Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Sidney was born on 8th July 1890, the only son of Frederick and Ellen Hooper of 5, Mannville Terrace, in central Bradford. His father, a native of Bradford, was a secretary and typist at the Chamber of
Commerce. His mother came from Crewe. Sidney attended BGS from 1899 until 1907, when he was 17. He was a talented linguist who won a Modern Languages Exhibition to London University and went up to University College in Autumn 1907. In June 1908 he took the French and German prizes in the Junior Class of Intermediate Arts. One of his tutors described him as “Not one to be satisfied with what he heard at lectures, or gathered from ordinary text-books … he had developed ideas of his own” and described his “independence of mind as well as his straightforwardness” (perhaps a reference to Yorkshire bluffness). Sidney’s father gained an appointment as a civil servant at the Board of Trade in London, so that the family were able to move to 24, Sutton Court Road, Chiswick in west London, where Sidney lived during his studies. He took his BA with German Honours in October 1911, and he
spent the next three years at the universities of Munich and then Vienna, where he was Lektor and about to sit for the Ph.D. degree when war broke out.
Sidney had enrolled in the London University Officer Training Corps in January 1909, gaining promotion to Sergeant. This military experience meant that when he returned from Austria he was able to apply for a commission, and he was gazetted as Second Lieutenant in the Wiltshire Regiment on 15th August 1914. He joined the 1st Wiltshires in Flanders with a reinforcement draft on 28th October, as part of 7th Brigade, 3rd Division. They had been with the BEF since August and recent fighting in the Battle of La Bassee had reduced them to a mere 200 men. They spent the next three months in and out of the trenches near Kemmel, south of Ypres. It was wet and cold, and would have been a strain on a man used
to a scholar’s life. The routine of four days in the line, with one company in the front line, one in support and a third in reserve, followed by four days in rest, limited the strain on the men. The sniper-fire was constant. December 25th was very foggy, which limited shelling and sniping, but still they lost 2 men killed, 1 wounded and 1 missing—there was no “Christmas
truce” for them.
On 12th March the British attacked at Neuve Chapelle. To draw away German reserves, the 1st Wiltshires left their billets at 2.45 a.m. to attack Spanbroek Molen. They reached the partly dug and half-flooded assembly trenches at 5.30 a.m. They crouched in this inadequate shelter under increasingly accurate German shellfire until they attacked at 4.10
p.m. They had to cross their own front line by means of plank bridges, pass through gaps in their barbed wire and contend with “knee deep” mud. ‘A’ company advanced the 200 yards to the German wire but none got through. Two parties of the neighbouring 1st Worcesters entered the German front line but had to abandon their foothold. At 7 p.m. all were pulled
back. The 1st Wiltshire lost 4 officers and 29 men killed, 3 officers and 45 men wounded, and 12 missing. Among those killed in action was Hooper who “fell at the head of his men, most gallantly leading them”, according to his C.O. His body was recovered and buried at Kemmel Chateau.
Hooper’s parents moved to Leeds, then Morecambe. His father died in 1919. Sidney’s tombstone records: “Only son of Ellen Hooper, of Escolme House, St. Mary's Rd., Heysham, Morecambe, Lancs., and the late Frederick Hooper. Native of Bradford, Yorks.” He did not marry.'