2nd Lieutenant Hugh GRAMSHAW
3rd (Reserve) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment

Date of birth: 27th January 1887
Date of death: 28th February 1916

Died aged 29
Buried at St Alban's Church, Earlsdon Grave 6
He was born at 45, The Grove, Milton, Gravesend on the 27th of January 1887 the only son of Charles Robert Gramshaw, solicitor, and Jesse Elinor (nee Walker) of 45 The Grove, Gravesend in Kent.

He was educated at the Junior King's School and at the King’s School Canterbury from January 1898 to July 1903. On leaving school he studied law and took his final law examination on the 23rd of February 1909, passed and was admitted on the 8th of April 1909. In July 1909 he became a partner in the firm of Landport Bassett and Biscock of Newport on the Isle of Wight and he lived at 114 High Street, Newport.

Following the outbreak of war, he enlisted at Newport as Private 1546 in the 18th (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers, University and Public Schools Corps on the 14th of September 1914. At a medical examination, which took place on the same day, it was recorded that he was five feet eight and a half inches tall, that he weighed 126lbs and that he had hazel eyes, brown hair, also, that he needed glasses.

He was posted to No.1 Platoon, A Company and sent for training to Woodcote Park Camp, Epsom.
He applied for a commission and underwent a further medical examination on the 30th of April 1915 after which he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the South Staffordshire Regiment on the 20th of May 1915. He was sent for training in at Eastdown Camp, Earlsdon in Northumberland.

On the 22nd of February 1916 he returned from a short leave complaining of feeling unwell and was taken to a doctor who had him admitted to Scaffold Hill Isolation Hospital, Forest Hill the same day. He was diagnosed with a case of measles but on the 24th of February pneumonia set in and he died from heart failure at midnight on the 27th of February 1916.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Holy Trinity Church, Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
 

Back