Major John Charles Edward DOUGLAS (1895)

10th (Service) Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment
Born 12 September 1876 in Kingsbridge, Devon
Died of wounds received in action 18 December 1915, aged 39
Buried at Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension, France; also commemorated on the Gray’s Inn war memorial, London, the Radley College war memorial, and on the Shanghai Race Club war memorial, China.

John Douglas was the son of Admiral Sir Archibald Lucius Douglas, GCB, GCVO, and Lady Douglas, née Constance Ellen Hawkes.

He was educated at Radley College and matriculated at Merton in 1895, taking an Honours degree in Jurisprudence four years later.

He was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn on 27 June 1900, and before the war worked as a barrister, coroner, and acting judge in Shanghai and Singapore. He wrote a biography of his father, which was later published in 1938.

On 16 October 1914, having unsuccessfully tried to witness the Japanese capture of the German colony at Tsingtau (Qingdao), Douglas boarded the SS Suwa Maru, making its maiden voyage from Yokohama to London, one of 110 men under the command of Captain Alan Hilton-Johnson who were heading to England to join Lord Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ of civilian volunteers.

Arriving in England, he joined the Yorkshire Regiment, and after training was sent to the Western Front, seeing service at the Battle of Loos.

He was shot through the neck whilst out inspecting wiring, and died of his wounds on 18 December 1915.