|
William was born on 17th December 1886 in Dorset, Southern England, the 10th of
13 children. The family moved to North Baddesley near Southampton, Hampshire and by 1904
had started collecting postcards, his album survives to this day.
He moved to a job at Durley Saw
Mills, about 12 miles away, staying for 18 months before following his brother to
Belleville, Ontario (his brother, James, having swapped his tickets on the Titanic when
another family needed to get to New York quickly. Consequently, James and his family
arrived safely on the Ascania).
Living in Belleville, William worked
on the railway as a fireman, joining the 15th Militia Regiment before enlisting
on 17th November 1914 with the 21st Battalion. His Attestation
Papers say he was 5' 6" tall with a 39
inch chest, grey eyes, brown hair, ruddy completion and 4" chest expansion.
At Christmas 1914 he joined with the
'Left Half' of the 21st for their Christmas Dinner - a traditional menu with a
rallying song between courses.
He sailed to England with his
battalion on 6th May 1915 and was stationed in Kent with “H” Company,
21st Infantry, 4th Brigade, 2nd Division.
While training in Kent, England, he
got leave to marry his sweetheart, Lillian Parfitt. He was described on his wedding
certificate as a 'Soldier from Hinton Parva', a tiny farming hamlet in Dorset where
Lillian was born in 1880. At the time of her marriage she worked as a cook for the Bishop
of Salisbury, her father being head dairyman on the same estate.
From September 1915 William was in
France as a battalion cook. He was sent a Christmas card from Lt Col Hughes when the 21st
Battalion CEF was at the 'Porridge Factory en route for Berlin'.
Apart from one incident when he was
hospitalized in Boulogne with an impacted wisdom tooth and an abscess in his lower jaw, he
serve with his battalion being granted leave a few times after the war was over,
eventually being de-mobbed in England on 1st May 1919.
He joined his wife and their son,
moving to Southampton, where he worked with the local council cleaning the streets with a
horse and cart. He left there in 1925 to reclaim scrap metal barges from the river before
being taken on a year later as a boilerman at the British American Tobacco factory which
was at the end of his road.
 
He
died on 26th August 1940, aged 54 years from a heart attack. From
the time of his death until 2023, he lay in an unmarked grave.
Through the efforts of Kyle Scott and the Last Post Fund, a grave
marker was put in place.
|
