Clarence Alexander Gosset

By Gilly Carr 

Clarence Alexander Gosset was born on 5 March 1908 in the parish of St Ouen in Jersey. At the time of the registration of Islanders in January 1941, Gosset was 32 years old, single, and working as a labourer. He stated on his Occupation registration form that he had previously served in the Jersey Royal Militia, which he left in April 1936 with the rank of sergeant.

Like a number of people on this website, we know little about his life before or after the Occupation. In circumstances such as these, the Frank Falla Archive asks his family to get in touch to provide us with more information.

Gosset comes to our attention because, on 2 February 1941, he was tried by the Military Court of Field Command 515 for ‘resisting arrest’, for which he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. While the surviving court records say nothing about the offence for which he was arrested, Jersey’s political prisoner log book notes that his sentence was for ‘infraction of the curfew order and resisting the authorities’.

On 18 February 1941 he was deported to France under a German military escort. Unusually, we have no record at all of which prison Gosset was deported to. Most islanders with short sentences deported at this time were sent to Caen, where there were two prisons. The prison register of only one of these two institutions survive (the Maison d’Arret). The register from Beaulieu Prison in Caen does not survive, and we know that at least 21 Islanders must have been held there, although the majority of these had committed serious offences.

We have no reason to suspect that Gosset did not return promptly to Jersey at the end of his sentence.

Sources

Clarence Gosset’s Occupation registration card, Jersey Archives ref. St/O/2/630.

Clarence Gosset’s Occupation registration form, Jersey Archives ref. St/O/2/631 and 632.

Clarence Gosset’s record, political prisoner register copyright Jersey Archives ref. D/AG/B7/7.

Clarence Gosset’s court records, copyright Jersey Archives ref. D/Z/H6/3/27.