His father was the Resident Magistrate in Walvis Bay. He left home in his early teens and joined the staff of the Standard Bank in Cape Town as an office boy. The Bank transferred  him to their 6th Avenue Nairobi, Kenya branch in 1912 as an assistant accountant. On the outbreak of WW1 he joined the EAMR and saw active service in GEA. In 1917 he transferred to the 5th KAR where he was commissioned and served under Major Harry Rayne in the Turkana rebellion and where he received a Mention in Despatches. After the war he returned to the Standard Bank as their accountant at their Eldoret branch. It was here that he met his wife to be, Sheilah Ball, who had arrived in Kenya at the age of 11 with her father Robert Edward Ball in 1912. In 1925 the Bank transferred him back to S. Africa where he held Manager positions in several of the Transvaal branches. In 1946 he took early retirement from the Bank and returned to Kenya where he bought a 300 odd acre farm at Langata on which he ran a small dairy herd and some sheep. For 10 years he worked at the Maize Control Board in Nairobi under Col. R.C. Swain. He sold the major portion of his Langata farm to Karen Estates who developed the property which is now known as Forest Edge Estate. A great lover of the African outdoors and an excellent shot.  Source: Mr John B.R. Allen

Gazette - 7/4/15 - Liable for Jury service, Nairobi District - J.W. Cleverly, Standard Bank

A. Allen - "The Desert and the Green" - " ….… but in May 1956, as I am writing this chapter, there arrives a letter from Mr. Cleverly in Nairobi; with his permission I quote from it: “I was a humble private in the E.A.M.R. and later was given a commission in the K.A.R. I arrived in Turkana on Christmas Day 1917 and left again about the middle of 1919; Von Otter arrived there shortly after I left. You mentioned Ebbey in your letter. He was known to us in ‘A’ Company (I was O.C. ‘A’ Company , 5 K.A.R., which I took over from Harry Rayne, when he was promoted to Major in 1917) as “the War Lord” after Kaiser Bill. He lived near the Abyssinian border. There was a price of 1,500 rupees on his head, so my men were very anxious to get him, but unfortunately were never able to get in touch with him. The big noise in the Turkana tribe in those days was their chief witch-doctor, Lowalel, who lived on Mount Lurissa, just across the Sudan border. No big raid would be undertaken until he had been consulted, and if he said the throwing of the bones indicated the time was not propitious, the raid would be postponed until such time as he considered it would meet with success. Turkana is quite peaceful these days; Lake Rudolf is only three days by lorry from Nairobi via Kitale. Crocodiles are now protected in Lake Rudolf.” ’ Cleverly was mentioned in dispatches for the Turkana expedition

Gazette 14 July 1964 probate

Gazette 18 Dec 1992 for wife's death

Langata cemetery, Nairobi: in loving memory / of / J W G Cleverly / Jock / died 12.10.1963