People on board

WALKER, George

George Walker was born in Salford, Lancashire in 1885 to George Henry Walker and Martha Lucas, the youngest of their seven children. George Henry worked as a ‘Maker Up in Cotton Manufacturing’ and while fifteen year old George was a ‘Warehouse Boy Yarns’ in the 1901 census, the family were not directly involved in the textile industry. George Henry died in 1890, aged forty-six, and from at least 1891 the family lived in Ordsall Lane in Salford.

Martha Walker died in 1907, aged fifty-eight, and in 1901 George was living with an older sister, Nellie, and her young family. He was then aged twenty-five and gave his occupation as a ‘Packer’. The following year he married Henrietta Ethel Stobart, giving his occupation on the marriage certificate as Warehouseman while Henrietta was a Dressmaker. They had three children, the eldest, Ethel, born in 1915, lived only a short time, and she was followed by George in December 1916 and William in July 1918.

George Walker enlisted in Manchester in the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry, though when it is not known. In October 1918 he was with the 2/1st Regiment, a training and draft-supplying reserve, which had moved to Ireland in May of that year. Whether going on leave or for posting abroad, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.