| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
John William Maude was born in Leeds on 14 Jul 1879. Instead of staying with his widowed-mother Susan and his sister Annie he moved to Beverley and was brought up by his relatives, the Bielby family. He enlisted in the Royal Navy on his eighteenth birthday in 1897. His papers indicate that he had been working as a “shipbuilder’s labourer”.
John had two spells in the Royal Navy. He was based at HMS Pembroke at Chatham, Kent and rose to be a Petty Officer in 1906 and then became Petty Officer 1st Class in 1908. He left the navy in Jul 1909 having served on many ships such as HMS Empress of India and HMS Blenheim. He then joined the Naval Reserve (Royal Fleet Reserve) and on the outbreak of war in Aug 1914 he was recalled for service. Again he spent time on many ships, including the cruiser, HMS Lancaster, and HMS Euryalus, possibly in the Far East. He left the navy in 1919 and spent three years in the Merchant Navy as an able-bodied seaman. In later life he was to work as a mate on a keel. In 1922 he was awarded the Royal Navy Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. He had also won the Royal Humane Society’s testimonial for the rescue of a royal prince from the sea in Sardinia in 1904.
In Dec 1909 John married Harriet Grindall , daughter of George Grindall, a grocer of Mill Lane who also had a four acre market garden. John and Harriet had four children. John E died at the age of thirteen months in Sep 1911 and was buried at St Mary’s, Beverley. Daughter, Beatrice, born a month before in Aug 1911. Cyril was born in Jul 1913 and Brenda in Oct 1922. The family home was Morton Lane, later 38 Norwood Far Grove and then 10 Mill Lane. Cyril became an aircraft fitter and died in Hull in 1975, Beatrice married Maurice M Cowling in Beverley in 1936 and moved to Bridlington. Brenda married Charles W Green, a milkman, in 1944 and they continued to live with her parents at Mill Lane for some time afterwards.
John died in Beverley in 1968. His wife predeceased him in 1942. Today he is remembered on the Norwood Street Shrine.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |