Allotments, Desborough Ave(picture from SWOP website)
Francis Devereux Humphrey's inscription, High Wycombe Cemetery
Francis Devereux Humphrey 1898 - 1929
My name is Francis Devereux Humphrey but most people knew me as Frank. I was born in 1898 in Wycombe. My father was Samuel Humphrey, also from Wycombe, and he married my mother, Agnes nee Devereux, who was born in Yorkshire. My grandfather, John Humphrey, was a Wycombe butcher just like his father before him. So my roots to this area go back some way.
My parents had six children, four boys and two girls and we lived along Desborough Avenue, at number 18. My father was an aerated water bottler but when we left school my older brother Charles became an assistant to an upholsterer and I became an assistant to a hairdresser. However, the Great War was soon to change our paths in life. Charles became Private 2722 with B Company of the 2/1st Bucks Battalion, Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry, and I became Private 30957 with the Devonshire Regiment. Charles was only 19 when he was killed in action on the 19th July 1916 and he is remembered on the Loos Memorial, Pas de Calais, in France.
Luckily I made it home but was badly wounded. I was discharged from the army on the 7th January 1919 and was given the silver war badge to wear. Sadly I spent the rest of my short life in pain. I died on the 6th of March 1929 aged 30, and am buried here, in High Wycombe Cemetery. My uncle Caleb Simmonds Devereux also died as a result of his injuries and he's buried in the cemetery too.
George Humphrey, a cousin who followed my great grandfather in the butchery trade, was also killed in the Great War in 1917. Likewise two Devereux men on my mother's side, James Devereux and his uncle Frederick Devereux, were killed in 1915 and 1916 respectively.
Researched by Margaret Anderton, Flackwell Local Area History Group and Sally Scagell, Lost the Plot.
