People on board

LOTT, Arthur Herbert

Arthur Herbert Lott was baptized in the parish of Britwell Salome, Oxfordshire on the 9th of April 1893. He was the fourth youngest of the twelve children of George and Elizabeth Lott. On the baptismal certificate George’s occupation was ‘Blacksmith’ but in the 1901 census he was an ‘Engine Fitter’. The family lived in Wallingford, Berkshire where George died in 1906. Six sons and two daughters were living with their widowed mother in 1911, all employed except for the nine-year old.

In 1911 Arthur was working as a ‘Drapers Porter’ but he joined the Great Western Railway as an ‘Engine Cleaner’ in October 1912, progressing to a ‘Fireman’ the following year, and stationed at Neath, in Wales. He joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment in September 1915, which his older brother Edwin had already done, but he had died in France in February 1915. Arthur also served in France but his records do not give any details. In 1918 he was with the 3rd Battalion which moved to Ireland in 1917 and was in Dublin in late 1918.

It can be presumed that Arthur Lott was travelling home on leave on the 10th of October 1918 when RMS Leinster was torpedoed. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered on the Isle of Man. He is buried in Kirkpatrick Holy Trinity Churchyard in Glenfabba, and his name follows that of Private George Lutton on a headstone erected at the time. Each soldier also has an individual Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone as does Corporal Michael Carroll, RAMC, who also lost his life on RMS Leinster. Arthur’s photo appeared in the Great Western Railway staff magazine in 1919 and he was among those remembered in a service in St Paul’s Cathedral that year.