BORN COTTINGHAM 1897. LIVED IN HULL AT THIS ADDRESS. SON OF ABEL & ELIZA ARCHBUTT, COTTINGHAM. ORIGINAL HULL PAL. DOW. ERRAND BOY. CENSUS PHOTO.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE JOHN HENRY ARCHBUTT 10/1441. Born in Cottingham in 1896, John was the youngest of three children and only son of Abel and Eliza Archbutt, of Cottingham. John never knew his father. Abel Archbutt died when his son was still a baby, and Eliza married Ernest Hudson in April 1903. The family lived at 9 Beech Grove, Princes Road, Hull. John worked as a errand boy and Fish Merchant before the war and was too young initially, but enlisted on his 19th birthday. He was severely wounded on 30th June 1916 and evacuated to 35th Casualty Clearing Station with severe shrapnel wounds over a third of his body. He didn’t last the day. John Henry Archbutt is buried in Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No.1; he was 20 years old.
The official battalion history says of that day:
“Enemy artillery fairly quiet. Trench mortars active.”
