Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
William, born on 19th September 1885, was the son of shipyard labourer George Urwin Knox and his first wife Catherine Ann (nee Clifford), who had married in South Shields in 1880. Catherine also bore two girls, Jane and Isabella, before her death in 1890. In 1891 the family were living with George’s parents in Jarrow and two years later George remarried and Emily (nee Bolan) produced two half sisters, Ann and Catherine, for William. By the time of the next census in 1901 William was also working as a shipyard labourer and living with his father and step-mother in Station Street and at some time spent 3¾ years in 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry.
It is not known when William arrived in Canada, but he found work as a marine fireman, and on 22nd October 1914 he was in Port Arthur, Ontario enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Naming his father living in Thornaby-on-Tees as his next of kin, he became Private 51019 of the28th Battalion and within a month was appointed as Corporal and found himself back in England at camp on Salisbury Plain, where in December he was transferred as a reinforcement to Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Embarking from Southampton on 23rd February 1915 he would have joined his new Battalion in billets at Poperinghe, Belgium, and then went into the trenches at St. Eloi.
On 6th May 1915 the Battalion were in the trenches at Hell-Fire Corner, Ypres when a shell burst behind Corporal Knox and shrapnel “blew his left knee to pieces”. Taken to #11 Canadian General Hospital William’s leg was amputated through the knee joint and weeks later he was evacuated on the Hospital Ship Liberty for Queen Mary’s Naval Hospital, Southend-on-Sea where he underwent another amputation through his middle thigh. His right leg which was also injured in the explosion became infected and he was sent for convalescence in Uxbridge. Attached now to the 11th Battalion, Sergeant Knox was invalided to Canada on board the SS Scandinavian in January 1916 and a stay at Grey Nuns Convalescent Home, Montreal until May. But a Medical Board recommended that he should have further convalescent home treatment until he got used to his artificial leg, which was causing him some trouble, and it wasn’t until after this that he was finally discharged from the CEF. A Medical Board in December 1917 examined the case of Sergeant Know and decided that due to defects in his first artificial limb which caused him continuous pain he should be sent to Toronto to have his case dealt with by “the experts at the artificial limb factory”.
At some time after his discharge from the army William married Florence Claddish, who had arrived in Canada from England in 1914.
William Urwin Clifford Knox died of pneumonia in the Grenadier Guards Hospital, Montreal on 23rd October 1918 and would never have known his son who was born in April 1919 and named after him.
William U.C. Knox is remembered in Thornaby-on-Tees on T70.01
