Stanley Samuel Beare was born on 20 June 1890 at Newton Abbot, Devon, the son of Samuel Beare an ironmonger and engineer, and Alice Austin Beer, whose father was a journalist and Crimean War veteran. He was educated at Newton Abbot Grammar School and Strand School, King's College, London. In 1909 he

Gervas Charles Wells-Cole, the eldest son of Gervas Frederick Wells-Cole, a farmer, was born in Lincoln on 5 May 1889. His mother, Mary Beatrice, who died aged 98, was a daughter of Charles Brook, FRCS, who himself survived to the age of 91. After education at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, and Repto