Bishopwearmouth Cemetery
Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
John Proctor Urwin was born on 6th December 1877 in Winlaton, and his middle name was the maiden name of his mother Sarah. Father Thomas was a Blaydon born an iron manufacturer who owned Blaydon Forge employing 27 men and 3 boys, and the 1881 census shows that the family of two boys, Walter the oldest and John, and five girls, Lucy, Edith Jane, Annie, Mary and Gertrude, lived with their parents at 63 Gloucester Terrace, Elswick. Ten years later the family had grown with the addition of Mildred, Hilda, Thomas and Sarah; all the children apart from Gertrude were born in Gateshead.
On 29th April 1893 father Thomas had just taken his seat on train in Newcastle Central Station to travel to Blaydon when he was taken ill and died shortly after in a waiting room from a long standing heart complaint. Sarah started a confectionery business, which she ran with the help of her younger daughters Mary and Mildred whilst John was working as a bookkeeper and clerk for a local ironmonger. Sarah died on Christmas Day 1907 leaving John as executor of her will.
By 1909 John was living alone in Wingrove Road, Newcastle but remained friends with Annie Morris Kelly who worked with her mother as a confectioner in Hendon Road, Sunderland.
May 1912 saw John arriving in Quebec on board the SS Empress of Britain with the intention of heading west to Alberta, where he hoped to find work as a bookkeeper. He was followed by Annie Kelly who arrived in Montreal on 27th September making her way to Edmonton where the couple were married later that year.
Naming his brother Walter then living in New Zealand as his next of kin, on 5th January 1915 John enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Edmonton, becoming Private 432272 of “B” Company, 49th Battalion, and five months later he arrived in England with the rest of the Battalion to be based at camp at Shorncliffe, Kent. Declined for front line service because of problems with his hearing, from January 1916 he was attached to the Canadian Army Pay Corps based in London, and remained on permanent base duty throughout the rest of his service, and latterly was attached to the Chief Paymaster’s Office, Overseas Ministry for the Forces of Canada.
Admitted to Orpington Military Hospital at the end of June 1919 with an initial diagnosis of gastritis, by 13th August he was listed as seriously ill with a brain tumour, and he died at Tooting Military Hospital having been transferred to their surgical unit, on 9th September 1919.
John Urwin’s funeral was held at Trinity and St. James’ Church, Sunderland followed by burial at Bishopwearmouth Cemetery.
Annie returned to England almost immediately after John’s enlistment in 1915, and found lodgings firstly in Folkestone and then in London. She never returned to Canada, but returned to live with her mother in Hendon Road, Sunderland, where she died in 1970.
John Proctor Urwin is remembered in Sunderland on S140.048 part 9, page 201.
In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance.
Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Urwin