Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes was born in 1922; he was the son of Reginald Keyes who was a soldier and Edith, née Blackburn. tragically Edith died not long after Sidney was born. Sidney was given into the care of his grandparents, sixty-two year old Sidney, after whom he had been named and his second wife, Ada.
Sidney senior’s first wife Emily Ann née Pimm, died in 1901 shortly after giving birth to her daughter also called Emily. Sidney was a coal merchant and miller when he was married to Emily, later a miller and corn merchant. They had a number of children including Reginald and Emily; Sidney Stanley who died before his first birthday in 1889, Walter 1891, Cleveland 1894, Phyllis 1896, Evelyn 1897, and Marjorie 1900.
Sidney senior’s family came from Essex, and he earned his wealth the hard way; his family, like mine had suffered during the agricultural depression, and Sidney had worked as a miller’s clerk before through his own efforts to owning a mill. By all accounts he was a formidable man and had a huge influence on little Sidney his grandson who lived with him until he was nine. Little Sidney didn’t have the strength or resilience of his father and grandfather and was a poorly child, and was kept at home with a nursemaid until he was nine, when his grandfather’s third wife, Agnes, sent him away to school.
This extraordinary background made young Sidney into a precocious poet and I came across a collection of his works a week or so ago in a second-hand bookshop. The tragedy is that young Sidney died in 1943, in north Africa where he was serving. A distant cousin of his also gave his live in the war, by coincidence he was also Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes.
Here is a fascinating insight into a poem he wrote in memory of his grandfather, the miller Sidney Keyes:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/jul/15/elegy-sidney-keyes-poem
Lois Elsden 