| Regiment/Service: |
2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (British Army)
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| Date Of Birth: |
14/11/1885
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| Died: |
27/08/1914 (Killed in Action) |
| Age: |
28 |
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| John Gunning Moore Dunlop was the son of Dr Archibald Dunlop and Bessie Dunlop. He was born on born 14th November 1885 in Holywood, County Down. His mother, Elizabeth Gunning Moore, was originally from Cookstown. John was the nephew of Mr J B Gunning-Moore of Coolnafranky, Cookstown. Archibald Dunlop was a physician. John received his commission in 1910. At the outbreak of the war he volunteered in August 1914. After Mons he was reported missing and later confirmed killed in action near Clary on 27 August. |
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| John Gunning Moore Dunlop was the son of Dr Archibald Dunlop and Bessie Dunlop (nee Gunning-Moore).
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| John Dunlop was born on born 14th November 1885 in Holywood, County Down.
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| His mother Elizabeth Gunning Moore was originally from Cookstown. John was the nephew of Mr J B Gunning-Moore of Coolnafranky, Cookstown.
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| Family: Archibald Dunlop, Elizabeth Dunlop, John Gunning Moore Dunlop (born 14 November 1885), Elizabeth Dorothea Dunlop (born 9 October 1886), George Malcolm Dunlop (born 13 January 1889).
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| From his previous marriage in 1861 to Elizabeth Jane Stanton (nee Henry), Archibald Dunlop had at least three older children. Shuldham Henry Dunlop (born around 1863, married Marion Christina Gunning on 30 June 1891 in Derryloran Parish Church of Ireland Church Cookstown), Archibald Samuel Dunlop (born 27 December 1864), Violet Madeline (born 22 June 1872 and married Elliott Hill on 5 October 1898 in Holywood Parish Church of Ireland).
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| The 1901 census does not list John as living with the family at house 64 in High Street, Holywood, County Down. Archibald Dunlop was a Physician I.P
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| John Gunning Moore Dunlop was educated at Summerfields, Charterhouse and Gonville & Caius College Cambridge.
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| At Caius College Cambridge, he was a member of the Officers’ Training Corps and he graduated with an MA degree. He gained first class honours in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos with Chemistry as his chief subject. After taking his degree he was awarded a research studentship by the College, where he remained in residence until the outbreak of the war, devoting himself to chemical research with considerable success, as shown by frequent articles published between 1909 and 1914. During the earlier years of this period, he held the position of Junior Demonstrator in the University Chemical Laboratory, and later undertook some teaching work in College. He was one of the secretaries of the University Chemical Club, and he was also interested in the ‘social side’ of Chemistry.
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| Caius College Cambridge in the late 19th century
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| John had always taken a keen interest in military work and spent most of his vacations with the Ulster Volunteers.
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| John Dunlop was a member of Holywood Masonic Lodge No. 381.
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| John Dunlop received his commission from Cambridge University in September 1910, and was gazetted to the Special Reserve of Officers, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, in June 1911.
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| At the outbreak of the war he volunteered at once and in August 1914 he went to the Front with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
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| After Mons he was reported missing in action and hope that he might have been taken prisoner was not abandoned until 12 November 1914 when a message was received from the American Consul in Berlin stating that Second Lieutenant John Dunlop had been killed in action near Clary on 27 August.
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| Second Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop was with two companies of his regiment which were left behind at Le Hautcourt on the 26th of August when the British Army retired earlier on that date. The two companies were commanded by Major H. Shewen of the Dublin Fusiliers. On approaching Clary they met the enemy, engaged him and were later surrounded. Second Lieutenant Dunlop met his death while gallantly directing a portion of the firing line. After having been already wounded, he was struck in the head and killed.
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| Three hundred and fifty men and officers of the regiment were cut off in the retreat. Only fifty succeeded in fighting their way through the enemy back to their Division.
