Born in 1899, Joseph Henry Lowe was the son of Hannah Lowe and Joseph Lowe, a builder and house decorator. In 1911, the family was living at 31 Wellesley Road, Ilford, Essex. He attended the Coopers Company School in Bow in 1910.
He enlisted at the Ilford recruiting office and served in the Machine Gun Corps (Infantry) 56th Battalion.
Joseph Lowe died of wounds but there is no precise information about where or how Joseph Lowe was injured. His burial at Cagnicourt, and his date of death, place him in the Hindenberg Line area; the earliest burials there were of men killed in the Drocourt – Queant sector. The fighting in the approach to the River Selle was also going at this time so the implication seems to be that Lowe was wounded north of the line somewhere between Arras and Cambrai.
Joseph Lowe died on 14th October 1918 at the age of 19. He is buried at Cagnicourt British Cemetery, France.
Some information / extracts have been reproduced with kind permission of Karen Pack from her book ‘Coopers’ Boys & Coborn Girls: Their Part in the Great War’ © Karen Pack, 2015
Sources:
Ancestry.com
ICHS school records and magazines
Commonwealth War Graves Commission