True and Fascinating Canadian History
Riverside Cemetery
Moline, Rock Island Co. IL. USA
In Memory of:
O.29, NWMP Inspector
Francis Jeffrey Dickens
Francis Jeffery Dickens was born the third child of Charles and Catherine Dickens. He was named after his godfather, Lord Jeffrey, Editor of the Edinburgh Review.
Like his two older brothers Alfred and Sydney, Francis was educated in Boulogne, France. He also considered studying medicine in France or Germany, but he abandoned this idea with the intention of farming in Canada or perhaps Australia. Farming, however, never materialized as his father landed him a job on the Magazine "All The Year Round". Francis was too restless and he soon realized that he was unsuited to an office life or to the profession of journalism. He needed adventure.
In January 1864, Francis went to India to join his brother, only to find that Walter had previously died on New Year's Eve.
Francis joined the Bengal Mounted Police for a short spell but he returned home in England after his father's death. Having squandered his inheritance, he then immigrated to Canada. He managed to obtain a Commissioned rank with the North West Mounted Police because his mother's aunt, Georgina Hogarth, was an acquaintance of Lord Dufferin. Francis Dickens served in Canada with the NWMP from Autumn 1874 until February 1886, but he resigned because of increasing deafness. For some months after his departure from the NWMP he applied for several jobs but obtained none of them.
Lord Dufferin had, by this time, returned to England, so Francis was unable to benefit from his influence, and he was forced to pawn his father's watch. In Ottawa, he had met a friend physician Dr. A. W. Jamieson from Moline, Illinois. Upon hearing that Francis Dickens had fallen upon difficult times, Dr Jamieson invited him to Moline to give a speech about the career of his distinguished father.
However, on the evening he was due to speak, Francis Dickens suddenly died of a heart attack.
He was buried in Moline, with the epitaph which said: "Take ye heed, watch and pray for ye know not what the time is."
On September 24th. 2002, an official N.W.M.P tombstone was unveiled over his grave.
