Henry Hadley

Henry Hadley (27 March 1863 – 5 August 1914) was an English civilian who was fatally shot in Germany, allegedly while resisting arrest, on 3 August 1914, the day before the United Kingdom's entry into the First World War. He is sometimes described as the "first British casualty" of World War I.

Early life and family Hadley was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. His father, also Henry Hadley (1812–1874), had been a senior doctor in the British Army, serving as a surgeon with the 40th Foot and the Rifle Brigade, in Australia with the 11th Foot and 99th Foot, at the Castle Hospital at Balaklava in the Crimean War, before retiring in 1861 with the honorary rank of Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals. His mother, Alpha Clementia Dunn, was from Hobart, Tasmania. His paternal grandfather, also Henry Hadley (1762–1830), was the physician of Erasmus Darwin and married Darwin's illegitimate daughter Susannah Parker (1772–1856) in 1809.

He was educated at Cheltenham College, attended the Royal Military Academy Woolwich, and served as a lieutenant in the 1st West India Regiment from 1887 to 1890. He later became a teacher of languages.

Death Hadley had been teaching in Berlin for three or four years, but decided to move to Paris following Germany's declarations of war against Russia on 1 August 1914 and then France on 3 August, and its ultimatum to Belgium, in the preceding days.

Hadley was taken by ambulance to the in Gelsenkirchen, and died there at 3:15 am local time on 5 August – just three hours after the UK declared war on Germany.

Elizabeth Pratley was interrogated as a potential spy, at a military prison in Münster, but was eventually released, without charge, A statement by Hadley's cousin S. Eardley Wilmot was published on 20 April 1915, also doubting the German official account, and cited the case as an example of "Prussian brutality". Other English periodicals made comparisons to the Saverne Affair, in which an unarmed Alsatian shoemaker was severely wounded by a Prussian officer wielding a sabre, but the officer was ultimately acquitted of any offence at court martial.

In 1917, the German authorities revealed that some of Hadley's possessions had been sold by a court-appointed administrator and the proceeds used to pay the costs of his hospital treatment. Subsequently, more of his belongings were returned to his family, via the neutral authorities in The Hague.