Introduction
Charles Walter Guppy belonged to a Hardington family of builders but, like many skilled young craftsmen after the First World War, travelled wherever work was available. His move to a large housing development in South Wales promised good prospects, but his career ended abruptly in a tragic accident at the age of twenty-two.
Early life
Charles was born on 18 May 1904 at East Coker, the third of seven sons born to Walter Charles Guppy, a stonemason, and his wife, Annie (née Higgins).[1] After a brief stay at East Coker, the family returned to Hardington to live in the High Street. In the early 1920s they moved to Rose Cottage at Hardington Moor.[2]
Charles entered Hardington School on 9 September 1907 and left on his thirteenth birthday, 18 May 1917, with a labour certificate.[3] By the time of the 1921 census he was employed as an apprentice bricklayer with the Yeovil firm of Bird & Pippard. Although apprenticeships in the building trade typically lasted about seven years, it remains unclear whether he concluded his training with the firm.
By 1925 or 1926, Charles had left Somerset to work for the Allied Building Corporation, which was engaged in the construction of 1,000 houses at Malpas. The move illustrates the willingness of young craftsmen to travel considerable distances in search of steady employment during the interwar building boom.[4] He lodged at 176 Shaftesbury Street with a fellow-worker named Everson.
Tragic accident
On the evening of Tuesday, 31 August 1926, Charles, Everson and other workers travelled home in a lorry owned by William Banwell, a local haulage contractor. When the lorry stopped outside his lodgings, Everson got down, but Charles remained aboard. As the vehicle pulled away, he suddenly realised he had missed his stop. Grasping the side of the moving lorry, he jumped down but slipped after landing and suffered severe head injuries. He died while being taken to the Royal Gwent Hospital.[5]
At the inquest, witnesses said that Charles had failed to leave the vehicle because he appeared to have been “buried in thought.” The first newspaper account reported that one of the lorry’s wheels had passed over him, but this detail disappeared from later reports and was not recorded on the death certificate, suggesting that the initial report was inaccurate. His death would have been a devastating blow to his parents and six brothers.
Conclusion
Charles’s short life illustrates the mobility of skilled building workers during the interwar years, when employment increasingly drew young men away from rural Somerset to expanding towns and cities. His death, resulting from what appears to have been a momentary lapse of attention, also reflects the hazards of road transport at a time when workplace and vehicle safety standards were far less developed than they would later become.
References
[1] Civil registration birth index; Hardington School admissions register; family reconstitution.
[2] Hardington rate book for 31 December 1923.
[3] Hardington School admissions register.
[4] Western Mail, 25 March 1925, p.9.
[5] Western Mail, 1 September, p.7 (name recorded as Charles Duffey); Western Mail, 2 September 1926, p.8; death certificate of Charles Walter Guppy.