Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

The son of Scottish oil merchant James and his Newcastle born wife Mary Maud (nee Bell) Arnott who had married in Tynemouth in 1876, John Herbert was born on 8th April 1880 and was baptised a month later; he was their third child. All the children were born in Longbenton, James in 1877 and Gertrude two years later. By 1891 the family had moved to live in Eslington Terrace, Jesmond and had grown with the birth of Charles and Stanley; at this time Mary’s widowed mother was also living with them. Their youngest child, Mabel, was born a year later. By 1901 twenty-year-old John was working as a ship owner’s clerk on Sandhill, Newcastle.

On 4th September 1907 John married Scottish born Jane Harriet Archibald, daughter of Councillor G.G. Archibald, in Westmorland Road Presbyterian Church, Newcastle, after which the couple travelled to Scotland for their honeymoon, and on their return moved to live in Hawthorn Road, Gosforth.

At the end February 1911 John and Jane, along with their one-year-old son James Archibald, arrived in Canada, having sailed from Liverpool on the SS Megantic. Two months later shipbroker James and his family were living in Vancouver. Five years later, in January 1916, the family sailed from New York to Liverpool returning to John’s now widowed mother on Eslington Terrace; on 3rd May only John returned to Canada, leaving Jane and James now living with her parents on Rye Hill.

Back in Canada John settled his affairs and moved into the St. Francis Hotel, Vancouver before enlisting with the CEF on 6th October 1916 and a posting as Gunner 339349 to 68th Depot Battery, Canadian Field Artillery. Just before Christmas he sailed with the 9th Reinforcing Draft aboard the SS Olympic into Liverpool and a posting to the CFA Reserve Brigade at Shorncliffe, Kent. Attached to the Brigade Ammunition Detail in March 1917, he was posted to the Artillery Pool in France and attached to 1st Army Service Corps Park in charge of ammunition. He remained in that post, apart from four moths with 4th Divisional Ammunition Column in the summer of 1918, until January 1919 when he was diagnosed with synovitis in his left knee and invalided to hospital in England.

After treatment at hospital in Southampton and two weeks' convalescence at Epsom John Arnott was discharged from the CEF in London on 28th February 1919, and returned to his family in Newcastle. His service record indicates that in 1922 his service medals were forwarded to an address in Birmingham.

John didn’t return to Canada until December 1923, and his Ocean Arrival Declaration indicated that he would probably be remaining in Canada, but three months later he returned to England giving an address in Victoria Square, Newcastle and indicating that he intended to stay. But just three weeks later he was aboard the SS Montclare sailing from Newcastle on Tyne to Canada, and then onward to Vancouver.

By 1931 John and Jane were divorced and she remained in Newcastle running a lodging house in Eskdale Terrace for local council officials. She died, a single woman, in Newcastle in July 1954, leaving over £10,000 to their son James.

John lived the rest of his life in Vancouver, an accountant with the Canadian National Railway. Retiring in 1952 he lived at West 15th Avenue with his sister Mary and died from heart failure in Shaughnessy Hospital on 4th January 1958, and was cremated four days later.

John Herbert Arnott is remembered in Newcastle upon Tyne on NUT159