PEOPLE IN PORTSMOUTH

 

Lives Lived and Lives Lost - Portsmouth and the Great War

FRED EWART VINEY
 
Most of the Viney family were born and bred in Portsmouth, at least as far back as the 1850s and probably somewhat earlier. Fred Ewart's father, William J. Viney, was born in Portsea in 1860 but he did not appear in the 1861 census, possibly because his father was in the armed services and was serving abroad that year.
 
William J. Viney married Elizabeth (b. 1860) around 1879, but a record of the occasion does not appear in the UK Marriage Register. The following year their first child William Herbert was born and they moved to 32 Crown Street, Landport. At the time William J. was working as a labourer. By 1891 they were living at 23 Brookfield Road, Fratton with William Herbert and three more children - Fred Ewart (b. 1882), Mabel (b. 1885) and Percy (b. 1887).
 
After Fred left school he became a bricklayer's labourer and in 1906 he married Lily Rose Stares who was born in 1886 in Baffins, Portsmouth. The 1911 census saw the couple living at 59 Highgate Road, Copnor with their daughter Ethel (b. 1907). By that time Fred was working at Gunwharf, but still as a labourer.
 
Fred didn't enlist at the outbreak of the Great War as he was a married man with a family but did so in November 1916. In April 1917 that year he was with the Hampshires when he was killed in action at Beaumont Hamel.
 
FURTHER INFORMATION
 
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) lists Private Fred Ewart Viney (27782), 15th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, died on 20/04/1917. Buried in the Dickebusch New Military Cemetery, Belgium (Grave Ref: F.42.).
 
Fred Viney is remembered on the Cenotaph. He is also listed in the 'National Roll of the Great War', Section X, p382.
 
RESEARCH NOTES
 
Fred's brother William Herbert Viney was also killed in the Great War. Although Fred was in the army and William in the navy their two names are next to each other on the Cenotaph (Navy Section) as it was then practise to keep the names of brothers together.
 
Tim Backhouse
April 2014