Pte 52086 Frederick William Shipton

• Age: 36
• From: Bootle, Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Frederick William was born in Bootle on 03rd July 1880, the son of Edward Henry Shipton and his wife Louisa Eliza (nee Griffith) who married at St James's Church in Bristol on 10th February 1867. Both parents were born in Bristol. He was the 8th of 12 children and his siblings were; Louisa, Alfred, Rosey, Jessie, Edward, Frances, Daisy (died aged 11), Albert and Dorothy. Two other children died in infancy. 

The family moved from Bristol to Liverpool around 1875. The Census of 1881 finds the family living at 3 Waterworks Street, Bootle. Father is a wool dyers labourer.

By 1891 the family are living at 404 Hawthorne Road, Bootle. All members of the family were born in Bristol. His father, Edward, is aged 43, and is a chemical labourer , mother Louisa is 44. They have eight children in the household; Alfred 21 a butcher, Rosa 22 a greengrocers assistant, Jessie 18 a greengrocers assistant, Edward 16 an engineers apprentice; born Bootle, Francis 14 a scholar, Daisy 8 a scholar, Albert 3 and Dorothy 8 months.

His father Edward died in 1907 aged 58. 

By 1911 the family are living at 406 Hawthorne Road. Mother Louisa Eliza is aged 64, now widowed and shown as a General shop dealer, she was married for 45 years, had 12 children, with 9 surviving. William Frederick is shown as aged 27 and is working in the shop. Albert Henry aged 22 is a shop keeper, Dorothy Grace is 20 at home. Daughter Jessie Eliza Jones aged 38 has been married for 2 years.

Frederick William enlisted in Seaforth and was serving with the 19th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 52086 when he was killed in action on 09th April 1917, aged 36.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

His death was reported in the Liverpool Daily Post on the 08th June 1917

Frederick's body was not recovered from the battlefield or was subsequently lost as his name is commemorated on the Arras Memorial in France.

The ARRAS MEMORIAL commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, and have no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this period were the Arras offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the spring of 1918. Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations are commemorated by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate memorial remembers those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick. The memorial was unveiled by Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force on the 31 July 1932 (originally it had been scheduled for 15 May, but due to the sudden death of French President Doumer, as a mark of respect, the ceremony was postponed until July).

Soldiers Effects and Pension to mother Louisa

Frederick is commemorated on the Bootle Civic Memorial.

His younger brother Albert has service records, he attested in Bootle on the 08th December 1915 as 211444 Royal Engineers, and went overseas on the 26th February 1917 with No.2 Light Railway Co.

His mother died in the September quarter of 1922, aged 76.