25-year-old regular soldier, Corporal Adam Edgar, died on 19th June 1915 serving with the 2nd Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment. On the same day, Private William Albert Birch was killed in action serving with the 4th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment.
16th June 1915
19-year-old Frank Ferris died on 16th June 1915 whilst serving as a Private with the Wiltshire Regiment. Born in Hockley Heath, he was baptised at St Thomas’s Church, Nuthurst Lane, Hockley Heath, although the parish register entry is a little confusing.
He is recorded in the parish register (available on the Ancestry website free of charge from library computers) as being baptised on the 18 Nov 1894 [sic], aged 5 months. His siblings George (aged 6), Charles Henry (3 years 11 months), Esther (2) and John (aged 9) were all baptised on the same day as Frank. However, there is a registration entry on the General Register Office (GRO) indexes for Frank’s birth in Mar qtr 1896 so the baptism entry may be an error – the entries were all added in in 1898 with a note saying they had been omitted from the register at the time.
10th June 1915
Former railway clerk William Brough Berry Harrison died of wounds in France on 10th June 1915, aged 20, serving as a Corporal with the 1st/7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
He was born on 17th October 1894, the third and youngest child of bricklayer’s labourer Leonard Lovelace Beverley Harrison (known as Beverley) and his wife, Emma (née West) who had married on 30th May 1886 at St Alphege Church, Solihull at which time the groom was aged 30 and the bride was 21. The newly-weds set up home at Elmdon Heath, where their two eldest children, Florette Annie and Alfred, were born in 1887 and 1889 respectively. At the time of Alfred’s baptism on 14th April 1889 the family was living at Lugtrout Lane, Catherine-de-Barnes.
6th June 1915
Harold Leonard Darby was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham in March 1893 and died in France on 6th June 1915, aged 22, whilst serving as a Lance-Sergeant with the 1st/6th Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He is commemorated on the war memorial at St Patrick’s Church, Salter Street, but is listed as Sgt. Harold Derby [sic]. An order of service for a memorial service at the church on 3rd September 1916 records him as Sergeant Harold Leonard Darby, although this indicated he died in May 1915, not June.
4th June 1915
Lance Corporal Harry Pugh, 4th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment, was killed in action on 4th June 1915. He was the sixth of ten children, and the second to be killed in the war. His brother, Harold, died on 12th March 1915.
Continue reading “4th June 1915”Berkswell Rectory Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital
Berkswell Rectory was used as an Auxiliary Hospital during the First World War. These hospitals for wounded soldiers were administered by the British Red Cross Society, and were used as convalescence hospitals – a stepping stone between treatment at a general hospital and discharge home.
The Red Cross had set up Voluntary Aid Detachments (V.A.D.) in each county to provide supplementary aid to the Territorial Forces Medical Services in the event of war. Members came to be known as ‘V.A.D.s’ and were all trained in first aid and nursing.
Continue reading “Berkswell Rectory Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital”
21st May 1915
27-year-old former Lieutenant Charles Russell Venables died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 21st May 1915. He died at home, Brougham House, Old Warwick Road, Olton, and was buried at Baddesley Clinton.
Continue reading “21st May 1915”19th May 1915
Two local men died on 19th May 1915. Herbert Samuel Wakelin died at home in Olton on 19th May 1915 and is buried at Yardley Cemetery in Birmingham.
Charles Samuel George, who had spent almost all his childhood as an inmate at Marston Green Cottage Homes, died of wounds in France, whilst serving as a Private with the 1st Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment. He was the brother of Harry George, who had died of wounds on 31st October 1914.
17th May 1915
Regular soldier Sydney Alfred Cockayne, from Catherine-de-Barnes, died of wounds on 17th May 1915 whilst serving as Acting Sergeant Major with the 1st Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps.
He was actually baptised as Alfred Sidney Cockayne, and appears as Alfred on the 1891 and 1901 censuses before being recorded as Sidney Cockayne in 1911. Presumably, preferring to be known by his middle name, he switched the order of his Christian names when he joined the Army. Certainly, all his Army records refer to him as S. A. Cockayne.
14th May 1915
John Augustus Lloyd was born at Hockley Heath on 1st June 1887 and is buried at Umberslade Baptist Church, having died of sickness on 14th May 1915 whilst serving as a Private with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.
Solihull Life 