Allgood, Bertram
Captain
1st Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles
Killed in action on Sunday 6 December 1914 (aged 40)
Buried:
Estaires Communal Cemetery and Extension, France (Grave I. B. 2)
Commemorated:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
St Giles’s Church, Birtley, Northumberland
Birtley War Memorial
St Mungo’s Church, Simonburn, Northumberland
Simonburn War Memorial
St Andrew’s Church, Hexham, Northumberland (Roll of Honour)
St Andrew’s Church, Hexham, Northumberland (Cross in Abbey Grounds)
Hexham General Hospital, Northumberland
St John Lee Church, Hexham
Newspaper Supplement Hexham Courant 1 November 1919
De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour 1914 – 1918 Part 2
BIOGRAPHY
The death of Captain Bertram Allgood was reported in the Newtownards Chronicle because he had lived in Newtownards when he was Adjutant of the 4th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles.
Bertram Allgood was born on 11 February 1874 in Bellingham, Northumberland and he was the second son of Major-General George Allgood CB (who died on 19 October 1906) and Elizabeth Allgood (nee Clayton, who died on 14 February 1874, three days after Bertram was born).
Major-General George Allgood served in the Indian Army and later became Chief Constable of Northumberland. He and Elizabeth Clayton were married on 24 July 1862 in Northumberland, and they had three children:
Adrian George (born 28 July 1867 at Murren, Punjab, India; served in the Royal Navy; died 26 May 1920)
Maud (born 2 December 1869 at Alnmouth; baptised 2 January 1870 in Lesbury, Northumberland)
Bertram (born 11 February 1874 in Northumberland)
Bertram Allgood was educated at Eton from 1888 until 1891 and became a career soldier who served in both India and Ireland.
He enjoyed hunting and polo and was a member of the Naval and Military Club.
He was appointed Second Lieutenant 15 May 1897 in the Royal Irish Rifles, Lieutenant on 10 August 1898 and Captain on 6 February 1904.
During the South African War, he was serving with the 1st Battalion at Calcutta and he continued to serve in India until 1905, when he reported for duty to the Depot at Belfast.
He returned to India but came back again to Belfast before serving for a time with the 2nd Battalion at Dover.
He was appointed Adjutant of the 4th Battalion on 19 November 1911 at Newtownards and he kept that appointment until he retired from the Army in February 1914 and joined the Reserve of Officers.
On 8 April 1913 Captain Allgood married Isobel (Isa) Edith Cochrane Bayley at St Simon’s Church of England Church, Chelsea. Isa was a daughter of the late Arthur Bayley and Mrs Herbert Lyde) in London and on 7 August 1914 their daughter, Elizabeth Mary Cochrane Allgood was born. During the Second World War Elizabeth Mary Cochrane Allgood was a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse. She and John Erskine Dundonald Cochrane were married on 15 June 1943 and they had three children:
Sarah Elizabeth (born 8 September 1946)
Ian Michael Dundonald (born 15 July 1950)
Alastair Charles Dundonald (born 4 October 1956)
They divorced in 1957 and Elizabeth married Phillip Carrington. Elizabeth Carrington (formerly Cochrane, nee Allgood) died on 19 January 1995.
At the outbreak of the First World War Captain Allgood was called up for service and joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Irish Rifles on 14 August 1914; he went to the Front with the 1st Battalion on 7 November.
Captain Allgood was shot through the heart by a sniper while taking his men into the trenches on 6 December 1914 (in some reports the date of death is recorded as 7 December). He was the first officer serving with 1st Battalion Royal Irish Rifles to be killed during the First World War.
Captain Allgood’s widow Isa remarried on 4 May 1920 in St Stephen’ Church, Gloucester Road, Chelsea – Charles Richard Sherriff. Isa Sherriff (formerly Allgood, nee Bayley) died in 1977.
Captain Bertram Allgood’s cousin, Lieutenant Richard Stopford Clayton (son of his mother’s brother, Richard Clayton), served with the 4th Battalion Highland Light Infantry and he died of a gunshot wound on 26 January 1916. Aged 38, Lieutenant Clayton was buried in Edinburgh (Morningside) Cemetery.