Captain. 2nd/7th Manchester Regiment.
Killed 21st March 1918, age 29.
Remembered on the Pozieres Memorial, France.
Former member of the University Officer Training Corps.
John was born in 1888 at Heaton Moor. He was the son of William, a Justice of the Peace, and Florence Fannie Brown. He attended Buxton College and The Leys, Cambridge where he was a prefect and a Cadet Sergeant and played football and lacrosse. He served for a time with the Middlesex Yeomanry. At the outbreak of war he was a director of Affleck and Brown, a drapery business on Oldham Street, Manchester.
John enlisted with the Sherwood Foresters in Nottingham in September 1914 and a few weeks later transferred to the Lincolnshire Regiment. From February to May 1915 he is noted by the University Roll of Service as being a member of the University Officer Training Corps. He then gained a commission with the Manchester Regiment and at some time during his service was awarded a Military Medal. He was killed near St. Quentin in March 1918 during the German Spring Offensive and buried by the enemy, but his grave was subsequently lost. He left effects worth £10387 10s 2d to Donald Gray MacGill, a medical practitioner, and Arthur Matthews, an engineer.