alcock

RAF aviator John Alcock. Alcock and Arthur Brown would win the £10,000 transatlantic flight prize offered by The Daily Mail (UK) by flying a Vickers Vimy from St. John's, Newfoundland to a bog, near Clifden in County Galway, Ireland. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_...

His MIC shows that he was Corporal 12L/5950 12th Lancers. Commissioned 12th Lrs. 28.10.1915. Then 2nd Lieut in the Gloucestershire Regiment.

Date of entry into theatre of war 15.8.1914.

Alfred was born in 1884 in Didbrook. The 1891 census shows him aged 6 living with his parents and 9 siblings aged between 12 and 4 months. They were living at the School House where Alfred Snr described himself as "Organist and sometime [Engine] Proprietor" and his wife Mary was Schoolmistress.

By the 1911 census Alfred was a Lance Corporal stationed in Egypt/Sierra Leone/South Africa/Sudan.

His family still lived in Didbrook. HIs parents had been married for 37 years and of their 15 children, 3 had died. Only 4 daughters were at home on census night and the 2 eldest girls were assistant teachers, whilst their mother was now Headmistress.

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