Name
George Joseph Cox
18 April 1871
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
30/06/1915
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Stoker 1st Class
277601
Royal Navy
H.M.S. Lightning.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 /15 Star, British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
BISHOP'S STORTFORD OLD CEMETERY
D. 17A.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Bishop's Stortford Town Memorial, Bishop's Stortford Old Cemetery
Pre War
George Joseph Cox was born on 18 April 1871 in Kentish Town, London, England.
In the 1901 Census he is recorded as a Stoker (Royal Navy) living in a “Soldiers and Seaman’s Home” in Chatham. This is where presumably he met his wife, Florence Fordham, who had been born in Chatham in 1884. They married in 1904.
On the 1911 Census he was living with his wife and a boarding child at the sewage works, Great Hallingbury, Herts and working as a Stationary Engineman for the Urban District Council.
N.B. Great Hallingbury is in the Bishop's Stortford district.
Wartime Service
He must have returned for duty with the Royal Navy when hostilities commenced in 1914 to meet his death in June 1915.
He was serving in the Royal Navy as a Stoker 1st class on HMS Lightning which was a Janus class destroyer built in 1895. The ship was engaged in destroying mines near the Kentish Knock, when she struck one of the mines, killing fifteen of her crew. The ship broke in half, the bow section sank and the stern was towed back to Sheerness, Kent.
The ship’s captain was absolved of any blame, but was advised that he “might have considered he was in a mine field, having already spotted three mines.”
George Joseph Cox was aged 44 years when he died on 30th June 1915 and was the oldest casualty from the 'Hallingburys' to die in the Great War.
Additional Information
Official Number Port Division 277601 (R.F.R.Ch.B4143.) (Ch).
His wife Florence later lived at 186 Trinity Road, Southchurch, Southend on Sea.
His death was reported in the Essex Newsman (10th July 1915).
Acknowledgments
Brenda Palmer, Jonty Wild
Philip Hays
