Tag Archives: Cork

Commonwealth War Graves, County Cork, Dorset, Dublin, Fleet Surgeon, Great War, Hampshire, history, illness, Ireland, Kent, photography, story, war

Fleet Surgeon Edward Ward

Leave a comment
Fleet Surgeon Edward Ward

Edward Copley Ward was born in Charleville, County Cork, Ireland, on 2nd November 1862. The middle of three children, his parents were Thomas and Elizabeth Ward. Thomas died in 1868, and there is scant information about Edward’s life until he reached his early 20s.

It is clear that he had a focus on education, and a leaning towards the medical side of things. By December 1883, he had qualified as a Master Surgeon at the Royal University of Ireland, and was licenced in midwifery through the King & Queen’s College of Physicians.

Edward was not one to rest on his laurels, however, and he soon tasked himself to a naval career. On 21st August 1900 he was recorded on the Navy Lists as being a Fleet Surgeon, although there is little specific information about this service at this time.

MARRIAGES: WARD-CROWE

October 28, by special licence, at Kill Church… Staff-Surgeon Edward C Ward, RN, to Eleanor, daughter of the late Michael F Crowe, JP, of Melfield, Blackrock, County Dublin.

[Northern Whig: Saturday 1st November 1902]

Edward and Eleanor’s trail goes cold again at this point, and it is not until the 1911 census that we are able to pick them up again. By this point, Eleanor, now 45 years old, is living with four of her sisters, Kate, Charlotte, Isabella and Susanna in a house in Monkstown, Dublin. The family are supported by a domestic servant, Mary Collins.

Edward, meanwhile, was serving on board the battleship HMS Jupiter, which was moored in Weymouth Bay, Dorset. There were 548 crew members on board, and the now Fleet Surgeon Ward was one of seventeen commissioned officers, serving under Rear Admiral Arthur Limpus.

Over the next three years, Edward would serve on six further ships, but, by the time war was declared in the summer of 1914, he found himself shore-based. From December of that year, he served at HMS Pembroke, the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. His role: to oversee the treatment of incoming wounded troops, and their preparation for onward transport to whichever hospital they would end up.

Fleet Surgeon War would spend the next three years fulfilling this task, but, by the summer of 1917, it would be Edward himself who needed support. Admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital in Chatham, he was suffering from tubercular disease of the kidney, and it would be this condition to which he would succumb. He passed away on 7th August 1917, at the age of 54 years old.

The body of Edward Copley Ward was laid to rest with a simple headstone in Woodlands Cemetery, Gillingham, Kent, not far from the dockyard he had come to know as home.

Interestingly, when Edward’s estate went to probate, he left his estate – worth £1257 7s 11d (approximately £111,500 in today’s money) to Geoffrey Holt Stillwell, with no mention of Eleanor. Geoffrey was a member of a banking family from the south of England, who served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the 4th Hampshire Regiment.

Fleet Surgeon Edward Ward
(from ancestry.co.uk)
Commonwealth War Graves, Company Sergeant Major, Corporal, County Cork, County Wicklow, Great War, Hampshire, history, illness, Lancashire, photography, Private, Royal Artillery, Royal Defence Corps, Sergeant, Somerset, story, Surrey, war

Serjeant Thomas Wood

Leave a comment
Serjeant Thomas Wood

Thomas Wood was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, in the summer of 1862. The third of ten children, he was the oldest son to Thomas and Emma Wood. Thomas Sr was a cabinet maker, but his son was not to follow in his father’s footsteps, seeking a life of adventure instead.

Thomas enlisted in the army and, while documents relating to his early life are not readily available, the 1891 census recorded him as being billeted at the Cambridge Barracks in Portsmouth, Hampshire. A member of the Royal Artillery, he seems to have been enlisted for a while, as he had risen to the rank of Corporal.

In 1894, Thomas married Leah Barrett, who was born in Oxfordshire. The army life underscored where the family would settle. They had four children and, according to their ages, the Woods were in Liverpool by 1895, Gosport, Hampshire, in 1896 and Cork in Ireland by 1899. The 1901 census found the family living in Wicklow, with Thomas having now achieved the rank of Company Sergeant Major.

