H.J.M. has submitted the following:
Ralph was born in June 1886, the son of coal miner Richard and his wife Elizabeth. Records show that the family first lived in Shildon and by 1901 had moved to High Street, Eldon Lane at which time Ralph was a grocer’s wagon boy. When twenty four he was living with his widowed mother at the same address and was now a grocery assistant in the Co-operative Stores. Two years later in August 1913 he married Mabel Wilson in West Auckland.
He enlisted in Bishop Auckland just before his 29th birthday in May 1915; occupation a grocer and living at 6 Hutchinson Street, Bishop Auckland. He joined the British Expeditionary Force to France on April 26th 1916 and nineteen days later succumbed, whilst in Boulogne’s General Hospital (No.13), to multiple gunshot wounds received whilst in the field.
He is remembered in Eldon on E61.01 in Bishop Auckland on B140.24 and in the D.L.I. Book of Remembrance page 118
