Name: John William Enwright
Rank: Private (Rifleman)
Unit/Regiment: 1/8th Battalion (Leeds Rifles), The Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire Regiment)
Service Number: 27610
Date of Death: 27 September 1918
Cemetery: Noyelles-Sur-L’Escaut Communal Cemetery Extension, Nord, France
John William Enwright (or Enright as he is recorded on the St Mary’s War Memorial) was born in the Carlinghow area of Batley on 12 February 1892. Baptised at Batley St Mary’s at the end of that month, he was the eldest of Thomas and Mary Ann Enwright’s three children.
Card cleaner Thomas Enwright, from Heckmondwike, married woollen weaver Mary Ann Kelly from March, Cambrigdegshire, at St Mary’s two years earlier. Their married life was spent in the Carlinghow area, in the Woolers Buildings/Coal Pit Lane/Back Coal Pit Lane locality.
Revised: 1915, Published: 1922 showing Back Coal Pit Lane – Re-use: CC-BY (NLS)
In addition to John William, the couple had two daughters. Mary Ellen was born in February 1894, and Margaret Ann in May 1897.
Educated at St Mary’s school, by the time of the 1911 census, 19 year-old John was working as a piecer in a woollen mill, a calling several parishioners in the textile town of Batley followed.
A Dictionary of Occupational Terms describing 1921 census jobs explains the work as follows:
Piecer, piecener; mule piecer, spinner’s piecer, spinning piecer, spinning mule piecer, spinning mill piecer; pieces, or joins together, by hand, threads broken in spinning; keeps mule clear of waste; sometimes adjusts temper weights, collects full cops of yarn from spindles, and assists spinner q.v. generally.1
More information about the role of a piecer can be read here.
His later employers included Messrs John Blackburn, Old Mill, Batley, where he worked in the rag warehouse.2
Outside of work he was at one time associated with the local Carlinghow Working Men’s Club, although he is not listed on their War Memorial.3
He married Carrie Marshall in May 1914 at St Patrick’s, Heckmondwike. This Catholic parish subsequently changed names to the Holy Spirit. The couple went on to have two children. Eldest son Francis was born in Heckmondwike that October. Their other son, Thomas, was born in May 1916, by which time the family were living in the Skelsey Row area of Batley, a location favoured by Batley’s Catholic community. By 1917 the family address was in Tillotson Street, a short distance from St Mary’s church.
Revised: 1915, Published: 1922 showing Tillotson Street – Re-use: CC-BY (NLS)
John enlisted in June 1916, and according to one set of records he was initially with the King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry), serving as Private 30774.4 The image attributed to him (below) does seems to indicate that Regiment’s cap badge.
He subsequently transferred to the 1/8th (Leeds Rifles) Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment which, by the end of January 1918, was renumbered the 8th Battalion. He served as a Private (or Rifleman, given his Leeds Rifles battalion connection).
Some sources indicated he went to Malta that November 1916.5 But by the summer of 1917 John was in France. In October that year Carrie received a field card informing her John was wounded and in hospital.
He recovered and returned to the Western Front once more. But almost exactly a year later Carrie received the official news that John had been killed in action in France, on 27 September 1918.
This was the opening day of the Battle of the Canal du Nord, one of the phases in the Battle of the Hindenburg Line. The Hindenburg Line – the last and strongest of the German Army’s defensive lines – consisted of three well-defended trench systems. It was hoped that by attacking and clearing the Hindenburg Line, the power of the German army would finally be broken, and it would ultimately lead to a succesful conclusion of the war.
At 6.15am on 27 September 1918 John’s Battalion began to cross the Canal du Nord. By 7.30am they were on the eastern bank awaiting orders to advance. Ahead of them fierce fighting was going on all along the front, the Germans desperately trying to hold their positions.
At 8.15am enemy guns swept the area with heavy shell-fire just as the West Yorkshire’s began to move off, inflicting 20 casualties at the start of their advance. Strafed by machine-gun fire they pushed on, progressing slowly down the network of captured trenches.
The gallant West Yorkshiremen then made what was described as a brilliant attempt to capture Marcoing, with ‘A’ Company leading the way and reaching the western outskirts, in the face of heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, and raked by field-guns firing over open sights. But ‘A’ company, reduced to only 18 other ranks, now faced annihilation so withdrew.
Meanwhile ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies were drawn off the correct advance line, and towards heavy machine-gun fire from Premy Chapel (which the Guards Division had not captured as planned), and Nine Wood. Despite losing all their officers, discipline was maintained. But their situation was desperate. The enemy had worked their way round their left flank, cutting them off from the rear. They sustained heavy casualties, with those surviving being captured.
By 4pm, ‘D’ Company, who had been in reserve, were called into action to consolidate and successfully push on with clearing a German-held trench. But the day had been costly for the Yorkshiremen.
Re-use: CC-BY (NLS).
The Regiment’s official history goes on to say:
When the morning of 28th dawned the 8th West Yorkshire’s were but a remnant. They had lost eleven officers and 341 other ranks, and although their capture numbered fifteen field guns, nine machine-guns and many prisoners (one a batch of seventy brought in by a solitary wounded man of “C” Company), the plight of the battalion was pitiable…6
I have found no information indicating in which Company John served that day, but this was the action in which he perished. He is buried in the Noyelles-Sur-L’Escaut Communal Cemetery Extension in the Nord Department, France.
John was awarded the Victory Medal and British War Medal. In addition to St Mary’s, he is also remembered on the Batley War Memorial and the War Memorial housed in St John’s C. of E. church, Carlinghow.
In the 1921 census the widowed Carrie Enwright was still living at Tillotson Street with her two young sons, and working as a woollen cloth weaver at Brooke Wilford’s Carlinghow Mills. She remarried in 1925.
Postscript:
Finally a big thank you for the donations already received to keep this website going. They really do help.
The website has always been free to use, but it does cost me money to operate. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to consider if I can continue to afford to keep running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading this post (along with the hundreds of others), and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
Footnotes:
1. A Dictionary of Occupational Terms: Ministry of Labour. Based on the Classification of Occupations Used in the Census of POPULATION, 1921. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1927.
2. Batley Reporter & Guardian, 18 October 1918 & Batley News, 19 October 1918.
3. Ibid, for association with the WMC.
4. Soldiers Died in the Great War is the only source to refer to KOYLI and his service number with them.
5. Batley Reporter & Guardian, 19 October 1917 & Batley Reporter & Guardian, 18 October 1918
6. Wyrall, Everard. The West Yorkshire Regiment in the War, 1914-1918: A History of the 14th, the Prince of Wales’ Own, West Yorkshire Regt.
and of its Special Reserve, Territorial and Service Battns, in the Great War of 1914-1918. Vol II. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head,
1924.
Other Sources:
• Batley Cemetery Burial Registers.
• Censuses, England and Wales, 1891- 1921.
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
• GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.
• Long, Long Trail, https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/.
• Medal Award Rolls.
• Medal Index Card.
• National Library of Scotland Maps.
• Parish Registers – various.
• Pension Record Cards and Ledgers, Western Front Association;
• Soldiers’ Effects Registers.
• Unit War Diary, 8th Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment, The National Archives, Ref: WO95-3083-1
PastToPresentGenealogy 