Ernest AlBert Beeby

Name	Ernest Albert Beeby
Corps	Suffolk Regiment 9th Battalion
Rank	Lance Sergeant
Service No.	47610
Date/Place of entry
Date of death
Memorial/Grave

Ernest Albert Beeby was born in Kettering in 1889, the second son of fishmonger George William Beeby and his wife Matilda nee Binley; she was a daughter of Lewis Binley of Cottingham. For more information on the extended Binley family see the page on Charles Stephen Binley.

In 1881 Denford-born George William appears in the census, listed as a fish hawker visiting Matilda’s family. He and she married a few weeks later and in 1891 were settled in Montagu Street, Kettering where he was now a fully- fledged fishmonger.

By 1901 they had moved house with their six children and George William had forsaken fishmongering for the Midland Railway where he was a railway servant. He died in the Spring of 1909 aged forty eight, and the couple’s second daughter Clara Matilda followed him in the autumn, aged twenty one. In 1911 the young Ernest Albert was employed as a tailor’s assistant and living with his widowed mother and two youngest sisters. His elder brother George Arthur probably went to Sydney, Australia on the Orontes in 1910. His eldest sister Bertha had married in 1906 and gone to live on Buccleuch Street with her husband George Chapman and their young daughter.
Ernest Albert’s few surviving military records show that he entered the 9th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment but do not say when and where he enlisted. The 9th was part of Kitchener’s Third New Army and went to France in August 1915, possibly but not definitely with Ernest Albert – he may have already been serving with a different battalion or regiment. On 30 October 1917 he was discharged to commission and on 31 December 1917 entered France. The 9th Battalion was disbanded there on 16 February. Where he went after that is not known. Ernest married in 1916 and died in 1957.

His cousin Percy Beeby, two years his junior, served in the 1st Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment and died in action in July 1918.

Other Binley servicemen to whom he was related are Charles, George, John, Sidney and Percy Binley of Cottingham, John, George and Willis Panter of Cottingham, and Albert Gear descended from Cottingham; Percy Augustine, Wilfred, Bernard and George Frederick Binley, William and Herbert Roddis all descended from the Corby Binleys.