R.B. Taylor

CWGC Headstone

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born in the Northumberland village of Cresswell on 24th June 1886 Robert Bertram Taylor was the first child of the local vicar Rev. Robert Edward Taylor and his wife Karen Fanny (nee Nielson) from Hartlepool, and was baptised in his father’s church on 1st August. By 1891 Robert had two younger brothers, two-year-old Cedric and three month old Wilfred, and three years later his father died.

After attending the Loretto School in Edinburgh in 1895, by 1901 both Robert and his younger brother Cedric were pupils at St. Edmund’s School in Canterbury, while their mother and youngest brother were living in Ealing, London with her mother.

While Cedric went to Cambridge University and then became a physician, on 15th October 1905 Robert arrived in Montreal having sailed from Liverpool aboard the SS Lake Manitoba. Having applied for a Homestead Grant in 1906 for land near Kindersley, the 1911 Canadian census shows him farming near Battleford, Saskatchewan.

On 22nd December 1914 Robert enlisted with “D” Company, 32nd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force in Winnipeg becoming Private 81875, giving his mother in Ealing as his next of kin. Two months later he left Canada, sailing with the Battalion aboard SS Southland from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Avonmouth and a posting to camp at Shorncliffe, Kent. On 3rd May Private Taylor was one of a draft of men posted to the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) Battalion, 2nd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division joining them in France a week later at Bailleul, where comment was passed on the excellent appearance and training of the 32nd Battalion drafts.

Promoted to Corporal at the end of July, on 8th December he was attached to the Canadian Corps School at St. Omer for officer training and on 23rd January 1916 was commissioned as a Lieutenant and granted leave in England in order to be kitted out as an officer. Whilst in England he had his photograph taken wearing the cap badge of his old battalion, the 8th, but on his return to France he was posted to the 2nd (Eastern Ontario) Battalion, joining them at Dranoutre on 2nd June.

On 26th April 26, 1916, the 2nd Battalion was manning a series of trench strong points near Armagh Wood, just east of Ypres, Belgium when the Germans launched a trench raid during which Lieutenant Robert Bertram Taylor was killed. Probate of his will was granted in 1957 to Dorothy Tremayne Taylor, the widow of his youngest brother Wilfred.

Robert Bertram Taylor is remembered in Hartlepool on H115.30 and in West Hartlepool on W111.054 and W111.086 page 37, and on the Roll of Honour at Loretto School, Edinburgh, St. Edmund’s School, Canterbury, and on Ealing Memorial Gates, London.

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 Lieutenant Taylor