Family :

Education & Career :

Solicitors Articled Clerk (1911).
Solicitor, Hippenholme (1916).

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

31 July - 10 November 1917. By the summer of 1917 the British Army was able for the first time to fight on its chosen ground on its terms. Having secured the southern ridges of Ypres at Messines in June, the main attack started on 31st July 1917 accompanied by what seemed like incessant heavy rain, which coupled with the artillery barrages conspired to turn much of the battlefield into a bog. Initial failure prompted changes in the high command and a strategy evolved to take the ring of ridges running across the Ypres salient in a series of 'bite and hold' operations, finally culminating in the capture of the most easterly ridge on which sat the infamous village of Passchendaele. The Official History carries the footnote ?The clerk power to investigate the exact losses was not available? but estimates of British casualties range from the official figure of 244,000 to almost 400,000. Within five months the Germans pushed the British back to the starting line, which was where they had been since May 1915.

Detail :

John Cotterill 6. Pte Samuel LUMB 16th Bn (Chatsworth Rifles) Died 2/11/17. 117 Bde of 39 Div. LUMB is buried in Luddendenfoot Congregational Chapel yard in Calderdale near Halifax. This is a mid 19th century chapel serving the mill workers of the Calder Valley. He evidently died at home of wounds or disease. Either are possible as the Chatsworth Rifles were heavily engaged on the Somme in 1916 and throughout 3rd Ypres in 1917.

UK Soldiers Effects register shows death cause was Wounds and location as Orpington. He reportedly died of Sepsis as a result of Wounds received at the Battle of Paschendaele.

Masonic :

Steward
Was initiated into Lightcliffe Lodge at the meeting following Rowland Lumb joining the Lodge from St. James' Lodge No. 448 Halifax. With 7 years between them, it is not father son relationship, but hard to preclude this is not family, perhaps a cousin.


[From "Lightcliffe Lodge No 3332: the first hundred years" by R.G. Taylor (2008)]
On July 28th, the brethren held a banquet to see Worshipful Master Richard Waite off to join the Royal Engineers. In the same month, the lodge established a roll of honour, listing the 11 members and their sons who had joined His Majesty's Forces, and in February 1916, sent "a small token of their appreciation and admiration of your patriotic spirit" to those on the roll. The story of one of them, Private Sam Lumb, epitomises the horror of the First World War.

Sam's Tragic End: Thirty-three year old solicitor Sam was initiated in December 1915, and became chief steward the following year. He was called to the Sherwood Foresters in May 1917, and went to war three months later. Sam fought at Passchendaele, one of the most famous offensives of the war, in the battle of Menin Road at Ypres.... Sam was wounded in the thigh on 20th September. He was brought home four days later, and died of septic poisoning on 2nd November at a military hospital in Orpington. The lodge held a Masonic memorial service for him in December. They had given him a bible to mark the birth of his daughter only 14 months earlier.

[photograph from a Halifax newspaper]

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley