The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.3 | Dec 2023

Member’s article

Clapham, Surrey, presumably as some form of apprenticeship, and then later a provision merchant and grocer in Hampstead, London. In 1899 he married Annie GREEN (1866 – 1946), daughter of Henry GREEN , a grocer; moving sometime before 1911 to Romsey and his Corn Dealer’s business. William sold his business in February 1919 to Messrs Purchase and Son, moving to Kent. The family records have a copy of a two-sided flyer with details of William HYDE and Messrs PURCHASE businesses on either side with the date of the transfer – obviously an orderly handover. Whether Harry STEAD and William HYDE knew each other before serving together in the Specials is not known, but my grandparents, Margaret Ellen STEAD (1895 - 1986) and William Percy Harold HYDE (1900 – 1986) (known as Harold) obviously met at some point, probably in Romsey. They married in 1928 a few years after both families had moved to Kent. Harold was an apprentice mechanic at Messrs Wrynams Motor Engineering works in Romsey before joining the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) as a Boy Mechanic in February 1918. Transfer to the RAF as a Motor Mechanic occurred in April 1918 with the merger of the naval and army air corps into the new service. Rather than being demobbed in 1919, Harold was transferred to Ireland where he became a Motor Cyclist, acting as a post man / messenger, for 100 Squadron. We have a small poor-quality snapshot of him on his motorbike with some comrades in Oranmore, County Galway, presumably out stationed from the squadron’s then base at Baldonnell, County Dublin. It must have been an

William Percy Hyde Specials

interesting experience riding a motorbike on Irish country lanes in that period, though I do not recall him ever talking about his experiences. Demob eventually occurred in June 1922 after 100 Squadron’s transfer to Spittlegate, near Grantham. Harold was then briefly a grocer’s clerk in Tilbury, before with his father searching for, and finding, a suitable house and land, for a market garden in Kent. Tim Cook (Member #15707) References: • Census returns for 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 • Birth, marriage and death certificates • Teachers Registration Council records • RNAS and RAF Records • Family memorabilia – advertising flyers, photographs, letters • A Very Special Force – 175th Anniversary of Hampshire Special Constabulary – Compiled by Brian Dixon – 2006 - Published by and available from the Hampshire Constabulary History Society.

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