| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Frederick Curry aged 44 worked for East Riding County Council for over 20 years, latterly in the Education Department, before joining the army in Jun 1917. He already had some experience with the Territorial Army, serving in the 5th Cyclist Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, based in Withernsea before moving to Newbiggin in Northumberland.
Frederick served as a bombardier in the Royal Garrison Artillery with the 32nd Siege Battery in France. They operated behind the frontline and fired heavy shells with a plunging trajectory, usually from a fixed position. He was killed in action on 9 Apr in northern France in the vicinity of Bethune/Armentieres and buried locally. Frederick’s remains were exhumed in 1920 and he was reburied at the nearby Royal Irish Rifles Cemetery at Lavantie, Pas-De-Calais, France. He was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
Frederick was born Mar 1883 in Stonehouse, Devon. His father William Inkerman Curry was a Sergeant in the Royal Marines who later joined the 2nd Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment at Beverley’s Victoria Barracks as a Sergeant Major. The family moved to Beverley at the end of the 1890s and lived in Toll Gavel, near the Golden Ball Inn. Frederick was one of six children born to his mother Mary Curry. Upon William’s retirement, he became an office porter at the British Oil and Cake Mills, Hull and the family moved to the city, living at Francis Street West in 1911, later at 202 Albert Avenue.
On 12 Jan 1914 Frederick married Elsie Stamp of Hull and moved back to Beverley to Shaftesbury Villas, Grovehill Road. They had a daughter Jessie, in Feb 1915 but she died aged 7 months and is buried at St Nicholas’ Churchyard where there is also an inscription about Frederick. Elsie soon moved back to Hull to 75 Cranbrook Avenue. Frederick is remembered on the Hengate Memorial and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |