John Thomas Mound
Nov 18, 2024
Just in time for Remembrance weekend the OFA received biographical notes on John Thomas Mound (1879-1915) who died in WW1. Please visit the Archive section and search using keyword 'Army / Navy / Air Force' for full details.John Thomas Mound came from working class stock. His father was born near Bridgnorth in Shropshire, but by 1871 was living in Kingswinford, working as a colliery labourer. John’s mother hailed from the nearby Kinver. However, sometime before the 1881 Census John’s mother and father moved to Salford (where the father worked as a carter) and it was there that John T was born in 1879.By 1891, John (then aged 12) was at Old Swinford Hospital School, presumably on the strength of his parents’ local connections and the judgement that he came from a “poor but honest” family. In 1899, John joined Great Western Railway at Stourbridge. The 1901 Census show him employed as a labourer. By 1911 he had moved on to be a “Signal lineman”; by then he had married and was living with his wife and the first three of their children in Stratford upon Avon. It was from there in 1914 that he joined the Army, probably as a volunteer.