People on board

HAILWOOD, Edmund Thomas Marcel

Edmund Thomas Marcel was born in Manchester in 1898 to William Thomas Hailwood and Ethel Mary Cowgill. The youngest of their three children, he was registered as Thomas Edmund and he and his older brother James were the only two to survive. In 1900 William and Ethel divorced, with William being given custody of the children. The court proceedings were reported in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, where William was described as a ‘Manchester Baker’.

In the 1901 census William, a ‘Baker and Flour Dealer’ was boarding in Rolleston Street in Manchester, accompanied by five year old James. There is an entry for a five year old Thomas Hailwood in Crumpsall Workhouse, some miles north, which may be Thomas Edmund. In 1903 William Hailwood remarried to Lillian Gill and by 1911 the family were re-united in China Lane, Piccadilly where two more children, Elizabeth and Thomas were born. Thomas Edmund was now named as Edmund.

In 1918 James married Emily Lusk and Edmund married Muriel Maybell Banner from Skegness. His name was registered as Edmund Thomas Marcel, but there is no indication where ‘Marcel’ came from. By this time Edmund had enlisted in the Lancashire Hussars Yeomanry and was with the 2/1st Regiment which moved to Skegness in January 1918 and then to Ireland in May. James had enlisted in the 2nd Border Regiment, Service Number 10665. At this stage the records become confused. James’s medal record then shows that he was with the Lancashire Hussars and then the Corps of Hussars, but with Edmund’s Service Number 30710.

Returning home on leave from Ireland, Edmund Hailwood 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 Cemetery. However the ‘Register of Soldiers’ Effects’ name him as J Hailwood, though with Muriel M as his widow. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has correctly named him on their list. James lived until the 1950s.