| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Private Fred Sample was killed in action sometime between the 9 and 13 Apr 1917. He was one of three brothers killed at this time, Edmund Sample, Royal Field Artillery, was killed on 15 Oct 1917 whilst younger brother John, 13th East Riding Regiment was killed on 13 Nov 1916 at Serre. Brothers, Arthur and Sidney also served in the army during the war.
Fred Sample was a private in the 8th Battalion East Riding Regiment, he enlisted in 1915. His Battalion saw action in Belgium in early 1916 at the Bluff and St Eloi craters, then at the Somme. Fred was killed in the First Battle of the Scarpe (part of the Battle of Arras) near Wancourt and Guemappes sometime between the 9 and 13 Apr 1917. Commonwealth War Graves Commission evidence says it was the 9th but other sources cast doubt on this. Fred is buried at Tilloy British Cemetery, Tilloy-les-Mofflaines, France. He was awarded the War and Victory Medals and is remembered on the Hengate War Memorial in Beverley and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
Fred was born in Little Cressingham, Norfolk, on 27 Jan 1883 and baptised at the local church on 15 Apr 1883. He was one of 14 children of Henry and Elizabeth Sample, he became a farm labourer. He later moved to Hull and became a grain warehouse labourer in the city, lodging with his brother Edmund and his wife at Wawne Street, off Spring Bank. In 1911 he married Harriet Tyas, their son Frederick was born the 27 Oct 1916.
Fred’s parents, Henry and Elizabeth Sample, moved to Beverley from Norfolk early in he war, living at 16 Sloe Lane. Some of Fred’s sisters had moved to the Beverley area, Edith and Elsie were in domestic service in Cherry Burton and both married local men; Letitia worked as a nurse at Broadgate Asylum, Walkington. Fred’s widow remarried in 1919, her husband Joseph Fountain was a heavy shunter on the LNER railway. Fred’s son, Frederick went to sea and in 1939 was an assistant steward on a steamship.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |