Rudyard Kipling Letters on the Wartime Loss of His Son to Auction

Rudyard Kipling's 18-year-old son John was reported missing in action in 1915 on the Western Front during a three-week offensive which left 61,000 wounded and nearly 8,000 dead.

Kipling blamed himself for his son signing up, using his influence to secure him a commission in the Irish Guards. But on the second day of the Battle of Loos in northern France, Lieutenant John Kipling was reported missing, leaving his father to make repeated enquiries through official and unofficial channels.

Part of this correspondence comes to auction at Hansons on October 10 with Rudyard Kipling's signed letter written from the family home of Bateman’s in Sussex and dated November 15t, 1915. It is addressed to the matron of the City of London Military Hospital and asks if one of her patients, Private Joseph Ahern of the Irish Guards who was wounded alongside his son, may have any information on his fate.

“So far we can get no report from Germany of his being a prisoner there, or any report from Belgium of his being in hospital there," wrote Kipling, "and we are anxious to get the evidence of the men who were wounded in the same action and who are now in England, before they are separated. This must be my excuse of troubling you.” In another plea he writes: “My only hope of knowing my son’s fate is from the evidence of the men who fought near him on the action of the 27th September.”

John was officially declared dead the following year, even though his body had not been found. Private Joseph Ahern recovered and was sent back to the Front where he died in 1917. 

The letters are expected to make £800-£1,200.