
Flight Sub-Lieutenant John Richard Bibby
Individual attestation record images are not available for this person.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
MILITARY INFORMATION
Flight Sub-Lieutenant (Royal Navy).
RESEARCH INFORMATION
Son of Mrs. John Birds; husband of Olive May Evis (formerly Bibby), of 9, Belvedere Apartments, Corner of Bloor St. and Brock Avenue, Toronto, Canada.
Update:
On 16 June 2010 a newspaper article in the Yorkshire Post noted that a package of memorabilia and medals belonging to the Birds / Bibby family had been found in Leeds (England) after apparently being dumped by a burgler. The police are looking for the owners. The items in this collection included detailed information about this family's extensive military history.
Link to online Article / "Mystery Leeds WW1 Find"
From an article by Bruce Smith, Yorkshire Evening Post, 16 June 2010:
A collection of memorabilia discovered dumped in Leeds underlines one Yorkshire family's transatlantic links to the Great War.
Bruce Smith reports exclusively on the mystery findThe courage and sacrifice a Yorkshire family endured during the First World War have been evoked by medals, letters, cuttings and photographs found dumped in a hedge
Some of the Birds family – from Canada but thought originally to be from Leeds – died on the Western Front. Others were wounded and one survived. They won numerous honours and four of the women nursed the war wounded.
Now the Yorkshire Evening Post and police are eager to reunite their heirs with the collection of mementos dumped in a cardboard box in Moortown – believed by a burglar.
The items lovingly preserved, some for nearly a century, speak of duty to Empire.
The collection reveals the lives of Major Samuel B Birds, Military Cross and Bar and Distinguished Service Order; Private John Albert Birds, Military Medal; their soldier and pilot brothers George W Birds and Flight Lt Bibby – all sons of Mrs John Birds of 562 Burlington Street East, Hamilton, Canada.
It also reveals the tragic death of a second generation, the Major's son Frederick Arthur Birds, also killed in the War to End Wars.
Many pieces centre on Major Birds. There are bronze and silver British City and Guilds medallions awarded in 1892 and 1893 to Samuel B Birds for carpentry, joinery, brickwork and masonry.
The story moves along to 1912 when the find reveals the Birds family to be living in Hamilton.
At least one family member is a crackshot winning a medal in a sporting
shooting contest at Kamloops in British Columbia.
In the box is evidence of the brothers' 1914-18 war exploits with 1917 newspaper cuttings.
One cites how Major Birds had "smoked his pipe throughout and escaped without a scratch although always in the thick of the fighting".
Another lists the achievements of the "patriotic" family. An MC and Bar for Major Birds of the 72nd Vancouver Battalion of the Canadian Infantry followed by a DSO at Passchendaele, a Military Medal for his brother Pte Albert Birds of the 14th Battalion after his "thrilling experiences".
Pte Birds, who enlisted as a bugler at Saskatoon in 1915, had escaped injury despite doing more, according to the Major, than some awarded the VC.
A third serving brother George, wounded twice, was then guarding German prisoners "somewhere in France".
The letters detail another of Mrs Birds' sons, Flt Lt Bibby who had been killed in a flying accident in Malta the previous summer.
The cutting reports that Major Birds' son Fred had recently been granted a commission in the Royal Flying Corps. But there is a sad epitaph for the flyer – a five-inch bronze commemorative plaque of the kind issued to relatives of killed servicemen inscribed in memory of Frederick Arthur Bird who " died for Freedom and Honour".
The fading cream envelope in which it was sent to Mrs L Birds at 5 Edgeware Avenue, Bayswater Road, Harehills, Leeds, is accompanied by printed letters from King George V on Buckingham Palace paper, stating: "I join with my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War."
The cutting also records the brothers' aunt Miss Dowbiggan, matron of Edmonton Military Hospital decorated with the Royal Order of the Red Cross First Class and her three nieces nursing, one on a hospital ship at Gibraltar.
With the collection is a registered envelope addressed to Major S Birds at the same Harehills address which had contained the bronze 1914-15 star awarded posthumously to his brother Pte FA Birds of the Royal Army Medical Corps who seemingly did not escape the dangers of war.
His First World War Victory medal accompanies it.
A rectangular medallion from the Belgian government in thanks for helping to liberate their country is among the gongs along with a cap badge bearing the motto Forewarned is Forearmed.
A miniature of Major Birds' MC for formal evening wear is there along with a 1914-18 War Service medal,
Other touching mementos include a personal note handwritten on the calling card of a Mrs T H Husband which reads: "We are all so proud of you. May good fortune favour you to the end".
An assortment of family snaps from the 1930s and 1940s feature Major Birds with unknown female relatives and children enjoying Scarborough's North Bay and Weston-super-Mare.
In "sports jacket and flannels", with white receding hair and middle aged he puffs his beloved pipe.
A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said: "A significant portion of a family's history is contained in this box and we want to see it reunited with its rightful owner and would ask anyone with information to get in touch with us."
Anyone with information should contact the helpdesk at Stainbeck police station via 0845 60 60 606 or Bruce Smith at the YEP on 0113 2388369.