b. 29/12/1889 South Bank, Middlesbrough. d. 1925 Guisborough, Yorkshire.
DATE OF EM ACTION: 14/01/1913 Middlesbrough, Yorkshire.
Albert was the youngest of two sons born to John Ridley and Jane Benstead. His older brother was named Samuel. Following a basic education, Albert became a joiner. Six months after the incident that led to the award of the Edward Medal, he married Lily Lewis in July 1913. Their only child, John R was born the following year. Albert died in 1925 aged just 35.
EM CITATION:
On the 14th January, 1913, Charles Jex was cleaning the roof over the smelting furnaces at Messrs. Bolckow, Vaughan and Co.’s steel works, and, while he was making his way along an iron beam thirty-two feet from the ground and immediately above a fifty-ton ladle, which was being filled with molten metal, a column of flame and smoke shot up from the ladle to a height of thirty or forty feet. The flames enveloped Jex, burning him so badly that. he was rendered helpless and barely able to retain his foothold on the beam. Had he slipped, he would have fallen into the ladle. Benstead was standing near’the foot of an iron ladder, twenty-five feet long, leading to the beam, and immediately climbed up and took hold of Jex, whose hands were so badly burnt that he could not assist himself in descending the ladder. Benstead placed him across his back and carried him down to the floor, the iron ladder being so hot that he had to use his cap to take hold of it and so steady himself as he came down. There is no doubt that Benstead saved Jex from falling into the ladle, and that he ran a very serious risk of falling in himself.
BURIAL LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
LOCATION OF MEDAL: UNKNOWN.
