PRIVATE JACOB CONROY
DURHAM LIGHT INFANTRY
25TH SEPTEMBER 1915 AGE 28
BURIED: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY EXTENSION, BELGIUM
Hodie mihi cras tibi - today it's me, tomorrow it could be you. This is an ancient inscription, used since medieval times to warn people that death is ever present: we know neither the day nor the hour. The inscription often has the additional words, 'sic transit gloria mundi', thus passes the glory of the world.
Private Conroy's sister, Elizabeth Watson, chose her brother's inscription. It was to her that he had willed his effects, £4 12s 3d, probably in gratitude for the fact that she took the family under her wing following their mother's death sometime between 1901 and 1911. In the 1911 census, Elizabeth and her husband George were living in a three-roomed house with their own four children, aged from 7 to 11 months, and with her father, Thomas 52, and two of her brothers, Thomas 22 and William 20. Jacob Conroy was boarding with a family in Fife where he was working as a coal miner.
Conroy joined up on the outbreak of war. His qualifying date for the 1914-15 Star is 21 May 1915, the date the battalion arrived in France. He survived the liquid fire attack at Hooge at the end of July and was killed in action at Loos on 25 September.
After her brother's death, Elizabeth had another son whom she named in his memory Jacob Conroy Watson.