Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 26th October 1884 by the turn of the century William gave up his apprenticeship as a plumber and joined the Imperial Army to fight in the South African War. Returning to Newcastle post war he completed his apprenticeship and then on 17th April 1906 he married Janet Wallace and at some time during the next five years they emigrated to Canada where they settled in Ontario and William found work as a plumber. On 10th May 1912 their daughter Eleanor Irene was born in Wentworth, Ontario.

On 11th January 1915, William, who had served with a local militia group, enlisted with the 33rd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force in his home town of Chatham, Ontario and giving Janet as his next of kin he was given the regimental number of A5. Five months later after initial training William sailed with the 1st Reinforcement Draft of the Battalion from Montreal to Plymouth, arriving on 28th June and a posting to camp at Shorncliffe, Kent.

Posted to Belgium with the 1st (Western Ontario) Battalion at the end of August, he joined the battalion in billets at the Piggeries near Ploegsteert, but after only four days on the front line was taken ill with an ear infection which led to him being invalided sick to England and a month in Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield. Discharged to temporary base duty in mid October he was posted to the Canadian Army Medical Corps Training Depot in Kent where he was assigned a new regimental number of 400505. Remaining with the CAMC when fully fit in March 1916 he was posted to Moore Barracks Hospital at Shorncliffe for duty and remained there for six months and was then posted to Ramsgate Specialist Hospital.

December 1917 saw him join to the CAMC Pool in France where he was attached to the Canadian Corps Reinforcement Camp before joining the 4th Casualty Clearing Station at Ruitz in northern France. Granted leave to the UK in October he would have visited his wife and daughter who had returned to England in 1915 and were living in Condercum Road, Elswick, Newcastle on Tyne. Returning to duty in November 1918, and at the start of the influenza epidemic, William himself was taken ill with the flu and was again invalided sick to England where he spent a month in hospital in Liverpool followed by a month’s convalescence at Epsom.

Private Potts chose to take his demobilization in London, and after a Medical Board and sick furlough, was discharged from the army on 19th March 1919. He and his family did not return to Canada, but returned to Newcastle, where their second daughter, Nora Edna was born in 1920. His older daughter Eleanor married in South Shields in 1935, and 1939 Register shows William and Janet living in Maple Grove, South Shields; his younger daughter Nora served in the WRAF and married in 1941. William served as a special constable for twenty-two years and during WW2 served as an air raid warden. He died in April 1950 in South Shields.

Thanks go to William’s granddaughter Carol for filling in some gaps in this biography.

William Potts is remembered in Elswick on E35.02