son of Max Edward Richard Mousay Montesole en Emma Drummond Montesole
1882 Marriage
15 Sep 1909 • Christ Church, Crouch End, England Kate Marian Heaton
She was the daughter of Squire Eastwood Heaton and Kate Petter
 |
| Hotel Juana Juan Les Pins |
Birth
12 May 1882 • 103 Huddleston Road Islington Middlesex
1882 Marriage
15 Sep 1909 • Christ Church, Crouch End, England Kate Marian Heaton
She was the daughter of Squire Eastwood Heaton and Kate Petter
Max Herschel Edward Richard Montesole
Born12 May 1882
Place 103 Huddleston Road, Islington, London, Middlesex, England UK
Died 4 augustus 1937 in France
Probate Effects £11614 2s 1d
A
London Doctor in Peace and War
Max
Herschel Montesole (1882–1937), the eldest son of Max Edward Montesole, husband of Kate Marion Heaton and son-in-law of Kate Heaton (neé Petter), qualified as an
MBBS from St Thomas Hospital in 1907, when he was 25. He married Kate in 1909,
giving his address as The Manor House, East India Dock Road, Poplar, originally
the Sheriff of London’s residence but after the 1870s a doctors’ commons of two
large houses where several doctors ministered to whoever came through the door,
often for no fee for the poorest. And in Poplar, the poor were very poor indeed,
largely casual workers in the East India and West India Docks on the banks of
the river Thames, with their families crammed into decaying slum housing;
living space had been compromised by the driving of the railway through the
East End of London, putting great strain on the sewage system and causing
frequent water contamination. The Poplar Workhouse was ‘the size of a small
town’ where the able-bodied indigent were put to work; the aged went to the
Workhouse in the neighbouring borough of Stepney and the sick to the Poplar Asylum.
Herschel (his brother, the actor Max
Montesole, used the name Max) was born in inner-city Islington, but the
family of two parents, six sons and a daughter had by 1901 moved upmarket to
270 Wightman Road in the newly built Estate laid out by the Great Northern
Railway Company in the Hornsey/Harringey suburbs. Herschel could have entered a
medical practice in these more prosperous local surroundings, but seems to have
made a socially conscious decision to work where typhoid, cholera (both
water-borne diseases), typhus and tuberculosis (diseases of dirt and
overcrowding) were rife in the insanitary tenements, and the average life
expectancy was 37 years old. In 1911, The
Medical Register, in its announcement of his election as a Member of the British
Medical association (BMA), lists him as living in 18 Russell Mansions, Coram
Street Bloomsbury: had he moved to work in Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital,
whose charter was ‘the education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young
children’ taken off the streets and treated for diseases such as dysentery and
smallpox? On 20 May 1915, at just 33, he was elected as a Freeman of the City
of London, presumably in recognition of his work.
On 7 April 1915, The London Gazette lists Herschel as a Temporary Lieutenant in the
Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), the non-combatant corps delivering medical
services to an infantry or artillery regiment, in Herschel’s case the 2nd
Royal Fusiliers (the City of London Regiment). In his mid-thirties and in a
reserved occupation as a doctor, he had no need to enlist, but perhaps the fact
that his brothers were fighting influenced his decision. (The Montesoles were
among the handful of British families to send five sons to the Front: Max abandoned
his life as an actor to join the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force, and
survived the war to make a glittering career in America; Eric died of wounds on
4 March 1916 at the Hohenzollen Redoubt in Loos; Herbert was killed by a shell
at Festubert on the Somme on 17 March 1915; Allan served in the Machine Gun
Corps, and survived the war. Edward, the second son, was in a reserved
occupation as a director of Mulliners, a coachbuilding firm commandeered to
make ordnance and munitions.) The 2nd Fusiliers served in Gallipoli
and Egypt early in the war and were almost wiped out by disease. They entered
the Western Front at Marseilles in March 1916, and Herschel’s Medal Rolls Index
states that he became a Temporary RAMC Captain in May. In the summer/early
autumn of 1916 the 2nd Fusiliers fought at Ginchy on the Somme, in
the attritional and costly action around Arras in 1917, and on the Somme again
in 1918, when several divisions were destroyed.
Herschel would have been the Medical
Officer in a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS), set up in an abandoned farm or
ruined building a few miles behind the front lines, but still dangerously
vulnerable to shelling and, after the battle of Ypres in April 1915, gas attack.
CCSs moved location to follow the fighting but where possible stayed close to a
railway line so that the most severely wounded could be evacuated to hospital.
He would have had some surgical equipment and a rudimentary operating theatre,
but many soldiers who made it that far would have died of infection or disease;
the chain of casualties he received would have come first from a regimental aid
post set up in a deep shell hole on the battle line itself, which could
administer first aid and some pain relief, and then from an advanced dressing
station in an underground bunker or dugout where wounds could be treated. Since
they had no holding capacity, casualties had to make it to the CCS on foot or
stretcher, often under bombardment.
At some time in 1918, Herschel was
seriously wounded; he was awarded the Silver Badge as someone honourably
discharged on account of wounds or illness.
He seems to have returned to medical practice
until 1928, but we do not know if his marriage survived the strain of war: at
his death in 1937, probate did not go to Kate. We have also found only one
child, Katherine, born in 1914; one would expect a child or children to have
been born in 1910–1913 and one can speculate that if he was doing paediatric
work at Coram Fields, he may have been motivated, like Alice Edith Vlieland, by personal experience of child loss (we
remember that Alice Edith’s mother, Phoebe
Coulson, was one of 11, only 5 of whom survived into their teens, and
Alice’s own eldest sister Helena
predeceased her at the age of 18 months).
Thanks are due to www.ramc-ww1.com for some of the material in
this post.
son of Max Edward Richard Mousay Montesole en Emma Drummond Montesole
spouse Kate Marian Montesole née Heaton
Brother of Edward Bernard Montesole;
Max S Montesole; Second Lieutenant
Eric Alfred Montesole;
Mindel Brenda Montesole;
Lieutenant Herbert Sarif Roy, B.Sc (London) A M I C E en
Beroep 1891 - 8; 1909 - Doctor; 1911 - 28, Medical Practitioner; 1917 - Temporary Captain, RAMC
and there seem to be two Montesole girls as well.
Emma born/died 1886 and Henrietta bird/died 1888
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