The Riddaway Family including Edith Grace C Lane

Robert Riddaway and Fanny Blackmore married in 1888. They ran Riddaway's Stores in Bow which served the village for almost 100 years. The shop was part of Manchester House, one of the oldest houses in Bow, formerly a brewhouse where King Charles I is reputed to have stayed for one night in 1664. Three of their eight children were involved in the First World War.

Edith Louise Riddaway was born in Bow in 1888. At the time of the start of the First World War she was a nurse/governess resident in France, and was briefly interned in Germany. After the war she returned to Bow with George Lane (born 1880). Also known as George Chalmers Lane, he came from London. Not a lot is known about him - it is said he had been invalided out of the army as a result of a gas attack, and he was certainly active with the British Legion locally. However it seems that he didn't marry Edith until a few months before his death in 1950, and that he had been previously married.

Their daughter, Edith Grace C Lane, was born in Bow in 1921 and brought up at Silver Street, then two cottages at the West end of the village. In 1978 she wrote a book under her married name of Grace Griffiths, about her childhood in Bow during the 1920s titled "The Days of my Freedom". In it she describes being attended by Dr Bastard. She was educated at Crediton High School, after which she became a librarian. She joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1942. In 1945 she was awarded the Certificate of Merit for her "outstanding work" in the Special Wireless Branch of The Royal Signals in London, where she met her husband, Gordon Douglas Griffiths (also an author). She died in 1998.

Ernest Robert Riddaway (b 1891) went to Australia at the beginning of the war. He enlisted in the 4th Division Signal Company of the Australia Imperial Force in Western Australia in September 1914. He was sent to the Dardanelles, where he received a bullet wound to his left forearm, treated in a field hospital in Heliopolis, Egypt in 1915. He then went on to Gallipoli. Between 1916 and 1918 he fought in France and was awarded the Military Medal. The commendation read: "During operations on 10th /11th August 1918 in the vicinity of ETINEHEM, near BRAY-sur-SOMME, these NCOs performed splendid work in maintaining telephonic communication forward of Brigade. Working through a barrage of gas shells the whole night, they kept up communication through a most dangerous area and although partially gassed they stuck to this work till relieved."

He was admitted to hospital in England in September 1918, with the effects of gas poisoning, got married shortly afterwards and was discharged from the army in England in June 1919. He died in Bath, aged 72 in 1963.

Arthur James Riddaway (b 1892) went to USA and Canada in 1913. He served in France with the First Canadian Contingent of the British Expeditionary Force from 1914, and returned to Britain in 1921. He married soon afterwards and died in Lymington, Hampshire in 1964 aged 71.