| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
David was born in Kentish Town, St Pancras, London in 1883. His parents, David and Ellen Galvin, had at least six children but seem to have separated in the early 1890s.
David was living in Dickinson St., Kentish Town in 1891 but then joined the army as a private in the 1st Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment. He may have served with them in Egypt and India. He eventually rose to the rank of Company Serjeant Major with the 1/4th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment. His records are incomplete but in 1911 he was living in Aldershot and later in York.
In 1909 he married Rose Mary Hopper, in Hackney, London. Rose was born in 1887 and came from West Ella. The had four children Charles born 1910 in Aldershot, Terrance born 1912 and Constance born 1913 in York, and Ethel born 2 Jun 1914 in Beverley. The family were by then living at 5 School Lane, Beverley and David was now stationed at Victoria Barracks and it seems that his role was as serjeant-instructor for the 5th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, a part-time territorial cyclists battalion. He had been rapidly promoted after 1911 and received training on the new Vickers machine gun at Fermoy in Ireland and had received a certificate in musketry.
The 5th Cyclists were mobilised immediately upon the outbreak of war on 5 Aug 1914 and sent to patrol the Lincolnshire coast between Grimsby and Skegness, based in Louth. David transferred back to the infantry and was sent to France with the 1/4th Battalion of the East Yorkshires. He was killed in action in the Battle of Estaires on 10 Apr 1918, aged 35. His body was not recovered, and he is remembered on the Ploegsteert Memorial in Belgium. He is also commemorated on the Hengate Memorial and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
His wife and family remained in Beverley after the war. |