CHARLES EDWIN BECKET

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Charles Edwin BECKET

Charles, who lived at 24 Rathcoole Gardens, Hornsey, was a Commercial Clerk by profession, but he was also a Baptist Local Preacher who had taken and passed the Church’s own exams for a lay preacher.

He had married his wife Jane in 1904 when he was 20 and she was 26.  They had two young daughters who would have been 8 and 5 and a half in 1916.

He appears to have applied for, and got, exemption from combatant service in August 1916, but we only pick up his trail with definite evidence from July 1918.  On the 5^th of that month, after the expiry of a previous exemption, he applied to Hornsey Tribunal for absolute exemption, but his application was refused.

On 18^th September he appealed to Middlesex Tribunal and was granted exemption from combatant service.  His appeal had actually been for absolute exemption so that he could become a full-time evangelistic preacher with the Open Air Mission, Bedford Row, in London.

Charles died in Eastbourne in 1962, aged 78.