LTC John Thomas Keyt, C.B.

John Thomas Keyt was born in Wendlebury, Oxfordshire, England in 1778. He was most likely descended from, or otherwise related to, the Keyt baronets. He was an officer in the 51st (2nd Yorkshire West Riding) Regiment of Foot, an infantry regiment, “51st Foot” for short.

John Keyt was drafted into the British army as an Ensign on the 9th of September 1798. He sailed as part of the 51st Foot regiment for India and Ceylon on the ship Earl Cornwallis, leaving Portsmouth on the 4th of October 1798. The vessel reached the Cape on the 20th of January 1799 and Madras on the 12th of April. After spending ten months in Madras, India, the regiment, then counting 450 men, arrived in Ceylon in February 1800, after which Keyt was promoted to Lieutenant.

In 1802 he had a son, born out of wedlock by the name of Henry Johnsz, with a local woman by the name of Ann (last name unknown).

The 51st Foot remained in Ceylon until 1807. Britain was at war with France, and it wanted to maintain control over its colonies at all cost, not just the Jewel in the Crown that was India, but also strategically important ports in the region, such as Jaffna, Trincomalee and Colombo. Once the 51st Foot was stationed in Ceylon, however, it also played an important role in the First Kandyan War (1803 – 1805). The Sinhalese kingdom of Kandy was nominally still independent, but already in Dutch times it was completely surrounded by the colonial forces, thus hopelessly cut-off from the rest of the world.

The British siege of Kandy was literally an uphill battle, through thickly forested terrain and facing fierce resistance from the Sinhalese. Yet the two decisive factors in the defeat of the British were the climate and diseases such as malaria and dysentery, which killed 300 men in less than three months. In William Wheater’s 1870 book A Record of the Services of the 51st (Second West York), the King's Own Light Infantry Regiment, Lt. Keyt is mentioned by name, participating in minor attacks on villages such as Avissawella (between Colombo and Kandy) in October 1803. He was promoted to Captain in 1804.

Keyt left Ceylon in 1807 with the 51st Foot for Europe to fight Napoleon, or “Naps” as British officers endearingly called their Imperial foe back in the day. Keyt’s left his sweetheart Ann and five-year-old son Henry behind in Ceylon. They would never see him again.

In October 1820 he married a woman named Mary King in Newbury, England, with whom he had a son, John Augustus Keyt (born on the 18th of December, 1823 in Corfu), also an officer in the British army.

John Keyt’s Tour of Duty included:

• Spain (1808 – 1809), where the British joined the fight against the French occupation of Spain and Portugal in the Peninsular War. He took part in the Battle of Corunna (January 1809), after which the British had to retreat from the Peninsula until 1811.

• Walcheren, the Netherlands (1809), where the British fought the disastrous Walcheren Campaign to take Vlissingen (Flushing) and Antwerp from the French. The British lost only 106 men in battle, but 4000 men died from the so-called “Walcheren Fever”, thought to be a combination of malaria and typhus.

• Portugal, Spain, France (1811, 1813, 1814) as part of the Anglo-Portuguese Army led by the Marquess of Wellington in the Peninsular War.
Battles he fought in: Badajoz (1811), Vitoria (June 1813), The Pyrenees / San Marcial in which he was severely wounded by shrapnel (August 1813), The Nive (December 1813), Orthez (February 1814).

• Belgium, France; Battle of Waterloo / Cambrai (June 1815). In April he had been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and was knighted Companion of the Order of the Bath (C.B.).

• Corfu, Greece (1821 – 1825). The United States of the Ionian Islands was a British protectorate.

• Jamaica (1828 – 1835), assigned to the 84th (York and Lancaster) Regiment of Foot.
In Jamaica he was tasked with suppressing the slave rebellions (Baptist War).

He died in Maroon Town, Saint James, Jamaica on the 16th of January 1835, aged 56.