Second Lieutenant John Gerald FITZGERALD, formerly HEALY (1875–1898)

John Gerald FITZGERALD was born John Gerald HEALY on 17 May 1875 and was baptised at the Garrison at Aldershot on 21 July. He was the son of Assistant Commissary Richard Calvert Healy and Aileen Harriet Fitzgerald, who were married at St Michael's Church in Pimlico on 10 December 1872.

John's father had served as a Colonel in the Ashanti War of 1873/4, and when John was a boy he fought in the Zulu War of 1879 and the Egyptian War of 1882, before retiring in 1887.

John's had three siblings:

• Algernon Richard Healy (born on 21 March 1874 and baptised at St Gabriel's Church, Pimlico on 20 April)
• Calvert Healy (born on 5 September 1882 and baptised at St Matthew's Church, Bayswater on 15 November)
• Aileen Healy (baptised at Peper Harow, Surrey on 24 October 1891)

At the time of the 1891 census John's family was living at Royal Farm, Peper Harow, near Goldalming, Surrey. John (15) is hard to find, but is likely to have spent census night at his boarding school, Clifton College in Bristol.

In 1895 John Healy (as he still was) joined the Militia, serving in the 3rd Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. He took the Militia Competitive Examination in September 1896 and was gazetted to the Oxfordshire Light Infantry as Second Lieutenant Healy on 6 June 1896, originally joining the 1st Battalion.

On 16 October 1896 he announced in The Times that in compliance with the will of Algernon Charles FitzGerald dated 15 November 1883 he had assumed the surname of FitzGerald in lieu of Healy, and still gave his address as Royal Farm. (Thereby he inherited a small estate in Surrey.)

Second-Lieutenant FitzGerald, as he was now called, embarked with a draft to join the 2nd Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry in India on 24 December 1896. On 22 January 1897 he was posted to D Company of the 2nd Battalion under Captain Fanshawe.

He proceeded on active service in the autumn of 1897, first on the Mohmand Expedition and then with the Peshawar Column in Bara Valley. He contracted enteric fever there, and was sent back from Ilum Gadr to Nowshera, and died at the base hospital there shortly afterwards on 13 November 1897, aged 22, just eighteen months after he had been appointed to a commission.

He was posthumously awarded the India Medal with two clasps.

Second Lieutenant Fitzgerald's obituary was published in the Oxfordshire Light Infantry Chronicle for 1897, pp. 250–251 (with his portrait photograph opposite page 250).