PRIVATE 765739 FRANCIS LAURIE VINCENT TAYLOR, 2/28th BATTALION COUNTY OF LONDON REGIMENT (ARTISTS RIFLES).

PRIVATE 765739 FRANCIS LAURIE VINCENT TAYLOR, 2/28th BATTALION COUNTY OF LONDON REGIMENT (ARTISTS RIFLES). DIED 10th NOVEMBER 1917 AGED 18.


Laurie Taylor was born in Ilkley in 1899 the son of Joseph and Frances Taylor. His father and grandfather had moved into the town in the 1870's and had opened a private preparatory school located in a large house called Burnside on Wheatley Road. It is probable that Laurie was born in the house, although, by the time of his birth the school appears to have closed.


The family, including his younger brother now moved to 1 Westville Avenue where Joseph Taylor became a private tutor and it is possible that Laurie was educated at home. At the age of 17 Laurie seems to have moved to the capital where he became a student at London University. However, it was on the 9th May 1917 that he went to the recruiting office in Whitehall and enlisted into the Artists Rifles battalion, a Territorial Army unit part of the London Regiment. The battalion was also part of the Officer Training Corps and men who enlisted were likely to be commissioned as officers.


By September 1917 Laurie was undergoing training in Kent that his health began to fail. At first he developed a cold and then measles. On the 29th October be was transferred to the No1 London General Hospital at Camberwell and placed into an isolation ward. Infection set in and he developed Bronco-pneumonia which before the advent of antibiotics was difficult to treat. On the 9th November he became delirious and his breathing laboured. By the following day his pulse was weak as his body began to fail and he died at 5.20pm in the afternoon.


The body of 19 year old Private Laurie Taylor was brought back to Ilkley where he was buried with full military honours in the town’s cemetery. He is also remembered with pride on the war memorial at St Margaret’s Church and on Ilkley war memorial.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19

Image
PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9 th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8 th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19 The youngest son of John Allan-Black and his wife Claire, Hugh was born in the hamlet of Stone Gappe near Lothersdale in the Craven District on the 25 th May 1899. His father was a wool merchant whose father Charles Ingham Black was a noted Irish scholar and poet and formally the Vicar of Burley in Wharfedale. His mother Claire nee Delius was the sister of the famous conductor Frederick Delius of Bradford and who in 1935 would write his biography. When Hugh was very young the family moved to Victoria Avenue in Ilkley where he attended the grammar school. However, in 1914 the family left the town and moved to Castletown on the Isle of Man where Hugh attended King Williams College. Hugh left school in 1917 when he achieved the age of 18 and enlisted into the army. His health was not of the strongest and he appears to have suffered from a w
Read more

2nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15 th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28. On the morning of the of the 1 st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, one thousand men of the Leeds Pals awaited the signal to leave the relative safety of their trenches and advance towards the German trenches situated a few hundred yards away in the remains of the village of Serre. Days of heavy British shelling had reduced the landscape to a sea of craters and it was blithely assumed that the enemy wire and trenches had been obliterated. At 7.30am precisely whistles blew and the Pals climbed out of their trenches and began to fan out before starting their deliberate advance towards the German lines. But contrary to their expectations the enemy had not been subdued and instead rushed to man their firing lines and opened up a deadly hail of machine guns bullets. The Leeds men now moving forward in lines walked steadily
Read more

CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22.

Image
CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4 th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27 th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22. During the Summer of 1918 as the war on the Western Front progressed towards its conclusion there was no let up in the intensity of the fighting as the Allied armies drove against a faltering but still dangerous enemy. After the successes achieved by the Germans during their Spring Offensive the British slowly and steadily regained the ground that they had lost earlier in the year and were now poised to breach the fearsome defences of the Hindenburg Line. Even though the fighting now took place over the shattered battlefields of 1916 and 1917 fighting  was more mobile and success depended on speedy rather than meticulous planning; it was a type of warfare at which British Divisions seemed to excel. The 62 nd (West Riding) Division had only arrived in France in 1917 and was recruited largely from the old West Riding of Yorkshire. Its effi
Read more