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Name: BONHAM, Jack Desmond (Capt.)
Birth Date: 29 Nov 1899 Waterloo, Lancs.
Death Date: 2 Aug 1970 Diani Beach, Mombasa
First Date: 1930
Profession: Hunter 1939; Game Warden at the Coast 1948
Area: Chemelil, Coast, 1953 Kathpat Est. Kiambu, 1937 Maiyolo Est. Sabukia, Malindi
Married: In Kiambu 29 Jan 1952 Kathleen Muriel Le Poer Trench b. 1921 Ecclesall Bierlow, d. 9 Apr 1999 Karen (dau. of Arthur Hugh Donald Le Poer Trench)
Children: one son; one dau.
Book Reference: Last Chance, Sitrep 2, Kinloch, Sundown, Hut, Red 31, EA & Rhodesia
General Information:
East Africa & Rhodesia - 21/2/52 - Captain Jack Bonham one of the best-known shots in Kenya, and Miss Kathleen Le Poer Trench were recently married in Kiambu
Hut has J.D. Bonham, 1930, Chemelil
Pre-war volunteer to the Kenya Regiment (KR 557).
Gazette 29 Jan 1971 probate
Ancestry He settled in Kenya. In the early 1940’s he was described as “The ‘Lawrence’ of the Kenya front who worked up the revolt in the lonely regions north of Dukana was a blue-eyed Irishman [sic] with a vivid harum-scarum personality. He was Jack Desmond Bonham, a 42-year-old rover from County Wexford [sic], who had once been a sailor but had spent the last 20 years on safari in East Africa tackling jobs such as thinning out lions in the Masai Reserve".
Allfree in Bluff: ‘He was the Game Control Officer of the Kenya Coast. A very boisterous, hard drinking, utterly self assured Irishman, he was an amusing companion. We learned to take his tales of valorous hunting with a small sprinkling of salt. Jack Bonham was the confident and bright-eyed boy of the Chief Game Warden, Kenya, Captain Archie Ritchie. Jack Bonham preferred elephants to human beings. His job was to protect the human beings and their property from the elephants.’
Allfree in Bluff: ‘He was the Game Control Officer of the Kenya Coast. A very boisterous, hard drinking, utterly self assured Irishman, he was an amusing companion. We learned to take his tales of valorous hunting with a small sprinkling of salt. Jack Bonham was the confident and bright-eyed boy of the Chief Game Warden, Kenya, Captain Archie Ritchie. Jack Bonham preferred elephants to human beings. His job was to protect the human beings and their property from the elephants.’