Pte 406053 Albert Edward Roberts

Albert Edward was born in Rochdale in late 1898, the son of Frederick Roberts and his wife Edith Mary (née Lake). Fred, born in King’s Cross, London, and Mary, from Gloucestershire, married in Rochdale in 1898 and had three children;  Albert had younger sisters Daisy, born in 1904, and Lily Jane, 1906.

 

He was baptised in Christ Church, Healey, his parents’ residence 13 Smallshaw Row, Lanehead, and his father’s occupation listed as joiner.

 

In 1901 Edith and Fred are visiting her parents, George and Sarah Lake, at 1 Snipe Barn, Lanehead, Norden, near Rochdale. His grandfather is a waterworks labourer, his father is 36, a joiner, his mother is 25, Fred is 2.  His aunt Emily is 23, a cotton winder.  

 

His father died in 1909, aged 43, leaving Mary with three children ages 10, 5, and 3.

 

The 1911 census finds them at No.8 Back Lanehead, Healey, near Rochdale.  His widowed mother Mary is 34, a cotton winder, Albert, although only 12, is employed as a weaver, Daisy is 7, and Lily 4.

 

Later that year his mother married Samuel Parton, a neighbour in Lanehead, with whom she had two children.

 

Albert enlisted in Rochdale and was serving in the 18^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 406053 when he died on the 09^th March 1918, aged 19.  Albert died of complications from his diabetes in hospital in Glasgow.

 

In 1918, eight years before the discovery of insulin by Banting and Best in 1926, patients with diabetes could only be treated by diet, and severe diabetics were condemned to a short lifetime on a very restricted and unpalatable diet before their inevitable fatal end.  (Extract from the "The Practitioner's Encyclopaedia of Medical Treatment", Published by Oxford Medical Publications, 1915).  Patients were often recommended prolonged fasting and starvation diets.)

Albert's death was featured in the Rochdale Observer on 22/03/1918:

DEATH OF SIGNALLER ROBERTS. 

Signaller Albert Roberts the King’s Liverpool Regiment, who lived at Beat Row, Caldershaw Lane, Spoil and, has died in a home hospital. He was only 19 years of age. 

He now rests at Healey, (Christ Church), Churchyard, Rochdale where his headstone bears the epitaph:

“LEST WE FORGET” 

There are 6 First World War burials in the Cemetery.

The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for about seven months, enlisting in about July 1917 (when he would have been 18 years old).  Albert received the British War and Victory medals, indicating he served overseas before being repatriated to the U.K. with diabetes.

 

His mother, Edith M. Parton, of 3 Baytro, Caldershaw, Spotland, Rochdale, received Albert’s Army effects and a War Gratuity of £3-10s.  The pension card shows she received a pension of 15/- a week.

 

His mother suffered further loss when his sister Lily died at age 20 in 1927. 

 

In 1939 Mary is living with her husband and two children at 9 Further Pitts, Rochdale.  She appears to have lived until 1960, dying at the age of 84.