Billy Clarke was a talented young musician from the east end of London who, in the years leading up to World War I, was at the forefront of Wick's entertainment scene as a pianist in local cinemas. By all accounts a popular figure in the town, Billy also ran a piano-tuning service and gave lessons. When war broke out, he joined the Seaforth Highlanders, becoming one of the few black men to serve in a kilted regiment, only to be killed in action in France in 1916. He was 22.

More than a century on from Billy's death, his great-niece Jan Skeels travelled to Wick earlier this month to find out more about the town that had embraced her relative. And, on a tour of Wick Heritage Museum, she was able to sit at a well-preserved piano that Billy almost certainly played during the course of his work at the Pavilion and Breadalbane picture houses.

Jan had no knowledge of her great-uncle until the John O'Groat Journal made enquiries through an east London newspaper and a family history group ahead of an article about Billy that was published in 2016. It had stemmed from an illustrated talk given the previous year by local historian Harry Gray, entitled Wickers and the First World War, in which the former Wick Society chairman showed a slide of Billy's gravestone in a military cemetery in France and gave a summary of his time in Wick.

Jan (66) spent a couple of days in the Wick area recently during a month-long touring holiday with her partner Roy Lee. The couple, who live in Uckfield, East Sussex, arranged to meet Harry for a coffee before visiting the museum.

“We would never have come up this far without specifically overnighting here, to spend some time in an area that Billy was in – to get some type of feel for what it might have been like,” Jan said.

Billy was born in March 1894 in Canning Town, east London. He was the second of seven children of William Clarke Snr, a Jamaican immigrant who worked as a ship’s fireman, and his London-born wife Leah.

There was trouble at home. By his early teens, Billy was out on his own and, it is understood, too scared to return. It seems he slept rough before being found, badly beaten and huddled in a shop doorway, by a passer-by, Edward Brennan. Edward recognised Billy as they had lived in the same street for a time.

Billy was taken to the Brennans’ house where he was cared for by Edward’s wife, Jane. The Brennans were to become his adopted family, with Billy giving banjo, mandolin and piano tuition to the couple's children.

He joined a touring music hall act, going back to the Brennans in between times. But by 1913 he had moved to Wick and was employed as pianist at Mr Aubrey’s Pavilion Cinema, which had opened in May of that year. Billy also worked at Wick’s other cinema, the Breadalbane.

In the era before talkies, the role of a cinema pianist was to bring the movies to life, usually working from sheet music but with scope for improvisation to reflect the changing moods of the melodramas, comedies and adventures being played out on the screen.

Billy offered piano lessons "under the same principles as taught by the Royal Academy of Music” for a fee of 10s 6d per quarter. He became an enthusiastic member of the Wick Brotherhood, a fellowship group under the auspices of Wick Bridge Street Church.

Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, and Billy signed up for the Seaforth Highlanders just over a month later. His “trade or calling” was listed as musician.

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Before going to France, Billy – now Private William S Clarke – paid one last visit to the Brennans. He wanted to say his goodbyes as he was convinced he would die on the battlefield.

In lulls between fighting, Billy was keen to boost morale through music and song. He instigated an appeal for hymn books for the troops and Willie Christie, of the Wick Brotherhood, arranged for a supply to be sent over. The item of news made it into the press back home, with one dispatch from March 1916 mentioning a church parade in which Billy “was quite at home at the piano”.

On July 10, 1916, two companies of Seaforths launched a big raid on German trenches and it seems likely that Billy was part of this action. In its edition of July 21 the Groat carried a short report under the headline “Popular Wick musician severely wounded”. It said Billy had been admitted to hospital on the 13th with gunshot wounds to the head, and that he was unconscious and dangerously ill.

“In Wick, where Billy was exceedingly popular, there will be sincere regret at this news,” the report went on. “He is a musician of marked ability, and even on service he contrived to cheer the hard lot of his comrades whenever it was possible to get hold of a piano or harmonium… All will join in wishing him a speedy recovery from his severe wounds.”

Billy died on July 31 without having regained consciousness. Reporting that Billy’s mother had received intimation of his death, the paper added: “He was a great favourite in town, and his death will be sincerely regretted.”

He was buried in Longuenesse (St Omer) Souvenir Cemetery in northern France.

Billy was the second of seven children, the eldest being Edward Leven – grandfather of Jan. He went to naval college and served in the Merchant Navy. Another brother, Fred, moved to America where he worked as Humphrey Bogart’s butler and had parts in several movies.

In the Wick museum, Jan was given an opportunity to touch the keys of the Zimmermann piano from the Pavilion that was almost certainly played by Billy. Although not a musician herself, Jan said: "Our grandson Aaron is very good at playing the piano. He is very musical, and we don't know where that came from."

Reflecting on Billy's life, Jan said: “He was a family member that we didn't know existed, but nonetheless he was a family member. He obviously had happy times but it's just so sad, the fact that he was thrown out of the home – for whatever reason – at an early age. I think we figured it was 14 or 15, which is the same age as our grandson. We're a very close-knit family and I hate to think that a member of my family was kind of out on a limb and on his own.

“With my grandfather being in the Merchant Navy, we don't know whether on his trips up here they would have met.

“And there are the missing times, the missing years. He would have had friends. Did he have lady friends? Did he have children? Who knows? At that age he would have had a life.

“We don't know whether it was because he was broken-hearted that he came up here. We just don't know that.”

Jan, who visited Billy's grave in 2019, added: “Apparently he was shot the day before his battalion was relieved from the front line.

“Going to see his grave over in France was quite emotional because although it's someone that you haven't met he's still in your genes, he is still a part of you. And it just seems so wrong.”

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