Royal Navy – HMS Dreadnought
Robert Jeffery was born at Towcester, Northamptonshire on 31 October 1889.
He joined the Royal Navy as a Boy Second Class (Bugler) on 29 September 1905, just a month or so short of his sixteenth birthday. On his eighteenth birthday, 31 October 1907, he signed on for twelve years service in the Royal Navy, as an Ordinary Seaman. He became Able Bodied in 1909 and a Leading Seaman on 1 August 1914, having been posted to the ship’s company of the battleship HMS Dreadnought on 21 September 1913. Promotion to Petty Officer came on 1 October 1915. He was to serve for the rest of his naval career aboard HMS Dreadnought, but would not have participated in the Battle of Jutland (31 May / 1 June 1916) as his ship did not sail with the Grand Fleet. The 1901 Census records him as being at Medway (probably Chatham) and at the time of the 1911 Census (2 April) he was somewhere in the Mediterranean.
His time on Dreadnought came to an end on 31 December 1917, when it is likely that he was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital, Gillingham, where he died of appendicitis on 10 January 1918, age 28.
In the first quarter of 1917 he had married Mary Elizabeth Jefferies at Tetbury. She had been born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire in 1890 and at the time of the 1911 Census was living at Westonbirt, where she assisted her mother as a laundress.
Robert Jeffery’s grave at Westonbirt (St Catherine) Churchyard is marked by a stone cross and the inscription notes that he was a ‘First Class Petty Officer HMS Dreadnought’.
Researched by Graham Adams 26 October 2012