Confusingly there are three men of the name of Sidney (or Sydney) Newman recorded in the 1911 Census for this parish. Two are father and son and they are the father and younger brother respectively, of William James Newman who died in the Great War and was buried in the graveyard at the former Church of the Good Shepherd at Iping Marsh. Both of these survived the war and indeed the elder Sydney Newman died at the age of 90 in 1958 still living in the parish and was buried in the churchyard. His son, Sydney was born in 1901 and was thus probably too young to have fought and his name can also be traced in later records.
The third Sidney Newman was a more plausible candidate for the Memorial since he did fight in the conflict and his war service is fairly clear, but he too survived the war.
As can be imagined there are many men of this name who died during the War but it has not proved possible to find any link between any of them and this comparatively obscure and rural parish. It is also possible that the War Memorial has an error in the name and that it had been intended that William James Newman’s name should appear and not that of his father who perhaps subscribed to the memorial.
As a typical record therefore of a survivor of the war, the following details are appended of the third Sidney Newman mentioned above, since these details were discovered as a result of research undertaken for this project.
Private Sydney Newman M.M.
Regiment: Sussex Regiment 11th/12th Battalion
Service No: G/19621
Date and place of birth: 31 July 1892 Midhurst registration district, West Sussex
Date and place of death: Summer 1966 (aged 73) in Thanet, Kent district
Sydney Newman was born and raised in the Iping area, the son of a gardener. He joined the Sussex Regiment and was awarded the Military Medal during his war service. He survived the War but he lost his first wife in childbirth in 1919 and only re-married some years later.
Family background
Sydney Newman was born 31 July 1892 and his birth was recorded in the Midhurst registration district. According to later census reports, he was actually born in the hamlet of Tentworth near Stedham, the neighbouring parish to Iping, which was where the family lived in 1901 and 1911. He was the younger son of James Newman, a domestic gardener, and his wife Blanche. He was baptised at St James Church, Stedham on 28 August 1892,
By 1911, Sydney was working as an under-gardener and he was still a domestic gardener at the time of his marriage in 1915 to Constance Ella Stacey, a formerly local girl who was living in London at the time of her marriage. They were married in the Iping and Milland Mission Hall when the groom was 22 years old. He had clearly not joined the army by this date.
Military service
At some point Sydney Newman joined up or was conscripted and variously served with the 11th and 12th Service Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment. He is also listed with the 4th Royal West Kent Regiment. At the end of September 1917, a newspaper notice states that he was awarded the Military Medal “for his gallantry in carrying despatches under heavy shell fire” and this was gazetted on 28 January 1918. The 11th and 12th Battalions were stationed on the Ypres Salient at this time and they suffered heavy losses in the area close to Passchendaele. The 11th Battalion moved from the Ypres Salient in January 1918 where they had been stationed for over a year and were allowed time to rest and reform before again being involved in fighting during the German spring offensive.
It is not known when Sydney Newman left this unit since it underwent significant reconstruction during 1918. However, the new unit was eventually sent to Northern Russia and landed at Murmansk at the end of September 1918. Little fighting was seen but the extreme cold of the Russian winter had to be endured before the unit was brought back to England in summer 1919.
Subsequent events
It is unlikely that Sydney Newman had to endure the Russian winter since on Boxing Day 1919 he suffered the death of his wife in childbirth. Their daughter, Constance Jean Newman was born on 26 December 1919.
In November 1926, Sydney Newman, a widower, married Mary Jane Boniface in the church at Iping Marsh. At the time of the 1939 Register, he was living at Milland with Mary, when he was working as a general labourer. He is believed to have died in the Thanet, Kent area in the summer of 1966.
Jean Newman married John H. Johnson in the Midhurst area in the summer of 1940.