Charles Francis Maurice Malley
World War I Veteran
By Camille Arbogast
Charles Francis Maurice Malley was born on December 1, 1871, in Milton, MA. His father, Patrick, was a coachman for the Angell family on Adams Street. Patrick was an Irish immigrant, as was his wife Margaret (Hanigan). Patrick immigrated to the United States in the 1850s. He and Margaret were married in 1865 in Charlestown. They had two daughters: Nora born in 1867 and Mary born in 1873.
When Charles was young, the family moved to Dorchester. By 1890, they lived at 2209 Dorchester Avenue in Lower Mills. Charles attended Boston Latin School, class of 1890, and won a Franklin Medal, a prize for outstanding students created by a codicil in Benjamin Franklin’s will. At Harvard, he did four years of coursework in three years, graduating magna cum laude in the class of 1894. His classmate later remembered of him, “He seems never to have refused a challenge of any kind whatsoever. … he never claimed to own but one book, and even that claim was disputed. In class, he used to look over his neighbor’s elbow and several professors noting this, sought to catch him napping. But he always whipped off his translations with such speed and accuracy that they ceased to be suspicious. He did his work scurrying through the libraries. It was one of his bewildering powers to have everything needful, for any occasion what so ever, at his fingers’ ends, but no one ever knew when or how in the world he got it all.” He earned an LL.B. at Harvard Law School, completing the three-year program in two years.
He went to work for the law firm of Churchill and Churchill in Boston in December 1895 and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1897. He then entered the office of Charles Francis Jenney, who was later an associate justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Later he had his own practice, during business hours he could be found in an office in downtown Boston, and in the evenings in the Bispham Building at 1177 Washington Street in Lower Mills. Two of his most notable clients were the U.S. Representatives Joseph A. Conry, and Michael F. Phelan. A member of the Democratic Committee of Boston, Charles ran for state office at least four times, but was not elected. He also submitted petitions to the state, including a consumer protection measure seeking to require bottles to display their size. Charles was a regular speaker in the Boston area, addressing Catholic social groups on topics such as his observations from his travels in Ireland, and on the troubles in France between the church and the state. During this time, he lived with his family at 1052 Washington Street in Dorchester, where they moved in 1899.
On June 7, 1905, Charles married Clara Madeline Hart. They were married in Wilmington, Delaware, her hometown. The couple were married by Charles’s cousin, Reverend Edward Malley. They took a honeymoon to Montreal and Quebec City before settling in Dorchester. A couple of months after their wedding, in September, Charles’s mother, Margaret, died of capillary bronchitis. By 1908, they lived at 124 Melville Avenue. In July 1909, Charles and Clara had a daughter, Mary Constance Malley. Born prematurely, she died of inanition, or exhaustion, at two months old at the Boothby Hospital in Boston.
By 1910, it appears Charles and Clara were no longer living together. That year, the census reported Charles living with his father and sisters at 91 Ashmont Street. They had moved to 1158 Adams Street by 1915. That year, Charles sued the Walton Lunch Company for $5,000 in damages, alleging he was humiliated when “employees seized him at the door, assaulted him and accused him of not having paid his check” when he was leaving their lunchroom on School Street.
When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Charles wanted to fight. Too old for the draft, he also seems to have been unable to enlist in the United States military. In August, he joined the 236th Battalion of the Canadian Army, which was recruiting in New England. Also known as the New Brunswick Kilties, or the MacLean Kilties of America, it was a Scottish Highlanders battalion complete with bagpipes and a uniform featuring kilts in the MacLean of Duart dress tartan. The Kilties actively sought New Englanders to join their ranks, even recruiting at a Red Sox game.
Charles travelled to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he officially enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces as a private on September 14, 1917. In order to join the Canadian Army, he claimed to have been born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He also took two years off his age, said he was unmarried, and gave his name as Charles O’Malley. He enlisted for the duration of the war. Charles was assigned to Company B, Platoon 5. The Kilties trained at Camp Valcartier in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, near Quebec City, and then at Camp McGill in Montreal. Charles seems to have been enthusiastic about the Kilties, writing a song for the battalion.
On October 30, 1917, he sailed on His Majesty’s Troopship Canada, arriving in Liverpool on November 19. The Battalion was renamed the MacLean Highlanders and sent to Seaford Camp in Sussex. While in England, Charles did some sightseeing, visiting the London Law Court and the House of Parliament, where he heard Prime Minister Lloyd George speak. He also attended the funeral of the Irish politician John E. Redmond, whom Charles had entertained when Redmond visited Boston.
