Sheffield in the Great War by Warr Peter;

Author:Warr, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 2070040
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2015-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Sergeant-Major Joseph Siddall was granted leave from the Western Front to visit his sick wife in Walkley but, like her, he died in the city.

Military deaths also occurred on British soil. Towards the end of June 1915, 48-year-old Sergeant-Major Joseph Siddall was granted emergency leave from the Western Front to visit his sick wife in Walkley. Before the war he had been a file forger with Thomas Turner and Sons in Mowbray Street and had long been a territorial member of the Hallamshire Rifles. Sadly, Eleanor died shortly before her husband reached Sheffield. Her death and the subsequent funeral greatly distressed him and he spent long periods of day and night mourning at her grave in Walkley Cemetery.

For several days Joseph Siddall had been unwell with a chest infection and this gradually turned into pneumonia, as commonly occurred in Western Front soldiers. On 23 July he died in the city’s Third Northern General Hospital and was himself accorded a full military funeral. Several thousand people lined the funeral procession’s route from his house in Freedom Road. At its head were a party of rifle-bearers, a regimental band and soldiers from local regiments. Four hundred men of the York and Lancaster Regiment formed a guard of honour at Walkley Cemetery, and his coffin, draped with a Union Jack, was borne by six sergeants and accompanied by his two soldier sons. After the ceremony, rifle volleys were fired over the grave, now shared by the sergeant-major and his wife, and finally the Last Post was sounded.

These events were described in detail in the local press. In a city of apparently random deaths of sons and fathers far away, and an inability to share grief at a distant funeral or graveside, the war and its human significance had been vividly brought home.

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