| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Robert Burton of the Northumberland Fusiliers, was an Old Contemptible, one of those British soldiers who went to fight on the Western Front at the beginning of the Great War, in what Kaiser Wilhelm called “A contemptible little army”. They were proud to claim the nickname for themselves.
Robert disembarked on 2 Nov 1914 and joined the Regiment during the 1st Battle of Ypres, they remained in Flanders during 1915 and was involved in the first and second attacks at Bellewaarde and the actions at Hooge. On Monday, 27 Mar 1916, following the detonation of mines under the German positions at St Eloi, the Fusiliers attacked the enemy line. The attack was successful but Sergeant Burton was killed by a “whizz-bang” after rescuing a wounded German soldier. His friend Sergeant William Reed Amos wrote a letter of sympathy to his family which was published in the Beverley Guardian on 16 Apr 1916. Sergeant Robert Burton has no known grave and his name is inscribed on the Memorial to the Missing at Menin Gate, Ypres, Flanders.
Robert Burton was born on 20 Oct 1883 at Patricroft, Lancashire, the son of Robert Barnard Pilkington Burton and Alice Ann (nee Wych). Robert's father, a plater and rivetter at the Vulcan Iron Shipyard, and the son of James Burton, a Beverley-born shoemaker, drowned in the River Hull at Weel in Aug 1883 while out swimming with his friend William Spinks. Robert was born two months later. He grew up in Hull. After his father's death, Robert's mother gave birth to three more children, Thomas William Spinks (born 1885) and Bertha Isabel Spinks (born 1887). Their father, Robert's step-father, was William Spinks who died at Myton, Hull in 1890, aged thirty. Alice Spinks, another half-sister, was born in 1899. Mrs Alice Ann Spinks, Robert's mother, died in 1909.
By 1911 Robert and his half-sister Bertha Spinks were Living at 5 Thorsby Avenue, Flinton Street, Hessle Road, Hull, he was working as a boilermaker. He was unmarried.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |