The Men

The Men

Sunday 19 January 2014

* Private John Henry Wisdom

Private John Henry Wisdom died 26th January 1916.
2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) 8641
Age 42. Killed in action.
Son of the late Thomas Hume Wisdom, of 17, Greenmount Road, Terenure, Dublin.
Enlisted from the Ecclesiastical Commission. Panel 1. Loos Memorial in France.

The younger son of Thomas Hume Wisdom Sr, Esq of Wilmont, Co Wexford, and also uncle of the philosopher John Oulton Wisdom, who remembered him throughout the 20th century, he was a lexicographer, and also translator of Lermontov's "Heart of a Russian" into English.
He travelled in pre-war Europe as far as St Petersburg, and worked at the English Church Commissioners.
His elder brother Thomas Hume Wisdom Jr won a mathematics prize at the High School c 1890.
He fought in the Boer War, and as a veteran, was called up in 1914. Probably because of his experience in the ranks, he refused the commission his standing and linguistic knowledge entitled him to, and so died with his comrades, of a shell or grenade. His brother mourned him for the rest of his life.   
All he left were language books, including one on Amharic. 

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