Profile

POPE, James
(Service number 6/4126)

Aliases
First Rank	Private	Last Rank	Private

Birth

Date	31/12/1883	Place of Birth	Port Chalmers

Enlistment Information

Date	17 November 1915	Age	31 years 10 months
Address at Enlistment	C/o B. Cannon, Queen Street, Waimate
Occupation	Cook, waiter
Previous Military Experience	Port Chalmers Naval Force - 2 years - left on leaving district
Marital Status	Married
Next of Kin	Mrs Alice POPE (wife), 908 Cumberland Street, Dunedin
Religion	Anglican
Medical Information

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	New Zealand Expeditionary Force
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	10th Reinforcements, Canterbury Infantry Battalion, C Company
Date	4 March 1916
Transport	Willochra
Embarked From		Destination	Suez, Egypt

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	Canterbury Regiment

Military Awards

Campaigns	Egyptian Expeditionary Force; Western European
Service Medals	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	26 June 1919	Reason	On termination of period of engagement.

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

Post-war Occupations

Labourer

Death

Date	4 April 1956	Age	72 years
Place of Death	Dunedin
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery	Andersons Bay Cemetery, Dunedin
Memorial Reference	Block 207, Plot 2
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

James Pope was born on 31 December 1883 at Port Chalmers, the youngest son of William John Pope and Catherine née Polglasse, who had emigrated from Cornwall, England, to New Zealand in the 1870s. James was educated at Port Chalmers School, going out to work at the age of 14½. He married Alice Dickison on 24 June 1908 in Dunedin.

A good number of recruits for the Tenth Reinforcements were dispatched from the South Canterbury district on 16 November 1915. Among those for the Infantry was Private J. Pope, a Waimate enlister. The South Canterbury draft of the Tenth Reinforcements was held up for some hours at Rakaia by flood damage to the bridge. They did not reach Christchurch till midnight, but the ferry steamer having been detained for them, they were able to go straight to Wellington. When he enlisted on 17 November 1915 at Trentham, he was a cook-waiter at Waimate. He had served with the Port Chalmers Naval Force for two years until he left the district. James named his wife as next-of-kin – Mrs Alice Pope, 908 Cumberland Street, Dunedin. Private J. Pope embarked with the Canterbury Infantry Battalion of the 10th Reinforcements, leaving for Suez, Egypt on 4 March 1916 per the “Willochra”.

On 19 November 1918, while Private J. Pope was “somewhere in France”, his wife Alice died at her Dunedin residence, a victim of the influenza epidemic. James was discharged on 26 June 1919 after serving for more than three years overseas, and was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. In November 1919 he married Belle Bradley Farrell with whom had a family. Bell died in June 1954. When James died at Dunedin on 4 April 1956, aged 72 years, he was buried with Belle at Andersons Bay Cemetery.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [20 September 2023]; School Admission record [20 September 2023]; Waimate Daily Advertiser, 9 November 1915, Timaru Herald, 13 November 1915, Evening Star, 19 November 1918, Otago Daily Times, 20 November 1918 (Papers Past) [September 2023]; Andersons Bay Cemetery burial records & headstone image (Dunedin City Council) [20 September 2023]

External Links

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC Genealogy Society

Currently Assigned to

Not assigned.

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

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