Person:Walter Wallis (8)

1880 - Baptism: Walter, son of George WALLIS, labourer, and Louisa. Record gives date of birth.

1881 - Not recorded with parents, unless he is recorded as George, aged 4 months.

1891 - With parents in a four-roomed home at Walnut Tree Farm, Redgrave Road, South Lopham. Scholar, aged 11, born at South Lopham.

Walter served in WW1. His great grandson, Joseph Hull, has his medals which were given to him by his grandmother before she died.

After his wife died of cancer, Walter and Annie's daughter, Rosemary, was 14 and her half sister took her to live with her. Walter was then on his own and started seeing other women. According to family members one of them cleared him out one day whilst he was at work . The family were very upset as much of the furniture and linen were promised to them by their mother before she died. Walter left Selby and went to live with his sister Rose May in Bradford with her first husband Arthur Fuller and their son Spencer. However, when Rose May remarried Walter did not get on with the new husband and on 4th November 1937 they had a quarrel and he was told to leave. Whilst Rose and her husband Walter Alderson were at work, Walter committed suicide and according to the Bradford paper he gassed himself with coal gas. There is no headstone on his grave.

1937 - Death certificate records cause of death as: Coal gas poisoning, consequent upon having inhaled a quantity of coal gas, administered to himself, at a time during which his mind was tempoarily unhinged." Inquest was held by J. G. Hutchinson, Coroner for the City of Bradford, on 5 November 1937.

1937 - Newspaper report reads:

SUICIDE AFTER QUARREL.

SISTER'S STORY OF BRADFORD EX-SOLDIER'S DEATH.

INQUEST VERDICT.

Evidence that on the evening before his death he had come home drunk and had threatened his brother-in-law with a poker was given at an inquest to-day on Walter Wallis, aged 58, single, formerly a general labourer, of 3 Fryston Place, Bradford, who was found gassed at his home yesterday. Rose May Alderson, his sister, said he had been unable to work for some time, and was in receipt of a war pension. During the past four years he had lived with her and her husband. Wallis had periodicaly come home drunk. Wallis, said witness, arrived home the worse for drink on Wednesday night, and he started to quarrel with her husband, brandishing a poker. Alderson struck him in self-defence in the face. As a result Wallis was told he would have to find quarters elsewhere. Wallis, witness continued, left the house at 11.15 that night, but it was later agreed that he should be allowed to stay for the night. Both she and her husband went out to work on the following morning, leaving a note behind to Wallis, who was then still in bed, that he would have to leave that day. Upon witness's return yesterday afternoon she found her brother dead on the hearthrug in the living-room. A gas tube was near his mouth. The cause of death was coal-gas poisoning. The coroner (Mr. J. G. Hutchinson) said: "So far as the sister and brother-in-law are concerned they appear to have shown much kindness and forebearance. There is no reflection upon either of these people." The Coroner recorded a verdict of "Self-destructiuon, at the time of which his mind was tempoarily unhinged."