Private Dick Wilkins
13868 Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derby Regt)
162240 Machine Gun Corps, 49th Battery, D Company
Dick Wilkins was born in 1895 at Old Westwood (Palmerston Street), Notts son of John Joseph Wilkins and Anna Maria (nee Archer) who both originated from Northants. His parents married at Banbury, Oxon and lived for the first few years of their marriage at Upper Boddington Village, Northants where his father was employed as an agricultural labourer. In the early 1890s they left the village of their birth and moved to Old Westwood where his father took up work as a railway platelayer for the Midland Railway Company. Dick had brothers and sisters Sarah, William, Mary, Frederick and Walter and by 1911 all the male occupants of the ‘Westwoodville’ household were gainfully employed, son William as a collier loader, Frederick as a labourer at the pipe works and youngest sons Dick and Walter as pit lads at the colliery.
Dick’s service records have not survived but his Medal Rolls Index Card indicates he was a recipient of the 1914-15 Star (qualifying date on entering a theatre of war 18th March 1915) and he also received the Victory and British War Medals . In 1918/1919 he is listed on the Absent Voters Roll as absent from Palmerston Street, Westwood, indicating that he served for the duration of the war. Dick’s brothers Fred and William served during WW1 and are also named on the Jacksdale War Memorial.
Dick married Amy Lilley from Chapel Yard, Selston in 1923 and they had children James, Dick, Joan and Roy. In 1933 Amy died aged 32 and later in 1936 Dick married Doris Jinks and they had children named Alfred and Brenda.
Dick died in 1961 (aged 66) in the Huntingdon District . His parents John Joseph and Anna Maria remained in the Westwood area and are both buried at Westwood, St. Mary’s.