Regiment: 38th Canadian Infantry (Eastern Ontario Regiment)
Service No: 437998
Date & place of birth:18 April 1889 in Lodsworth
Date & place of death: 30 November 1917 at Passchendaele, aged 28
Private Richard Wyndham Sherlock was one of two close neighbours and most likely school friends from Lodsworth Common who emigrated to Canada to work as farmers, who enlisted in the Canadian forces in the same recruitment centre on the same day, and who served and were killed on the Western Front in France.
Family background
Richard was born on 18 April 1889 in Lodsworth and baptised on 14 July 1889 at St Peter’s church, Lodsworth. He was the last of the nine children of Richard Sherlock, a labourer in Lodsworth Common brickworks, and his wife Phoebe Emma née Munday who came from Priors Dean in Hampshire.
In 1911 Richard was a postman, living with his parents on Lodsworth Common.
According to an article published in 1977 by Harry Carver in Outlook, the village magazine, around 1912 a ‘Dick’ Sherlock, probably the father, was living in Brickyard Cottage, Lodsworth Common.
Richard emigrated to Canada to become a farmer. He may have sailed from Liverpool to St John, Canada on the Virginian on 29 March 1912.
He remained unmarried.
Military service
Richard’s attestation papers show that he enlisted on 25 November 1915 in Edmonton, Canada as Private 437998 in the 38th Canadian Infantry ‘Eastern Ontario’ Regiment, part of the 4th Canadian Division. This was the same day and same place where his neighbour and school mate from Lodsworth Common, Edgar John Boxall, enlisted: Edgar had similarly emigrated to Canada to be a farmer.
Death and commemoration
Richard was killed in action at Passchendaele, Belgium on 30 November 1917 aged 28.
He was buried in grave XV.A.20 in the Tyne Cot Cemetery at Passchendaele and is commemorated on the Lodsworth war memorial.
Subsequent family history
Richard’s brothers Arthur and Sidney also served in World War 1, but both survived.
His mother, Phoebe Emma Sherlock, died in 1919 and his father, Richard, probably in 1926.