Dawlish World War One Project

Arthur Jones joined the Royal Navy at the age of 18 on 29 May 1905 and signed on for 12 years service. He had been working as an agricultural labourer and his father had been a butler. He advanced from Boy Seaman to Able Seaman in two years and served among a variety of ships until posted to H.M.S.DEFENCE on 2 September 1913. He was killed in action when the ship was consumed by a massive explosion which killed all of the ship's company, while attacking a larger German ship. (see Documents for service history detail)

Arthur Jones was in the Royal Navy when he married Lily Bond at the Newton Abbot Register Office on 7th January 1915.   Lily was the daughter of Richard Bond, a former naval rating and coastguard who took his pension in 1888 and died two years later. His widow Mary (nee Mary Ann Evers) worked as a laundress in Dawlish where she had been born. Lily was born in Dawlish ca 1885.

Arthur Thomas Jones married Lily Bond after the birth of their first child, Ethel May Jones Bond (GRO ref 1914, Apr-June, N.A., vol 5b, p 163), but this may have been forced upon him joining H.M.S.DEFENCE in September 1913 and then serving in the Mediterranean and the South Atlantic, as described above. They appear to have married as soon as the DEFENCE returned to home waters sixteen months later.

Their second child, Hilda Mary Jones (1917-2010), was born on 2 February 1917, after the death of her father. She married Kenneth S O Pook in 1940 and there were two children from that marriage.

Lily Jones did not remarry and she died at Dawlish Hospital on 9 October 1964. She had been living at 35 Old Town Street, possibly with Ethel May Jones(1914-1986) who was granted Probate and was a spinster.