2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lowland Field Company, Royal Engineers.
Killed in action Sunday 9th May 1915, age 23.
Remembered on the Le Touret Memorial, France.
Former student of Mechanical Engineering.
John was born on 18th May 1891 at Cheadle Hulme. He was the eldest son of John Wilson and of Moss Side, Manchester. Educated at Ducie Avenue and Central High School he entered the University of Manchester in 1907 to study Mechanical Engineering and received a BSc. Technology Honours Division in that subject in 1910.
After his studies John worked in the Glasgow area for Gibbs and Hogg, a engineering company in Airdrie, and Murray and Paterson Ltd., an iron and steel works in Coatbridge. In 1912 he spent a year as Chief Assistant to Professor Andrew Jamieson, whose obituary he read at the January 1913 meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. At the outbreak of war John was an assistant engineer with A.E.G. Electric Company Ltd. He was an associate member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
From November 1908 to June 1911 John was a member of the University of Manchester Officer Training Corps. In October 1914 he obtained a commission in the Lowland Division of the Engineers and went to France in January 1915. In late April that year he visited Manchester on leave and 4 days after his return to the front he was killed, shortly before his 24th Birthday. Effects of £646 16s. 13d. were left to his father who was at the time a bank manager.