Name
Edward Rowley Kelly
1897
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
07/07/1915
17
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Second Lieutenant
Border Regiment
3rd Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
Panel 35
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Stained Glass Window, Hitchin Boys Grammar School, St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin
Pre War
Edward Rowley Kelly was born in 1897 in Southampton, Hampshire, and his parents were Edward and Ethel M Kelly and his grandfather was Admiral Edward Kelly.
The family is difficult to trace in the census, probably because of service in the Royal Navy. However, in 1901, Edward (3) and his mother (25), were living 32 Madeira Road, Streatham, London, the home of his father’s widowed mother Elizabeth A Kelly (55). The others present were (as related to Elizabeth) son George R Kelly (29), daughter Margaret S Kelly (23) and grandchildren Dorothy E Kelly (6), Edward Rowley Kelly (3) and Margaret M Kelly (2). There were also two domestic servants.
He started in the 2nd Form at Hitchin Grammar School(*1) in the Spring of 1905 and was in the Upper 5th Form by the Winter of 1910 and is recorded as 13 and boarding at the school in the 1911 census, but was also educated at St John’s School, Leatherhead, where he won and open History scholarship to go to Merton College, Oxford and had before him a most promising career. It was said that he was a man of irrepressible wit and good spirits, and it was said that memory of him would be treasured as something rare by all that knew him. He paid a visit to the school the week before he left for the Western Front.
Wartime Service
He received a commission in January 1915 and arrived in France on the 8th June 1915 and was in the 3rd Battalion of the Border Regiment, although attached to the Lancashire Fusiliers at the time of his death. This was probably the 2nd Battalion as it was the only Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers in France at that time.
He was killed in action within a week of reaching the front. Edward's body was not recovered and he is remembered on Panel 35 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres in Belgium in the Border Regiment section.
Additional Information
*1 There are three almost identical contemporary articles; one in the Herts & Cambs Reporter & Royston Crow (23/7/1915), The Bedfordshire Mercury (20/7/1915) and then Bedford Times & Independent (23/7/1915). The first has Edward as educated at Hitchin Grammar School and latter two give Edward and the other at Bedford Grammer between 1903 and 1909. The discrepancy lies with the period before 1909 as Hitchin records indicate he start there in the Spring of 1905. He was certainly in Hitchin School by 1911.
Acknowledgments
Adrian Dunne, David C Baines, Jonty Wild
