SLEEPING IN TE AROHA (3)

(Published in the Aroha Advertiser)

The Dead Man’s Penny

After WW1 the next of kin of all service personnel who died as a result of the war were issued with a Memorial Plaque.  It is a sobering thought that 1,355,000 of these plaques were issued.  Because the plaque was made of brass and looked not unlike a penny it was soon nicknamed the Dead Man’s Penny.

One of these symbols of sacrifice can be found in the Te Aroha Cemetery on the memorial for Private William Lusby who died of disease in France on 1 March 1918 while on active service. To the right of the plaque is William’s name without his rank, as all sacrifices were regarded as equal. Around the picture are the words “HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR”.

William Lusby Snr immigrated to New Zealand from Lincolnshire with his parents and siblings in 1883 aboard the Crownthorpe.  The family settled at Shaftesbury near Te Aroha. Ellen Higdon, aged 13, arrived in New Zealand aboard the Rangitiki, with her older sister and her parents, from Somerset in 1879.  William snr and Ellen married in 1893 and farmed at Manawaru. William Lusby Jnr, the first child of the marriage, was born in 1894. Six other children followed.

At the outbreak of war, William Jnr (known as Bill) was a farmhand on his parents’ farm.  He wasn’t part of the initial response but left New Zealand for Liverpool on 13 October 1917 and arrived on 1 December. On 18 January 1918 Bill was admitted to Brimstone Bottom Isolation Hospital in Tidworth.  He had contracted Rubella. On 30 January Bill was discharged to Sling Camp and on 14 February he left for France. By 23 February Bill was very sick with pneumonia, a supervening infection from measles, and on 1 March 1918 he died in a field hospital.

Bill’s medals and his Memorial Plaque were sent to his mother in 1922.  His actual grave is in Westoutre British Cemetery in Belgium, along with two other Kiwis from the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, but the memorial to him, and the graves of his brother George Edward who died in 1920 and his parents William and Ellen, stands proudly in the Te Aroha Cemetery. The Dead Man’s Penny has been embedded into the headstone.

Deborah Watson

Genealogist and Family Historian

www.watsons.co.nz

© Deborah Watson 2017