Jack Cornwell - Victoria Cross

Victoria Cross

Three months later, Captain Robert Lawson of Chester described the events to the British Admiralty. Though at first reluctant, the Admiralty eventually decided to recommend Cornwell for a posthumous Victoria Cross and King George V endorsed it. The recommendation for citation from Admiral David Beatty, reads:

"the instance of devotion to duty by Boy (1st Class) John Travers Cornwell who was mortally wounded early in the action, but nevertheless remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders till the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded around him. He was under 16½ years old. I regret that he has since died, but I recommend his case for special recognition in justice to his memory and as an acknowledgement of the high example set by him."

Jack Cornwell was initially buried in a common grave (Square 126 Grave 323) in Manor Park Cemetery, London, but his body was exhumed on 29 July 1916 and he was reburied with full military honours also in Manor Park Cemetery Square 55 Grave 13. Jack Cornwell's father Eli, who died on 25 October 1916 from bronchitis during home service with the Royal Defence Corps, was buried in the same grave on 31 October 1916. The epitaph to Jack Cornwell on his grave monument reads,

The award of the Victoria Cross appeared in the London Gazette on Friday 15 September 1916; the citation read

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the grant of the Victoria Cross to Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell, O.N.J.42563 (died 2 June 1916), for the conspicuous act of bravery specified below. Mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded all round him. His age was under sixteen and a half years.

On 16 November 1916, Cornwell's mother received the Victoria Cross from King George V at Buckingham Palace. Court painter Frank O. Salisbury made a portrait of Cornwell, using his brother Ernest as a model, depicting him standing in his post. Boy Cornwell Memorial Fund was also established. After that, the rest of the family was effectively forgotten. After Eli Cornwell's death on 25 October 1916, his stepbrother Arthur Frederick Cornwell was killed in action in France on 29 August 1918. Impoverished Alice Cornwell died at Stepney on 31 October 1919 at 745 Commercial Road in rooms she was forced to take when her son's memorial fund refused financial aid at the age of 48. The two of her children remaining at home were granted £60 a year in a pension from the fund after Alice's death, but this proved insufficient and they both emigrated to Canada in the early 1920s. Jack Cornwell's elder half-sister, also named Alice, loaned Jack's Victoria Cross to the Imperial War Museum on 27 November 1968. Salisbury's portrait of Cornwell hangs in the Anglican church within the Royal Navy's Initial Training Establishment HMS Raleigh, perhaps selected as an appropriate place also because the ship's Chaplain, The Rev. Cyril Ambrose Walton, was also killed during the action.