John James ‘Jack’ Cadden

1889–1918

Bunbury’s clerk of courts became a mounted military policeman and then traffic control officer of the 1st Australian Division — and, after three years abroad without a wound, died of influenza on leave in London eleven days before the Armistice. His family remembered him as lost ‘in France’.

Sepia studio portrait of a young Australian soldier seated in a cane-backed chair, in service dress and slouch hat with chin strap, with sergeant’s chevrons on his right sleeve. — Jack Cadden as a sergeant of the military police, between his promotion in September 1916 and his commission in October 1917 — the only known photograph of him.

Born: c. 1889 · near Glen Innes, New South Wales
Died: 31 October 1918 · 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth
Trade: Clerk of courts, Bunbury; lieutenant, Anzac Provost Corps
Lived: 29 years

John James Cadden — Jack to his family — was born near Glen Innes in about 1889, the second son of John Mitchell and Annie Cadden.¹ Like his elder brother William he went into the Western Australian public service, and before the war he was clerk of courts at Bunbury, the officer who ran the local court’s office — its summonses, fees and records — living in Picton Crescent.²

He enlisted at Bunbury on 24 July 1915, aged twenty-six: a dark-haired, dark-complexioned, blue-eyed man of five feet eleven, with scars over his right eyebrow and forehead, and a Methodist.¹ On 12 October, the day before he sailed, he made his will, leaving everything in trust for his mother.³

Heliopolis, January 1916

‘Colic, mild’

Jack sailed from Fremantle on the Themistocles on 13 October 1915 with the 5th Reinforcements of the 28th Battalion, too late for Gallipoli. In the night of 2 January 1916, in camp at Heliopolis outside Cairo, he was taken ill with a rigor, a temperature of 103° and a cutting pain in his left side. His parents were cabled that he had been admitted to hospital with ‘colic, mild’.⁴⁵

It was nothing of the kind. His case sheet records pneumonia of the left lung with pleurisy; a fortnight later eighteen ounces of thick fluid were drawn off his chest. He was moved to Ras-el-Tin and then to the British Red Cross hospital in the Khedive’s summer palace at Montazah, and was not back with his battalion until 10 March.⁴⁵

France, 1916 – 1918

Military police and traffic control

The 28th went to France that spring. In July 1916, as the Australians were thrown into Pozières, Jack was attached to 2nd Division Headquarters as a mounted military policeman; by September he was a corporal, then lance sergeant, in the newly formed Anzac Provost Corps — the AIF’s own police, work that suited a man who knew courts and regulations.⁵

In October 1917, in the middle of the Passchendaele offensive, he was commissioned second lieutenant and posted as Traffic Control Officer of the 1st Australian Division — the officer responsible for keeping men, guns and supplies moving along shell-swept roads to the line. He was promoted lieutenant in January 1918 and that month attended the Fourth Army’s Provost School. In September 1917, before the commission, he had made a short field will confirming the one his sister Pearl was keeping for him at home.³⁵

Wandsworth, October 1918

Influenza

On 17 October 1918 Jack went on leave to England. Six days later he was admitted to the 3rd London General Hospital at Wandsworth, and at ten in the morning on 31 October he died there, aged twenty-nine, of influenza and pneumonia, in the deadly autumn wave of the 1918 pandemic. Eleven days later the war ended. He had come through three years abroad without a wound.⁶

He was buried on 7 November 1918 in the Australian section of Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, with a full military funeral: firing party, bugler and pallbearers, the coffin draped with the Australian flag, the Last Post sounded at the graveside and a Methodist army chaplain officiating. No family could be there. His parents chose the words at the foot of his headstone.⁷

White Commonwealth war grave headstone with the Rising Sun badge, reading Lieutenant J. J. Cadden, Anzac Provost Corps, 31st October 1918, age 29, with a cross and the inscription In memory of the dearly loved son of Mr & Mrs Cadden of Perth W.A. — Jack’s headstone at Brookwood Military Cemetery — Plot 4, Row G, Grave 18: ‘In memory of the dearly loved son of Mr & Mrs Cadden of Perth, W.A.’

Victoria Park, 1918 – 1923

What came home

Two of the family step out of Jack’s file in its last pages. A fortnight after his death a ‘G. H. James’ wrote to Base Records from Austral Hall, Hay Street, ‘on behalf of his parents’, asking for the death certificate of ‘the late Lieut. Jack James Cadden’ — George Horace James, who would marry Jack’s sister Edna in 1922. And it was Pearl, still at home, who held his will and answered the army’s letters in 1919, firmly and efficiently, asking only that her brother’s effects be sent to their father.⁸

