Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 59

W ORLD W AR O NE (1914 - 1918) INCLUDING THOSE WHO DIED LATER AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name HARRY CHESTER HOPTON (Private)

Arrive SES 1868

Roll Number 98 Died 25:11:1916

Set / House -

Lef SES 1870

Where BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND Serving with NAIROBI DEFENCE FORCE

Age 60

Buried King’s Norton, Worcestershire, England Remembered Uganda Memorial Plaque, Nairobi, The St. Edward’s School Chapel (Wooden Plaque) and The Cloisters Stone Memorial Born Rothwell, Yorkshire in 1856, the second of four SES brothers, amongst the first to enter the School in the New Inn Hall Street days. He was also one of the oldest OSE to fight in The Great War and the oldest to die because of it. He was only at the School for a short time, the rest of his education being at Bromsgrove School. Nothing is recorded of his time at St. Edward’s. After leaving full-time education, he lived for a while in Cheltenham, then joined the Merchant Navy for a spell and married young in 1886. As early as 1898 he was recorded as living in British East Africa. He took part in the Boer War (no record found) remaining in South Africa after the ending of hostilities. In 1910 he was living and working in Nairobi. When The Great War broke out, although nearly sixty years of age, he volunteered for the East African Defence Force in 1914 and immediately saw action in German East Africa. By the summer of 1916, suffering from Dysentery and Malaria, the campaigning ‘proved too much for him’ (Chronicle) and his family were told that he was near death. He returned to England, nearly blind, to the home of his OSE brother, the Archdeacon of Birmingham, where he died in November 1916.