On this day in 1915, Alfred Bishop (1890-1915) died in Devonport Military Hospital while serving in the Great War as a corporal in the 1st Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment.
The Devon and Exeter Gazette reported that he had had been home ‘recuperating from a wound received on Hill 60’ (a battleground near Ypres).
The newspaper said: ‘Since then he had been with a recruiting party and contracted measles, to which pneumonia and bronchitis supervened.
‘He was at the Front all through last winter and no doubt the ordeal there weakened his constitution.’
In May 1915, The Devon and Exeter Gazette reported that 24-year-old Alfred had been in St Mary’s Hospital in Southend-on-Sea after being ‘slightly wounded in the right shoulder’.
At the time he was wounded, he was attached to the Maxim gun section of the 1st Devons
Alfred, who went to the Western Front on August 22, 1914, was a professional soldier in the 1st Devons before the war.
In 1911, he was based with the battalion in barracks at North Tidworth, Wiltshire.
Alfred was buried at Weston Mill Cemetery, Plymouth.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
Alfred married Rhoda Chorley (1891-1961) on September 28, 1913 in Milverton, Somerset. Rhoda was a sister of Edith Mabel Chorley (1887-1976), who married John Francis Bryant Roberts (1883-1929) on April 16, 1906. John was one of 30 grandsons of John Roberts (1829-1919) – my great-great grandfather – who served in the Great War.
Born on August 18, 1890 at Ash Thomas, Halberton, Alfred was the son of carpenter William John Bishop (1860-1936) and Sarah Jane Mansell (1862- 1953). In 1901, he lived with his family in Stoodleigh, at 3, Church Stile Cottages.
Widowed less than two years after marrying Alfred, Rhoda married Tom Lockyer in 1924. Rhoda, born on February 2, 1891 in Washfield, was the daughter of William Charles Chorley (1857-1935) and Fanny Elizabeth Gunter (1860-1936). She died in 1961 in Tiverton, aged 70.
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Picture below
Corporal Alfred Bishop’s war grave at Weston Mill Cemetery, Plymouth. Picture by Julia&Keld.
