L/6899 Pte Harry Jarvis Bobbins, 1st Bn, Middx Regt

L/6899 Private Harry Jarvis Bobbins of the 1st Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, died of wounds on the 13th January 1915. He was born in St George's, west London and enlisted in London in January or February 1901.

According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Harry was the son of Mrs. Amelia Bobbins, of Marylebone Lane, London, and the husband of Mary Bobbins, of 75, Northway, Brentfield Estate, Willesden, London. He also has an entry in De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour (Volume 1, page 40), which however, yields no additional information. His medal index card indicates that he arrived overseas on the 14th September 1914.

Harry appears on the 1891 census as a 10 year old resident at Leopold House in Mile End, east London. This was a home for orphaned boys between the ages of ten and 13 and had been opened in 1883. You can read more about Leopold House, and see photographs of it, here. Harry is recorded on the census simply as being ten years old and having been born in England. I have been unable to find Harry on the 1901 census but he would certainly have been serving with the Middlesex Regiment at this time.

Harry married Mary Hodgkiss at Willesden, west London, in the June quarter of 1910. Unless he had extended his terms of service, he would have been on the army reserve at this time. The following year, a son - also named Harry Jarvis Bobbins - was born. His birth was registered in the September quarter of 1911. A second son - John C Bobbins - followed in 1912 (birth registered in the December quarter of that year) - and a daughter - Alice M Bobbins - whose birth was registered in the March quarter of 1914. When he died, therefore, Harry left a widow and three children aged four, two and under one year - coincidentally almost exactly the same ages as my own three children on this date, 95 years on.

Harry Bobbins is buried in Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery in Armentieres.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Sources:

Ancestry.co.uk (MIC, De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour, BMD, 1891 census)
Army Ancestry
Army Service Numbers 1881-1918
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Soldiers Died in The Great War