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| From the Mid Ulster Mail dated 7th November 1914:
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| DUNLOP – 27th August, killed in action at Clary, John Gunning Moore Dunlop, 2nd Lieutenant Royal Dublin Fusiliers, of Caius College, Cambridge, third son of the late Archibald Dunlop, M.D., St Helen’s Holywood.
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| From the Mid Ulster Mail dated 7th November 1914: Roll of Honour – Lieut J G M Dunlop
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| Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop, M.A., whose death at the front has only been officially announced, though he was killed on 27th August, was the elder son of Mrs Dunlop, of Holywood, and nephew of Mr J B Gunning Moore, D.L. he was educated at Charterhouse and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was a distinguished student, graduating in Science. He belonged to the Officers Training Corps at Cambridge, and was attached to the Dublin Fusiliers, of which regiment his younger brother is a lieutenant. He arrived in Belgium on 23rd August and was rushed up country at the critical moment when Von Kluck boasted to the Kaiser that he has caught the British, and in the fateful days after the retreat from Mons, Lieutenant Dunlop was reported missing. No news was obtained till a couple of officers, who were taken prisoner, wrote that he was killed, but his death was not confirmed until this week, though his friends feared the worst. Lieutenant Dunlop was one of a number of whom, under the wills of Messrs Gunning and Moore, the Cookstown Estate would have reverted, and it is probable that, had he been spared, he would have succeeded his uncle at Coolnafranky. He was appointed one of Mr Gunning-Moore’s trustees, and as such his name appears in recent leases. We are quite sure we voice the feelings of the entire community in expressing sympathy with Mr Moore in his bereavement.
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| From the Mid Ulster Mail dated 12th December 1914:
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| John Gunning Moore Dunlop, Lieutenant, Dublin Fusiliers, Killed in action on 27th August 1914.
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| In his last will and testament, dated 3rd August 1914 he stated that his executors were to be ‘The Masters and Fellows of Gonville & Caius College’. He left his estates and lands in County Tyrone to his brother George Malcolm Dunlop, and to his sister Elizabeth Dorothea he left the contents of his rooms at College. The rest of his estate was left to the Masters and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College.
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| From the Mid Ulster Mail dated 6th March 1915: Lieutenant Dunlop’s Will
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| Second Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop,, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who was killed in action in France on 27th August last, son of Dr. Dunlop of Holywood, and nephew of Mr J B Gunning Moore, D.L., Coolnafranky, Cookstown, left unsettled property of the gross value of £1,507 10s 10d, with net personality £1,462 19s 5d. By his will, dated 3rd August last, he named his executors as the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and probate has been granted to their representatives – Dr. Hugh Kerry Anderson, M.D., Master of the College, and Mr John Collin, solicitor, Cambridge. He left his lands in County Tyrone to his brother, George Malcolm Dunlop, the affects in his room at Gonville and Caius College to his sister, Elizabeth Dorothea Dunlop; £1,500 to the Master, Fellows and scholars of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to be used by them as the Governing Body of that college shall direct; and the residue of his property to his brother George and his sister Elizabeth Dorothea in equal shares.
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| Second Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop was 28 when he died and he was buried in Clary Cemetery. His body lay in that cemetery, which was held by the Germans, for the next four years until the ground was recaptured and his body was exhumed and reburied in Honnechy British Cemetery, near Le Cateau.
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| John’s brother, Captain George Malcolm Dunlop was later killed in action at Gallipoli on 25th April 1915.
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| Second Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop is commemorated on Holywood and District War Memorial; on the Memorial Plaque in Holywood Parish Church of Ireland Church (St Philip & St James); on the Memorial Tablet in Gonville and Caius College Chapel Cambridge; on the Chemical Society Memorial (now the Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London) and on the Memorial Plaque in Holywood Masonic Hall.
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| The CWGC record Second Lieutenant John Gunning Moore Dunlop as the son of Archibald Dunlop, M.D. He is also recorded as being a native of Holywood, County Down.
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| The vast majority of this information was gleamed from Barry Niblock’s website ‘The War Dead of North Down and Ards’. See references below.
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