| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Harry Otter was born in Hull on 2 Mar 1897 and was baptised and confirmed at St Nicholas’ Church, Beverley the 5 Apr 1906. He was one of eight children born to Frederick Robert and Gertrude Otter (nee Longman). His father was an “iron turner” and the family lived at 40 Beaver Road. Harry attended St Nicholas’ School and then became a butcher’s errand boy. In 1913 he became an apprentice at the Beverley Grovehill shipyard, becoming a joiner. Like his brother, Fred, born in 1893, Harry was a member of the Beverley Church Lads’ Brigade, from Mar 1911 to Sep 1913 but was recorded by Neville Hobson who ran the troop as being “slack and indifferent” before being asked to resign from the organisation
Harry served as a territorial in the East Riding of Yorkshire Imperial Yeomanry and was later attached to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) according to a short piece in the Beverley Guardian in Dec 1916. He then moved to the Royal Engineers and served as a sapper. Harry was awarded the War and Victory Medals
Harry returned to the Beverley shipyard and having finished his apprenticeship joined a craft trade union in 1919. On 25 Nov 1922 he married Florrie Long (nee Hancock), a widow with three children, at St Marys, Beverley. She was born 1886 in Beverley the daughter of a tanner’s labourer. The new couple had one child, Jack, born in early 1923. The family lived at 339 Grovehill Road
Harry died, aged 90, in Hull in 1987, Florrie died in 1978.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |