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Name: SMITH, David
Short Name: David Smith and Helen née Collie
Birth Date: 11 Oct 1892 Torphins, Scotland
Death Date: June 1960
First Date: 1925
Profession: Uganda Railway guard, ticket examiner
Area: Nairobi
Married: In Mombasa 24 Sep 1922 Kate Winter, nurse, b. 11 May 1898 Sheffield, d. 1969 Zimbabwe
Children: Cyril b. 19 Nov 1924 Nairobi, d. 31 Aug 2010 Canada; Walter b. 28 Sep 1923 Nairobi, d. 11 Oct 2016 Queensland, Aus.; Florence (Hamilton) b. 25 Sep 1931, d. Zimbabwe; Peter Raymond b. Nakuru 4 Nov 1926, d. 13 June 1975 Melbourne, Australia
Book Reference: Red 25
War Service: Gordon Highlanders
General Information:
Barnes Langata cem. Nairobi David Smith / October 1892 - June 1960 / till we meet
Info from Sharon Daishe (granddaughter) David did an apprenticeship as a tailor and cutter to a Torphins tailor who made men's suits. At the start of World War One in 1914 he was called up and served with the Gordon Highlanders. He was gassed at some point (in Belgium?) and recuperated in London with a collapsed lung. Sent to Kenya in 1917 as an army instructor for The Kings African Rifles. Remained in Kenya after the war where he tried tailoring again however his lungs could not tolerate the fabric dust (he had only one functioning lung). Found work with East African Railways and Harbours as a Railway Guard on the so called "Uganda Railway" . Married Kate Winter on Christmas Eve 1922 in Mombasa when he was 30 and Kate 24.
Kate was born in March 1898 in Sheffield, studied as a children's nurse and arrived about 1920 in Kenya as a governess or children's nurse to Isabel Ross and William McGregor (McGregor was head of the Public Works Department). Kate worked as a clerk for the agricultural company Gailey & Roberts from 1946 to 1958 when she retired. Kate died in Zimbabwe in 1969, aged 71, and is buried there in an unmarked grave. In the 1920’s David and Kate lived in a railway house in Nakuru. David then worked as a caretaker for the Standard Bank in Nairobi where he lived in the caretaker’s house, and finally as caretaker for the seven storey Mitchell Cotts building in Nairobi. David had at least one sibling, a younger brother called Charles. David’s father, also called David Smith, was the caretaker for the local Learney Town Hall (Scotland)
Blue Book 1926 appt. 30.10.1922