I've spelled John's name as it appears in the birth records on the Scotland's People website. Various sources spell his surname "Macbeth", spell Gilmore as "Gilmour" and use 0, 1 or 2 middle names.
I'm indebted to members of The Great War Forum in their help with aspects of John's military service.
John was born on 12th February 1883 at Dervaig on the Isle of Mull.
His father, John Gilmore McBeth was a teacher. His mother was Betsy Gilmore Beaton and he had older siblings Malcolm, James and Jessie. They lived at the school in Dervaig, shown here on a map from 1877:
and here is the house today:
This undated photo shows the village with the school house roof in the foreground:
In the 1891 Census the family was at Dalvourn School, south of inverness:
It's not as easy to spot the school house here, but the Census return puts it next the church and the manse:
The church is now the Farr Free Church of Scotland, and the likely manse and possible school house are a few yards further south:
By the 1901 survey the family was still here and John's sister, Jessie, was an assistant teacher. John, aged 18, was described as a "Student in Arts".
The next glimpse we have of John is in 1910 when, on the 4th July, he married Isabella (Isabel) Dawson MacLean, aged 23, daughter of Lachlan Black MacLean, a master mariner. John was living at 6 Barrington Drive in Glasgow (just off Great Western Road on the city side of Kelvinbridge) and gave his occupation as teacher of mathematics.
Their first child was a girl, Eileen May McBeth, born on 3rd May 1913 at 11 Montague Street, which is the next street to Barrington Street, moving closer to Kelvinbridge.
Around this time they moved to 37 Maxwell Avenue in the Westerton area of Bearsden, which would have had quite a rural feel to it:
These were brand new houses, finished around the middle of 1913 (for more information including the garden suburb partnership, click here):
John and Isabella moved into a house very similar to one of these (possibly even the one on the right).
View south down Maxwell Avenue around 1913
John was now a maths teacher at Glasgow Academy and was active in the Officer Training Corps at the school.
War broke out in August 1914 and I imagine the Office Training Corps took up a lot of John's time. Not that he would have had much because on 23rd May 1915, a son was born, Lachlan Ian McBeth.
As the volunteer army expanded officers would have been needed and, just before Christmas 1915 (on the last day of term?), John proposed he join the 3rd/5th Highland Light infantry in this handwritten letter:
This required a letter from Glasgow Academy saying that his departure would not adversely affect teaching or the running of the OTC:
So John was commissioned a Second Lieutenant (the most junior grade of officer) and trained with the army during 1916. Documents then show him being sent to Alexandria in Egypt and sailing there from Marseilles between 28th December 1916 and 12th January 1917:
If you can read the handwriting you might be able to make out that he disembarked in Alexandria "ex Kalyan from Suda Bay ex Ivernia", in other words he did not arrive on the Ivernia. No big surprise, you might think, he changed ships - except that on 1st January 1917, five days out from Marseilles the Ivernia was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine near Greece. Considering there were 2400 troops on board, the loss of 84 was comparatively light but as the ship went down quite quickly it must have been a traumatic experience.
When John arrived in Egypt, he found he had been transferred from his intended battalion, 1st/5th HLI, to 1st/5th Royal Scots. The Middle East was not a priority for replacements so a shortage of officers in one battalion may have required balancing by 'borrowing' officers from another battalion. The transfer does not reflect on John's abilities.
Britain's war with Turkey is mainly remembered today in the single word "Gallipoli" but the Ottoman Empire extended into modern day Palestine. To protect the Suez Canal and in pursuit of a morale-boosting victory the British attacked from the Nile delta eastwards across Sinai.
I have not attempted a precis of the campaign (interested readers can find more by clicking here for a quick version and here for a more detailed version). However, John was killed during what is known as the Second Battle of Gaza.
This is the clearest map of the battle I can find copied from a website commemorating troops from Norfolk (click here) so the red arrows denote their attack.
I haven't found a detailed account at the battalion level but the initial attack made some progress, then required a retreat and at some point John was noted to be missing. Over a year later, when Glasgow Academy prepared a Roll of Honour for ex-pupils and teachers killed, wounded and receiving gallantry awards, John was still listed as missing. All we can say for certain is that he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Jerusalem Memorial to the troops of the Allied forces killed in the region in World War One with no known grave:
and from the CWGC website, the plans for the part of the memorial where John's name is listed:
Isabella was left with two young children and turned to her younger sister Janet (Nettie) Black McLean who had married James Archibald Andrew in 1915 (both were teachers). James had been a soldier in the war as well, but was wounded and discharged with a description of "general debilitation". In the 1921 Census Isabel was a visitor at James and Nettie's house, 14 Loudon Terrace in the west end of Glasgow, the turn off of Byres Road that leads to Observatory Road.
This is/was a substantial property with 14 rooms according to the Census, and only seven persons living in it. Another woman recorded living there was Marjorie Niven, also a teacher and a widow, so we could imagine the two widows (Isabella and Marjorie) and Nettie, wife of a badly wounded soldier finding some mutual support and understanding. By 1926 Isabella was resident at the property with James and Nettie, who do not appear to have had any children.
In August of that year, Isabella paid a visit to Kilmelfort on the coast in Argyllshire, just south of Oban. While resident in a house called Tigh Na Mara, she died (seemingly suddenly) of an intestinal obstruction, aged 40. The children were orphaned ages 13 and 11.
Appendix: The McLean's, Isabel's family
I would usually do limited research on the spouse of someone I was profiling but in this case there were added motives - Isabel turning to her sister after John's death, the possibility that (some of) the McLeans had lived near Dalvourn where John grew up (could they have been childhood sweethearts?) and understanding where Alastair MacLean, the novelist from the 1950s and 1960s, fitted in.
Isabel's parents were Lachlan Black McLean (b 1852), a master mariner, and Mary McVean (b 1857). They married in 1883 and had four children:
Alexander (Alistair) born 1885, married Mary Lamont in 1916, children Lachlan (who died very young while a medical student), Ian, Alastair the future novelist, and Gillespie. Alexander was a reverend in Shettleston and conducted the ceremony for his sister Janet's wedding. After this the family moved to Daviot, just south of Inverness and a few miles from Davourn where his brother-in-law, John McBeth, grew up (it is marked on the map of the area earlier in this post). Alistair died in 1936, aged 51.
Isabella (Isabel) born 1886, who's story is recounted above.
Janet (Nettie) born 1888 who became a teacher where she (presumably) met James Archibald Andrew and married him in 1915. She gave a home to her widowed older sister and was named in Isabel's probate as the guardian of her nephew and niece.
Donald, born 1890.
Their mother, Mary, died in 1891, aged 34. Their father was difficult to trace, but on marriage records he was alive at the time of Isabel's wedding in 1910 but had died by the time of Nettie's wedding late in 1915. On Isabel's wedding record he is also called Lachlan Black Mclean and with this information we can see he died in 1915 while a visitor at a house in Pollokshields on the southside of Glasgow. His home address was in Kilmelfort, where Isabel died 11 years later.
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