| Esmé Chinnery | |
| Fullname: | Esme Fairfax Chinnery |
| Birth Date: | 28 March 1886 |
| Birth Place: | Cobham, Surrey |
| Death Place: | Issy, Paris, France |
| Date: | 12 March 2017 |
| Source: | http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/11122.html Cricinfo |
Captain Esmé Chinnery (28 March 1886 - 18 January 1915) was an English soldier and aviator. He played one first-class cricket match for Surrey in 1906.[1] He was killed in an aircraft accident during World War I.[2]
After school, Chinnery went up to Brasenose College in the University of Oxford. Whilst at Oxford he became a Freemason in the Apollo University Lodge, a Masonic lodge for students and former students of the university.[3] [4] He played cricket at university, and whilst still an undergraduate he was selected to play in the first team for Surrey County Cricket Club.
Chinnery was commissioned as a Coldstream Guards officer in 1910 and was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in 1913. He obtained his aviators certificate at Brooklands Aerodrome on 30 April 1912, flying a Deperdussin Monoplane.[5]
Chinnery was flying as a passenger in a Voisin biplane when the aircraft broke up and both he and the pilot fell to earth, Chinnery died and the French aviator Laporte died later in hospital. Following his death a memorial service was held at the Embassy Church in Paris and his body was repatriated to England for a military funeral, and burial in his family's plot at St. Matthew Church at Hatchford in Surrey.[6]