Catalogue description Letters and papers of Lt.-Col. John Alexander, R.E

presented by Dr. M. Clough, 2 Sherborne Road, Chichester, July 1975.

John Howard Alexander was born in Dublin in 1880. He started work in a draper's shop, a job he seemed to dislike, and which he tried to forget in later life. He left the shop to join the Imperial Irish Yeomanry, with whom he served in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902. On leaving the army, he eventually found a position as an inspector of buildings for the Zululand Railway, when this line was completed in 1903, he moved firstly to the Natal Government Railway, then to the Public Works Department of Natal. He stayed with the Public Works Department from 1903 to 1910, with the exception of the years 1906-1907 when he joined the Army to fight against the Zulu Rebellion. In 1910 he joined the Dundee Coal CO as assistant engineer. In 1911 he began to make the arrangements for the setting up of a farm of his own, but unfortunately he had only been established on the farm for a short time when the 1st World War brought him back into the army again. The war took him through Africa, to Egypt, Palestine and Turkey, and he was awarded the D.S.O. and the M.C. From the signing of the Armistice until 1920, he was Military Director of the Baghdad Railways. On leaving the army he became resident engineer for British Thomson Houston CO, and then in 1923 their head representative on the contract for the electrification of the Natal Railways. In 1924 he was compelled to return to England for family reasons, and found it very difficult to obtain employment in his specialised field. He therefore undertook various positions as Golf Club secretary until 1933 when he was put in as manager of a margarine and cheese factory in Mitcham in an attempt to save it from bankruptcy.

Unfortunately the chief debenture holder died, and his executors foreclosed, and in 1935 Lt.Col. Alexander was once more seeking employment. It is to this period that the final group of letters belong.

Lt.Col. Alexander married in 1934 Miss Francis Marie Callow.

Lt.Col.Alexander was a very keen amateur photographer and a considerable number of photographs taken in South Africa, and while on active service in the Near East, are now in the photographic collection of W.S.R.O.