William Moorwood Staniford

William Moorwood Staniforth was born in Hackenthorpe near Sheffield in 1884. He had joined the army as a regular soldier before the outbreak of the First World War serving with the Queen’s Own Yorkshire Dragoons Yeomanry based in Sheffield. He rose to the rank of sergeant and was awarded the Long Service medal. When war broke out, he was sent with his regiment to France and Flanders on active service where he served until December 1915. In January 1916 William was enrolled with the Royal Flying Corps to be trained as a pilot with the 28th Reserve Squadron at Castle Bromwich. He was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant.

Later that year William Staniforth was married. The details of the wedding were reported in the West Yorkshire Post on 1st July 1916. The previous Saturday William had married Gladys Burrows at St Mary’s, the parish church of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. The marriage was presided over by Rev A S Commeline, rector of Beaconsfield, coincidentally formerly of York.

It is likely that William had met Gladys while in Sheffield. Gladys was the second daughter of Mr and Mrs Sam Burrows, then living in Beaconsfield but formerly of Sheffield.

Short Lived Happiness

Gladys’s happiness was to be short-lived. The next year Gladys’s father died and was buried in Shepherd’s Lane Cemetery just along the road from the parish church where his daughter’s wedding had been celebrated.

And then in March, Gladys’s husband of only 9 months crashed his plane while training at Castle Bromwich aerodrome and was killed outright. He was 32 years old. William Staniforth was buried in Castle Bromwich graveyard with others who had shared the same sad fate.

A tablet was erected in William’s memory bearing the words: To the dear memory of Billie, killed while on flying duty in England, Gladys. Gladys also had her husband’s name inscribed on her father’s gravestone at Beaconsfield.

After the war ended Gladys remarried and was last heard with her husband in Southern Rhodesia at the site of a prospective gold mine.