John Adderley
Private 16866 7
th
Battalion. North Staffordshire Regiment
Died of wounds Saturday 15
th
April 1916 age 37
Buried Amara War Cemetery, Iraq
John Thomas Adderley was born in 1879 in Doley and christened with his youngest
sister, Fanny, on the 4
th
February 1888. His mother, Esther Adderley (born at Broadhill)
worked as a charwoman. She never married although she did have five known children:
William, Sarah Ann (named after Esther’s mother Ann who died in 1873), Lucy, John and
Fanny.
Sarah Ann Adderley married Herbert Kibble in 1870 and lived on Audmore Lane.
In 1881 John Adderley was two years old and living with his mother and sisters at the
Hollies. Ten years later he was a farm labourer working for William Griffiths at the Fountain
Inn (next to old doctors surgery).
On 31
st
December 1900 John Adderley married Hannah Elizabeth Evans in Ranton
(John’s mother had moved and was living there in 1901) however the couple moved first to
Shugborough, then Stone and then to Elford near Tamworth. Three children were born in
each place: Elizabeth Hannah on the 17
th
February 1904; John, on the 23
rd
April 1905 and,
Edith Mary on the 20
th
January 1915.
In 1911 they were living in four rooms at
Mill Cottages, Elford, Tamworth where
John was a Farm Labourer but by then
two of their children had died.
John (senior) joined the North Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales) 7
th
Bn. at Lichfield,
on the 15
th
February 1915. At the time he was described as a farm labourer, being 36
years and 7 months old, with sound lungs and excellent vision.
His Service Statement is brief: three postings (and a possible furlough that was cancelled)
and then: “Gunshot Wound. Dangerously ill”. “Died of Wounds; Killed in Action 15.4.16”.
On the 23
rd
May 1917 the Officer in Charge of Infantry at Lichfield received a
memorandum directing him to despatch any items of personal property belong to John to
his wife Hannah in Tamworth. Hannah died on November 6
th
1918 in Elford near
Tamworth. Her eldest daughter Elizabeth Hannah was still living with her; John junior was
in Freasley Green near Tamworth and Edith Mary (still only four years old) was being
looked after by William Evans at 762 Kingsbury Road, Tyburn, Erdington, Birmingham.
John Adderley’s mother Esther was 73 by then and still living in Ranton, as was his
youngest sister Fanny. His older brother William (50) was living at 2 Bridge Street in
Newton Heath, Manchester and married sister Sarah Ann was still living in Gnosall. This
‘blood relative’ information was required by the Army to ascertain War pay and or pension
rights and was provided by John’s eldest daughter Elizabeth Hannah and witnessed by the
local priest at Elford Rectory on the third of May 1919.
AMARA WAR CEMETERY, IRAQ
Amara was occupied by the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force on 3 June 1915 and it
immediately became a hospital centre. The accommodation for medical units on both
banks of the Tigris was greatly increased during 1916 and in April 1917, seven general
hospitals and some smaller units were stationed there.
Amara War Cemetery contains 4,621 burials of the First World War, more than 3,000 of
which were brought into the cemetery after the Armistice. 925 of the graves are
unidentified. In 1933, all of the headstones were removed from this cemetery when it was
discovered that salts in the soil were causing them to deteriorate. Instead a screen wall
was erected with the names of those buried in the cemetery engraved upon it. Plot XXV is
a Collective Grave, the individual burial places within this are not known.
Note:
The cemetery was destroyed during the Iraq war and will be rebuilt by the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission once the current climate of political
instability improves.