218892 Cpl. Henry "Harry" Allcock British Army 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifle corps from:Aberafan, Port Talbot (d.10th Mar, 1915) Harry Allcock married my grandmother's sister, Agnes Nixon, in 1911. From Davenham, Cheshire, he enlisted in Manchester, and he may have been a reservist who was one of the first to be 'called up'. They moved to South Wales where Harry had found employment, probably in the Port Talbot steel works. They had a baby daughter and named her Beatrice after my grandmother.
In 1912, Gran and her Irish born fiancé where planning to emigrate to America; he would go on ahead and find work and a home,then send for Gran. Early in the year Beatrice found that she was pregnant... a disaster, especially for a Catholic couple. The fiancé wasn't supportive, and neither were her parents. She spent most of her pregnancy in a convent, and when my mother was born, she took work as a live-in domestic servant. She never heard from her fiancé again. She had trained as a seamstress, and this new work and living arrangement was proving so taxing that she was on the point of giving up her baby daughter to a children's home. Then Harry said to Agnes 'Ask Beatty and Mary to come and live with us; Mary'll be company for Beatrice'. So they moved from London to Port Talbot.
Harry served with the King's Royal Rifle corps 1st Battalion and was reported 'missing, presumed dead' on 10th March 1915. His memorial is at Le Touret, Pas de Calais.
Agnes remarried a friend of Harry's in 1924, but her daughter died from TB in 1926. Gran married a widower and moved to a nearby mining village where my mum grew up happily and met and married my father in 1938.
I owe my existence to this generous, hospitable man, for had Mum and Gran not moved to Wales my parents would never have met!
Thank you Harry.
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