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Sir John Furley was born in the Masonic Lodge, in North Street, Ashford, Kent on the 19th March 1836. He was the son of the eminent JP, solicitor and historian Robert Furley. Sir John was educated at Harrow School where he was living as a pupil in the 1851 census aged 15.
By 1861, Sir John is a qualified solicitor staying at Reigate as a visitor to Thomas Hart and his family in Church Street. If by coincidence, his future wife Maria Turner Baker was living with her family in the next street where John was staying in the 1861 census.
In 1868, he was one of five members of the Order of St. John who created a national body that could treat  injured people and also train workers to use First Aid skills when an event occurred. The St. John Ambulance Brigade was established in larger towns and cities, and provided a twenty-four hour service with the help of its trained volunteers. Sir John Furley established a corp at Ashford in 1879 and is to this day one of the oldest brigades still in existence.
Sir John had returned to Ashford’s North Street by the 1871 census, where he is living with his parents, Robert and Margaret, and relations. Previously in 1870, he had helped to establish Ashford’s first cottage hospital along with other members of the community. Sir John was a trustee of the hospital and also took an active part being the Honorary Secretary and Manager.
In 1874, Sir John married Maria Turner Baker in Reigate district. They had no children from their marriage.
After their marriage, Sir John spent much of his life living in and contributing to the needs of people and soldiers during wars which ravaged the Continent. John is credited for his invention of the hospital train and stretchers for casualties, enabling speedier treatment and a greater chance of making a full recovery.
In 1881, Sir John and Maria continued to live in North Street, Ashford with John’s 64 year old mother Margaret.
At this time in Britain, the effects of the Industrial Revolution were being felt by the work force, with long hours and little if no breaks from laborious and strenuous activities. This took its toll on many, and people were dying in the factories and in the streets from a variety of reasons. Sir John Furley was frustrated that workers could not be treated more quickly and by trained medics within the workplace.
For his tremendous work and service to the country and Europe, Sir John had been awarded more than thirty medals in his lifetime. This achievement reached its peak in 1899 when Sir John was gifted a knighthood. At this time he was living on his own means with his wife Maria in Tulleney [or possibly Pulteney] Street, Bath.
Sir John Furley died on the 27th September 1919.
Further interest:
Royal Mail issued a set of stamps for the St. John’s Ambulance centenary celebrations on 16th June 1985. They featured the Ashford Litter of 1887, a First Aid in Wartime with a blitz victim being treated by a volunteer from 1940, First Aid at Events shows a volunteer treating a young lady in 1965 and the transportation of an organ by Organ Flight in 1987.
Vintage films of various St. Johns Ambulance parades can be seen and purchased here: www.britishpathe.com and in particular http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=75034 that shows a wheeled stretcher.
Museum Exhibits
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Ashford Litter was designed by Sir John Furley and Henry Headley and manufactured in Ashford. The complete original wheeled stretcher is one of Ashford museums’ star exhibits with its authentic stretcher, wheels, hood and apron. Surprisingly it was used in Ashford up ‘til 1926 even though horse drawn stretchers were introduced in 1906!
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Framed picture of Sir John Furley’s various medals and descriptive notes.
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Pictures of Sir John Furley. | 
