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Lieut.-Colonel John May was born in Church Street, Basingstoke, on June 3rd, 1837, a few days before Queen Victoria came to the Throne. This was the year of his great uncle's eleventh and last Mayoralty, and possibly the veteran Mayor who had for forty years taken a prominent part in the municipal life of the borough, might in his imagination have seen through the vista of years the latest addition to the May family occupying the civic chair, which had been so well filled by his ancestors. The population of Basingstoke at that time was only about 4,000, so that Colonel May has grown with the town, there being now, as already stated, over 10,000 inhabitants.

John May was educated first at Queen Mary's School, then established within the precincts of the Holy Ghost Chapel, and subsequently at War Field Grove, near Bracknell, then at Tunbridge Wells, and finally at Southampton. The Colonel is proud of the fact that he is an old Queen's School boy, and well lie might be, for the school has the credit of having turned out some of the best of Basingstoke's citizens. While lie was at school at Southampton he saw the troops leave that port for the Crimea War, and so inspired was he with military ardour that only his regard for his widowed mother kept him from enlisting in the Queen's service. Had lie followed that early bent the history of Basingstoke in the last quarter of a century would have been very different.

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