Name
John Males
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Sapper
193539
Royal Engineers
96th Field Company
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Pirton School Memorial
Biography
John appears on the School War Memorial, confirming that he attended the school. Parish records suggest only one man of this name who could have served and he was born on February 11th 1895 to Charles and Sarah Ann Males (née Chamberlain). He would have been nineteen at the outbreak of war. The 1901 census records him as the nephew of Lucy Durham. Baptism and census records list eleven children, but by 1911 four had died. At this time, only ten can be identified with certainty; Rachel (b 1879), Clara Amelia (b 1882, d 1884, aged two years and eight months), Isabella Rose (b 1884), Ellen Elizabeth (b 1885), Alice (b 1887), Sarah (b 1888), Florence (b 1890, d 1891, aged twenty-one months), Michael George (b 1892), Arthur (b 1893) and John (b 1895). His older brother, Michael, also served and survived.
In 1911, his parents were living with two of their children, Michael and Arthur, in 3 Holwell Road, and another, John, was a few doors away at number seven - the house of his brother in law John Baines and his sister Alice (now Baines). John’s profession was given only as an iron foundry moulder, probably in Hitchin.
His family inform us that he enlisted in 1915. The Parish Magazine of June 1917 records John as serving in the Royal Engineers and in 1918 he was recorded as Sapper 193539, 96th Field Company, Royal Engineers, with his home address the same as his brother Michael’s, 3 Holwell Road. John was Gillian Bethell’s great uncle and she remembers “John married his cousin Alice Baines and they lived in Holwell. I remember him from when I was a little girl; he was the road sweeper and would pop in for a cup of tea with his sister Sarah, my mum carried on the tradition after Sarah died. My fondest memory of Uncle John is him sat on the back step of 19 West Lane playing his concertina, which he could do one handed as his party piece, brilliant, the very thought makes me smile.” A photograph taken during the Second World War shows a John Males as serving in Pirton and Holwell Homeguard.
Additional Information
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission
Acknowledgments
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission, Gillian Bethell (Great Niece)
