Army
Roberts, E S
E S Roberts
Rank: Sapper
Regiment: ‘J’ Depot Company, Royal Engineers
Other Info: Sapper Roberts died on 26th February 1919. He is buried at Hastings Cemetery.
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Egbert Stanley Roberts was born in 1875 in Fulham registration district, Middlesex, to Egbert and Julia Roberts.
In the 1881 census the family were at Alma Villa, Harrow. Mother Julia was wife of a commercial tea traveller. He had four sisters and two brothers, and was born Shepherd’s Bush.. In the 1891 census he was one of numerous pupils boarding at a school for children of commercial travellers at Pinner.
In the 1901 census he was at 2 Boston Cottages, High Street, Hanwell, Middlesex, in the house of his brother in law Alfred Henbury, attendant at a lunatic asylum, and his wife Ethel, born Sudbury. He said that he was born in Shepherd’s Bush and he was a fitter. Next door at no. 1 Boston Cottages was his widowed mother Julia, living on her own means, and her daughter Beatrice.
He married, at the Brentford Register Office, 17 Jan 1903, Nelly Shepherd. She had been born in Bury, Lancashire. Between 1904 and 1916 they had at least three girls and two boys. In the 1911 census they were living in a six-room dwelling at 184 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell. He was a gas and hot water fitter, born Sudbury.
When he enlisted, 17 July 1917, Hounslow, expressing a preference for the Royal Engineers, he said that he was aged 39 years and 7 months. He was in fact about 42. His address was 184 High Street, Hanwell, and he was a labourer.
He was posted to the depot of the Labour Corps, and became a Private in the 386th Labour Company on the 2 August 1917. On the 18 August 1917 he was sent to Halifax. On the 18 October 1917 he was posted to D.O.R.E. in Hastings. It is unclear what happened to him then except that on the 29 June 1918 he was sent to the Royal Engineers as a Sapper, service number 369272.
He was admitted to St John’s Hospital, Hastings, on the 17 February 1919, suffering from severe influenza and bronchitis. After five days he developed septic pneumonia and rapidly grew worse and died on the 26 February 1919, aged 43,
On the 20 September 1920 his widow made a declaration in the military records. She was living at 192 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, with four children. Both his parents were dead. Three sisters, all married, were in Middlesex.
In 1923 the widow married Frederick James Eaton, who died in 1925. She died in 1967 at Abbots Langley Hospital.
Daughter Gladys raised her father’s status to “engineer” when she married in 1930 Frederick Robins, a french polisher.