Key Information
Name:Lawrence Stanley Carrick
DoB: June 26 1882
Regt: 49th Canadian Infantry Batt
DoD: September 15 1916
Academic Career: CGS 1892 – 1896
Biographical Information
Family Background:
Lawrence Stanley Carrick, was the youngest of eight children born to John and Catherine Elizabeth Carrick. His father and grandfather were solicitors. They were comfortably off living in a large family home at Brampton with servants. His father died when Lawrence was eight years old. The family seem to have been left well provided for.
Academic Record After leaving the Grammar School Lawrence went to Rugby School. In 1902 he is shown as a “farmer’s pupil”, however he must have had an adventurous nature as he went to South Africa and joined the East Griqualand Mounted Rifles, and fought in the last year of the Second Boer War. Lawrence next tried farming in Canada. His brother John William Preston D Carrick had gone to Canada in 1896, and he and his youngest sister Eleanor Rosalind travelled out to Canada in 1908 to join him at Pine Lake, Alberta , Eleanor later married Charles Atter and settled there.
War Service:
Lawrence next joined the Canadian Light Horse, and the North West Mounted Police. After war broke out he enlisted on September 23 1914. He joined 19th Alberta Dragoons and came to Europe with the first Canadian Contingent.
On his enlistment he is described as 5ft 5 ½ inches tall with fair hair and a medium complexion. He had a tiger’s head tattoo on his right forearm.
Lawrence was shot through the head by a sniper at 8am on September 15 1915, and was one of 128 members of the Alberta Regiment who died that day. His body was not recovered for burial and he is commemorated on the Vimy Memorial. Although his body was never identified his obituary in the Cumberland News states that he died just twenty yards from the German front. Later in the long obituary it quotes a letter from a brother officer “He was a most capable officer and genial companion, and beloved by everybody”
Battalion:49th Canadian Infantry Batt
Sources:
a) Carlisle School Memorial Register 1264-1924
b) Ancestry web site: Probate list 1917, 1890
c) Freebmd web site
d) Red Deer News, Dec 13 1916, Alberta
e) Census:
1901 : RG13 4827 116
1891 RG12 4280 6 6
1881 RG11 5149 45 16
1871 RG10 5216 15 4
1861 RG9 3907
Cumberland News Sept 30 1916