| Birth: | Jul. 3, 1871 | | Death: | Sep. 26, 1940 | 
Author. Welsh poet who became famous for spending his life as a tramp in the United States. A son of an iron-molder who died when he was two years old, his mother remarried and had little time for her three children, who were left to themselves. Davies became a member of a shoplifting gang and left school early. He tried a few jobs but soon moved to London, then Bristol, and eventually to the USA in 1893. For some years he was working and begging his way across North America, occasionally working his passage back to the UK as a sailor on cattle ships. Davies documented this period of his life in his acclaimed memoir, "Autobiography of a Super-Tramp." The turning point in his life was the loss of a leg as the result of trying to board a moving express train and getting dragged under the wheels. Unfit for manual labor or life on the road, Davies turned to writing and returned to London. He established himself as a poet, most notably for one entitled "Leisure." At the age of 50, he married Helen Payne, a prostitute 30 years his junior. He left the city, moving first to Sussex and later to Gloucestershire, where he lived quietly until his death in 1940. (bio by: julia&keld)
Search Amazon for William Davies | | | Burial:
Cheltenham Cemetery and Crematorium
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire, England
Plot: cremation ashes garden 1 |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Originally Created by: julia&keld
Record added: Jun 20, 2006
Find A Grave Memorial# 14659558 |
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