In March 1918, the 236th Battalion was broken up and the men used as reinforcements for other units. Charles was assigned to the 42nd Royal Canadian Highlanders, part of the 20th Reserve Battalion, and stationed at Camp Bramshott in Hampshire, England. On May 8, 1918, he was sent to France, where he was billeted in a farmhouse. That month, Charles’s father died in Dorchester.
In September 1918, Charles was transferred for the final time to Company C, 78th Canadian Infantry. Most of the men in the unit were from Winnipeg, Manitoba. For Charles, the “great joy is that they do not wear the kilts, of which I had become sick and tired and also, whisper, winter was coming on and I’m no Spartan Boy.” They went to the front in that month. In October, he saw action in the Battle of Cambrai. To a friend he wrote, “Well, Bill, your old pal can truly say now that he is a tried solider o-the-wars and has been through his baptism of blood and fire. … we were five days under hell-fire of artillery shell and machine gun fire, aeroplane bombs and bullets of snipers, i.e. sharpshooters. … We slept in shell-holes and trenches midst rain and mud, and little to eat, but we stuck on.”
Marching through a town where the villagers, recently liberated from German control, shouted “Vive les braves Canadiens,” he felt “a funny feeling of pain and pleasure never experienced before … We saw the meaning and necessity for our presence in arms … Bill, O Bill, after that I know that I have not lived in vain— that I have done my sum— been of some little use in the world and I am glad and content and at peace with myself.”
Charles was taken out of the lines on November 9, suffering from influenza. On November 17, 1918, he died at the British 26th General Hospital in Etaples, France. He was buried in the British Etaples Military Cemetery with Catholic ceremony and military honors. In Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline he is listed on the family tombstone, along with his mother and infant daughter. A memorial mass was celebrated for him on Thanksgiving day 1918 at Saint Gregory’s Church in Dorchester. He is commemorated in Harvard’s Memorial Hall, where his name is engraved alongside the other members of the Harvard community who died while in military service. According to an obituary which ran in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin he was “believed to be the oldest Harvard graduate who died at the front.” In Dorchester, a square is named for him at the junction of River and Washington Streets.
Sources
Family Tree; Ancestry.com
Boston Directory, various years; Ancestry.com
Latin School Register, Vol XXXVII, no 6, March 1919: 10-12; Archive.org
Harvard College Class of 1894, 25th Anniversary Report, 1894-1919, Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1919; Archive.org
Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report No II. Cambridge, 1897; Archive.org
Advertisement, Blue Book of Dorchester 1902. Cambridge, MA: Edward A. Jones, 1902; Books.Google.com
“Wants Bottles Labelled,” Boston Post, 15 March 1902; 5; Newspapers.com
“All Saints’ Court M.C.O.F.,” Boston Globe, 13 April 1908; 16; Newspapers.com
“Malley-Hart,” Boston Globe, 14 June 1905; 14; Newspapers.com
Marriage Record, Delaware Vital Records. Microfilm. Delaware Public Archives, Dover; Ancestry.com
Deaths, Boston Globe, 28 Sept 1905; 11; Newspapers.com
Daughter’s Death Record, Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; Ancestry.com
1870, 1910 U.S. Federal Census; Ancestry.com
“Forsyth Sued for $38,600,” Boston Globe, 9 July 1915; 7; Newspapers.com
“War News of Harvard Men,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 5 December 1918: 200; Archive.org
Attestation Record, Personal Records of the First World War, Canadian Expeditionary Force; Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
Service Record, Personal Records of the First World War, Canadian Expeditionary Force; Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
Putnam, Eben, ed. Report of the Commission on Massachusetts’ Part in the World War: The Gold Star Record of Massachusetts, Vol II. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1929; Archive.org
MacLean, Ian. “The MacLean Kilties,” Clan MacLean Atlantic Canada. <http://www.clanmacleanatlantic.org/his-kilties.html>
Deaths, Boston Post, 2 June 1918; 18; Newspapers.com
“Hub Lawyer Dies Abroad,” Boston Post, 26 November 1918; 3; Newspapers.com
“Canadian Casualties,” Boston Globe, 26 November 1918; 8; Newspapers.com
“The Class of 1894,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin,12 June 1919: 747-748 ; Archive.org
Commonwealth War Graves Registers, First World War, modified 27 July 2016, Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
“Charles Francis Maurice Malley;” FindaGrave.com
“World War I,” Harvard: The Memorial Church. < https//memorialchurch.harvard.edu/world-war-i>
Reports of Proceedings, Boston City Council, Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1921; Books.Google.com