A recent visit to the Lancashire Record Office in Preston by Chorley Pals historian John Garwood has added more information to the lives of Pals members before, during and after the First World War.
James Pendlebury
Three of the Pals had connections to the Lancashire Police – then covering the old County Palatine of Lancashire which included Liverpool, Manchester, Eats Lancashire, the Fylde, Lancaster and up to Barrow-in-Furness.
Private 15861 James Pendlebury served as PC 306 in Blackburn, from the 13th November 1908 until the 1st September 1909 before returning to work as a Twister in a local cotton mill. He was killed in action on the 1st July 1916 and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
Corporal 18971 Joseph Alexander Thompson joined the Police as a Probationary on the 25th October 1913, serving as PC 1896 in Ashton-under-Lyne until the 7th February 1915, whereupon he joined the Chorley Pals Company under the terms of the Police Naval & Military Service Act 1914 – 1915.
His Police Service record states that he worked as a Carter for Messrs. J. Hall & Co. in Chorley, whilst the 1911 Census had him down as a Porter for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company (probably at Chorley Station).
Joseph Thompson died of wounds in a German field hospital on the 7th September 1918; he is buried in New Irish Farm near Ypres in Belgium.
Seargent 15524 Percy Allsup was one of the Chorley Pals held in reserve in the trenches at Serre on the Somme on the morning of the 1st July 1916 – he was still wounded, however, by shell-fire. Wounded again later in the War, he survived and returned to his family home in Clayton-le-Woods near Chorley.
He joined the Police on the 25th June 1930 as PC153, serving in Blackburn as well as 112 days spent with the Birmingham City Police. he left the Police 23rd December 1921 and emigrated to New England in the USA, where he died in 1966.
The names of James Pendlebury and Joseph Thompson will be on the new Chorley War Memorial, as part of the Chorley Remembers project run by the Chorley Pals Memorial charity.
