Frederick Charles Davies (1884 - 1917)
First World War Roll of Honour
Frederick Charles Davies was born in 1884, the youngest son of Mr. William Davies J.P., the first Mayor of Battersea, and his wife Ellen. He was educated at St Paul’s School before matriculating at Downing in 1903 with an Entrance Scholarship (pictured above, seated far left). He was a member of the College’s rugby team, pictured here in the 1905 team photograph (seated bottom left), and proceeded to his degree in 1906 by way of the Natural Sciences Tripos. He continued his medical studies at Charing Cross Hospital, where he was house-surgeon, house-physician and medical registrar. He then went on to hold a variety of medical posts, including resident medical officer at Plaistow Fever Hospital, considered one of the most modern hospitals at the time which pioneered the barrier method of nursing infectious patients, bacteriologist of West Ham County Borough and medical officer of Battersea Tuberculosis Dispensary, 1912.
When war broke out Dr. Davies was Tuberculosis Inspector for Cambridgeshire, medical officer to the county’s Insurance Committee and was also a consulting physician at Welbeck Street, London. He took a temporary commission as Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps on 10th August 1914 and within a week was at the front. He was promoted to Captain after a year’s service. He had published a number of works, and before his death was engaged on a very important treatise on trench fever, with a view to taking the M.D.
Capt. Davies was killed in action during the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele campaign) on 17 October 1917, aged 33, while attached to the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers. He is buried in Talana Farm Cemetery, but the wooden cross which originally marked his grave was relocated to the family grave in Garn cemetery, Aberystwyth.
Images
1903 matriculation photograph (credit Lafayette Photography Ltd)
1905 Rugby team photograph (credit Lafayette Photography Ltd, with thanks to the Bryan-Brown family)
Sources
Michaelmas 1917 issue of ‘The Griffin' magazine
Obituary in ‘The British Medical Journal’, 3 November 1917, available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20308635