Frederick Corby

War Service

Frederick enlisted and served as a gunner with the Royal Field Artillery with number L/27604 before he was wounded and he died of his injuries on 8th October 1916. He is buried in the Etaples Military cemetery and was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
The following was printed in the Wakefield Express on 14th October
“KIRKHAMGATE SOLDIER DIES OF WOUNDS
Mrs Corby of Westfield-Place, Kirkhamgate, yesterday received an official intimation that her husband, Gunner F W Corby, Royal Field Artillery, had died in hospital at the Front. She had previously received a communication that he had been seriously wounded and that his left leg had been amputated. Corby who was 35 years of age was at the time of his enlistment a packer for the Public Benefit Boot Company at Leeds, previous to which he was a railway platelayer.”
The following year there was a memorial in the Wakefield Express from his ‘sorrowing Wife and children Raymond and Renee’.
In 1919 Eleanor was married to John Peace, a miner also of Kirkhamgate at the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Market Street Wakefield. They had a daughter later that year.
Sadly, Raymond died in 1922 aged just 11 years and was buried in Alverthorpe Churchyard on May 13th 1922. Two years later Renee was also buried in Alverthorpe on 1st March 1924 also aged 11. Eleanor died in the West Riding Mental Hospital aged 53 in December 1936.

Family Life

Frederick was born in Middlesborough in about 1880, son of John and Elizabeth Corby.
In 1881 he was living in Linthorpe, Middlesborough with his mother, brother John (b1865) an assistant in a shoe shop, brother Thomas (b1868) a shoemaker’s apprentice and his sister Ann E (b1876) who was still at school. I believe Ann died the following year aged 7. Their father John was boarding in Heworth near Gateshead and was a grocery assistant.
In 1891 Frederick was with his parents and siblings in Linthorpe, Middlesborough where his father John was still a grocery assistant and his brother Thomas was a coal dealer. His brother John had married and, also living in Middlesborough, he was manager of a boot shop.
By 1901 Frederick’s mother was dead and he and his brother Thomas were living with their father who now worked in the iron works. Frederick aged 20 worked in a boot and shoe warehouse.
The 1911 census reveals Frederick had married Eleanor Middleton Dixon and they were living at Willington. Eleanor had lost a child but had 8-month-old Raymond, while Frederick was the manager of a boot shop. At some point he moved to Wakefield where I believe he had a daughter Renee in 1913. They lived in Silcoates View, Kirkhamgate.

Etaples Military Cemetery