[3] As a boy, Roebuck worked as a trammer at Silverwood Colliery and after being sentenced to one month's imprisonment for stealing a watch in 1904, he enlisted in the territorial section of the York and Lancaster Regiment.
[3][6] Over the next seven years, he was stationed in India and Ireland and was promoted to lance corporal, but was demoted back to private in 1910 for "misconduct".
[3] After Britain's entry into the First World War in August 1914, he was mobilised by the York and Lancaster Regiment and arrived on the Western Front in September 1914.
[6] On 18 October 1914, Roebuck was recorded as "presumed dead" after an attack near Beaucamps-Ligny during the Race to the Sea.
[2] This biographical article related to association football in England, about a defender born in the 1880s, is a stub.