Father’s Profile

New Conscript.

John Finch. Known as Jack to most, born on 1st. June 1916 to John and Dorothy Ann. John was the fourth child of nine living at 104, Derby Street, Ormskirk. John Snr. (John’s father) was a painter and decorator by trade, his mother was a housewife. During the First world war, John Snr. was called up for duty and in one of the bloody battles lost part of his leg to the knee after a bomb explosion, later the rest was amputated he was discharged and eventually returned home. He was then government retrained and became a cobbler but for the meantime kept his job with a painting and decorator firm but later after falling off a ladder at work he made his living by cobbling. The accident during the war had affected him mentally and in later years spent most in a hospital for mentally sick. When he had visitors he would always want to play cards which he could do quite well although wouldn’t know what day or time of day it was. He died in hospital aged 85. John Jnr. had a normal childhood getting up to the usual pranks that boys do, Tony his brother in law, said he had to take John home on more than one occasion the worse for wear, one night taking John home from the Dray and Horses they would toss him over hedges climbing after him and when getting home in Derby Street his mother told them to leave him on the bench by the front door and shut the front door on him. One of Johns brothers Norman used to have a stall on the market selling meat and produce and in December Christmas trees, he used to use an old ambulance as his means of transport and one day he was stopped by the police as blood was seeping from the back doors, the cause being that Norman had shot a pig on the way to the market. At the start of the second world war John was called up for the army and was sent to Durham to join the Durham Light Infantry, Fortunately for John he was not able to go to war as he had flat feet and would not be able to walk the many miles the infantry regiment do. He was stationed permanently on the base and trained other soldiers for combat. He was promoted to Sergeant and received two medals. During the war he married Muriel Asquith on 20^th April 1940, after meeting her on a blind date in a foursome. Muriel stayed with her parents at Lydiate where they had their first child Colin born on 13^th. April 1941 in Ormskirk General Hospital. In 1942 Muriel moved to Wallasey in Cheshire with Jack coming at the end of the war, moving back to Ormskirk in 1951. At this time John was working in a factory at Aintree, Liverpool the ‘British Enka’ making rayon and yarns, with some of the reject yarns John used to make dressing table mats and such. Leaving the factory he started as a farm labourer at George Gittins farm, leaving after several years he worked then in a wood factory and at Vitex fertilisers in Burscough. At home he did all the decorating, grew vegetables to feed the growing family in the back garden, he also kept rabbits, chickens and at Christmas, Geese and Ducks. He enjoyed gardening and had also a couple of green houses in summer full of tomatoes for sale and home use, the tomatoes was a sort of competition between the neighbours to see who had the most and best. Later he changed jobs again and became a ‘Potman’ with an asphalting company, getting to work very early to heat the asphalt in the boiler before the other workers came, he worked travelling around working on the new Liverpool cathedral and also on the first Bristol Channel bridge. Jack enjoyed playing dominoes and was a keen crown green bowler playing for the ‘Comrades of the great war’ club in Ormskirk and at the Windmill hotel in Ormskirk. John died from a heart attack after falling down stairs at home in Whittle drive.

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