Family reunited with First World War medals stolen decades ago

When local historian Anne-Marie Fawcett saw five medals from the First World War in an antique shop in Ossett that belonged to two brothers who were originally from Lancashire. She was determined to find out how they’d ended up there.

The brothers, Arnold and Peter Booth, served during the war in the Manchester Regiment and East Lancashire Regiment respectively. Two of the medals were awarded to Peter, and the other three to Arnold.

Miraculously, all five medals had remained together, but Anne-Marie says, “I always find it sad that these medals pass out of the family. So I thought I'd have a go and see if I could track down anyone that might be connected to these two men.”

“There were several men named Arnold Booth in the military records but I eventually tracked down a pension record that had two addresses on it - one was the address of the grandmother of the casualty, the other was the address of his mother in Morecambe. The jigsaw was beginning to fit together.”

Having joined the war early on, Arnold was part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and was declared missing on August 7 1915 in Gallipoli in modern day Turkey, during the attritional 8-month battle that saw 100,000 deaths. His family was awarded his medals: the 14-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, collectively known as ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ after a popular cartoon from the time.

Peter was born in 1899, but lied about his age to join the army in 1915 - most likely after his brother’s death.

After returning from the war, Peter moved to Leeds in 1930 where he settled with his family, before dying in January 1959. The medals were passed on to his son, Peter Jr, but were stolen when he eventually passed away.

Following more online sleuthing via family tree websites, Anne-Marie tracked down Peter Jr’s widow, Jean and her two sons, Shaun and Neil, who now lived in Tadcaster, York and Selby.

After managing to convince them that she wasn’t out to scam them, Anne-Marie met the Booths last week at Ossett Antiques and Collectables to reunite the family with their long-lost heirlooms.

As well as the British War Medal and Victory Medal that were discovered at the Ossett antiques shop, Peter was also awarded the Silver War Badge, which was issued to personnel who had been honourably discharged following wounds or sickness.

An emotional Jean spoke about her late father-in-law while collecting his medals and remembered how the war continued to affect him long after his return.

“Because he was gassed in the war, every winter he couldn’t work. If the weather was bad or really cold, he couldn’t work.”

Peter ran his own business spray painting cars, and coincidentally lived in Harehills, only two streets away from where Anne-Marie herself lived in the 1990s.