12/11/2024
As this weekend is remembrance Sunday I would like to share with you this 1927 newspaper report I recently found about my great grandfather Pte Robert Shacklady 1/5th Kings Liverpool regt. who was wounded at the battle of Festubert 15th - 25th May 1915
OPERATION FEAR. EX-SOLDIER'S SU***DE IN HOSPITAL. POISON TAKEN.
LIFE IS JUST A GAMBLE, ANYHOW." Su***de while of Unsound Mind was recorded by the Liverpool City Coroner today, at the inquest on Robert Edward Shacklady, aged 43, an inmate of the Ministry of Pensions Hospital, Mossley Hill, who drank half a cupful of lysol. Shacklady, it was stated, was a pensioned soldier of the King's Liverpool Regiment. He was suffering from a gunshot wound in the leg, received during the war, and had been in Mossley Hill Institution for three years. He had been previously in Knotty Ash Hospital. His wound gave him trouble and he was worried because he thought he had to undergo another operation.
He told his wife that he could not face another. “JIMMY WHITE DID IT." John Edward Scott, nursing orderly at the hospital, said Shacklady had been out on a day's leave. He heard him chatting to another patient in bed that night, and asked him to be quiet. He then heard Shacklady muttering to himself something like, “Jimmy White did it. Life is just a gamble anyhow." Shacklady moving restlessly again, he went back to the bedside, and the man was then ill.
There was a cup on the locker which smelt as if it had contained lysol. The orderly rushed for a doctor and nurses, and a pump was used and strychnine administered, but Shacklady died an hour later. A bottle which had contained lysol was afterwards found in his locker. Col. Elliot, medical superintendent of the hospital, said 10 further operations had been contemplated in Shacklady's case.
Robert was a pre war regular solider having served in the Boer war.
Robert was wounded on the 16th May 1915, the 1/5th Liverpool’s began there attack at 8am, there didn’t get half way across the 250 yards of no mans land before the attack faltered. A bullet hit Robert in his right leg entering above the knee and exiting just below it. He lay in no mans land for 3 days before he was picked up by the stretcher bearers, initially they thought he was dead.
It was nice that the veterans foundation https://www.veteransfoundation.org.uk was able to attend the North Essex Miliataria fair last weekend, and its a timely reminder that there are more organisations supporting our veterans, families and military wounded now than there was in my great grandfathers day.
Robert was clearly suffering very badly with PDSD and was obversely in a great deal of pain with his leg and his injuries. the great war ended in 1918, Shacklady’s war ended in 1927 leaving a wife and three young children, his youngest son Henry age 4 died in 1926.
He should have been recorded as died of wounds but deaths after 1918 were not officially recorded in the great war casualties figures.
It is so important to keep supporting these amazing organisations to assist our veterans with mental, psychical and financial needs now and in the future.
Thousands of veterans are in need across the country, we are committed to funding the support they require. The Veterans' Foundation operates the Veterans' Lottery.