Ten years later, and Thomas had stepped away from the army life. Now 48 years of age, he and Leah had been married for 17 years. The couple had settled in the Worle, on the outskirts of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where Thomas had set himself up as a butcher, with Leah assisting him.

War came to Europe in 1914, and it seems that Thomas felt drawn to play his part once more. He joined the Royal Defence Corps as a Serjeant when it was formed in the spring of 1916, and was assigned to the regiment’s 263rd Company.

Little information is available about Serjeant Wood’s army service, but by the autumn he had been admitted to the Shell Shock Hospital (now the Maudsley Hospital) in Denmark Hill, London. His entry to the hospital, however, was actually due to kidney disease, and this was what would claim his life. Thomas died from a combination of nephritis and uraemia on 21st November 1916. He was 54 years of age.

Thomas Wood was brought back to Somerset for burial. He was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Martin’s Church in Worle.

Serjeant Thomas Wood
(from ancestry.co.uk)
Commonwealth War Graves, County Cork, Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire Regiment, Great War, history, illness, Ireland, photography, Private, Royal Engineers, Sapper, Somerset, story, war, Wiltshire

Sapper Abraham Scott

Leave a comment
Sapper Abraham Scott

Abraham James Scott was born in Bathford, Somerset, in the spring of 1893. He was one of fourteen children to Abraham and Lucy Scott, and became known as James, to avoid any confusion with his father. Abraham was a shepherd, who travelled where work took him: both he and Lucy were from Wiltshire, but had moved to Somerset by the end of the 1880s. When James was just a babe-in-arms, the family had relocated to Gloucestershire, but by the time of the 1901 census, they were back in Wiltshire once more.

Abraham Sr died in 1910, at the age of just 41 years old. The following year’s census found the now widowed Lucy living in North Wraxhall, Wiltshire, with eight of her children. Abraham Jr is absent, and, indeed, does not appear on any of the 1911 censuses.

Lucy needed options and, on Christmas Day 1912, she married carter William Amblin in the village church. Abraham was, by this time, living in Bath and working as a carter.

When war came to Europe, Abraham felt the need to step up and play his part and, on 15th December 1915, he enlisted in the army. His service records show that he was 5ft 5ins (1.65m) tall and weighed 132lbs (59.9kg). He had a vaccination mark on his left arm which, according to the document’s section on ‘distinctive marks’, has a tendency to rupture.

Private Scott was mobilised in March 1916, and was assigned to the 1st/5th Gloucestershire Regiment. He soon found himself on the Western Front, and, having transferred to the 1st/4th Battalion, served at the Somme.

Abraham was in for a chequered time in Northern France. On 26th August 1916, he was injured when he received a gunshot wound to his scalp. He was admitted to the 1st Canadian General Hospital in Etaples, the moved to Rouen to recuperate. Private Scott rejoined his unit on 21st October 1916.

Just weeks later, however, Abraham was back in a hospital in Rouen, having fractured his ankle. After a couple of weeks in the 1st Australian General Hospital, the injury was deemed severe enough for him to be evacuated back to Britain for recuperation, and he was posted to Ballyvonare Camp in County Cork. Abraham returned to his unit in France in September 1917, nine months after his ankle injury.

On 1st March 1918, Abraham transferred to the Royal Engineers where, as a Sapper, he was attached to the Depot in Rouen. He remained there for more than a year, during which time he was admitted to hospital once more, this time with trench fever. Little additional information is available about this spell in hospital, other than that Lucy had written to the regiment thanking them for informing her of her son’s illness, and confirming a new address for her.

Sapper Scott’s health continued to suffer, however. In May 1919, he was admitted to a camp hospital, suffering from appendicitis. He was operated on, and medically evacuated to Britain for further treatment and recuperation. Abraham was admitted to the Bath War Hospital on 25th July 1919, and remained there for four months.

Abraham’s health seemed to improve, albeit slowly, and he was moved to the Pension’s Hospital in Bath on 27th November. The head wound, broken ankle and bout of trench fever appear to have taken their toll on his body which, by this point, seems to have been too weak to recover. On 28th February 1920, two months after being transferred to the Pension’s Hospital, he passed away there from a combination of appendicitis and pelvic cellulitis. He was just 26 years of age.

Abraham James Scott’s body did not have to travel far after this point. He was laid to rest in the sprawling Locksbrook Cemetery in his adopted home city of Bath.