McConnell appears to have been baptised George William, but the names are reversed in all records of him from the 1891 census on, presumably by choice. While noted as ‘provision merchant’ in 1911 he appears also to have begun painting before the First World War and, possibly as a boy soldier, was also in the 4th (Territorial) Battalion of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry until discharged at his own request. On 15th November 1913 he enlisted in the Royal Engineers (no. 25596) and from 20th February 1915 to 6th June 1918 served in France, latterly as a photographer with the 1st Field Survey Company (which was formed in March 1916), reaching the rank of lance-corporal. He displayed conspicuous bravery over a long period acting as a battlefield photographer for intelligence purposes, for which he was gazetted on 3rd June 1918 with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, a decoration that for non-commissioned ranks stood only below the VC. The citation, however, only appeared in the supplement to the London Gazette of 21st October 1918. From 7th June 1918, when back with the Engineers at Chatham, McConnell was posted (presumably at his own request and on recommendation) to an RAF [Cadet Brigade] Cadet Distribution Depot and, on being certified fit to be a pilot or observer, to the No. 7 (Observers) School of Aeronautics at Bath. He then went back to the Engineers at Chatham for the first two months of 1919 until 18th March, when he was formally transferred to the RAF (no. 319662) and posted to the No. 5 School of Aeronautics at Denham, Buckinghamshire, as an officer cadet and trainee pilot. This was probably a paper exercise since the No. 5 School is reported to have disbanded from 15th February and just two days later, on 20th March 1919, McConnell was ordered to the Crystal Palace Dispersal Unit for demobilisation. He was discharged on 19th April but four years later was granted an honorary commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the RAF Reserve of Officers (untrained), effective from his discharge date (see London Gazette 30th March 1923). In effect it was compensation for being a casualty of the RAF’s suspension of new pilot training at the war’s end. (Note that the RAF, formally created on 1st April 1918, used army ranks until its own system was introduced in August/September 1919.)

The war probably affected McConnell’s health in the longer term. In the 1939 Register he is listed as ‘artist, photographer, decorator’ but also as ‘invalid’. In the second quarter of 1924 he married in Ludlow to Lillie M. Hurman (b. 23rd September 1894) where The Kington Times of 26th July that year reported on a ‘beautiful oil painting by him’ then being displayed in a High Street shop window. Its subject was ‘a copy of the East Window of St. Lawrence's Parish Church’ there, showing the life of that martyr, and it had been commissioned by Trevor Arnett (1870–1955), an expatriate former Ludlow Grammar School pupil then visiting from America, where he had been a senior University of Chicago administrator and was by this time also working for John D. Rockefeller. This all suggests that McConnell was then living in the area but in February 1925 he and his wife bought the Star Coffee House, a restaurant at Weston-Super-Mare, based on a £200 overdraft and loan of £100 from a friend, since they had little to invest themselves. It prospered for about six months until his wife became ill, after which ‘bad seasons’, her illness and ‘inexperience in the business’ were the reasons he gave for bankruptcy in 1927 (Western Daily Press, 24th February 1927). By 1939 the McConnells were living at ‘The Bungalow’, Stanner Road, Kington, near Ludlow again, which remained their address until his death. This was reported in The Kington Times of Friday 26th November 1954, and that he had been buried in Kington Cemetery ‘last Thursday’ (probably the 19th). The only painting by McConnell so far identified in a UK public collection is a portrait of an unidentified man, signed and dated 1921, in Ludlow Library.

Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Could anyone give us information about the artist ‘W. Geo McConnell’?’ and further research on McConnell’s service career by Osmund Bullock.