Arthur Stallard

[John Simkin]

Does anybody know anything about Arthur Stallard? In their book, "West Ham United" (1994), John Northcutt and Roy Shoesmith claim that Stallard was a promising striker who scored 8 goals in 13 games before the First World War. However, in "West Ham United Who’s Who", Tony Hogg claims that Stallard was a centre-half who was a reliable deputy for Jim Barrett. The record books suggest that Hogg is wrong about this because he definitely did score 1 in 2 in 1913-14 and 7 in 11 in 1914-15.

Hogg goes on to argue that after retiring he worked as chief scout for West Ham and died in 1989. Northcutt and Shoesmith claim that Stallard was killed during the First World War. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission shows that several people called Stallard were killed in the war. However, most of these only have the initials and it is important to correctly identify an Arthur Stallard, born in Hackney, who lost his life in the conflict.

http://www.cwgc.org/search/SearchResults.a...5&send.y=13

Is it possible that there were two Arthur Stallard’s at West Ham?