Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

John Westmacott Boykett (x274)

22/05/1924 –28/02/1940

A pupil at Berkhamsted School; died age 15 years

• Jane Beaty

Plot X274

John Westmacott BOYKETT

Died 28^th February 1940, aged 15

John was born on 22^nd May 1924 in Ruddington, Nottingham. His parents lived in India at the time as part of the colonial government, but his mother had clearly come to England to have her only child born in Ruddington near Nottingham, where her father-in-law was in the last year of his post as the Vicar of the St Peter’s Parish Church. John’s middle name of Westmacott was the same as his mother’s middle name and seems to have been used by him as an alternative surname in some circumstances.

John’s parents were Constance Westmacott BOYKETT (nee HUTTON) and Charles Henry BOYKETT.  His short life was peripatetic and quite unusual.

John’s mother Constance was born in Bengal, India in 1898 into the British Raj community. Her father Ernest HUTTON was a major in the British Indian Army. By the time she was 12 she, her mother and four younger siblings were living in Hunstanton, Norfolk and she was attending school there. The household also had a governess for the three youngest children plus a couple of Indian boarders.  This was at a time when the women of the Indian Raj were the most travelled of the families because those who could afford it were constantly migrating between Britain and India to attend to the needs of children and other family members whilst their husbands were working. There was a weekly P & O  service carrying officers and civilians from Bombay to England. So Constance was educated in England and in due course started work as a clerk. But in August 1920, at the age of 21 she embarked on a ship to Bombay. A year later, in August 1921, when she was 22, she married Charles Henry BOYKETT at the Bombay Presidency, the main municipal building of the province within the Indian state. Within less than a year, in May 1922 Constance was on the way back to England on her own to stay in Ealing, London. However, by October that year she was on her way to India again, stating that she intended to live there. By May 1924 she was back in England where her son John was born.

Meanwhile, John’s father Charles Henry BOYKETT came from an ecclesiastical family firmly rooted in England. He was also born in Ruddington, Nottingham in 1888 and was baptised in the village church by his own father, who was the vicar. He decided to train as a seafarer and when he was 19 he was awarded his “Certificate of Competency” by the Board of Trade. He then went to India and joined the Royal Indian Navy as a sub-lieutenant. He remained in India for the rest of his working life, including naval service in WWI, and rose to the rank of Commander of the Navy. When he was 33, he married Constance HUTTON in Bombay.

After their marriage and the birth of their only child, John and his mother became part of the peripatetic English community of India and travelled back and forth between various places in the south of England and their Indian home. In 1934 John travelled alone as a ten-year-old schoolboy to a house in St John’s Wood, London, presumably to attend school.

Towards the end of Charles’ naval service in about 1936, a decision was made to settle back in England – in Berkhamsted where John could attend school. At the end of September 1939, the pre-war register shows John and his mother living in a  house called “The Ridge” in Shootersway with John going to school in the town. He was 15 years old and his father came to join them shortly afterwards.

The family had no sooner become established together in their new home than sadly John died on 28^th February 1940. His gravestone has a poignant message from his parents “Memory will be our happiness. You are enshrined there”

Charles died 14 years after his son on 29^th January 1954 whilst still living at “The Ridge”. At some point later Constance moved to “Little Corner” on Cross Oak Road where she died, aged 77, on 26^th November 1975.