Canadian Badge

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

On 28th April 1886 colliery worker Thomas Adams, from South Hetton, and his wife Hannah boarded the steamship Sorata to emigrate to Australia. On 8th June, five days before arriving in Sydney Hannah gave birth to their first child, a son William. The family settled in the coal mining town of Lambton, New South Wales where Jane, Emily and Martha were born, but the family had returned to live in Wingate by 1897 where Sussannah, Thomas, Bertha and Sydney were born.

In 1901 the family were living in Seymour Street and William, aged 14, was an overground worker at the local colliery; ten years later he, like his father, was working underground as a stoneman, and the family was living at 322 Sinkers Row.

William then emigrated to Canada, where he may have been working in a mining town in British Columbia. But on 21st November 1914 he was in Quebec City where he enlisted with the 23rd (Montreal) Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force becoming Private 63060, giving his mother in Wingate as his next of kin and his occupation as a coal miner.

The battalion sailed for England on the SS Missanabie in February 1915, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel F.W. Fisher, with a complement of 35 officers and 942 other ranks, arriving in Avonmouth on 7th March and an onward posting to camp at Shorncliffe, Kent. Within three weeks Private Adams had gone AWOL, possibly to see his family, but returned to camp and was fined seven days’ pay.

On 26th April William was posted to the 4th (Western Ontario) Battalion, part of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, one of the thousands of replacements sent after the battle at St Julian, and joined them a week later at Vlamertinghe, Belgium, where he was assigned to “A” Company.

He reported sick on 14th February 1916 at Dranoutre, diagnosed with a persistent case of bronchitis, and was invalided to England in mid April where he was admitted to Ontario Military Hospital in Orpington, Kent with suspected TB, although all his tests were negative. A Medical Board in July recommended that he should be invalided to Canada as permanently unfit, and on arrival in Canada the following month another Medical Board recommended six months treatment at Freeport Sanatorium at Kitchener, Ontario. By July 1917, a Medical Board reported that his condition was slowly, but steadily, getting worse, he would never get better and should remain under medical supervision.

Private Adams wrote out his last will and testament on 16th November 1918, and died four days later in Kitchener.

His name does not appear on any local war memorial.

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 Private Adams