The families who were left scarred by losing loved ones in Great War
WORLD War I left many families very badly scarred. Ormskirk and District was a small community: families worked together, socialised and worshipped together.
There were so many close ties through marriage that every man lost to the town was mourned by numerous households.
James Edward Lyon was just 30 when he was killed in action on July 31 1917.
James was the son of Edward Woods Lyon of Wigan Road, the relieving officer of Ormskirk before retiring. James’s mother Jane was the sister of Henry Tyrer, the shipbroker of ‘Bewcastle’ Ruff Lane. Samuel Brighouse, the SW Lancashire Coroner, was a witness at their wedding.
James, although still a young man in 1914, was a director of Henry Tyrer & Co. Shipping, working in the Liverpool office.
Through his half-brothers and sisters, children of his father’s first wife, James was related to the Kennedy family, Isabella Kennedy being his father’s first wife. She was sister to solicitor Leonard Kennedy.
James had married Agnes Esther Brown in early 1913, and when James was killed in action on that last day of July 1917, his wife was heavily pregnant with their first child. A son, also James Edward Lyon was born September 25, 1917.
Agnes Esther Lyon née Brown was born and raised on her father’s nursery on Dark Lane next to Bath Lodge and also neighbours to John Tyrer, father of Henry Tyrer of Bewcastle.
Agnes received a letter in August 1917 from Captain Fred Atkinson of the 9th King’s Liverpool Regiment, who was the commanding officer of A Company to which her husband belonged.
It read: “They had consolidated the enemy trench they had taken and it was several hours later that he was killed instantly by a German shell. He suffered no pain whatsoever.
“At the time he was just sitting down in the trench and he could have had no warning of his fate.
“Fred Atkinson, Capt. France. August 26, 1917.”
Henry Tyrer not only lost his nephew James on July 31, 1917, he also lost another employee, Clement William Ford, a shipping clerk working for Tyrer who lived at Elmside, St Helen’s Road.
Clement was the step-son of Dodgson Kennedy, brother to Leonard and Isabella Kennedy.
Two other of Tyrers’ employees were lost in the final months of the war, brothers Henry and Daniel Alty of Wigan Road, Westhead.
Henry was awarded the D.C.M. in 1917. Daniel was killed on September 5, 1918, aged 31.
Henry, the younger son, was given permission to return home but was killed on September 30, 1918 before the order took effect. He was just 24.
Their older brother Thomas had been lost the year before.
After the war, Henry Tyrer donated the memorial of a stained glass window at St James Church, Westhead.
A fellow director of the Tyrer Shipping Company was Walter Stretch of Vine Cottage, Burscough Street.
Walter’s nephew Thomas had served with the 9th Kings and was invalided home after losing a leg in a similar incident to James.
Another director was Herbert Medcalf Warlow, whose father was a solicitor in the town. The Warlow family lost George Brighouse Warlow in 1915.
George’s mother was the daughter of Samuel Garside who had Garsides Chemist. Luke Brighouse, solicitor, was George’s grandfather.
All these families shared each other’s loss and grief, this was a story repeated across the whole country and communities needed to come together to mind comfort.
This began to happen as the first memorial services were held and the War Memorial projects started to be planned.
The hundreds of names from the district on the various memorials to the dead of the Great War are familiar names in West Lancashire still today.