Three packages reached Victoria Park in August 1919. They held what he had with him on leave — officer’s tunic, Sam Browne belt, pipe and tobacco pouch, razor and brushes — and the kit bag he had left in store in 1917, with letters, a New Testament and a pistol that needed a permit to land. A small sealed envelope held his purse, nine coins and a Masonic badge: Jack was a Freemason.⁹ Probate was granted to his father in January 1919, the estate sworn at £456 18s.³ Over the next four years John Mitchell Cadden signed for everything the Commonwealth sent the families of the dead — his son’s commission, the memorial scroll, the bronze plaque and the three medals.¹⁰

In 1936 his mother’s death notice still remembered him as ‘Jack (deceased, A.I.F., France)’. It was where he had served; it was not where he died.¹¹

The Record

Sources & References

1
Enlistment, 1915

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J, No. 2354 — attestation, Bunbury, 24 July 1915: born near Glen Innes, NSW; 26; civil servant; single; next of kin father, John Mitchell Cadden, Oswald St, Victoria Park; 5 ft 11 in, 152 lb, dark complexion, blue eyes, dark hair, Methodist; scars over right eyebrow and forehead.
2
Clerk of courts, Bunbury

Western Australia Directory (Wise’s), c. 1912–16, p. 448: ‘Cadden Jno. Jas. clerk of courts, Bunbury’ and ‘Cadden John M. cab propr. Oswald st. Vic. Park’.
3
Wills and probate

Two wills, and the grant:
- Will of John James Cadden, ‘formerly of Picton Crescent Bunbury … Civil Servant but now a member of His Majesty’s Forces’, 12 October 1915: all estate to John Mitchell Cadden, orchardist, 29 Oswald Street, Victoria Park, as executor, in trust for ‘my dear mother Annie Cadden’.
- AIF field will (Form 511B), 30 September 1917: confirming the earlier will ‘lodged with Miss Pearl B. Cadden, 29 Oswald Street, Victoria Park’.
- Supreme Court of Western Australia, probate no. 62/19, granted 22 January 1919 to John Mitchell Cadden; no duty payable, death on active service, net estate under £500. Daily News (Perth), 23 January 1919, p. 3: £456 18s.
4
Illness in Egypt, 1916

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — medical case sheet, 1st Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis, 3–17 January 1916 (pneumonia, left base; ‘18 oz of thick fluid drawn off left chest’); cable to J. M. Cadden, 12 January 1916: ‘admitted 1st Australian General Hospital Heliopolis … colic mild’.
5
Service, 1915–1918

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — casualty forms, statement of service and officers’ record:
- Embarked Fremantle per HMAT Themistocles, 13 October 1915; Ras-el-Tin and British Red Cross Hospital, Montazah, February 1916 (pneumonia and pleurisy); rejoined B Company, 28th Battalion, Moascar, 10 March 1916.
- Attached 2nd Division HQ as Mounted Military Police, 9 July 1916; corporal and lance sergeant, 2 September 1916; Anzac Provost Corps from 24 September 1916.
- Second lieutenant, 6 October 1917, under the Assistant Provost Marshal, I Anzac Corps; Traffic Control Officer, 1st Australian Division, 23 October 1917; lieutenant, 6 January 1918; 4th Army Provost School, 25–31 January 1918.
6
Death, 1918

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — Report of Death of an Officer (A.F. B.2090), 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth: died 31 October 1918, cause (1) influenza (2) pneumonia; casualty form, admitted 23 October 1918 on leave from France, died 10 a.m. GRO death index, Dec. qtr 1918: Cadden, John J., 30, Wandsworth, 1d 1446.
7
Burial, 1918

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — AIF burial report: interred 7 November 1918, Australian Military Burial Ground, Brookwood, non-conformist ground, grave 182002; Chaplain the Rev. Brumwell (Methodist); full military funeral; letter to J. M. Cadden, 24 March 1923: grave registered as Plot 4, Row G, Grave 18. Headstone photograph, family collection.
8
G. H. James and Pearl, 1918–19

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — G. H. James, Austral Hall, Hay Street, Perth, to Base Records, 14 November 1918; Base Records to Miss P. B. Cadden, 12 May, 2 and 3 July 1919; Pearl B. Cadden to Base Records, 16 July 1919; reply, 24 July 1919.
9
Personal effects

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — AIF Kit Store inventories D/S 47591, 47592 (ex ‘Bulla’) and 45846 (ex ‘Barambah’): including ‘1 leather purse, 1 Masonic badge in purse, 9 coins’; receipts signed John M. Cadden, 24 August 1919.
10
Commemoration

NAA: B2455, CADDEN J J — British commission forwarded 27 August 1919 (receipt signed ‘E. V. Cadden’ for J. M. Cadden); memorial scroll received 18 October 1921; memorial plaque 13 January 1923; Victory Medal 15 February 1923; 1914/15 Star and British War Medal; ‘Where the Australians Rest’ sent 16 September 1921.
11
‘A.I.F., France’

The West Australian, 18 June 1936, p. 1, death notice of Annie Cadden: ‘loving mother of … Jack (deceased, A.I.F., France) …’