Sidney Oliver GRINDLE 1897 - 1944 Littledean Hill R I P (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Thursday, April 06, 2017, 22:21 (2793 days ago) @ Mike Pinchin

The medal card on Ancestry shows that Pte 12242 Sidney O GRINDLE was awarded the Victory and British War medals. There is no Correspondence information on the card. The Service Medal and Award Rolls give the same information but record him as a Lance Corporal in the 7th Battalion the Gloucestershire Regiment.

BNA Gloucester Journal - Saturday 13 May 1911

Littledean Petty Sessions

Martha Grindle, widow, Causeway, Littledean, was summoned to recover £1 4s. arrears under an order dated 10th June. 1910, in respect of her son, Sidney Grindle, who was sent by the magistrates to the Cardiff and Barry Industrial School.

Hi Mike, thanks for looking up the Medal Card. I'm sure you also tried to find Sidney's Army Records, and like me have found they aren't available anymore, presumably amongst those lost during WW2 bombing.

The Cardiff & Barry Industrial School is a new subject to me, so I thought I'd look it up. It appears to be a "workhouse" specifically for pauper children, which gave the inmates basic education plus taught trades intended to help them find employment in later life. For girls this included housework, needlework and laundrywork; for boys tailoring, shoemaking & carpentry. Cardiff had such an Industrial school in Ely from 1862 to 1903. I guess that the Cardiff & Barry School was a relatively new replacement when Sidney was there from 1910 ?
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Cardiff/

In fact the Cardiff & Barry School was originally a "Short Term / Truant" Industrial School, certified in 1899 for 120 boys, but became an ordinary Industrial School in May 1910. From 1933 it became Bryn-y-don or Brynydon Approved School for 120 children. It was at Dinas Powis in the Vale of Glamorgan, south-west of Cardiff towards Barry. This comes from an excellent site I'd not seen before which details Industrial & Reformatory Schools all across England and Wales.
http://missing-ancestors.com/index.html

More detailed info and modern photos of the School here. The School finally closed in 1996, it appears the buildings are still intact.
http://www.childrenshomes.org.uk/CardiffIT/