Harold was born in Southampton on 22nd January 1894 and attended Ilford County High School during the 1908-09 academic year. He passed his Oxford Junior examination in 1909 and left school to train as a Boy Clerk in the Civil Service.
His father, Alfred also worked in the Civil Service as a Chief Preventative Officer for Customs and Excise. His mother’s name was Alice. Harold had an older brother, Alfred and younger sister, Elsie. The family lived in Portsmouth in 1901, but had moved to 29 Warwick Gardens, in Ilford by 1908. By 1911, Harold was living as a boarder with Esther Stevens in Thorold Road, Ilford. At that time, he was still single and working as a clerk for the Port of London Authority.
In the Summer 1916 edition of the school magazine, Chronicles, his uncle, H. W. Tremayne wrote the following sketch of Harold’s career;
‘On leaving School in 1910 he entered the Civil Service, but resigned to take up a position under the Port of London Authority. War being declared in 1914, he considered it his duty to go at once, joined the 4th Seaforth Highlanders, and had a very strenuous time in France during the first winter of the war. In the summer of 1915 he was invalided home, but recovered, and received a commission in the Fusiliers. On completion of his training he was again sent to France.’
He married Florence Stapley in Southampton in the spring of 1916. His wife gave birth to a son, who was also named Harold Ernest, in May 1917. Unfortunately, Harold senior had died in September 1916, at the Somme, and father and son never had a chance to meet. His captain, Arthur Agius, wrote the following to Harold’s wife after his death;
‘Perhaps by now the official telegram will have reached you; yet it is my hard task to be the bearer of ill news. Your husband, Lieut. H. E. Scarlett, was killed in action last Sunday evening.
We had been in the big fighting of the last few days. On Sunday we were just behind the advanced line on the right of the British attack. A shell burst near your husband, killing him instantaneously; he could not have suffered even a moment’s pain. The newspapers have spoken of Leuze Wood. It was there your husband was killed; it is there that he is buried.
I wish to put on record the high opinion his commanding officer had begun to form of him. He had not been with us many days, but those days were strenuous days of working, fighting, and continuous endurance of shell fire. It was a stiff test, and your husband bore himself nobly. Always cheery and brave, he was a fine example to his men, an officer we can ill afford to lose.’
A letter back from Florence to Captain Agius, is now kept in the Imperial War Museum archive and can be read in full in Lyn MacDonald's book, "Somme.” It was also read out at the Somme Centenary Service at Thiepval on 1st July 2016 by Harold's grand-daughter Clare Scarlett.
Harold is recorded on the Ilford County High School first Roll of Honour (in the Christmas 1914 Chronicles magazine). It gives his regiment as the Seaforths. When he died on 17th September 1916, he was a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the London Regiment.
Research by Andrew Emeny, History Teacher at ICHS
Sources:
Ancestry.com
ICHS school records and magazines
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Correspondence with Peter Agius
Lyn Macdonald’s book ‘Somme’
Note
Ilford County High School started life as the Park Higher Grade School in 1901 in Balfour Road, Ilford. It was renamed Ilford County High School (or initially County High School, Ilford) in the years after the school’s management was transferred from Ilford School Board to Essex Education Committee in 1904.