James McKeown 1892-1916

James McKeown was born in Shincliffe in 1892. His parents were John and Frances. He makes a first appearance in the Census of 1901 alongside his parents, older brother, John (14), and younger sisters, Mary (6) and Margaret (2). The family are living on Avenue Row, now Street, at this time.

John McKeown Senior was living in Pond Row, now Street, in 1881. His father was from Roscommon in Ireland, a small town that was the source of much emigration to the north-east of England in the nineteenth century. Many people of Irish descent in Sunderland, for example, could claim Roscommon as their ancestors’ home.  1891 sees McKeown living in Trimdon Colliery with his wife, Frances, and son John. On this occasion, though, John is somewhat confusingly named as James. John and Frances had married in Durham in 1889. Frances’ father was a gamekeeper in Clifton, near Bedale, in Yorkshire. In 1881, she was a general servant for police sergeant Robert Bowton in Sedgefield.

By 1911, the family had moved to 22 Clarence Street, Bowburn, just like the Carlins, in order to work at the new pit. In 1909 on September 3rd, however, it was reported in the Durham Advertiser that John McKeown Sr, along with John Henry Storey, Matthew Luke and George Wilson, (all of Shincliffe) was summoned before Durham Magistrates in order to answer a charge that all four men had been caught playing “ Pitch and Toss”, a game involving gambling that would have drawn the attention of the local policeman. McKeown and Storey were fined ten shillings and costs, Wilson five shillings and costs and Luke one pound inclusive.

1911 saw the addition of another male member of the family. Thomas McKeown had been born in 1902. John McKeown Jr is back in Shincliffe at this point, living at 15 Avenue Row with his wife, Mary. 

James McKeown died on July 1^st 1916. It is a date shrouded in infamy as it marks the first day of the Battle of the Somme when the casualties suffered by the British Army were immense. He had joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, 25^th Battalion (Tyneside Irish). The Northumberland Fusiliers lost 1,644 men on the first day including, of course, McKeown. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Monument in Picardie, France.

James’ mother died at the relatively early age of fifty-three in 1922. His father would die in 1938. His sister, Margaret, could be found living just round the corner in Wylam Street with her husband and children. 

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