Eric Penn

Eric Frank Penn (17 April 1878 – 18 October 1915) was an English soldier and a cricketer who played first-class cricket for Cambridge University and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) between 1898 and 1903. He was born at Westminster, London and died in the fighting of the First World War near Loos, France.

Eric Penn was the eldest son of William Penn, a cricketer and a businessman who ran the family engineering company of John Penn and Sons founded by his own father, John Penn, which was based in Greenwich, London. Eric Penn was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Penn played cricket as a right-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm slow bowler while at school. At Cambridge, he played in a few first-team games in 1898 but did not consolidate his place in the side and was not picked for the University Match against Oxford University. He was awarded a Blue, though he took only one wicket in the 1899 University Match.

There was then a hiatus in Penn's university and cricket career, as he joined the 3rd (Militia) battalion of the Royal Scots as a lieutenant on 30 August 1899. The battalion was embodied in December 1899 to serve in the Second Boer War, and in early March 1900 left Queenstown on the SS Oriental for South Africa. He won a second Blue but again made little impact in the University Match.

In 1906, Penn married Gladys Eveleen Ebden, daughter of Charles Ebden of Baldslow Place near Hastings in East Sussex.