| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Job Marson Gossip was born in Hull the 8 Aug 1879. His mother was Charlotte A Marson Gossip, a dressmaker born in Beverley in 1860. In 1887 she married Albert Edward Dobbs, a railway porter, born in Beverley in 1866. The family lived in Hull on Walker Street. In the 1891 Job was described as being the “stepson” of Albert Dobbs. Job became a full time soldier in the East Yorkshire Regiment. By the time of the 1911 census Job had left the army and returned to civilian life in Hull, living at Waverley Street, he worked for Hull City Corporation as a tramway conductor. He was unmarried at this time.
At the outbreak of war Job re-enlisted as a soldier, initially serving in the 1st/4th and the 1st Battalions before switching to the 12th Battalion in 1915. This was the third of the Hull Pals Battalions raised in the city. The 12th were commonly referred to as the Sportsmen’s battalion. His surviving army documents state that he served as a private but his photo in the Beverley Guardian in May 1916 states that he was a “Sergt. Drummer”, which could have been his rank in his regular career. He went to Egypt with the 12th at the end of 1915 to undertake guard duties along the Suez Canal, threatened by Turkish forces in Sinai. In Mar 1916 they were transferred to France and to service on the Western Front. The 12th saw action on the Somme, especially in the bloody attack on Serre in Nov 1916, and at Arras where the 12th were involved in the failed attack on Oppy Wood on 3 May 1917. Job was switched to the 966th A. E. Company of the Army Labour Corps though the nature of his duties there are unknown. He later returned to infantry service in the 43rd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. They performed garrison guard duties at five headquarters in France in 1918 France; its members were considered unfit for front line duty.
After the war Job returned to his previous career in Hull and by the outbreak of the Second World War was a timekeeper/inspector for Hull City Corporation. He married Edith Barrington, born in Hull in 1894 at Sculcoates in 1930. They had no children. Job died in Hull, aged 74, in 1954.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |