Colonel Sir Joseph Hewitt, 1st Baronet (14 October 1865 – 8 February 1923) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

 and coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 mine owner.

Hewitt was born in humble circumstances, but qualified as a solicitor and later acquired substantial interests in the coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 industry. He was an adviser to the Coal Controller during the First World War, and for these services he was knighted

Knight Bachelor

The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

 in 1919 and created a Baronet

Baronet

A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...

 in the 1921 New Year Honours.

He was commissioned into the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment

York and Lancaster Regiment

-History:It was formed in 1881 through the amalgamation of two other regiments:*65th Regiment*84th RegimentThe title of the regiment was derived not from the cities of York and Lancaster, or from the counties...

 in 1900. He resigned his commission as a Captain

Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)

Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...

 in the 5th Battalion in 1910. In September 1914 he was given command of the Barnsley

Barnsley

Barnsley is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Dearne, north of the city of Sheffield, south of Leeds and west of Doncaster. Barnsley is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, of which Barnsley is the largest and...

 Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment (Barnsley Pals

Barnsley Pals

The Barnsley Pals were two Pals battalions during the First World War.They were formed as the 13th and 14th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment...

) as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He relinquished command and his commission in November 1915.