| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Driver Robert Kirk died of wounds on 1 Sep 1916, one day short of his 23rd birthday. Serving in Belgium with the 6th Brigade Canadian Field Artillery, he accidently incurred a fractured skull and died at No.10 Stationary Hospital, St Omer. He is buried at Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery, St Omer, Nord Pas de Calais, France. He had enlisted on 25 Nov 1914 but the date of his arrival on the Western Front and subsequent involvement is not known.
Robert was born in Leven on 2 Sep 1893 and baptised at St Mary’s Church in Beverley on 1 Nov 1893. The family home was at Crown Terrace, Lairgate, Beverley. Both of his parents were from Leven; Robert worked as a stone breaker; his mother was Mary Elizabeth Kirk (nee Smith) born in 1860. Robert had two older half brothers, two sisters, Annie and Helen and a younger brother, Leonard. Robert was unmarried. Robert’s father died in 1903, followed by the death of his mother in the autumn of 1904. Robert and his brother became part of the Barnardo Homes scheme to send children (not all of whom were orphaned) to the Empire to be trained and work as indentured farm labourers and domestic servants to the age of 18. Robert became one of 100,000 children sent to Canada between 1833 and 1939. He arrived in Montreal on the SS Southwark from Liverpool on 9 Oct 1904 to become a farmer at Lethbridge, Alberta where he enlisted for the Canadian Army in 1914. His brother Leonard came to Canada on the SS Dominion from Liverpool and arrived on 5 Mar 1907, living in Harriston, Ontario. He joined the 153rd Brigade of the Canadian Army on 31 Dec 1915 but probably hadn’t served in Europe before his death from pneumonia on 6 Jan 1917. Robert’s sister, Helen, moved to foster parents in Hertfordshire and spent the rest of her life in the London area. It is not known whether any of the siblings spent time at the Barnardo home on Beverley Road, Hull which had opened in 1902.
Robert is remembered on the Hengate War Memorial, he is also remembered in the Canadian Book of remembrance that lies at the Memorial Chamber, Peace Tower, Parliament Hill, Ottawa
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |