War researchers unearth love story
RESEARCHERS of Macclesfield’s role in the First World War have uncovered a story of romance amid the conflict.
Lily Garner was a teacher when war broke out and volunteered for the St John Ambulance Brigade when Macclesfield Auxiliary Military Hospital opened.
From July 1916 to May 1917 she worked parttime as a nursing sister for a total of 522 hours, helping injured soldiers recover from their injuries.
During this time she met and fell in love with a Corporal, Arthur Dawson from New Zealand, who was wounded in both knees while serving in Egypt and Gallipoli.
Arthur, whose family emigrated to New Zealand 50 years ago from Higher Sutton, was staying with his cousin on Mill Lane, Macclesfield, when he met Lily while visiting his aunt at Tytherington.
Their marriage on May 1917, at St George’s Church, Macclesfield, was covered in the Maccles- field Times and had an international flavour with the added involvement of best man Private Ernest Roberts, of the Canadian Black Watch.
The report described a ‘pretty wedding’ where ‘the bride was attired in a khaki-coloured costume with big leghorn hat’.
It said: “A detachment of St John Ambulance nurses was present in uniform, together with a number of wounded soldiers from Prestbury Road Military Hospital, who formed a guard of honour along the aisle as the bridal party left the church.”
After a honeymoon in Torquay, the couple set sail from Plymouth to their new home in New Zealand where they lived on Arthur’s family’s farm in Canterbury.
Tragically, Arthur, who had survived the South African War and First World War, died less than ten years later in 1926.
Lily lived to the ripe old age of 89 before passing away in 1969.
The couple are buried together in Canterbury, New Zealand.
Research was carried out by the team at macclesfieldreflects. org. uk using the General Register Office, Census, WW1 British Red Cross Volunteers Records and New Zealand Cemetery Records.
The website features many of the history and stories of the hundreds of servicemen from Macclesfield who lost their lives during the war.