Francis Alexander Lewis

Second Lieutenant, Royal Flying Corps, 53rd Squadron

Killed in action on 5 February 1918, aged 25

CWGC: "Second son of James and Ada Lewis, of The Priory, Larkhall Rise, Clapham, London."

Remembered at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Poperinge, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

From the Lijssenthoek project website

Also served in the Royal Engineers Regiment and Royal Army Medical Corps; to France on 1 January 1915.

B6446 RE8, photographic patrol, shot up ground machine gun fire, 11.10 a.m.; crashed; Lewis was the pilot; the observer, TMCK Hughes, was also killed and is buried in Lijssenthoek.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Francis Alexander Lewis, then aged 18, was working as a clerk for a merchant and living at 36 Larkhall Rise, Clapham with his parents and sisters. His father, James Lewis, 61, was an auctioneer originally from St Clement Danes, Middlesex. His mother, Ada 44, was from Southampton. Gladys Lewis, 21, was a student. Irene Lewis, 16, and Vera Lewis, 14, were at school. The family had two servants: Helen Bessant, 19, from Wood Green, Middlesex, and Mary Ann Cook, 26, a cook from Portsmouth, Hampshire.