Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Born on 5th June 1895 and baptised a month later in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, Stanley was the oldest child and only son of Scottish brewer’s clerk John Blaikie and his local wife Jane (nee Sewell). By 1901 the family, consisting of John and Jane, John’s widowed mother and children Stanley, Beatrice Jeannie aged 3 and Amy Winifred aged 2, were living in Ormonde Street, Bishopwearmouth.
John Blaikie died in Ryhope Asylum on 22nd October 1910, and there is no mention of any family members in the 1911 UK census. It would appear that Jane and the two girls remained living in the Sunderland area as Jane is mentioned in her husband’s probate report as living in Victor Street and Beatrice and Amy both died in Sunderland in the 1970s.
Stanley went to sea. On 18th August 1913 he arrived in New Orleans, USA having sailed from Sunderland as part of the crew on the Taylor and Sanderson Co. steamship “The Wallace”. Stanley elected to stay in the US and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, living on Columbus Avenue, and becoming an officer in the US Merchant Marine. On 1st September 1917 he was Third Officer on the Artesia which returned from Bordeaux to dock in New York two months before he received his WW1 draft registration papers.
Crossing into Canada he enlisted in Montreal on 8th January 1918 and was attached as Private 3081439 to the 1st Depot Battalion, 1st Quebec Regiment, and having made out his will in favour of his mother in Sunderland, he sailed with his regiment on the SS Grampian, arriving in England on 16th February. Posted to camp at Bramshott, Hampshire the men were absorbed into the 23th Reserve Battalion from where Private Blaikie was posted to the 14th Battalion on 16th May 1918.
Joining his new unit in France at the end of the month in Special Army Reserve at Ostreville, by early August the battalion was in front line trenches near Amiens and it was here “during operations near Caix, on the morning of 9th August 1918, this soldier was killed by the explosion of an enemy shell, near the “jumping off” place”.
Stanley Blaikie is remembered in Sunderland on S140.048 part 9, page 200.
In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance
Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Blaikie
