Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Charles Edward Scott was born in 1867 in Bradford. He was the sixth son born to Walter Scott, from Northamptonshire, and Jessie Forbes from Scotland. In total their family numbered thirteen children. Walter was a cloth merchant, first in Manchester, then in Bradford from around 1863. He died in 1880,
leaving a substantial personal estate worth nearly £40,000 (that is more than £2 million by today’s values). Their sons followed different careers, including a doctor, consulting engineer, farmer in Canada, cloth manufacturer, master dyer and motor cycle manufacturer. Charles Edward attended Bradford Grammar School from 1876 to 1885, from the ages of nine to eighteen. After school he became a solicitor, eventually becoming a partner in the firm of Wade, Tetley, Wade and Scott. The Scotts were neighbours to the Wades, father and son, around 1870. The younger Wade, Henry Oswald, was himself an Old Bradfordian, and he and Charles Scott were also active together as members of the ‘Bradford Rifles’, the 2nd Volunteer Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment. When the Territorial Force was established in 1908, both were appointed Captains in the 6th Battalion. Charles married relatively late, in
1903, when he was 36. His wife Margaret Ackroyd was the daughter of a wealthy woollen cloth manufacturer, and the couple lived on Wilmer Drive in Heaton. By 1911 they had two children, a son and a daughter.
When war broke out Charles was already 47 years old, married and a father, yet he did not hesitate to volunteer for overseas service with the 6th Battalion. When it went abroad on 15th April 1915, Major Scott was second-in-command. The commanding officer was his business partner and school-friend Henry Wade. Charles Scott served with the 1/6th West
Yorkshire throughout the arduous months in the Ypres Salient in the second half of 1915. It was his ‘punctiliousness and devotion to detail’ as “O.C. Gas Masks” which ensured that the battalion did not suffer worse during the gas attack of 19th December. When Wade was wounded on the 1st of July 1916, he became Lieutenant-Colonel in command of the battalion. Scott was clearly a man who led from the front and who had the respect of the men under his command. On 24th July, when the battalion was holding the line near Authuille Wood, Scott was touring the front with his second-in-command Captain Knowles (another Old Bradfordian and brother of the first B.G.S. pupil to die in the war), when the Germans began shelling with shrapnel and high explosives. Knowles was dangerously wounded while Scott received a mortal injury. As he was carried away on a stretcher, the Battalion’s historian wrote, ‘men took off their helmets, and muttered sincere words of sympathy, and felt a keen sense of personal loss as Colonel Scott passed on.’ His three weeks in command, at a time of great emergencies, ‘added greatly to his reputation for thoroughness and unselfishness. It can be said with absolute sincerity that he thought first of the comfort of his men, and last of himself.’
It was at first reported in Bradford that Scott was wounded in the arm, and he was evacuated by rail to No. 18 General Base Hospital at Camiers, near Etaples on the coast. On 9th August he succumbed to his wounds and was buried in the British Military Cemetery at Etaples. He is also remembered on the family monument in Undercliffe Cemetery. His parents dedicated a window to his memory in the recently built St. Chad’s Church, Manningham.'