J.E.+Keene

Keene, John Elgar, Private, 17119, 10th Battalion, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment Born Derby Enlisted Derby Killed in action 1st December 1915 aged 23 Commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial
 * John Elgar Keene (1892-1915)**

1911 Census A bank clerk Son of Charles Barrow Keene, a photographer, and Julia Rose Keene, of 9, North Parade, Derby

John was born in Derby about March 1892 to Charles Barrow Keene and Julia Keene. He was the grandson of photographer Richard Keene, who published the Derby Telegraph. His uncle William Caxton Keene was a famous watercolourist and his father Charles Barrow Keene a photographer having a studio in Irongate, Derby. The 1901 census records the family living at 39 Kedleston Road, Derby, moving to 9, North Parade, Derby by 1911. John’s occupation in 1911 was given as a Bank Clerk. He had an elder brother Charles Pembury Keene. John was a private in the Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment) 10th Battalion, service number 17119. He was killed in action in France on the 1st December 1915. (Not as shown on the church roll). At the end of the war his body was never recovered and his name is recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial along with 54,000 other names of officers and men who have no known graves. It is unfortunate that his name is recorded as John Edgar rather than John Elgar. The Derby Daily Telegraph reported his death on the 10th December 1915. **Derby’s Roll of Honour** //One of the latest additions to Derby’s roll of honoured dead is Private J. Keene, second son of Mr C B Keene of 9 North Parade, and a member of a well known and respected family. He was 23 years of age and joined the “Comrades” Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters as long ago as September 1914.// //He was killed by the bursting of a shell at the top of his dug-out near Hooge. He was shortly to have received a commission. One of his officers in a sympathy letter to his parents said, “I cannot say how sorry we are to lose him: he was such a nice fellow, always cheery and willing, and it make a great difference having men such as he doing their duty cheerfully and bravely in such even in the most depressing circumstances. We shall feel his loss very much here.”//


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