Photo: James Pasby
204948 Private
R. Knotts
Durham Light Infantry
11th May 1920
Jacky Cooper has provided the following:
Richard was the fifth child of Thomas Knotts and Ann Bulman who had married in the summer of 1885 in the Gateshead area. Thomas was an iron worker and the family lived in Winlaton. Richard was born towards the end of 1891 and by the time he showed on the census return in 1901 his mother, Ann, was recorded as a widow, working as a washer-woman to support her four surviving children.
It is not known what happened to Ann, but by 1911 the family had dispersed. Richard was living with his mother’s brother and his family. He had left school and was working as a labourer underground at the colliery. His older brother was living with another uncle and the girls had gone into service.
Perhaps looking for better opportunities, Richard enlisted on 2 May 1913, joining the 5th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, a territorial battalion which was part of the York and Durham Brigade. He was initially given the service number 1568.
When war broke out the men were at their summer training camp in North Wales and were recalled to battalion headquarters at Stockton on Tees. After further training and preparations the men were ready for battle, and sailed to Boulogne, where they disembarked on 18 April 1915. The next couple of days were spent travelling to the field of battle where they arrived on 20 April.
The battalion fought in the second battle of Ypres in 1915, and spent much of 1916 on the Somme.
In 1917 when territorial soldiers numbers were re-numbered Richard was issued with his new service number, 204948. That year the men fought in Arras and Passchendaele, and at some point Richard was injured, and was eventually sent back to England. In the summer of 1917, whilst still in the army, Richard married Dorothy Oliver in Newcastle. He was unfit to return to his unit and was eventually discharged 4 October 1917.
In the autumn of 1918 Dorothy gave birth to their first child Thomas and on 8 March 1920 to a daughter, Jennie. It must have felt like things were settling for the young family, but barely two months after the birth of his infant daughter Richard died on 11 May 1920 at the age of 28.
For his service to his country Richard earned the 1915 Star, British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Dorothy stayed in the area, and in 1939 was living in Newcastle upon Tyne and working as an examiner in a naval ordnance store. Jennie had left home and was working as a domestic servant in the orthopaedic hospital school in Gosforth.
Richard Knotts is remembered in Blaydon on B111.01 in Swalwell in S85.01, and in Whickham on W86.10
