Edwin Charles Kay Clarke was the only son of stock-broker Charles Sidney Clarke and his wife Elizabeth Clarke. He was born in 1890 and admitted to Westminster in 1910, joining Rigaud’s House. He was an accomplished cricketer and won the Pashley Cup for bowling two consecutive years in a row. His Wisden obituary says that he headed the school batting averages in 1909 and the bowling in 1910, and The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News for 16 June 1917 that he headed the bowling averages in both years, but whichever was correct he was certainly a talented all-round cricketer. He was also captain of the football 1st XI, for which he read the game well but was ‘a trifle lacking in pace’. On 1 and 2 August 1910 he played for the Public Schools in an exciting match at Lord’s, which MCC won by two wickets. He top- scored with 79 in the Schools’ first innings and took two wickets.

He left the school in 1910, and joined the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps in 1911. He remained with this division for five years, and was promoted through the ranks to become a Captain in 1916.

In 1918 he joined the 8^th Battalion of the London Regiment, an unusual regiment that were not affiliated with the Territorial Force, but instead was treated as a corps in its own right. Clarke was sent to the Western Front with the London Regiment in May, and was killed during an attack on Massiere’s Wood in August of that year, for which he was awarded the Military Cross.