Major John Strange "Jack" Spencer-Churchill, DSO, TD (4 February 1880 – 23 February 1947) was the younger son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Randolph Churchill (Jennie Jerome), and brother of World War II Prime Minster, Sir Winston Churchill.
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He was born at Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland (where his father, was secretary to his grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, who had been appointed Viceroy of Ireland in 1876), and educated at Harrow School.
He married, in Oxford on 8 August 1908, Lady Gwendoline Theresa Mary Bertie (20 November 1885 – 7 July 1941), a Roman Catholic, the daughter of Montagu Bertie, 7th Earl of Abingdon and Gwendoline Mary Dormer.
He was commissioned into the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars in 1898. He served in the South African Light Horse alongside his war correspondent brother in the Second Boer War between 1899 and 1900, where he was Mentioned in Dispatches, and shot through the leg during the Battle of the Tugela Heights, part of the campaign for the relief of Ladysmith.[1]
He fought in the First World War, where he was again Mentioned in Dispatches. He also served on the staff of Field Marshal Lord French, General Sir Ian Hamilton (serving as Naval Liaison Officer for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) and Field Marshal Lord Birdwood (serving as Camp Commandant, 1st Anzac Corps, and then as Assistant Military Secretary at the headquarters of the Fifth Army). He reached the rank of Major.
He was awarded the French decorations of the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'Honneur. He was awarded the British Distinguished Service Order in 1918.
John Strange Spencer-Churchill became a businessman in the City of London.
John Strange Spencer-Churchill and his brother Winston were very close. John and his children spent a lot of time with his brother's family at Chartwell and other residences.
During the Second World War the widowed John lost his house during the Blitz and he lived in 10 Downing Street.[2] He lived in either No 10 (where he used the bedrooms on the top floor formerly used by Churchill and his wife) or the No 10 Annex. [3]
He died of a heart disease[4] and is buried near his parents and brother at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
The couple had three children:
Despite the Ne Temere decree, apparently only their daughter was brought up as a Catholic, the faith of her mother (herself the daughter of a convert).
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