James Tongue

James was the son of James Tongue (b. abt. 1867, Sutton Bonington) and his second wife, Fanny nee Oliver (b. abt. 1870, Codnor, Derbyshire) whom he married in 1890. James and Fanny had four children, Winifred (b. abt. 1892) and James (b. 1893), David (b. abt. 1897) and Harold (b. abt. 1899). However, James Tongue senior had also had a son, James Bernard (known as Bernard), by Emma Elizabeth Tongue nee Snow whom he had married in 1883; Bernard had been born the following year. Emma died in 1888 aged 27. In 1881 James Tongue senior, then 14 years old, was a hosier's assistant, and living with his widowed mother, Sarah Tongue (50), a domestic servant, and his two sisters, Eliza (29, b. Nottingham), a hosiery turner-off, and Annie (16, b. Sutton Bonington), a domestic servant, at 12 Lion Square, Nottingham. By 1891 James, a fireman (railway), having been married twice in the intervening 10 years, was living with his second wife Fanny and his son Bernard at 1 Mayfield Terrace, Meadows, Nottingham. It would seem that the census enumerator mistakenly recorded Bernard's age as 6 months as other evidence suggests he would have been 6 years old. James probably died in 1898 age 31, meaning that his youngest son, Harold, was born posthumously the following year. At the time of the 1901 census the widowed Fanny and her four children, Winifred (9), James (7), David (4) and Harold (2) were living at 55 Blackstone Street, Meadows, in the household of Lizzie Oliver (26), a laundress. Fanny, who was Lizzie's sister, was also working as a laundress. Fanny's stepson, Bernard (16), was also living with them but was described as a 'lodger'; he was employed as a carter for a provision merchant. Fanny, Winifred and James Tongue were still living at 55 Blackstone Street in 1904 when Bernard named them as his next of kin living at this address when he joined the Sherwood Foresters. However, it appears that James' family was split up some time after this date. Winifred died in 1907 aged 15 and James joined the Royal Navy in 1910 having previously been in the Gordon Boys' Home, Nottingham. In 1911 his brother Harold (12), who was still at school, was recorded on the census as a patient in an Institution in Nottingham; the residents who comprised children and adults were described as either 'inmates' or 'patients', many of the adults were in paid employment. On the same census Fanny Tongue was a live-in servant in the household of Walter Blackman, a grocer, and his family at 179 Quarry Road, Bulwell. James' other brother, David, has not yet been traced on the 1911 census but a record has been found of the marriage of a David Tongue to Clarice Culley in Nottingham in December 1925. According to the notice of his death in the local paper, James was living at 7 Radcliffe Terrace, Meadows, Nottingham, at the time of his death. James' half-brother, Bernard, served continuously in the Sherwood Foresters from 1904 until his death on the Western Front on 29 April 1915 (Corporal 9082). He left a widow, Florence Gertrude (nee Parsons), whom he had married on 24 December 1914.