Percy Cass

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born in Hartlepool on 30th August 1890 and baptised on 11th September in Musgrave Street Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Percy was the middle child of hawker/furniture dealer Henry Colburn Cass and his Norfolk born wife Alice. He had two older brothers, Arthur and George, and a younger brother and sister, Henry and Violet. In July 1910 Percy and his two older brothers sailed from Liverpool to Quebec on board the SS Lake Manitoba aiming to find work as farm labourers in the province, as talked about by the Canadian government agent, Edward Brewster, who had been touring England hoping to attract young men to emigrate to Canada. The following year they were joined by their parents and younger brother and sister and the 1911 Canadian census shows them living in Toronto and taking in lodgers, with all the boys taking on odd jobs to make money.

On 2nd November 1912 Percy married Lillian Maud McCarthy, also from West Hartlepool and who had followed Percy to Canada and their daughter Violet Lillian Cass was born the following July. Percy attempted to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in August 1914 but was rejected on medical grounds, given a ‘Certificate of Unfitness for Active Service’. He was more successful the second time when he became Private 669065 of the 166th Battalion Queen’s Own Rifles in Toronto on 28th January 1916, giving Lillian as his next of kin and his occupation as a porter for Northrop & Lyman Co., a large manufacturing chemist’s business based in Toronto.

The Battalion trained at Exhibition Camp in Toronto until July and then moved to Camp Borden before the first half of the Battalion, including Percy, embarked on board the SS Olympic, arriving in Liverpool on 19th October 1916, and then moving on to camp at Seaford, Sussex. Transferred to the 38th Battalion at the end of November, by December he was in France, almost immediately to be invalided sick with influenza to No. 7 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Le Havre on 17th December 1916 but was well enough to join the battalion at Vimy Ridge at the start of 1917. On 26th March in the front line trenches a dugout was filled with gas and seventeen men, including Percy, were gassed and were treated at 12 Canadian Field Ambulance based at Grand Servins. Rejoining his unit on 7th April Percy found himself promoted to Corporal in July, and then August 23rd 1917 saw a day of heavy bombardment on the front line trenches near Avion, south of Lens, and it was here that Percy Cass was wounded by shrapnel in the right arm, leg and head. He was evacuated to no.6 Casualty Clearing Station at Barlin, ten miles behind the front line. He was unconscious when he arrived and “he succumbed to his wounds the same day”.

Corporal 669065 Percy Cass is buried in Barlin Communal Cemetery Extension in the Pas de Calais. Percy’s parents remained in Canada, but his wife and five-year-old daughter returned to live in Hope Street, West Hartlepool in 1919, Lillian never remarried.

Percy Cass is remembered at West Hartlepool on W111.86 page 10 and W111.54

He is also remembered in Canada on the Sons of England War Memorial, Toronto, on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial and in the Canadian Book of Remembrance.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Cass