It started with a postcard to a house on Belfield Road in
Didsbury and by degree became a story.
In this case it featured a name on the war memorial facing
Didsbury Library, and as so often happens,
it started with someone else’s piece of research.
So, I have my old friend David Harrop to thank for setting
me off on the search for James and George Biddle.
David came across a picture postcard sent by George Biddle
in 1917 during the Great War to his parents.
The picture on the front is of a French chateau, and the
message is brief, added to which the censor has blotted out the location of
where George is stationed.
But it was enough to strike a chord with David who remembered
that there was a James Biddle listed on the Didsbury war memorial which set him
thinking if the two men were related.
And they were. George
had been born in 1885, and James seven years later and they grew up with their
three siblings in the home of George and Mary Biddle at 16 Belfield Road,
Didsbury.
In 1911, their father described himself as a land surveyor,
while James was working as an engineering apprentice and his brother William
was a “motor car designer”.
By then, George and his two sisters had moved out, leaving
his father, James and William alone in the house with Ms Edith Barsby who was
employed as “domestic servant”.
In time, I will discover more about the family, but for now
there is just a record of the place and date of James’s death, which was on
September 29, 1918, just under two months before the Armistice and was buried
in Buqouy Road Cemetery, Ficheux , which is 9 kilometres from Arras.
Now, I say that is all, but only yesterday David came across
the order of service at the unveiling ceremony on Saturday, July 2, 1921 for the Didsbury War Memorial, which was
dedicated to “The memory of the sacred dead of this village who, having left
all that was dear to them endured hardships, faced dangers, and finally paid
the supreme sacrifice in defence of our King and Country”.
And amongst the fourteen names on the Committee charged with
the creation of the memorial was a George Biddle who I assume was James’s
father.
I can not begin to think what he felt during the committee meetings
and finally the unveiling ceremony.
Location; Didsbury
Pictures; courtesy of David Harrop
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