Reginald Charles Rycroft
Rank: Sergeant
Regiment: 12th Ordnance Depot, Army Ordnance Corps
Parents: Mr Herbert Rycroft & Mrs Elizabeth Morris
Brothers: Leslie Frank Rycroft & Leonard Rycroft
Address: 11 Shepherd Street, St Leonards
Other Info: Reginald Rycroft died aged 27 on 14th September 1918. He is buried at Hastings Cemetery. The inscription on his grave reads “After the battle, peace”.
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He was born in 1891 in Hastings. Just before his birth, in the 1891 census, the family was at 42 North Street. Father Herbert was a waterman. He died 23 September 1897, age 35, at Hastings.
In the 1901 census mother Elizabeth was a widow and a caretaker, aged 38, at the Christchurch School on Alfred Street, with Reginald the fourth of six children in the household. A few months later she married, in Hastings, William James Morris.
In the 1911 census the Morris household was in a 7-roomed dwelling at 11 Shepherd Street, St Leonards. William James Morris was 32, a milkman for a dairy. His wife was 45. The couple had one child, nine-year old Kathleen Eva. Reginald was the eldest of three stepsons, and was also a milkman for a dairy, age 19. The other stepsons were a grocer's assistant and a shop assistant for a builder and decorator.
He was service number 010222 in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He died at the 13th Canadian General Hospital, Hastings.
The Hastings and St Leonards Observer in its 22 April 1939 issue has an interesting account of Leslie Rycroft, a policeman in London, and a brother of Reginald. His mother was living at 28 Sedlescombe Road North. It says that Herbert the father was an assistant verger at Christchurch, which may explain his widow securing both a place and an apartment there as caretaker. Leslie served in World War I as a military policeman on the Western Front, and now lived with his family in Orpington, Kent. The 1 June 1918 quotes a letter he wrote from the Western Front.
The 1939 Register shows for 28 Sedlescombe Road North both William James Morris, a stoker, born 12 March 1880, and Elizabeth Morris, born 12 April 1867, together with Arthur H. Rycroft, born 1887, steam engineer.