4351 Acting Corporal Rupert William Edwin Adams, 21st Infantry Battalion, C Company
Rupert
Adams, the eldest son of William Leonard Adams and Millicent Bawden, was born
in Moonee Ponds in 1891. His brother Aubrey was born there five years later. Older
sisters Edeline Florence (referred to as Hilda in some records) and Lillian (Lily)
were born in South Yarra in 1888 and 1890.
Rupert Adams is remembered in Coburg Historical Society's Soldiers' Book. Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society.
By
1903 the family was living in Coburg where the youngest children attended
Coburg State School. After school, Rupert worked as a clerk. He was a member of
the local Lacrosse team and something of an athlete as he left his mother all
his trophies ‘won in running’ when he died in November 1920. The family attended
Holy Trinity Church. Little else is known of his life, except that the family
lived at 6 Main Street, Coburg and his father William was a commercial
traveller, and Vice President of the Commercial Travellers’ Association for
a time.
Rupert
Adams enlisted in July 1915 when he was 24 years old. He embarked in March 1916
and arrived in France the following month. However, he saw little action.
By December 1916 he was sick in hospital. He returned to his unit but in mid-January
1917 returned to hospital with appendicitis and returned again and again with influenza,
tonsilitis and pleurisy. Finally, in early November 1917, he returned to
Australia with tuberculosis of the lung and was granted a pension.
By
the time of Rupert’s return, his family had moved from Coburg and was living at
‘Brighton Grange’, Hawthorn Road, Brighton and it was there that Rupert’s
younger brother Aubrey died on 20 January 1918 of pneumonia. He was 22 years
old.
Rupert’s
health deteriorated over the next three years and he died at ‘Warawee’, Healesville
on 15 November 1920 of tuberculosis contracted during the war. Considered a
death caused directly by his war service, his parents, who were then living in
Union Street, Malvern, received the Memorial Plaque known to many as the
Dead Man’s Penny. He was 27 years old.
The
Adams brothers are buried together in the Church of England section of the
Brighton Cemetery.
Image courtesy Brighton Cemetorians
In
the will he made the day before his death, Rupert Adams left a Sister Clara
Bristow his ‘War Gratuity Bond with interest accrued at the time of my death’. Presumably
she was his nurse. At first I thought she might also be his sweetheart but she
was twelve years older than he was, so perhaps the legacy was simply a gift
from a grateful patient.
Rupert’s
parents and unmarried sister Lily moved to Garden Vale before settling in
Murrumbeena in the mid-1920s. His father William died in July 1937 aged 74. His
sister Lily died the following year aged 48. His mother Millicent Matilda, who appears
to have gone by the name Sarah Matilda in her latter years, died in 1943 and is
buried with her husband in the Church of England section of Fawkner Cemetery.
Sister
Hilda remained a mystery for some time until I discovered that her legal name
was Edeline Florence. It was then that I found in one of those coincidences that
feature in so much historical research that Hilda (Edeline) Adams married Edwin
Endersbee, younger brother of Charles Endersbee who was the subject of my last
blog post. The couple married in 1912 and lived in Thornbury and Preston. Hilda
(Edeline) died in 1982, the longest-surviving member of her family and the only
one to have children.
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