Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Richard Bowen Roberts was a native speaker of Welsh who had no known connection with Bradford, apart from the two years he studied at B.G.S. He was born at Dolgellau in north-west Wales on 1st August 1880, the youngest of four children of Owen Davis Roberts, a merchant and J.P., and Eliza Jane
Williams, the daughter of an Angelsey G.P. In later life he styled himself as Bowen Roberts, but he was also known as Dick. His mother died in 1889, and by 1891 he was a boarding pupil at Dolgellau Grammar School where the headmaster was a Cambridge graduate and a Yorkshireman from Greetland, near Halifax. Could this be the reason that Bowen Roberts attended Bradford Grammar School from the ages of sixteen to eighteen? His record in the
Third and Fourth Forms was not a distinguished one academically, but in September 1898 he passed the preliminary examination to study Medicine at Owens College Manchester. Two years later he went to Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated B.A. in 1904. In 1906, in Liverpool, Bowen married Jane Gertrude Thomas, the only surviving child of Dr. Lewis Thomas, a G.P. who had lived at Amlwch on Anglesey. They lived at Plas Penrhyn overlooking the Menai Strait, near Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on Anglesey. Bowen was wealthy enough not to need to work for a living. He was honorary secretary for Wales of the Agricultural Co-operative Trading Society and chairman of the Anglesey Industries
Association, and he had the time to devote himself to shooting and fishing at which pursuits he was adept, and to collecting eggs. Bowen and Jane Roberts had two sons David and William, the first of whom died in 1913.
War began three days after Roberts’ thirty-fourth birthday, and a day later he joined ’D’ Company of the Denbighshire Hussars Yeomanry, serving as a trooper and then sergeant until he was commissioned in April 1915. As a Second Lieutenant he served in the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry, both regiments being in the same division. They went to France the summer of 1915 and the four squadrons of the Westmorland and
Cumberland Yeomanry were dispersed to different divisions. As it is not known which squadron Roberts served with, the detail of his service is also unknown. It was later said that the strain of service damaged his heart. In July 1917 his regiment was converted from
cavalry to infantry, and in September the officers and men were drafted into the 7th Battalion Border Regiment. Bowen was an officer known for looking out for the welfare of his men who knew him as ‘Robbie’.
After training for the attack, the 7/Border moved to the Ypres salient in October. On the 12th they were support battalion in an attack between Langemark and Poelcapelle. After a short spell in rest they returned to the line in late October, then in November provided working and carrying parties behind the front. On the night of 21st November Roberts was in command of a party taking ammunition to a machinegun company when he slipped on a duck-walk and
severely sprained his ankle in a ditch or shell hole. He was sent home on sick leave to recuperate. However, it had been noted on 12th October that he was suffering from epilectic fits, and he died at home from a convulsion on the morning of 13th January 1918. His Major wrote: ‘he was always so full of life and so cheerful.’ He was buried in Llanedwen churchyard
overlooking the Menai Strait and Snowdonia.'