Education & Career :

[British Medical Journal]: COLONEL JOHN GASSON HARWOOD, Army Medical Staff (ret.), died at Southse on July 8th, aged 58. He was born on August 27th 1856, educated at Bart's, and took the diplomas of M.R.C.S. and L.S.A. in 1879, as well as the F.R.C.S.Edin in 1888. He entered the army as surgeon on March 6th, 1880, became surgeon-major on March 6th, 1892, lieutenant-colonel on Marc 6th, 1900, and colonel on June 29th 1906, retiring on March 15th, 1909. The Army List assigns him no war service. [dated July 17, 1915]

His interest in Association Football led him to found The Bombay League, also known as the Harwood League, first began in 1902. The earliest editions were organised by Colonel Harwood who was also the founding president of the Western India Football Association (W.I.F.A.) founded in September 1902; however, this association dissolved and the Harwood league and Rovers tournament were organized by separate committees until 1911, when a second incarnation of the W.I.F.A. (with the same name) was formed to govern football in the region. Some modern sources suggest that the league only became named after Col. Harwood in later years, but newspaper reports from the period indicate otherwise; the league was referred to in the majority of reports as "The Harwood League" even from its first edition in 1902. As with all competitions in colonial India, the league was dominated by British army regimental teams in its first few decades. The first native Indian team to win the league was the Western India Automobile Association Staff team, in 1942.

In later years disputes developed between competing associations attempting to organise competitions in the Bombay region, and during the 1990s there were two competing leagues, only one of which retained the Harwood League name; the major clubs gravitated towards the other more prestigious league (further information is below). The two rival leagues were reunited in 2000.

Bombay was renamed Mumbai in 1996.

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

Natural causes is attributed those deaths due to causes that were not directly associated with the war. Included in this are wartime deaths resulting from, for example, theSpanish Influenza pandemic and its associated pneumonia problems and other attributions such as age and exhaustion. It also groups those who through Post Traumatic Stress committed suicide as a result of their experiences.

Masonic :

His masonic life was just as prevalent as his military life, being initiated relatively young and showing that, perhaps, wherever he was posted, he found a lodge and participated. He originally traces back to and was initiated into Lodge Fraternity & Perseverance No. 1746 at Benares in 1883.
Joined Stewart Lodge No. 1960, Punjab on 15th November 1884
Joined Army and Navy Lodge No. 1971, Aldershot on 19th May 1886. Still a member at the time of his death. Record shows "Died 8th July 1915"
Joined Sandema Lodge No. 1374, Dum Dum, Bengal on 16th December 1893.
Joined St. John the Evangelist Lodge No. 1483 at Mean Meer, Punjab on 14th July 1892. Resigned 31.3.1896.
Joined Rahere Lodge No. 2546 at 9th November 1897. Resigned Sep. 1912.
Joined Yeatman Biggs Lodge No. at 2672 Peshawar on the 7th September 1899. Resigned 31.12.1901.
Joined St. Georges Lodge No. 549 at Bombay 16th October 1900. Excluded 30.6.1908 (R.175).
Joined Lodge Orion in the West No. 415, Poona, Bombay 18th February 1903.
Joined In Ardius Fidelis Lodge No. 2432 (the Lodge of the Royal Army Medical Corps) on 5th January 1911.

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley