Profile

TONKIN, John Franklin
(Service number 6/2001)

Aliases	Known as Jack
First Rank	Second Lieutenant	Last Rank	Major

Birth

Date	05/05/1890	Place of Birth	Waikari, Canterbury

Enlistment Information

Date		Age
Address at Enlistment	Cadogan, Sefton Road, Timaru
Occupation	Clerk
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	John Goodrick Shreddon TONKIN (father), Zetland Hotel, Christchurch
Religion	Anglican
Medical Information

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	4th Reinforcements
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	Canterbury Infantry Battalion
Date	17 April 1915
Transport	Willochra or Knight Templar or Waitomo
Embarked From	Wellington	Destination

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With

Military Awards

Campaigns
Service Medals	1914-1915 Star; British War Medal; Victory Medal
Military Awards	Military Cross. Croix de Guerre. Mentioned in Despatches

Award Circumstances and Date

Military Cross - for distinguished service in the field, Passchendael, 1918. Specially Mentioned in Despatchess - for distinguished service and devotion to duty while commanding the 2nd New Zealand Entrenching Battalion, at Meteren & Ypres, April-May 1918

Prisoner of War Information

Date of Capture
Where Captured and by Whom
Actions Prior to Capture
PoW Serial Number
PoW Camps
Days Interned
Liberation Date

Discharge

Date		Reason

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

Wounded at the Somme & at Passchendaele

Post-war Occupations

Company manager

Death

Date	11 February 1960	Age	69 years
Place of Death	Timaru
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery	Timaru Cemetery
Memorial Reference	General Section, Row 51, Plot 260
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

John Franklin Tonkin, known as Jack, was born on 5 May 1890 at Waikari, Canterbury, the son of John Goodrich Sheddon and Gertrude (née Sanderson) Tonkin. Jack was educated at Christ’s College, Christchurch.

John Tonkin was a clerk for Dalgety and Company at Timaru when he enlisted, his address being Cadogan, Sefton Street, Timaru. He named his father, whose address was Zetland Hotel, Christchurch, as next-of-kin. His mother had died in 1909. Second Lieutenant Tonkin embarked at Wellington on 17 April 1915 with the Canterbury Infantry Battalion of the 4th Reinforcements. He was wounded at the Somme and again at Passchendaele. He was specially mentioned in Dispatches while commanding the 2nd New Zealand Entrenching Battalion in action during April and May 1918 at Meteren and Ypres. He was awarded the Military Cross for distinguished service in the Field and the Croix de Guerre for distinguished service during the Campaign (1918). Major J. F. Tonkin returned to New Zealand in June 1919 per the “Maunganui”, which came into Dunedin, the South Canterbury men coming north by train. Tonkin, however, continued to Christchurch by the train.

After the war John married Muriel Mary Graham in 1920. Sometime later Jack and Muriel lived again in Timaru, where he died on 11 February 1960, aged 69 years. He is buried at Timaru, Muriel with him. When his uncle, Robert Edmund Tonkin died in 1935, John Franklin Tonkin, as his sole heir, inherited the lordship of the Manors of St Buryan and Alverton in Cornwall. On his death, the Manors by tradition would normally have gone to his eldest son John G Tonkin, but instead he divided them equally amongst his four children.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [15 April 2021]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [14 April 2021]; Timaru Cemetery headstone image (Timaru District Council) [15 April 2021]; Timaru Herald, 24 June 1919, Otago Daily Times, 26 July 1918 (Papers Past) [13 & 15 April 2021]; SCROll web submission by N Lambert, 11 December 2025.

External Links

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

Not assigned.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.

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