People on board

BUTT, Edwin

Edwin Butt was born in Paddington, London in 1883 to William Edwin and Eliza Butt. No other details of his family have been confirmed. In the 1891 census, at the age of eight, he was living with a sixty-eight year old widow, Ann E Hodges, in Woking, Surrey. There was no one else in the household. In 1901 he was living with her then forty-four year old daughter, Elizabeth Emma Hodges, on the same street in Woking, and probably the same house. Elizabeth Hodges was a School Teacher and Edwin Butt gave his occupation as ‘Printer’s Compositor Apprentice’. No family connection has been found to link the Butt and Hodges families.

In 1911 Edwin was boarding in Forest Gate, London and, at the age of twenty-eight, was a Compositor. It is not known when he enlisted in the Army Service Corps, but when he did he gave his residence as Westcliff-on-Sea, a suburb of Southend-on-Sea in Essex. In October 1918 he was with the 538th Horse Transport Company in the Curragh, Co Kildare as a Driver.

Presumably returning to England on leave he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Ceremony. His name is recorded on the War Memorial in All Saints Church, Woodham, Woking and listed as one of the parishioners. His connection with Woking and the Hodges family was clearly an important one and Elizabeth Emily Hodges was named as one of the Executors of his Will, along with Edith Florence Sturrock, both Spinsters. The latter’s connection has not been established.