People on board

ROGERS, Walter Thomas

Walter Thomas Rogers was born on the 21st of December 1870 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire to John Rogers and Eliza Higgins. He was the youngest of their six children, all sons. When John Rogers married in 1858 he was a ‘Brickmaker’, progressing to ‘Bricklayer’ then ‘Builder’, finally by the time of the 1891 census, and the year of his death, he was a ‘Grocer’. The family lived in Abbey Foregate in Shrewsbury where the sons were employed once they reached their teens. In 1891 both Walter and his brother Arthur were ‘Rivetters’.

In 1898 Walter Rogers married Louisa Newman in Wolverhampton but had returned to Shrewsbury for the birth of their first child Walter later that year. He gave his occupation on the baptismal certificate as ‘Electrician’. A daughter Louisa was born just before the 1901 census when he gave his occupation as ‘Electrician Wiring Houses for Electric Light’ and an address of Islington Terrace. Three more children, Gertrude, Frank and Lucy, were born before the 1911 census by which time they had moved to Springfield Gardens on the Wenlock Road. He was then an ‘Electric Light Wireman’. A final daughter Alice was born in 1913.

It is not known when Walter Rogers enlisted in the Shropshire Yeomanry but by October 1918 he was a Sergeant in the 2/1st Regiment, a second-line regiment that had moved to Ireland early in 1918. The amount of his War Gratuity, £17 15s, suggests that he had been in the army for over a year. Presumably returning home on leave, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October but did not survive the sinking, nor was his body recovered. His name is recorded on the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton and on the memorial in St Giles Church on Wenlock Road in Shrewsbury.