Poppy In memoriam Poppy

Private William McKee Murphy

 

Murphy 1

 

William McKee Murphy was born on 13 September 1893 at Prospect, Ballymoney, County Antrim, the third of six children of agricultural labourer Thomas Murphy and his wife Matilda (Tilly) (née McKee). By the time of the 1911 Census he was living at Ballywattick Lower, near Ballymoney, with his parents, an uncle and four of his siblings (including his twin sister), and working as an agricultural labourer.

Murphy enlisted in the North Irish Horse at Antrim in early January 1916 (No.2073). He trained at the regiment's Antrim reserve depot before embarking for France around January 1917 to join one of the two North Irish Horse regiments serving there. However that month he contracted pneumonia and was hospitalised at No.9 General Hospital in Rouen. He died on 12 February 1917.

Private Murphy is buried in St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Seine-Maritime, France, grave O.V.C.7. His gravestone inscription reads:

2073 PRIVATE
W. MC K. MURPHY
NORTH IRISH HORSE
12TH FEBRUARY 1917 AGE 23

 

All three of Murphy's brothers also served in the war - James Murphy and George Picken Murphy in the Royal Irish Rifles, and Thomas Alexander Murphy in the North Irish Horse.

 

Murphy 2

 

Images kindly provided by ponte fractus. Some of the above information sourced from Robert Thompson's Ballymoney Heroes 1914-1918.