Mombasa Mbaraki cemetery - Harry Alcorn, buried 14 Mar 1958 age 63, European Hospital, Bronchopneumonia. And Ivy Esther Alcorn, d. Nov.1957, Eur. Hosp, chronic nephritis, buried 18 Nov., aged 59

Gazette 16 Nov 1936 Voters List 1936 - Harry Alcorn, Solicitor's Clerk, c/o Ralston & Kaplan, Nbi

Ancestry for birth

Pat Whiteley (granddaughter: Ivy worked as a cook.  She and her husband were separated for many years. She was in charge of the Officer’s Mess in Mombasa, Nyali Leave Camp and also Mackinnon Road House in Voi.

Henry was with the 4^th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards.  He fought in France during WW1 and when he returned to N. Ireland after that war it wasn’t long before he packed his bags and headed for East Africa (Nairobi) in April 1920.   According to a copy of a letter to him dated 09 March 1920 from Thomas George Lewis, Tourist, Steamship, Forwarding and Insurance Agent, Henry was told that there was a sailing about the middle of April 1920 and that they had received his passport.   I also have a copy of a letter to him, dated 28^th April 1920, signed by all his friends together with a gift wishing him a “pleasant voyage and every success and prosperity in the future”. He worked in a Solicitor’s office in Nairobi.   Henry married my maternal grandmother Ivy Esther Godfrey (S. African) on 1^st June 1921.  After their first three children were born, they sailed to the UK and to N.Ireland where they remained for two or three years while my grandfather qualified in his legal degree.   My mother told me that he was a Notary Public. 

My grandfather was staying with us (my mother, Eileen and I) in Mombasa when he died.  He’d had surgery and come to recuperate.  On the day he died, we had lunch at the dining room table together, and the plan was to meet my mother during the afternoon in town because he needed a walking stick.  He joked with Eileen and I and said that if anything happened to him, we were to dial 999!  My grandfather became tired of walking and took a rest on a large chair in a curio shop while our mother went into the Arab quarters to purchase a walking stick for him and I was sent to buy a bottle of Lucozade.  This is where he suddenly died.    I met my mother on the street walking back to the curio shop when Eileen came running towards us shouting “Mummy, come quickly.  Something has happened to Grandad”.   My poor devastated mother accompanied her deceased father to the Mombasa Hospital in the ambulance while Eileen and I caught the bus back home.