Charles Edgerton
Private 7842 - "C" Coy. 1st Bn. King’s Shropshire Light Infantry
Killed in action on Monday 9th August 1915, age 30
Remembered on Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial
Charles (Charley) Edgerton was born in Edgmond in the winter of 1884, but spent most
of his childhood in the Outwoods and Befcote.
He was the son of William and Mary Edgerton. His younger brother William Henry also
fought in WWI.
William and Mary were living in Befcote in 1911 where their nearest neighbours were
farmers William and Elizabeth Barker &, farmers Greader and Emily Belcher (at Coton
Farm).
In 1911 Charles Edgerton was a Lance Corporal serving in the regular army with the 2
nd
Battalion King’s Own Light Infantry in Secunderabad, India. Their entrenchment was at
Trimulgherry. On the night of the census, Lance Corporal Charles Edgerton was officially
‘absent’.
The KSLI remained in India until they were mobilized for war, joining the 80
th
Brigade, 27
th
Division and landing at Le Havre in France on the 21
st
December 1914 (later, in December
1915, they were posted to Salonika).
However, in the meantime, Charles Edgerton had married Florence Mary Johnson in the
early months of 1914 in the district of Wharfdale in Sunderland and re-emerged in
Flanders serving with the 1
st
Battalion KSLI who had been serving in Tipperary and landed
at St. Nazaire on the 10
th
September 1914, joining the 16
th
Brigade, 6
th
Division.
The 1
st
Bn. took part in the early battles of the Aise and Marne and afterwards served on
the Western Front, being present in more-or-less every major engagement. In the Ypres
salient of 1915, it was part of the attack on the Hooge positions in August.
Charles Edgerton was killed on the 9
th
August 1915 but his body was never recovered and
he is one of the thousands now commemorated on the Menin Gate. (Bay 49 stone K)
Charles’ widow remarried in 1918.
Son of Mrs. W. Edgerton, of 11, Anchor Site, Gnosall, Staffs, husband of Florence Mary
Jinks (formerly Edgerton), of Milton Terrace, Willington Rd., Etwall, Derby.