L/CPL. 6786 JOHN WILLIAM LIVETT
18th June 1915
L/CPL. 6786 JOHN WILLIAM LIVETT of the Suffolk Regiment died of enteric fever in France on June 18th 1915. He was aged twenty nine and lived with his wife Jessie at 608 Blackburn Road, Rising Bridge. He was a native of Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.
John was a regular soldier and went to France with his regiment in August 1914. He was taken ill and died in a military hospital in the cathedral city of Rouen. Even so early in the war, Rouen was an important base with several large hospitals. The hospitals used the municipal cemetery in St. Sever, a suburb, up to September 1916. John’s burial, therefore, was one of the early ones.
The scale of suffering and death in these hospitals is indicated by there being 3,084 burials in St. Sever Cemetery and 8,348 burials in the Extension, which remained in use from September 1916 until April 1920.