Robert (Brock) Stewart

Malpas CemeteryRobert Brock Stewart's Grave

Robert (Brock) Stewart

Private No. 8069

2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders.

Died of his wounds in The Bolling at Malpas 18 May 1915. Age 36

Buried in Malpas Cemetery, West Plot 323 on 19 May 1915.

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The 1881 census records him being born in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1879.

Second son of Robert and Mary Stewart of Glasgow.

Robert emigrated to Australia some time prior to the Great War, settled down and married Amy J Stead, in 1915 in Petersham, Western Australia, with whom he had one child.

When war was declared, he returned to the UK and enlisted with the Seaforth Highlanders.

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He was wounded in Belgium (Ypres) on 26 April 1915, repatriated to the UK to the Bollings VAD Hospital in Malpas, where he died of his wounds on 18 May 1915. (The military records show him dying in the 2nd Western General Hospital in Winchester).

We speculate that having died in Malpas with his parents and siblings in Glasgow and widow and child in Australia, an expedient (and practical) decision was taken to bury him in Malpas cemetery Robert Brock Stewart was buried on 19 May 1915.

A newspaper record at the time suggests that his funeral was the first to be staged in Malpas with full military honours.