Notes
The College Website (see sources) states: 'Ernest Stratford Pipkin was born on 24 June 1876, son of Samuel J Pipkin of Cheapside, London, and later, Surbiton in Surrey. He was educated at Marlborough College and St Paul's in London before matriculating as a Non-Collegiate student in Cambridge in April 1895. He was admitted at Emmanuel in October that year and, after completing three years at the College, served in the Boer War from 1898-1901 as a Trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry. He achieved the rank of Captain but was invalided home after the relief of Ladysmith. He was admitted at Downing in October 1903, by which time he was known as Ernest Pipkin Stratford, appearing in a rare early matriculation photograph surviving in the archive. [NB - the Emmanuel website notes his attendance there prior to the Boer War under his then name but does not list him on either of their WW1 memorials (IWM 46467 or 46468). In October 2023, the College Archivist, Amanda Goode, suggested that his omission was because it was assumed he was more a Downing student but said no record exists as to why he was not readmitted to Emmanuel after serving in the Boer War.]
After Downing, Stratford continued his medical training at St Thomas's and St Mary's Hospitals in London and was appointed the resident medical officer at the West Ham Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System. He married Amy Lorna Rose in 1910 in Wokingham, where they settled and were active members of the local amateur dramatic group. After the outbreak of war in 1914, he took a temporary commission as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps on 16 September 1914 and, after serving for three months as a surgeon at Netley Hospital and surgeon-specialist at the Indian Hospital in Bournemouth, went to the Front in February 1915. He was attached to the No. 8 British Field Ambulance in the Labour Division of the Indian Expeditionary Force and on 17 March was injured by the bursting of an enemy shell at Neuve Chapelle. After a short time in hospital at Dieppe he was invalided home but died from septicaemia as a result of his wounds at Bourne End on 20 April 1915.
He was buried at All Saints church in Wokingham on 23rd April 1915 with military honours and conveyed to the church on a gun carriage of the Royal Field Artillery.
Sources: Obituary in Downing College magazine, The Griffin, Easter 1915, Obituary in British Medical Journal, 29 July 1916, Commonwealth War Graves Commission website'