The manager of the Hermit Inn, Burley Woodhead, recently found a ‘death penny’ whilst creating a patio in the ‘yard’. These were issued to the families of servicemen killed during WW1. This particular one had a small hole in it suggesting that it may have been on display, possibly hanging on a nail. The WW1 Group where asked to research for any information on the person named on the ‘penny’, Ernest Vitty.

Ernest was born in Little Horton in Bradford. He attended All Saints School on Little Horton Lane. When he left school he worked for the Midland Railway as a Carriage Cleaner. When war broke out he enlisted into the West Yorkshire Regiment 1st/6th. He married Bertha Kershaw in May 1916 and shortly afterwards was wounded in the shoulder on the 1st July 1916. When he recovered he joined the West Yorkshire Regiment 1st/7th and was killed on the 9th October 1917 at Passchendaele. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial.

How the ‘penny’ got from Bradford to the Hermit Inn is a mystery.