White, William (Willy)
Second Lieutenant
4th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers
Killed in action on Sunday 25 April 1915 (aged 25)
No known grave
Commemorated:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium (Panel 44 and 46)
Bangor Grammar School
Brother of Captain Cecil Godfrey White MC, Royal Air Force
BIOGRAPHY
William White was a son of surgeon Robert Godfrey White MD FRCP FRCS and Minnie Moore White (nee Finnigan) who were married by special licence on 4 March 1889 in the bride’s home in Fortwilliam Terrace, Antrim Road, Belfast. This house was in the Parish of St James’s Church of Ireland Church, Belfast. Robert Godfrey White from The Firs, Haughley, Suffolk was a son of Joseph William White, a Dublin solicitor. Minnie Moore Finnigan was a daughter of Edward Shirley Finnigan, a Belfast solicitor.
Robert Godfrey and Minnie Moore White (nee Finnigan) had at least three children:
William (born 17 January 1890 in Suffolk – from a notice in the Bury and Norwich Post)
Cecil Godfrey (born around 1891 in Suffolk; baptised 7 May 1891 in Haughley Church of England Church, Suffolk)
Son (born at Kobe, China on 27 July 1895)
Their father, Robert Godfrey White, died on 21 April 1897 at Boscombe, Bournemouth.
In 1901 William and Cecil White were living at Sydenham Avenue, Belfast with their maternal grandparents, Edward and Mary Jane Finnigan. Edward Finnigan was a solicitor by profession and in 1901 he was appointed Her Majesty’s Coroner in Belfast. Both William and Cecil White attended Bangor Grammar School.
William White was working as an insurance official (Claims Manager with the Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society) when he enlisted at Dublin on 14 September 1914 with the 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (No. 14183). He had previously served with the South Irish Horse. It was noted that he was 5 feet 10½ inches tall with a fresh complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair. His mother was living at 21 Colville Terrace, Bayswater, London. On 29 October 1914, having been gazetted to a commission he was struck off the strength of the Battalion.
In the 26 December 1914 edition of the Kentish Express the engagement was announced between William White and Joan Marie Crookes, youngest daughter of the Rev J.W. Crookes of The Court Lodge, Wormshill, Sittingbourne.
William White served as a Second Lieutenant with the 4th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers (attached 2nd Battalion) and was killed in action on 25 April 1915.
William White died intestate, ‘a bachelor without father’. His widowed mother was his next-of-kin and she made a case for financial support, based on the extent of her son’s financial support when he was alive.
At the time of Willy White’s death his mother was living in Combe Martin, Devon. Second Lieutenant William White has no known grave and is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium and on the War Memorial Plaque in Bangor Grammar School (as W. White). In the school archives it is recorded that he served as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers.