In Memory of JOSEPH R HOGG Private S4/090932 Royal Army Service Corps Who Died on Tuesday, 24th November 1918 Age 31 Eastwood Cemetery, Nottinghamshire Commemorated in Perpetuity by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission & Remembered with Honour

Eastwood Cemetery, Nottinghamshire

Joseph R Hogg was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire in 1887¹, the elder of two surviving children, both sons, of Lewis (b. 1861, Langley Mill. Derbyshire) and Georgina Hogg (b. 1863, Eastwood, née Rolling). Lewis and Georgina had married in Nottingham in 1885² and, by 1891 they were living with their two surviving sons at Nottingham Road. Eastwood³ where Lewis was trading as a butcher. They were still at the same address and still running the butcher's business there in 1901⁴. The 14-year-old Joseph had not yet started work.

In 1907, Joseph married Annie Edith Widdowson (b. c1880, Nottingham), the daughter of Nottingham chemist Robert Truman Widdowson and his wife Martha⁵. Sybil Mary, the first of their two daughters, was born in Eastwood in 1908 and their second, Winifred May Hogg, was born in 1910. By 1911, Joseph had established himself as a self-employed butcher, trading from their home at 326 St Anns Well Road, Nottingham⁶ but tragedy struck later that year when Annie Edith died, aged only 30⁷. It appears that their two daughters were placed under the care of Joseph's mother, Georgina Hogg.

When war came in August 1914, Joseph enlisted immediately, joining the Army Service Corps as a butcher⁸. This corps - which added the prefix 'Royal' in 1918 - was tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that everything the Army needed was provided. Of course, a major part of that task was the provision of food, notably bread and meat through the provision of field bakeries and butcheries. Joseph was able to use his butcher's skills in that role. After initial training, he was posted to France on 30 August 1915⁹. Although we have no record of his service subsequently, we can surely assume that he continued in the role of butcher, in field butcheries for the remainder of the war.

Having served throughout the war, Private Hogg died on 24 November 1918, less than two weeks after it ended and in circumstances which are currently unknown. Significantly, he was buried in Eastwood Cemetery where his grave is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. This means that he died in the United Kingdom but from a cause presently unknown to us¹⁰.

Private Hogg was posthumously awarded the British War Medal, the Victory Medal and the 1915 Star¹¹. His Army financial effects consisting entirely of his War Gratuity of £21, were paid to his mother as guardian of his children, on 5 November 1919¹².

In addition to his entry on the memorial in Beeston Parish Church, he is remembered on a memorial on Nottingham Road, Eastwood, erected in 2010.

Between the wars, the wider Hogg family developed its butchery business in the Nottingham area on a large scale and it seems likely that, had he survived, Joseph would have been part of that success. The family member who was most responsible for the development of the business was George Richard Hogg (1890-1960), Joseph's brother, who developed and operated a chain of neighbourhood butchers shops in the Nottingham area, with the involvement of many of his large family - he and his wife Martha Rebecca had at least fourteen children - from a base on Colwick Road. Land was acquired in the Colwick and Radcliffe-on-Trent areas to raise livestock. In the mid-1950s, the family acquired the Popplewell butcher's shop at 62 High Road, Beeston, on the corner of Union Street. After George Richard's death, his son, also George, was to continue trading there until his retirement in 2013¹³.

Several Hogg family members moved to the Beeston area, indeed George Richard lived at 5 Trent Road, Beeston with his wife and family for a while in the early 1920s. By then also, Joseph's parents, Lewis and Georgina Hogg together with Joseph's daughters, had moved to live at 11 Dovecote Lane, Beeston. Lewis died in 1923 and his widow, Georgina, later moved to live at 20 Audon Avenue, Chilwell and eventually moved to 66 Beeston Fields Drive, Bramcote, where she was resident at the time of her death in December 1957, aged 93¹⁴.

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Footnotes
¹His birth appears to have been registered as 'Lewis Hogg' in Basford Registration District (of which Eastwood was part) in Q1/1887(Ref 7b 110). Only the initial 'R' has been found in the records for his middle name.
²Lewis and Georgina were married on 22 September 1935 at St Marks Church, Nottingham.
³Eastwood, Notts, 1891 Census, Piece 2659 Folio 16. Joseph's brother, George Richard was born in 1890.
⁴Eastwood, Notts, 1901 Census, Piece 3144 Folio 130.
⁵There marriage was registered in Q2/1907 in Nottingham Registration District.
⁶Nottingham, 1911 Census, Piece 20586 RD430 SD3 ED46 Schedule 56.
⁷Annie Edith's death was recorded in Nottingham Registration District in Q3/1911 (Ref 7b 400), aged 30.
⁸As his Army Service Record has not survived, his enlistment date has been calculated based on the amount of his War Gratuity.
⁹His arrival date in France is recorded on his Medal Card.
¹⁰His death date is recorded in his Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial page and on his gravestone (where it appears to be wrongly inscribed as '4th November 1918') but we have not been able to identify a record of his death in England, Wales or Scotland with any certainty.
¹¹Details from Joseph's Medal Card and the Medal Rolls - available on ancestry.com.
¹²Details from "Army Register of Soldiers' Effects, 1901-1929" - available on ancestry.com.
¹³A more detailed account of this business and 62 High Road may be seen here
¹⁴Family details have been derived from standard genealogical sources including Electoral Rolls and the 1939 Registration.

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