With Remembrance Day just around the corner, it was fitting that I should come across another of my relatives who lost their life in the First World War.

Ann Leonard, a second cousin once removed, was just twenty-four when she succumbed to TNT poisoning while working at the Barnbow munitions factory near Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

Born in October 1891 in Morley, Yorkshire, she was one of ten children to William Leonard, a Coal Miner, and his wife Emma. Her death certificate said she had died from “atrophy of the liver” as a result of working with munitions. She was one of many women killed in the production of weapons and ammunition throughout the Great War; explosion and disease were constant threats in the workplace. While Ann died from liver failure in the July of 1916, on December 5th of the same year, an explosion tore through part of the Barnbow factory and killed 35 women outright, and maiming and injuring dozens more.

The Barnbow Lasses

I was surprised to hear that Ann’s name appears on a Roll of Honour in York Minster, underneath the 13th Century series of stained glass windows known as the Five Sisters. The window was renovated between 1923 and 1925, and then dedicated “Sacred to the memory of the women of the Empire who gave their lives in the European war of 1914–1918” as a lasting memorial for all those women who died as part of the conflict.

The Five Sisters

In a cruel twist of fate, her brother Edward, himself only twenty-two, was posted as “Missing presumed dead” in France, just twenty four hours after Ann died. I can’t begin to imagine what their parents, must have gone through.

Aside from the Roll of Honour in the Minster, both Ann and Edward are featured in a plaque in the church of St John the Evangelist in Carlinghow, Batley, Yorkshire.

The Imperial War Museum maintains records of the casualties of war, and Ann’s entry can be found here.

I have more than seventy family members recorded in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records, across the First and Second World Wars. Family war casualties came from the UK, the USA, Canada, and South Africa. This November 11th I will be keeping Ann uppermost in my thoughts as we remember all those who have died in modern wars.