Profile

LAWLOR, Denis
(Service number 8/756)

Aliases
First Rank	Private	Last Rank	Private

Birth

Date	20 Apri 1887	Place of Birth	Orari Bridge, Geraldine, New Zealand

Enlistment Information

Date	25 August 1915	Age	27
Address at Enlistment	Morton Mains, Southland, New Zealand
Occupation	Railway Surfaceman
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	Miss Mary Lawlor (sister), Temuka
Religion	Roman Catholic
Medical Information	5 foot 10 inches tall, fair complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, weight 164 lbs, chest 37 inches, good teeth

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	Main Body
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	Otago Infantry Battalion
Date	16 October 1914
Transport	Hawkes Bay or Ruapehu
Embarked From	Port Chalmers, New Zealand	Destination	Alexandria, Egypt

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	Otago Infantry Battalion

Military Awards

Campaigns	Egyptian & Gallipoli
Service Medals	1914-1915 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Military Awards

Award Circumstances and Date

No information

Prisoner of War Information

Date of Capture
Where Captured and by Whom
Actions Prior to Capture
PoW Serial Number
PoW Camps
Days Interned
Liberation Date

Discharge

Date	17 July 1916	Reason	Medically unfit

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

18 April 1915: Australian Stationary Hospital, Lemnos - measles & pneumonia; 9 May 1915: Alexandria Hospital, Egypt; 5 June 1915: 1st Southern General Hospital Birmingham England; 15 February 1916: NZ General Hospital Cairo; 28 April 1916 Hanmer Convalescent Home, NZ.

Post-war Occupations

Tramway Conductor, Labourer, Hotel Employee

Death

Date	3 June 1941	Age	54
Place of Death	Napier, New Zealand
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery	Park Island Cemetery, Napier
Memorial Reference
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

Denis was born at Orari Bridge on 20 April 1887, the fifth son of Maurice & Catherine Lawlor.

Prior to joining up for WWI, he was employed in South Otago, as a plate layer for the Railways Department and living at Morton Mains, Southland. Enlisting into the 10th Otago Battalion at Dunedin on 25 August 1914, he was described as being aged 27, single, 5 foot 10 inches tall, of fair complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, weighing 164 lbs, chest 37 inches, teeth good and of the Catholic faith. He gave as his next of kin, his sister Mary Lawlor of Temuka. After training, Denis left Port Chalmers with the Main Body on 16 October 1914, aboard SS Hawkes Bay or Ruapehu, arriving in Alexandria 3 December 1914.

After Egyptian service, he embarked for the Dardanelles on 12 April 1915, and, on 18 April, was admitted to the Australian Stationary Hospital Lemnos, suffering from measles and pneumonia. His condition was serious as for the next few months he was shuttled back and forth between Egypt and England, before finally leaving Suez, Egypt on 6 March 1916 aboard SS Maheno for return to NZ. 28 April 1916. There he was admitted to the Hanmer Convalescent Home for further treatment and finally discharged from the army as medically unfit on 17 July 1916. For his service he was awarded the 1914-1915 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.

In 1919 Denis was working in Christchurch as a tramway conductor, in 1928 as a labourer on Omapere Station, Hastings, and in 1935 he was a hotel employee at the Carlton Club Hotel, Gisborne. Denis died in Napier Hospital on 3 June 1941, aged 54, and is buried in the Park Island Cemetery.

Sources

Auckland Museum Cenotaph database (June 2015); Archives NZ (Personal File); ancestry.com.au; Papers Past

External Links

Military personnel file

Researched and Written by

Ted Hansen (SC branch NZSG)

Currently Assigned to

Not assigned.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.

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