Philip Barker Hindmarch was born on 20th August 1870 at Shincliffe in County Durham, the son of Philip Slater Hindmarch and Annie (nee Barker). The father was a schoolmaster, but he sadly died a month after his son was born.
The census of 1881 recorded ten-year-old Philip as living with his grandmother at Park House in Shincliffe. Philip’s mother had re-married but died in 1883. Ten years later Philip was working as a farm servant at Yanwath Hall in Westmorland.
In the 1890s Philip moved to Cheshire and worked as an assistant Schoolmaster at Dutton Workhouse. He married Agnes Elizabeth Swain, the daughter of the workhouse master, Alfred Swain, at Little Leigh Parish Church on 25th October 1899. That month he also left the workhouse to take up a position as a clerk for the Manchester Ship Canal Company, to which he felt himself more suited.
Their son Frank Barker Hindmarch was born in 1900 at Preston on the Hill, where they lived on the Bridgewater Canal Bank. A few years later the family moved to live in Birmingham and then emigrated to Canada, where a daughter called Phyllis Una was born in 1909, but she sadly died the same year.
Philip enlisted to serve in World War One in January 1915, at which time the couple were living in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He had previous militia service. He served nearly three years in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force as a Private with the service number 65451 and eventually ecame a Corporal and then a Sergeant. He served for thirteen months in the trenches. He had a stay in a hospital in France and later recuperated in St Leonards- on- Sea in Sussex.
On return to Canada, he served in the Canadian Military Police, until he was discharged in February 1919. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the Victory Medal and the British War Medal for his war service.
Philip Barker Hindmarch passed away from pulmonary tuberculosis in Montreal on 14 th June 1919 at the age of 48 years. He was buried in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission grave at Cimitiere Mont- Royal in Montreal as it was adjudged that his death was due to his war service.
His wife Agnes died in December 1921 at Sherbrooke, also aged 48 years.
Their son Frank Barker Hindmarch also served in World War One.
