John Foster Haigh

REV JOHN FOSTER HAIGH
d. 23rd September 1943 aged 42

John Foster was born in May 1901 and was brought up in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, Wales. His father was a coal miner.

He trained as an architect but after a few years he decided to train for the ministry at Edinburgh University and Airedale Theological College, Bradford. In 1930 he became the Minister at Booth Congregational Church

In January 1933 he married Annie Farrar, aged 36, from 2 Mill House, Luddenden, daughter of Joseph Pickles Farrar a retired Mill Mechanic.

In 1934 he moved to Heywood Chapel, Northowram,

He was a very good musician and at 16 conducted a choir. He was also an organist, played the piano, had a tenor voice of rare quality and was very successful at the Welsh Eisteddfods. At Booth he organised several music festivals, and performed with Halifax Amateur Operatic Society with great success.

He enlisted in June 1940 was made a Chaplain and sent to Singapore with the 4th Suffolk Regiment and he was captured by the Japanese and sent to Niki-Niki POW Camp where he died on 23 September 1943 of beri-beri (thiamine deficiency). He is buried at Thanbyuzatyat War Cemetery in Burma (Myanmar).

The cemetery sits a stone’s throw from the end of the infamous death railway. This cross-country route was built by forced labour, including prisoners of war, during the Second World War, in often gruelling conditions. It has been said that a man died for every sleeper laid across the 415-kilometre (258 mi) route of the railway. Many of those who died lie at rest in CWGC’s care.

And as a reminder of what they went through, visitors to Thanbyuzayat will see a handmade wooden cross in the cemetery’s entrance, assembled out of those infamous railway sleepers by prisoners.

Rev J Foster Haigh is remembered with a bronze plaque in that cemetery, behind the cenotaph in Luddenden and also in:
Halifax Civic Books of Remembrance
Heywood Congregational Church, Northowram
St Matthew’s Northowram

His widow Annie had returned to Mill House and she passed away aged 100 years in 1997.

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