The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website confirms that Lance Corporal Arthur Ernest Hemsworth was the: “son of Albert and Maria Hemsworth, of The Post Office, Eyam, Sheffield.”

The following appeared in the ‘Belper News’ of 12 October 1917:- “EYAM SOLDIER KILLED”

“Mr and Mrs A Hemsworth, Post Office, Eyam [which is near Chesterfield, Derbyshire], have received the news of the death in action in France, on September 20th of their third son, Pte. Arthur Hemsworth, Cheshire Regiment. The information was sent by his Captain.

Pte. A Hemsworth was 27(sic) years of age, and joined up at the outbreak of the war in August 1914. He has been four times invalided home, the first time from the Dardanelles when he received wounds in the back from shrapnel. He has had enteric fever and dysentery, and also been wounded in the knee and thigh. He was of a bright and cheerful disposition, and made a host of friends wherever he went. Mr and Mrs Hemsworth have another son, Frank, also in the Army.” 

Arthur Ernest Hemsworth was born in Sheffield Yorkshire in 1888, to Albert Hemsworth (born Sheffield 1855) and Maria Hemsworth nee Ellis (born Chesterfield, Derbyshire 1858). Albert and Maria had wed at the church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield, in 1882.

The 1911 census located the 22-year-old Arthur Ernest living with his parents and siblings at 12 Hanover Square, in the Broomhall District of Sheffield, with his father employed as a Post Office Supervisor. At that time Arthur Ernest himself was an Assistant in a Warehouse.

Arthur Ernest Hemsworth’s service records have not survived. But the publication ‘Soldiers Died In The Great War 1914-1919’ records that he was born in the Broomhall District of Sheffield, that he enlisted in Birkenhead, which was then in Cheshire, and that, at the time, he was resident in Sheffield.

Arthur Ernest’s medal card shows that he was awarded the 1914-15 Star, which confirms that he first entered a war zone before 31 December 1915. His medal card also confirms that he had served in the Gallipoli campaign.

The register for the 19th General Hospital based in Alexandria, Egypt, lists Arthur Ernest Hemsworth as being a patient with Enteric Fever* who was discharged on 19 October 1915 for further hospital treatment at Port Said**, Egypt. The same source records him as being aged 27 at the time, having been in the army for one year, and having served in the field force for one year also. His religion is noted down as Church of England.

[*“An acute systemic infection which induces fevers and is potentially lethal” (Wikipedia)] [**The entry does not place him in the Sick Convoy for transport back to the UK]

The CWGC website confirms that Arthur Ernest Hemsworth died, on 20 September 1917 and that his name is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial in the West-Vlaanderen Region of Belgium, for the missing presumed dead of the Ypres Salient. It may well be relevant that Arthur Ernest met his fate when the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (31 July to 10 November 1917), was in progress.

(The newspaper article above and the CWGC record his age as 27. But Arthur Ernest Hemsworth would in fact have been circa 29).