Photograph of Sergeant Arthur Blades

Photograph of Sergeant Arthur Blades of the East Yorkshire Regiment.

Arthur Blades (born 18th October 1894 in Hull, died 1st November 1983, also in Hull) served and was badly wounded in the First World War. His youngest sister Alice reported that he was in a hospital or convalescent home near Sheffield for about nine months. She remembered: "Mother used to make the journey from Hull once a month to see him. When she came home, exhausted, she would sit down, still in her hat and coat, and weep."

His niece Julia Allum, who deposited the collection relating to him and John W. Blades, writes:

"Arthur became a public health inspector and married Ethel Mason in 1932. He was an active member of St Augustine's Church in Queens Road from its opening, when he was a boy in the choir, until it closed, being declared unsafe. He then became a member of St Cuthbert's Church.

He was a member of the masons and a staunch Labour supporter from the party's early years.

I remember him as a kind and interested uncle, with a very dry sense of humour. He was one of nature's gentlemen, for the most part self-educated and a man of integrity."

Part of a collection relating to John W. and Arthur Blades.