Carole Fife has provided the following.
John was born in Bedlington on 28th October 1888, and was baptised at St Bede's Church on 9th December 1888, the eldest child of William and Sarah Jane, but his father died when he was young and his mother re-married in 1899 to Robert Bell. In the 1891 and 1901 censuses, when he was living with his maternal Percy grandparents, only his initials were given with his surname (a rare occurrence). It is only on the 1911 census, when the Bell family was living at Whitley Terrace in Bedlington Station, that his name is given as John William. Like his grandfather, and probably his father, John went to work down the pit, and in 1911 he was a hewer. In 1914 he married Mary Dunn, and in the following year they had a son named William. He enlisted in the 22nd Northumberland Fusiliers, but at the time of his death was serving with 20th Battalion. He died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and is one of the many whose body was never found or identified.
He is remembered in Bedlington Station on B163.04 and at Bedlington on B15.06
