John Thomas and Edwin Andrew Taylor

These brothers were born in Dore, in 1893 and 1897 respectively to John Taylor, a farm labourer, and his wife Sarah, nee Green. In 1901 and 1911 they were living with their parents and siblings on Church Street.

John Thomas Taylor worked as a market gardener. He enlisted with the Sheffield Pals on 11th January 1915, at the age of 21 years and 10 months, and may then have been living in Dinnington. On 24th February 1915, when he was billeted in Dore and presumably training with the Battalion, he married Amy Dinsdale, the daughter of Robert John Dinsdale, a joiner of Broomhill. Their only child, John (known as Jack) had been born at the end of January.

On 14th June 1916, John Thomas was posted to France. He was wounded on 10th September that year and sent back to England on the hospital ship Newhaven. After recovery, he was returned to France in January 1917 when he was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Yorks & Lancs Regiment. By May of that year he was again wounded and sent home, this time to be treated at the Red Cross General Hospital in Glasgow where he remained until October. He was then granted a fortnight's leave which he spent with his wife and child at her family home, but by the end of the month he was posted back to France. On 5th February 1918, when the Sheffield City Battalion was disbanded, he seems to have been transferred to the 1st/5th Battalion of the Yorks and Lancs, when his luck finally ran out. He died of wounds on 15th April 1918, and is buried in Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery, Steenwerck, France.

Edwin Andrew Taylor also worked as a gardener, though he later became a blacksmith. He married Holley Malyan, a coal miner's daughter from Barnsley, at Bolton-on-Dearne parish church on 12th November 1917; their only child, John Edwin, was born in Sheffield less than a fortnight later.

Edwin enlisted in the army at Pontefract in March 1916, but was not called up for service until 24th May 1918 when he turned 21. He was a private, first in the 6th Battalion, the West Riding Regiment (E Company), and later in the 9th Battalion of the same Regiment. He served in France for just one month from 5th October to 5th November 1918, when he died of wounds at 53 Ambulance Station, having apparently been wounded the previous day, probably in the Second Battle of the Sambre. He is buried in the Forest Communal Cemetery, Forest, France.

So, John and Sarah Taylor lost two of their three sons in the same year.