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In St Michael's Church, Brierley Hill.

CORPORAL C MOORE'S GRAVE IN BETHLEHEM

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Christopher Moore was born at the end of 1879/start of 1880 in Kingswinford in Staffordshire, and he was baptised in the Parish Church on 13 February 1880. His parents were Henry Alfred Moore, born in Shardlow, Derbyshire in 1840, and Fanny Ferrer, born in Kingswinford in 1860. It was Henry’s second marriage as his first wife had died after giving birth to Chistopher’s half-brother, Charles. Fanny was made of sterner stuff and, besides Christopher, gave birth to 11 (eleven) girls and 2 more boys, all bar a couple lived to see their majority. Christopher never knew his youngest brother, Ralph who was born in 1902 and lived to celebrate his 90th birthday.

In 1881 Christopher’s father was the proprietor of a shop at 48 Market Street, Kingswinford which sold drapery, clothes and furnishings but the proceeds did not run to financing a servant to help his mother with a growing family. We can only assume the business was not a success as by 1891 the family had moved to nearby Brierley Hill and Henry was no longer working for himself, unfortunately his given occupation is totally illegible. The 1901 Brierley Hill enumerator described him as “ Milk Purveyor” and by his own hand in 1911 he was a “Milk Man”.

As Christopher’s military paperwork has not survived we don’t know exactly when he joined the Worcestershire Regiment but his regimental number of 5034 would suggest the autumn of 1897, so Christopher may have been a little disingenuous about his age when he attested.

For a regular battalion the 1st Worcesters were late arriving in South Africa, disembarking at Cape Town on 8 April 1900 when they joined General Rundle’s 17th Brigade. By 21 October 1900 they had arrived at Bethlehem where General Rundle left them to guard the town assisted by the 62nd (Middlesex) Company of the Imperial Yeomanry and two guns of the 79th Battery. There they had to deal with daily forays by small bands of marauding Boers but on the 26th October things became more serious when 5091 Private W Hill was killed in action, Christopher was “severely” wounded and 2582 Lance-Corporal Fredrick Henry Sholey was “slightly” wounded. Christopher died two days later in Bethlehem, Fred Sholey, nearly 10 years older than Christopher and a Reservist born in Worcester, was still serving in South Africa at the end of the war and thus earned the KSA medal as well as the QSA medal. Christopher’s posthumous QSA Medal bore two clasps – Cape Colony & Orange Free State. He and 5091 W Hill are both commemorated in Worcester Cathedral.


The above undated photograph was found on a well researched public family tree on Ancestry.