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Norman Gwynne Chamberlain

 

Lieutenant, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards.

 

Norman Chamberlain was a member a well known family: his uncle, Joseph, was a renowned Lord Mayor of Birmingham before entering parliament and rising to high office; Norman's cousin Neville was Prime Minister are the start of World War II.

 

Norman's own political career was in its infancy when he volunteered to serve in the army, but he is still remembered in Birmingham where the Norman Chamberlain Playing Fields are a lasting memorial to his work as a city councillor.

 

He made such an impression on his cousin Neville that the future Prime Minister's only book was Norman Chamberlain: A Memoir. Throughout his own political career Neville sought to continue Norman's social reform programme.

 

Obituary (TImes, 16 Feb 1918)

 

Captain Norman Gwynne Chamberlain, Grenadier Guards, son of Mrs Alfred Cole, of West Woodhay House, Newbury, and the late Mr Herbert Chamberlain, and nephew of the late Mr Joseph Chamberlain, was born in 1884. He was educated at Mr Dunn’s preparatory school at Ludgrove, whence he went to Eton, where he won a scholarship, which, however, he did not take up. He was in Mr Impey’s House.

 

From Eton he went to Magdelen College, Oxford, where he gained a Demyship. Om leaving Oxford he travelled abroad for a year, and, returning to England, stood for the Unionist interest for the Camborne division, but was defeated.

 

He then went to Birmingham, and entering the City Council in 1909, became a prominent member. He served on the Education Committee, in the work of which he took special interest. He was chairman of the Committee which deals with the acquiring and improving of open spaces in the city, and initiated in Birmingham the system of organized games and play centres. The Birmingham Central Care Committee, the first of its kind in the country, was originally formed on a scheme worked out by him in conjunction with Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, and proved so remarkable success that it has been largely followed by other cities. His work among the street boys of Birmingham made him widely known, and he was often consulted on boys’ welfare questions.

 

In September, 1914, he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and in December, 1914, exchanged into the Grenadier Guards, going shortly afterwards to the front, where he served until December 1 last, when he was reported ‘missing’. After more than two months he was found some way out in No Man’s Land, surrounded by 18 Grenadiers and 20 Germans, the Grenadiers having apparently been caught by machine-guns after bayoneting the Germans. A brother officer writes:- "To me and to all those who knew him he will ever be a deathless memory of magnificent courage and steadfastness".

 

His death at the early age of 33 has cut short a life full of brilliant promise and deprived the country of one whose powers of constructive statesmanship might well have raised him to a high place among educational reformers.

 

More.

 

Norman Chamberlain is buried in grave IV. B. 9. at Fins New British Cemetery, Sorel-le-Grand.

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 Died this day:
29 March 1917
L H Sparks
Ashampstead

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