John David Ivor Hughes (1885-1969)

John David Ivor Hughes (1885–1969)
(Photo Friends’ Ambulance Unit c.1916)

John David Ivor Hughes was born in Nottingham as the only son of a Welsh schoolmaster, John Bowen Hughes JP (1860–1930) (later Superintendent of the Nottingham Student Teachers’ Centre), and read Law at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth before matriculating at Balliol College in 1911. He transferred to Magdalen as a Senior Demy [1] where he was awarded a 1^st in the Bachelor of Civil Law examination, and was elected to the Vinerian Scholarship [2] in 1915.[3]

According to his entry in the Magdalen College Record of 1922, Hughes served with the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) in France from 1915 to 1919. His Personnel Cards from the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU) tell a more complicated story. He seems to have joined the FAU in York on 15 July 1915, and in March 1916 he was transferred to Jordans in Buckinghamshire, a centre of Quakerism and the burial place of William Penn (1644–1718). Old Jordans, originally a farmhouse, was used as a training centre for the FAU. From February to March 1917 he was in the ‘Office’; it is not clear from the Personnel Card where or what this was. But in April 1917 he returned to Jordans and remained there until September 1918. It seems likely in view of what he did in France that he worked as an administrator. He arrived at Boulogne on 21 September 1918, where he worked as chief clerk at the BRCS headquarters. On 24 October he moved to Dunkirk working for the BRCS as an administrative officer (4^th grade) until he left the service on 20 January 1919.[4]

Red Cross Record Card for John David Ivor Hughes.

Although serving with the FAU in York when conscription began, he had to appear before the York Military Service Tribunal, which he did on 23 March 1916. He was given exemption from combatant service conditional on his continuing to be in the FAU. The Yorkshire papers did not report the proceedings of the tribunal as extensively as the Oxford papers and there is no specific mention of Hughes. However, the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer briefly report the proceedings of 23 March and note that at least one Quaker was denied absolute exemption but was given exemption on condition that he joined the FAU.[5] By virtue of having served in France he was entitled to the Victory Medal and the British War Medal.[6]

In 1919 he was appointed Professor of Law at Leeds University and remained there until his retirement in 1951. In 1920 he married Dorothy Lingford (1897–1981) at the Cotherstone Friends’ Meeting House in County Durham. They had two sons. She was the daughter of Ernest Lingford (1864–1931), a baking powder manufacturer and the one-time Chairman of the York Retreat, a Quaker hospital for the insane. Hughes, together with his wife and children, is recorded as attending Quaker meetings in the 1947 edition of the Yorkshire Quaker Meetings. So he had either been brought up as a Quaker, or converted at some point during his life.

FAU Personnel Card for John David Ivor Hughes.

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[1] Demy is a form of scholarship unique to Magdalen College, and reflects that historically these scholars were entitled to half the allowance of Fellows.

[2] Awarded for the best result in the examination for the Oxford degree of Bachelor of Civil Law.

[3] [Anon.], ‘University Intelligence’, The Times, no. 40,786 (24 February 1915), p. 5.

[4] FAU (1914–1919) Personnel Card:
http://fau.quaker.org.uk/search-view?forename=John&surname=Hughes (accessed 31 March 2022).

[5][Anon.], ‘Conscientious Objectors at York’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, no. 21,453 (Friday 24 March 1916) p. 7.

[6] BRCS General List dated 5 May 1921.