Pte 73301 Isaac Menday

• Age: 35
• From: High Wycombe
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment)
• Died on Friday 27th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Calais Southern Cemetery
  Panel Ref: I.G.10

Isaac Menday was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in the summer of 1881, the son of John Menday and his wife Elizabeth (nee Plumridge). His father, born in High Wycombe, and his mother in  Cadmore End, Fingest, Bucks, married in 1870.   

His mother had a daughter, Elizabeth Ann Plumridge, born in 1869, who was raised as Menday.  Five siblings are found on censuses:  Samuel, born in 1871, Alice 1874, and Joseph 1877, and younger siblings Bertha, 1883, and Arthur, born in 1885. 

In 1881 before Isaac was born that summer, his parents with four children, Elizabeth, Samuel, Alice, and Joseph, were living in Hobbs Lane, Wycombe, his father employed as a chair maker.   

At the time of the 1891 census they are found at 20 Gordon Road, Chepping Wycombe with six children.  His father is a chair maker, Isaac is 10 years old. 

The 1901 census finds them at 40 Totteridge Road, High Wycombe with four of the children at home.  His father, 51, is a chair maker and framer, his mother is 53, Alice, 26, is a chair caner, Joseph, 23, and Isaac, 19, are cabinet makers, and Arthur, 15, is a stable lad/groom. 

Isaac married Eva Caroline Wheeler, born in Kent, in late 1903 and their son Harold Ernest was born on 27th November that year. 

Some time after 1903 the family moved to London, where his son Harold enrolled in Kennington Road School, Lambeth in September 1907, the family then living at 383 Kennington Road, and where Hilda May was born on 22nd May 1908. 

By 1911 they have returned to High Wycombe, and are living at 37 Westbourne Street.  Isaac and Eva are both 29, he is a chair maker like his father.  Harold is 7, Hilda 2, and newborn daughter Doris Alice, born on 22nd February 1911, is 1 month old.  Another daughter, Joyce Mabel, was born on 29th January 1917.  It is possible that Isaac never saw his youngest daughter. 

He enlisted in High Wycombe as Gunner 128991, Royal Garrison Artillery, and at some point was transferred to the 17th Labour Bn., King's Liverpool Regiment.  No medal roll has been found for his R.G.A. regimental number, indicating that Isaac had transferred to the K.L.R. before being posted overseas.  The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he had served for no more than a year when he died.

He contracted bronchitis whilst on active service, and died in No.30 General Hospital, Calais, on 27th April 1917.  He now rests in Calais Southern Cemetery, where his headstone inscription reads, 

"NEVER FORGOTTEN FROM HIS SORROWING WIFE AND FAMILY". 

In April 1915, No.6 Base Supply Depot was started at Calais to help relieve the pressure on Boulogne and to provide a base nearer to the front than Le Havre or Rouen. The base remained open until the last Commonwealth forces left France in March 1921.

The 30th, 35th and 38th General Hospitals, No.9 British Red Cross Hospital and No.10 Canadian Stationary Hospital were also stationed in the town, providing about 2,500 beds. From May 1915 to March 1918, Commonwealth burials were made in Calais Southern Cemetery. Subsequent interments were made in the new military cemetery at Les Baraques.

The cemetery now contains 721 First World War burials. There are also 224 burials of the Second World War, 56 of them unidentified, the majority dating from May 1940.

The Commonwealth plot was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.

His son was 13, and his daughters were 8, 6, and three months old when Isaac died. 

His Army effects and a War Gratuity of £3 went to Eva, who was awarded a pension of £1-8s-9d a week from November 1917 for herself and four children.  One pension card shows his rank as Gunner. 

His brother Arthur enlisted in December 1915, was classified B1, and posted to the Army Reserve.  He was mobilised in August 1916, and served in the Army Veterinary Corps as a packer and loader.  He was transferred to the Labour Corps and dispatched to Winchester for farm work in August 1918, and was demobilised in October 1919. 

His mother died about the same time as Isaac, in April 1917, aged 69, and his father in 1932, at the age of 82. 

His youngest daughter Joyce died in 1939, at the age of 22.

On the 1939 register his widow Eva is a patient in the Bucks Mental Hospital in Aylsbury.  Harold, a furniture polisher, is living with his married sister Hilda Sims in Chepping Wycombe, where married daughter Doris Brion is also living, working as a french polisher. 

Eva never remarried and died in 1950, aged 68, living at 7 Wayside, High Wycombe. 

His son Harold died in 1985, Doris in 1998, and Hilda lived until 2003. 

Isaac's British War Medal and Victory Medal, in "very fine" condition, were advertised for auction in 2018. 

Isaac is commemorated in High Wycombe and District War Memorial Hospital.

We currently have no further information on Isaac Menday. If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.