GUNNER 87051 JOHN GEORGE WAGGITT, 4th BRIGADE CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY.


GUNNER 87051 JOHN GEORGE WAGGITT, 4th BRIGADE CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY. DROWNED 31ST JULY 1917 AGED 24

Grave at Addingham

At 9.30am on the morning of the 31st July 1917 Arthur Bland, a gardener from Burley in Wharfedale was climbing up Hebers Ghyll which lies on the western edge of Ilkley. As he looked over the bridge near to the entrance on Grove Road Arthur saw a body dressed in a soldiers uniform about 20 feet below him lying face down in a pool of water. The local police were called and Inspector Bell went down the slippery banks of the Ghyll and retrieved the body. A seemingly cursory examination of the scene by the inspector concluded that the deceased had simply fallen off the bridge and died by drowning in the beck below.


The body was soon recognised as being that of John Waggitt who lived with his family at Moorside Farm at Addingham Moorside and his father, also called John, was sent for and was able to identify the body as being that of his son.

Three days later an inquest was held at the Conservative Club in Addingham where evidence was heard from several witnesses. John's father told the court that his son had arrived back home on leave early on the morning of Monday 30th July and at 2.30pm had walked into Ilkley. later that evening he had seen John in the Listers Arms on Skipton Road drinking with another man. The last person to see John Waggitt alive was a Police Sergeant Goldthorpe of Ilkley Police who reported that he had found the deceased soldier asleep on a bench on Grove Road just after midnight the following morning. He has roused him and found him to be sober and sent him on his way home. The coroner, Mr Edgar Wood concluded that john was very tired and had simply fallen from the bridge and drowned in the shallow pool below and his death was accidental.

John Waggitt had been born in Tunstall the son of John and Jane who had taken over the tenancy of Moorside Farm before the beginning of the war. Tragedy had already struck the family the previous October, when another son, William, had been killed during the Battle of the Somme whilst serving with the West Riding Regiment.

John had emigrated to Canada in January 1914 and worked as a farmer in Saskatchewan. He enlisted in the town of Yorkton March 1915 and was posted to the 5th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. The brigade arrived in England later the same year and was involved in fighting on the Somme and at Arras with the Canadian Corps. John would have seen much fighting at the front and the both ironic and tragic that he should meet his death barely a mile from his home.

Gunner John Waggitt is buried in the graveyard of St Peters Church in Addingham and remembered on the war memorial in Ilkley.




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