“Son Of The Speaker”

On the 29th April 1915, 2nd Suffolk were relieved from their front line trenches by the 4th Middlesex regiment. 
As they departed, they marched back to their billets behind the line. As they passed through the junction known as "Confusion Corner" near the Ypres-Comines canal, the Germans unleashed a deadly bombardment of high explosive and shrapnel shells onto the cross roads causing several casualties.
One man wounded that day was Lieutenant A. J. Lowther, when a shard of shrapnel nicked the top of his ear, knocking off his glasses and grazing the side of his head. Though it looked gruesome, the wound itself was not serious.
The War Diary duly noted his injury and paraphrased it by a rather pompous note stating “Son of The Speaker” - a rather tongue-in-cheek remark referring to his illustrious family lineage and the fact that at that time, his father was the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Arthur James Beresford Lowther was born in 1888 and volunteered for service in early August 1914. He didn't remain a private soldier for long for he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment on the 1st September 1914, and arrived in France on 4th February 1915, joining the 2nd Battalion then in the front line at La Clytte. 
Arthur’s father, James William Lowther, 1st Viscount Ullswater, of Campsea Ashe in the County of Suffolk, GCB, PC, JP, DL was Speaker of the House of Commons throughout the Great War, coining the immortal parliamentary phrase “Stand up. Speak up. Shut up” The family, which had direct lineage back to William the Conqueror, was one of the noblest in the land.
Captain, the Honourable Arthur James Beresford Lowther, was himself educated at Eton and was before the war, a barrister of the Inner Temple. After his Great War service, he went on to become Assistant Commissioner for Kenya (1918-20) and later Aide-de-Camp to the Governor of Southern Rhodesia in 1923.  He never married and died in 1967.

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