[3] Although academically and artistically gifted, he began work as a miner at the age of fourteen, continuing to educate himself in his spare time.

The battalion was subsequently transferred to the Western Front.

Streets, by this time a sergeant, was wounded on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and subsequently went missing.

His body was eventually recovered exactly ten months later, on 1 May 1917, and he is buried at Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, France.

His poems were posthumously published in the same year under the title The Undying Splendour.