Name
John (Jack)
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
NA
Biography
Jack’s great niece, Rose Agnew, provided much of the following information and confirmed that Jack Lawrence was sometimes known as John.
Jack was born in Hitchin and baptised at St. Mary's Church (Hitchin) on August 10th 1893. He was the second of eight children born to George and Kate Lawrence (née Hill), four of whom were Lucy (b c1892), Jack (b c1894), George (b c1897) and William (b c1900). He grew up at 9 Russell Slip in Hitchin. His sister (Lucy?) died at about eleven years old, having contracted lockjaw (tetanus) while picking blackberries.
Jack married Violet Abbiss, a Pirton girl, on December 27th 1915, the same day as Frederick William Brooks (another Pirton Soldier) married Annie Priscilla Carter. Violet was a younger sister of the Frank Abbiss who died in the war, and who is listed on the Village War Memorial. Jack’s brothers George and William also fought. George, the grandfather of Rose, lost a lung after being gassed with mustard-gas in the trenches at Ypres, and she remembers the hacking cough it left him with for the rest of his life. William died just two weeks before the Armistice, in what must have been one of the last battles of the war, during the taking of Heestert in Belgium. Neither man had a direct connection to Pirton.
Jack was wounded in the leg during the war, which resulted in its amputation. Following the war, as with so many injured men, he was given training as a cobbler. He trained at the Bedfordshire Disability Centre, and then repaired boots and shoes from his tin shed on Village Green, also known as Chipping Green and situated near to Great Green. His skills not only earned a living, but when Rose’s father was born with rickets, which could well have crippled him for life, Uncle Jack fashioned the leg irons that enabled him to walk. He went on to work as a postman for many years.
Jack and Violet had two sons Brian and Geoff.
Jack also features in Joy Franklin’s book – Memories of Old Joys. Joy wrote; ‘Jack Lawrence, the local shoe mender, lost a leg in the First World War and rode a bicycle with one fixed pedal which intrigued me very much, but he sometimes walked to his little tin shop situated on the village green. People used to congregate in this little shop for a chat and the children were just as welcome as were their elders, providing they behaved themselves. He would hammer nails into heels and soles with a mouthful of nails for supply. I always hoped he would not swallow any of them and I never heard that he did. He used the expression 'Oh! Lor’.’ a lot and because of that some of us used to refer to him as ‘Oh! Lor’.’
Parish and census records provide no further information, except that he and his wife’s ashes are interred in the Garden of Rest of St. Mary's Church.
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, Rose Agnew
