john medowes hawkes mallandaine + margaret mary fogarty
John was born on 3 June 1882 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, the son of James John Mallandaine and Honora Frost. In 1891, eight year old John was attending a boys preparatory boarding school in Lewisham in south east London. He later joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corp just as his father before him and he served with the 7th Battalion and in April 1902 was promoted to Second Lieutenant.
A note in the London Gazette dated 25 February 1905 advised that Lieutenant Mallandaine had resigned his commission in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and he then disappears from the public records and does not appear again until 1914. The oral family history suggests that he was a ‘remittance man’ which was a term commonly used to describe upper class emigrants who were paid by their families to leave England and settle elsewhere in the British colonies.
By 1914, John had emigrated to Australia and was living in Helena Vale near Perth in Western Australia when he joined the Australian Imperial Force on 7 August, aged 32 years. He listed his occupation as a Tram Conductor and his next of kin as his mother Honora at Olde Court in Torquay, Devon. He was described as 5’9” tall and 138lbs with fair hair, blue eyes and several tattoos — a swan on the front of his chest, a butterfly and snake on his left forearm and a stork and a leaf on his right forearm.
In his application for enlistment, he states that he served in the Kings Royal Rifles for 3 years on a voluntary basis and the oath taken at enlistment included a commitment to serve ‘until the end of the War and a further period of four months after’. He enlisted as a Private and embarked at Gallipoli as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 2 March 1915 but shortly after he was injured at Gallipoli and transferred to a military hospital in Egypt. When he recovered, he returned to active duty and was assigned to the Imperial School of Instruction in Zeitoun, Egypt but while there he contracted Malaria and in 1918 was hospitalised again but his health deteriorated over the next 9 months. His medical records show that he was dangerously ill with pneumonia in December 1918 but recovered and returned to duty at the training school.
After almost 5 years of service, he was demobilized at his own request and discharged with the rank of Sargeant from the Australian Imperial Force on 22 August 1919 in Cairo, Egypt. In a letter to the Adjutant of the AIF, John requested his discharge as he intended to go into business in Cairo but there were no details regarding the nature of his intended business venture. He also noted that his sister ‘was coming from France to meet me here as soon as it is possible for her to travel’ and his discharge application also contained additional information on his financial situation: ‘I have four thousand pounds inheritance in the National Bank here and another five thousand on the way.’
A month after his discharge, John married Margaret Mary Smith in Cairo and a notice of their marriage was later published in Perth in the West Australian newspaper on 14 November 1919:
Mallandaine - Smith on 27 September at St Mark’s Catholic Church, SHOUBRA, CAIRO, John Mallandaine son of the late Captain John Mallandaine K.R.R, to Margaret Mary daughter of Mrs. B. Fogarty; late 117 Harold Street, Highgate Hill, PERTH.
Address - Villa Carbonaro, ZETOUN, EGYPT
Margaret was born in 1881 in the South East district of South Australia, the daughter of Patrick Fogarty and Bridget Dineen. Patrick was born in Conahy, County Kilkenny about 1832, the son of Thomas Fogarty and Anne Nolan, and he emigrated to Australia and initially settled in Belfast, Victoria before moving to Western Australia. He married Bridget Dineen in 1857 and they had nine children. Margaret, or Min as she was known, married Walter John Smith in West Australia and had one daughter but Walter died in Perth on 21 October 1910.
John and Margaret returned to Australia in the 1920’s and first settled in Victoria before moving to Mannum in South Australia and finally Perth in Western Australia. John and Margaret appear in the 1925 Electoral Roll at 243 Albany Road in Victoria Park, now a suburb of Perth and his occupation was listed as saloon keeper while Margaret’s was home duties. They were still in Victoria Park ten years later but had moved to 57 Mackie Street however the entry in the Electoral Roll of 1936 does not list occupations for either John or Margaret.
John died on 31 October 1945 in Victoria Park and was buried at the Karakatta Cemetery in Perth. His headstone reads:
John MALLANDAINE
Beloved husband of Margaret Mary
Died 31st Oct 1945
Late 3rd Brigade 11th BATT WA 1914-1919
Margaret died, aged 86, on 5 April 1967 at Lathlain in Perth, West Australia and she was buried next to her husband at the Karakatta Cemetery.