Sidney Fortnum, known as Sid, was born in Abbotts Langley on Saturday, 18th February 1893 and baptised at St John the Baptist church in Aldbury, Hertfordshire when he was nine years old on Sunday, 2nd November 1902. He was the only surviving son born to Dan Fortnum and Mary Wilson Sangster, who had lost their first-born son Dan when he was only an infant in 1890.

Sid’s father worked as a ‘Paper Cutter’ at John Dickinson & Co Limited in Apsley Mills, a job he would do until his retirement. Dan was a native of Hemel Hempstead and he met and married his wife Mary after she had come south from Dyce near Aberdeen where she had been born. Mary had worked as a ‘Paper Folder’ in a paper mill in Auchmull, south of Aberdeen and she moved to Apsley End to work for Dickinsons in the early 1880s.

Sid lived with his mother and father at 1 Doolittle in Apsley End, not far from the paper mills, in the house the Fortnum’s lived in well into the 1920’s.

When he left school in 1906, Sid started work with Dickinsons at Apsley Mills and was employed as a Clerk in the ‘Counting House’ where he worked for the next ten years until he joined up. On the 1st November 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps, but his service was cut short after only four days and he was discharged. This was not unusual, as in the early years of the war approximately 45% of recruits were rejected and deemed to be unsuitable to fly for many reasons.

He enlisted in the Army a year later in November 1916 when he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and was posted to the 662nd Heavy Transport Company. He went to Park Royal in west London to train, but only two weeks after arriving he fell ill and was quickly admitted to the Royal Herbert military hospital on Shooter’s Hill, Woolwich in London. Sid’s condition worsened quickly and his parents were informed that he was ill and visited to find him in a critical condition.

His mother stayed with him as he deteriorated and she was with him when he died, just three days before Christmas, on Friday, 22nd December 1916. The cause of Sid’s death was pneumonia.

Sid was brought home to Apsley by train and his coffin taken to his parent’s house on Thursday, 28th December 1916 and two days later his funeral service was held at St Mary’s Church in Apsley. Officiating at the service on Saturday, 30th December, was the Reverend James Herbert Lendrum, who would also fall in the Great War in August 1918. The Reverend Lendrum’s biography also appears on this site. Sid’s funeral was well attended by family, friends and work colleagues who all knew him for his “quiet, unassuming manner and genial disposition”. He was laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Apsley.

Sid was the last of the local men to die in 1916 whose name is recorded on the Hemel Hempstead War Memorial. A detailed report describing the service appeared in the Hemel Gazette on the Saturday following his burial. 

He is commemorated on the memorial plaque in St Mary’s church and on the John Dickinson & Co War Memorial in Apsley.

Sid is Remembered with Honour in Apsley End (St. Mary) Churchyard, Apsley, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom where he is interred in a Grave against the north hedge.

He was 23 years old when he died.

Sid was entitled to the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.