PRIVATE JOSEPH FRANKLIN KERSHAW
MACHINE GUN CORPS
14TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 33
BURIED: COXYDE MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Joseph Franklin Kershaw studied at the Royal College of Art and is commemorated on their war memorial. He was born in Oldham, where his father was a prosperous ironmonger, and educated at Oldham Hulme Grammar School. Oldham Library and Art Gallery have three of his paintings, and there is one in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport's Collections. These paintings can be seen on the BBC's Your Paintings site.
Kershaw married in 1908 and it was his widow, Effie, who confirmed his inscription, even though the War Graves Commission doesn't mention her in its register, simply saying that Joseph Franklin was the son of Joseph and Hannah Kershaw of Oldham. I wondered whether there was some antipathy between Joseph Franklin and his parents over his marriage because the 1911 census gives Effie's age as 42, which would have made her 16 years older than her husband. However, the cemetery register for Backup, where Effie was buried on 31 March 1966, gives her age as 85. This means that although she was a couple of years older than her husband she certainly wasn't 16 years older than him. In 1911 the couple were living in Fulham but when Effie Kershaw filled in the War Grave Commission's form she was living in St John's Cross, Storth, a remote house on the shores of Morecombe Bay. Private Joseph Kershaw is commemorated on the Storth war memorial too.