Jack Wilson (Yorkshire cricketer)
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John Philip Wilson DSC, AFC known as "Jack", was a first class cricketer, a decorated World War One pilot and winner of the Grand National in 1925.
He was born 3rd April 1889 at Gilling Castle in the North Riding of Yorkshire, attended Harrow School and made his debut for Yorkshire CCC against Leicestershire CCC in the County Championship in August 1911, one of 6 matches he played for the county that month. He played against the touring South Africans and Worcestershire in August the following year and against MCC in September. His final two matches came for HDG Leveson-Gower's XI against Oxford and Cambridge Universities at The Saffrons, Eastbourne in the final summer before the war.
He was not prolific in the first class arena. His best innings was a knock of 36 against Middlesex at Bradford while his solitary first class wicket was that of J. W. Hitch, the Surrey and England allrounder. He also played for the 2nd XI and in country house cricket for the Yorkshire Gentlemen.
After gaining his pilots license on a Vickers biplane at Brooklands in June 1914 he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Air Service on the outbreak of war. In April 1915 he attacked two German submarines lying at anchor alongside the Mole at Zeebrugge with four bombs "with successful results." Later that summer, on June 7, he attacked the Zeppelin shed at Evere, north of Brussels in a daring night attack, a mission for which he and his co pilot J. S. Mills RN. were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was later awarded the Belgian Order of the Crown (Aug 29, 1917), and, in the New Year's Honours for 1919, he was awarded the AFC 'in recognition of distinguished' service'. October 3, 1959 in Tickton, Beverley, Yorkshire.
Although he continued in club cricket after the war, his new claim to fame came as an amateur steeplechase jockey. He rode over 200 winners, rode in Grand National 3 times and won on Double Chance in 1925. In 1915 he married Louisa Harrison-Broadley, whose elder sister had married the former England cricket captain Stanley Jackson, who thus became his brother-in-law.
