William Iceton

Grave marker

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

8 months after the census was taken William Jackson Iceton was born on 1st December 1891 and his parents Jackson, a lamplighter, and Annie and daughter Mary (5) were living at 71 Eldon Street, Darlington. Young William was baptised at St. Paul’s Parish Church just before Christmas on 23rd December. Annie Iceton died in 1893 and in the 1901 Census Mary was living with her grandparents at 64 Model Place and William, then aged 9, was living with his father at 22 Chapel Street where they had a housekeeper, Mary Baines, to look after them. Mary was still with them 10 years later when Jackson, now a gas fitter working for the Borough Council, and William, a coal merchant, lived at 52 Model Place, just down the road from Jackson’s parents. Fifteen months later father and son were on board the Laurentic sailing as labourers from Liverpool to Quebec and a life in Toronto, Canada, with them was William’s new wife Mary Ellen (nee Cooper) whom he had married on 15th March 1912.

William found work as a brickmaker and joined the Canadian Militia, rising to the rank of Lance Corporal. When he enlisted as Private 1048369 in the CEF on 12th September 1916 he gave Mary Ellen as his next of kin and his current address as 130 Hawthorn Road, Toronto. He was posted to England and then on to France with 21st Company Canadian Forestry Corps. On 2nd March 1917 he was “one of a party that left Rouen with a party of 10 men to proceed to La Joux with a convoy of 24 horses. He had been detailed to take charge of six horses in one of the four cars. He was last seen by his comrades at a stopping place (Montreau) at 6.30pm on 4th March and was apparently in the best of health and spirits and reported to have been pacifying his horses at 3.30am the following morning. On arrival at another stopping place (Dole) it was noticed that his car door was locked and when opened he was not to be found, and one of the horses was loose. Some days later an investigating party learned that his dead body had been found by a section man on the morning of 6th March about 160 yards from the extreme end of the De Blaisy Tunnel on the Baulme-la-Roche side, and that he had been buried by the citizens in the local cemetery two days later”. This report was taken from the War Graves Register with the note “accidently killed”.

Mary Ellen returned to Lansdown Street, North Road, Darlington with their 2-year-old son Verdun William in April 1919, and she remarried the following year. Verdun died in Darlington in 1996.

William Jackson Iceton is remembered in Darlington on D40.034, D40.046 and D40.067

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and in the National Memorial Album of Canadian Heroes, published in 1919.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Iceton