Second Lieutenant Ralph Thomas BODDINGTON (1902)

1/10th (County of London) Battalion (Hackney), London Regiment
Born 8 June 1883 in Selly Park, Birmingham
Killed in action 2 November 1917, aged 34
Buried at the Gaza War Cemetery, Israel/Palestine. Also commemorated on the Berkswell, Solihull, and Sidmouth war memorials, and at King Edward’s School.

Ralph Boddington was the son of Samuel Boddington, a wool merchant, and Elizabeth Mary, née Pask Hughes, of Birmingham. He married Muriel Jessie Harris on 12 October 1910 at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. They had one son, Paul, born in 1913.

Ralph was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham and matriculated at Merton in 1902, taking a BA in 1905 and an MA in 1909. Before the war he worked as a solicitor in Sidmouth, Devon, before becoming senior partner in the firm of Hooper, Ryland and Boddington, Birmingham.

By March 1915, Ralph had joined the Arden Volunteer Rifle Corps, formed in December 1914; in July 1915 The Coventry Herald reported that he had qualified as a second-class shot at the 2nd Battalion Camp in Warwick. He was made Second Lieutenant at the start of August 1916.

He was killed in action at Rafa-Belah ridge, Gaza, on 2nd November 1917.