Sidney Blagg

Bank: Union of London & Smiths Bank

Place of work: Nottingham Union Bank branch

Died: 29 July 1918

Sidney Blagg was born in South Collingham, Nottinghamshire, on 17 January 1881, the son of Thomas Blagg, an auctioneer's clerk, and his wife Margaret. He had three elder siblings: brothers Thomas and Percy and sister Eva. By the time Sidney was 10, the family was living in Newark.

Blagg became a bank clerk, working initially for Samuel Smith & Co of Nottingham, the oldest provincial bank in England. In 1902 that bank merged with several others to form Union of London & Smiths Bank, with which Blagg spent the rest of his banking career. He spent time working in the bank's Nottingham Smiths Bank branch as well as its Nottingham Union Bank branch.

In 1910 Blagg joined the South Nottinghamshire Hussars. As soon as the First World War broke out in August 1914, he was called up to serve as a Serjeant. For the first months of the war, his regiment undertook home defence duties, but in April 1915 - by which time Blagg had become a Regimental Quartermaster Serjeant - they embarked for Egypt. In February 1916 he went with his unit to Salonika, before returning to Egypt in summer 1917.

From October 1917 Blagg undertook officer training, and in March 1918 was commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment). He was attached to the Royal Sussex Regiment, and posted briefly to Palestine, and then to Egypt, before being sent to France in June 1918. It was there, on 29 July 1918, that Second Lieutenant Sidney Blagg was killed in action, at the Battle of the Marne. He was 37 years old.

Sidney Blagg is commemorated on a bank war memorial at NatWest City of London office.