Jimmy Durham: A modest but important mark made on history 

August marks the 110th anniversary of the death of Jimmy Durham, dubbed the only Black soldier in Victoria’s Army. Donal O’Keeffe visits his grave in Fermoy.

Jimmy Durham, 2nd Batallion, Durham Light Infantry. Reproduced by permission of Durham County Record Office. File picture. 

In Fermoy’s old military cemetery, a white marble cross marks the final resting place of a historic figure who died in 1910, aged 25, 5,500 miles from his birthplace.

Jimmy Durham’s story begins on New Year’s Day, 1886, after the Battle of Ginnis, when Lieutenant Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle found a baby on the banks of the Nile. Soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry had defeated Mahdist Sudanese warriors of the Dervish State aboard a barge. The Sudanese were massacred by British boat-mounted Gardner guns, and the few survivors fled.