Story
William Gallichan was a Poole dock labourer before he enlisted with the 3rd Dorsets at the age of 42 years and 6 months. Although serving at home, he suffered an injury to the head. He had joined up on 21 August 1915 when his address was given as 180 High Street. Later his address was 3 West Butts Street, also in Poole. Although recorded down as Medical Category B2 (ie able to walk five miles and see and hear sufficiently), he was marked to serve on the Home Front only. Despite that, he still found himself in Devonport Hospital for 10 days with a scalp wound. The wound occurred on 25 April 1917 when Driver Gallichan was on transport duty and taking a wagon down a hill to a tram terminus and his horses broke into a trot. He tried to pull them round, he stated in a report, but one of the wagon wheels caught in the kerb stones and he was thrown out. He was taken to a doctor and then to a military hospital. The driver, he added, did not appear to be in any way to blame. It was predicted the wound would not interfere with his future efficiency as a soldier. William Gallichan spent three years 221 days with the Army, serving also as a Lance Corporal with the Hampshires and, when demobbed, he was with the Royal Army Service Corps (Regiment number T/203162). During his years of service he had been posted to Bristol, Plymouth and Woolwich where he worked on the docks ending up as a Driver. Five feet five inches tall with a 36.5ins chest he was of good physical development, had tattoo marks and was a single man. He had previously served in the Militia and listed his next of kin as his brother, Frederick Gallichan, who lived at Bevis Valley in Southampton. Driver Gallichan got himself in a spot of trouble just once, it seems. In 1916, when stationed at Bristol with the Dorsets, he went absent from midnight on 9 February 1919 for 15 hours. As a result he was confined to barracks for five days. He was finally demobbed on 29 March 1916. William Gallichan's Army record shows that he was born in Southwick, Sussex in 1872 where his mother and family were living. (The birth of a William Witham Gallichan, however, was registered at Steyning, Sussex in the spring of the previous year.) At the age of nine, William was living in St Helier in Jersey, where both his mother, Harriet and father, George, a retired seaman, had been born. George was 71, 30 years older than his wife, and he passed away on Jersey on 7 February 1888 at the age of 78. The cause of death was marked as 'Viellesse' or old age. He was buried two days later. In the census of 1891 Harriet is listed as living at the same address Jersey address but with another of her five sons, William's brother Frederick, a 23-year-old Jersey-born mariner (the brother whom William had listed, when he joined the Army, as his next of kin.) William was not at the address on the night of the census. By 1901, however, William and his mother were both still living at the same address in Jersey, where William worked a print compositor. Ten years later and William was now living in Poole, working as a news compositor and quay labourer. He lived at 5 Church Street in Poole and had a housekeeper, 43-year-old Emily Beaney whose occupation was cook. William only survived for 12 years after the war ended. He died in Poole in the summer of 1931 at the age of 59. * Please contact us if you wish to suggest any amendments or additions.