Baghdad bell

Baghdad bell

• Height  387 mm
• Width  483 mm
• Weight  74 kg
• Note  A#

The Baghdad bell (misspelt 'Bagdad' in the inscription) in the Carillon was given by sisters Dorothy Tanner and Gwyneth Laird in memory of their brother Charles Cyril Pontin Tanner, who died in Baghdad during the First World War.

Charles Tanner

The only son of Ann and Cyril William Tanner of Wellington, Charles was born in 1892. His father was a solicitor and for some time a city councillor. Charles attended Wellington College and went on to study at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in England. In 1912 he received a commission with the British Army and in June 1914 he was posted to India where he served at Bannu, in what is now Pakistan.

During the First World War Charles served with the 29th Mountain Battery and later the 157th Heavy Battery in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He became a captain and was based in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), where the British Army fought against the Ottomans. As well as facing the dangers of warfare, soldiers had to contend with extreme heat and poor sanitary conditions, which led to sickness and many deaths from disease. In late 1918 Charles became seriously ill, and on 5 October he died from disease in an isolation hospital in Baghdad. He is buried at the Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery in Iraq.

Donating the bell

In 1926 Charles’ sisters, Dorothy Tanner and Gwyneth Laird, donated the Baghdad bell in his memory. Dorothy had served in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service as a masseuse working with returned soldiers after the First World War. She served again in the Second World War with the Women’s Auxiliary Corps in India. She was later deeply involved in the movement to save Old St Paul’s church in Wellington from demolition in the 1950s and 1960s.

Shortly after donating the bell with Dorothy, Gwyneth left New Zealand for England with her new husband, naval officer James Laird. In the Second World War, James was a Master Mariner in the Merchant Navy. He was killed when his ship the Turakina, a refrigerated cargo steamer, was attacked and sunk by the German raider Orion in the Tasman Sea in August 1940.

Further information

Auckland War Memorial Museum Online Cenotaph record – Charles Tanner

Commonwealth War Graves Commission record – Charles Tanner

London Gazette, 21 January 1913, no. 28683, p. 497

'Personal matters', Evening Post, 18 February 1913, p. 7

'Personal matters', Evening Post, 16 May 1917, p. 8

'Personal matters', Evening Post, 11 October 1918, p. 8

'On service', Evening Post, 26 December 1918, p. 2

'Personal items', Dominion, 1 January 1919, p. 4

'Roll of honour', Dominion, 4 January 1919, p. 1

Mesopotamia campaign, National Army Museum UK

The sinking of the Turakina – part of S. D. Waters, German raiders in the Pacific, War History Branch, Wellington, 1949