Revealed: The bizarre and tragic tale of languages teacher who became Britain's first victim of World War One just three hours into the conflict

Henry Hadley died barely three hours after Britain declared war on Germany

Shot in stomach after a row on a train home from Berlin

Private John Parr was thought to be first casualty until now

Henry Hadley 1880, has been revealed as the first British man to die in World War I by a new book

The first Briton killed in what would become known as the Great War has long been recorded as Private John Parr, who died three weeks after it began.

But according to a military historian, the conflict’s first British casualty was in fact a 51-year-old languages teacher called Henry Hadley.

He perished barely three hours after Britain declared war on Germany – shot in the stomach after a row on a train as he tried to make his way home from Berlin.

His unfortunate story is revealed in a book published this week.

Public school-educated Mr Hadley, a former officer in the West India Regiment, was teaching in Berlin when Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914. Realising that Britain would soon be drawn into the conflict, he caught a train for Paris at 11am that day.

But he became ‘agitated then angry’ with a waiter when the service was too slow in the restaurant car and a ‘heated exchange’ took place in front of some German officers.

Having gone back to his seat, he returned to the corridor for some reason – where one of the soldiers shot him in the stomach at point-blank range with a revolver. Mr Hadley was just short of the Belgian border.

His terrified housekeeper and travelling companion, Elizabeth Pratley, rushed out of the carriage to find him on the floor surrounded by German soldiers.

He gasped: ‘They have shot me, Mrs Pratley; I am a done man.’

Britain had not formally declared war on Germany when Mr Hadley was shot. He was taken to hospital and clung to life for 24 hours, but died at 3.15am German time on August 5, 1914.

Britain had declared war on Germany just three hours before – at midnight German time, or 11pm British time on August 4.

Military historian Richard van Emden revealed the strange story of Mr Hadley’s sad demise yesterday.

When news of Mr Hadley’s death reached London, the Government demanded an explanation but the Germans ‘rebutted all claims of foul play’.

The German officer who shot him, Lieutenant Nicolay, justified the killing by claiming that Mr Hadley was ‘acting suspiciously’, was ‘vague about his travel arrangements’ and had raised a stick at him when confronted. ‘The British government considered the shooting nothing less than murder,’ Mr van Emden says in the book.

It is usually recorded that the first British casualty of the Great War, the 100th anniversary of which will be marked next year, was Private Parr.



Public school-educated Mr Hadley, a former officer in the West India Regiment, was teaching in Berlin when Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914. He was killed on August 21, two days before the Battle of Mons

He was killed on August 21, two days before the Battle of Mons. Mr van Emden made his discovery after unearthing Mrs Pratley’s eye-witness account of Mr Hadley’s death.

He said: ‘[Mr Hadley] was the first British casualty of the Great War and the first person to die as the direct result of enemy action. Henry Hadley just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘He also seems to have made the mistake of upsetting an armed German officer in the atmosphere of heightened tension as the whole of Europe plummeted into war.

‘Having spent two decades researching and writing about the Great War, his story is, to me, an amazing, fresh discovery.’

After his army career, Mr Hadley, who was educated at Cheltenham College, became a language teacher in Cheltenham. He had been working in Berlin for three or four years when hostilities broke out.

Mr Hadley is believed to have been buried in a pauper’s grave in a German cemetery, but there is no headstone to show his final resting place. After the shooting, Mrs Pratley was ‘whisked off for interrogation’ in a military prison as the Germans sought to establish if either she or Mr Hadley were spies.

She protested her innocence and was released, but by then was in such a ‘weakened and nervous state’ that she was taken to a Roman Catholic hospital to recover.

Between 1914 and the war’s end, almost one million more British troops lost their lives.

The last British soldier killed in action was Private George Ellison. He was also shot at Mons, just before the official ceasefire at 11am on November 11, 1918.