Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

James Frederick Harding, known as Jack, enlisted to fight in the First World War at age 41 on 1st September 1915. He had served in the militia voluntarily for 21 years, and no information has survived as to why he did not volunteer for the Boer War as a younger man, instead leaving behind three children to fight in the later war. He sent many postcards to his wife May during his 1916 artillery training in Taunton, Somerset. He wrote in a letter from this time to his 12-year-old son Jack Junior, “I am very happy considering the circumstances”. Little subsequent correspondence from the front has survived: just one affectionate postcard to May mentioning a bomb falling nearby and an illustrated letter to his three-year-old son Norman explaining that the Hun is a howling cur. A 1918 card to Norman from England mentions “great doings” and events for lonely Australian soldiers in London during Tank Week. Jack survived the war uninjured, but was hospitalized in London for bronchitis in 1917 and returned to Australia only in November 1919, presumably because of his late enlistment. The delayed return caused him to be absent for his mother’s death of Spanish Flu in July 1919.
 
Jack was born in Redfern, Sydney in 1874. He had brown hair and eyes and a dark complexion, and grew to 5 feet 9 inches tall.  His mother, Mary Josephine Warren, had been born in Mauritius of a Cornish father and a mother from La Réunion. His father William Harding had been born in Manchester, but his parents soon divorced and his mother married William Browne. In 1899 Jack married Mary (May) Shaw, born in England, and moved to the new suburb of Campsie, where they had three children: Win (Winifred) born 1900, Jack (James Frederick) Junior born 1904 and Norman born 1913. While Jack Senior’s occupation was listed as mail clerk on his enlistment papers, a family photo caption indicates he was a conductor on the tram from Central to Watson’s Bay in 1915. He did not complete an apprenticeship. Jack joined the Campsie volunteer fire brigade when it was established in 1907 and became a freemason.
 
Jack was very religious, as indicated by the crucifix tattooed on his chest and his involvement in church activities. Before his marriage, he had been Superintendent of the Sunday School at St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Surry Hills and he was a lay reader in Canterbury in the first year of his marriage. Later, he acquired the land for St. John’s Anglican Church in Campsie with three other bondsmen and attended the laying of the foundation stone in 1910. He founded the Sunday School and was its superintendent, as a stained-glass window in the church still attests (albeit with his name incorrectly given as John). He attended church in Taunton during his 1916 training, and through church connections visited London and was shown around the major Anglican churches by a minister.
 
His wife May died prematurely at age 51 in December 1927; her long obituary described her as having “for over 28 years devoted the whole of her energies to the benefit and uplift of mankind in general”. Jack’s stepfather and mother-in-law attended the large funeral. Jack travelled to Perth in January 1929 to marry Lily Cary, age 42, who had arrived there by boat from England. According to family lore, she had nursed Jack during the war. In the 1920s (possibly 1928), Jack Senior built a weekender on the Georges River in Revesby/East Hills with his sons Jack Junior (a carpenter) and Norm (probably an apprentice carpenter at the time). In 1929 and presumably also in later years, Jack Senior, Lill, Jack Junior and Jack Junior’s future wife Marge enjoyed boating and swimming at the weekender. If Jack did spend weekends on the river, it suggests he was no longer attending church. Post-war documents list his occupation as “traveller” then “inspector of accounts”.
 
Jack died of heart disease in Campsie in May 1935, aged 61.