BORN HULL 1895. ORIGINAL HULL PAL. SON OF JOHN AND SARAH BLACKBURN. NAME APPEARS IN ST BARNABAS CHURCH. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL ON THE 27TH MARCH 1917, WITH HIS PHOTOGRAPH. *
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE SIDNEY BLACKBURN 12/760. Born in March 1895 Sidney was the son of John and Sarah Blackburn of 12 Ellis Terrace, Wassand Street, Hessle Road, Hull. The 1911 Census finds him as an inmate at the local Reformatory, but by 1914 he was earning a living as a Mason before dropping everything to enlist on 30th September. He joined the 12th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Sportsmen’, 3rd Hull Pals and travelled to Egypt to defend Suez over Christmas and New Year 1915/16 before arriving in France early in March. In August 1916, he left the line for the training camps at Etaples, where he was schooled in use of the Lewis machine gun. It is likely that he was part of a Lewis gun team when he climbed into no-man’s land in the mist and drizzle of that horrific morning in front of Serre. Sidney Blackburn was initially listed as wounded and missing. A comrade must have witnessed him being hit, though he must have survived that in agonies we’ll never understand. Later, when no trace of him was ever found, he was listed as having been killed in action on 13th November 1916 during the last desperate days of the Somme campaign. His body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial; he was 21 years old.
