For a good number of years, we have been able to access the Keighlian Magazine at our local library in Keighley, but through various means I have managed to get hold of a set covering the Great War period for my own collection, which means we can scan and use the images therein. Most of them are well over 100 years old now, so there are unlikely to be any copyright restrictions on them.
The 'Keighlian'. School magazine of Keighley Boy's Grammar School.
A page showing the obituary photographs available in the Keighlian magazine.
The magazines were produced several times a year by the older boys at Keighley Boy's Grammar school, which is evidenced by their names in the publication team in the front pages of each issue. The contents dealt with school issues, examinations and sports team results plus a section about the old boys of the school, particularly when one of them achieved something of note such as a bachelors degree at university. They give us some insights into wonderful and interesting stories of school life.
We have recently completed the transcription of the Grammar School's Great War roll of honour and placed it online here: Keighlian Roll of Honour.
The various wartime issues also featured obituaries of old boys who died as a result of the war complete with photographs and detailed information not found anywhere else in local archives. There are 42 separate images of the old boys who died, out of 46 who gave their lives. Despite this wealth of contemporary information, as far as we know Keighley Boy's Grammar School did not create it's own war memorial, instead settling for this rather hidden printed form.
Some of these images are pretty good quality for a magazine and often much improved upon the local newspaper archives, both on microfilm and the original newspapers which are now closed for public access because of their fragile nature. Heres an example of the difference between the various images:
Comparison image of microfilm, newspaper and Keighlian magazine images.
We use these images in our research and along with the text from the obituaries and other records such as Army records, census records, local Great War specific records in the library archives and newspapers we can build up a decent profile of an old boy who served. We have placed a couple of these biographies online as an example of our work:
Arthur Binns MM | Luther McKechnie
