A musical talent at a  young age...

Albert Midgley was born on the 21st of January 1892 and his musical talents were obvious from an early age. 

His father taught him the piano and in 1904 the twelve-year-old Master Albert Midgley duly played solo piano at the Perth Primrose League Day, a performance for which he not only received an encore, but was also presented with an inscribed pocket watch.

Albert’s musical future certainly seemed bright. In 1906, while still a schoolboy at Perth Academy, he was appointed organist and choirmaster to the 10th Lord Rollo.

Lord Rollo lived in a handsome mansion near the village of Dunning, about fourteen miles from Perth. Close by was the private Duncrub House Chapel, where Albert played the organ. Throughout his youth Albert’s musical achievements were reported in local newspapers, which variously described him as ‘Perth’s Boy Organist’ or ‘Perth’s Boy Musician’.

Then in November 1907, when he was still only fifteen years old, he made his official public debut in Perth City Hall with the William Tell Overture, Wolstenholme’s Fantastique Rustique and Bach’s Fugue in G Minor.

In March 1908 Albert sat the Trinity Board music exam and was awarded the Senior Practical Exhibition of £9/9s. The money was obviously put to good use, because the following year, at the beginning of February, he travelled to London to take the final exam for a free open scholarship to the Royal College of Music. He passed.

As a result he was awarded sixty-five pounds a year for up to three years to pay for a ‘thorough and systematic free education at the college in theoretical and practical music’. He was seventeen.

The Royal College of Music — a conservatoire — had been founded in 1882. Albert would have studied in the new building in Prince Consort Road, just behind the Albert Hall. On graduating in May 1911, Albert saw off ninety-seven rivals for the post of organist and choirmaster at Regent Square Presbyterian Church in Bloomsbury.

He then went to St Andrew’s Church in Alexandra Park, moving to a house in Muswell Hill. But early in 1914 tragedy struck when his brother Ernest, aged only twenty-four, died after an operation.

Then, in August, the First World War broke out... 

In January 1916 the Military Service Act was passed, which made it possible for all single men between the ages of eighteen and forty to be conscripted. By June the new arrangement had been extended to married men as well.

Although Albert had extremely poor eyesight, the armed forces were in desperate need of recruits, poor eyesight and medical conditions were ignored, so Albert was able to enlist in the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) as a private, and then to fight in France.

In 1901 the Midgley family were living at number 18, King Street in Perth: The head of the household was Albert's 35 year old father, Frederick, who was an organist and teacher of music (organ and singing) - his wife and Albert's mother, was Alice - who was also 35 years old.

At this time, Albert had two brothers (Arthur, aged 13 and Ernest, aged 11) and two sisters (Nellie aged 9 and 2 year old Gladys). 

Albert Midgley married Eileen F. A. Clench in Edmonton, Middlesex, on the 29th of September 1917.

Albert enlisted as a Private with the 9th Royal Fusiliers (Reg. No. 23765) and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant with the 1/7th Royal Worcester Regiment on the 11th of October 1917.

At the Battle of the Piave River in June 1918, the Allies fought with the Italians against the Austrians on the Asiago Plateau in northern Italy. The Battle of the Piave River was part of this offensive.

Although there is no definitive account of how, or where, Albert Midgley lost his life, it's most likely that he died of wounds sustained in this action whilst being treated in one of the Casualty Clearing Stations, which were set up in the village school at Dueville.

On the 26th of June, 1918, the Perthshire Advertiser reported:

“OUR OWN MEN - PERTHSHIRE OFFICERS

“Mr. F. Midgley, organist, St John’s East Church, Perth, has been informed of the death as a result of wounds received in action on the Italian front of his younger son, Second Lieutenant Albert Midgley of the Worcestershire Regiment.

"Mr. Midgley was a Perth Academy boy, and when 17 years of age gained a free scholarship for organ playing at the Royal College of Music under Sir Walter Parratt. He was an F.R.C.O. and A.R.C.M. and he held an organist’s appointment in North London, and in later years on several occasions played at the St John’s Choral Society Festivals in Perth. He was 26 years of age. His elder brother, Lieutenant Arthur Midgley, of the Machine Gun Corps, fell in action in July, 1916. A third brother died in Glasgow following an operation just before the declaration of war.”

Albert Midgley is also commemorated on the Royal College of Music War Memorial; and the St. John’s East Parish Church War Memorial, Perth.