THE SUDAN CAMPAIGN 1896-1908
D.S.O. London Gazette 26 November 1886: For the action at Ginnis, the first awards of the D.S.O. C.V.O. London Gazette 11 August 1903: On the occasion of the visit to Ireland of His Majesty. K.C.M.G. London Gazette 1916.
Mention in despatches London Gazette 25 August 1885 (Nile Expedition), 11 January and 6 September 1889 (Ginnis and Toski), 3 November 1896 (Dongola), 25 January (Nile), 24 May and 30 September 1898 (Atbara and Khartoum); 16 April 1901 and 29 July 1902 (Boer War).
John Grenfell Maxwell was born in Toxteth Park, Liverpool, on 12 July 1859, the second son of Robert Maxwell (d. 22 November 1874), senior partner in the firm of A. F. and R. Maxwell, corn merchants, of 28 Brunswick Street, Liverpool, and his wife Maria Emma, daughter of John Pascoe Grenfell, an Admiral in the Brazilian Navy. His father Robert Maxwell was the son and heir to Archibald Maxwell of Threave, a descendent of the Maxwells of Drumpark. and cousin of Field Marshal Francis Wallace Grenfell, first Baron Grenfell. The marriage of Mrs Maxwell's sister Sophia to Pascoe Grenfell, Lord Grenfell's eldest brother, greatly strengthened the intimacy that arose between young Maxwell and the field marshal. John spent his boyhood with his father's parents in Scotland and was educated at Cheltenham College from January 1875 to July 1877; he was in the shooting eleven, and long continued to be an exceptional shot.
He entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1878, and was commissioned into the 42nd Foot (Royal Highlanders, the Black Watch) in 1879. In 1882 the 42nd was part of Wolseley's expeditionary force to relieve Gordon, besieged in Khartoum, with Maxwell chosen by Major-General Sir Archibald Alison as his aide-de-camp at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir and remained with Alison until he left for England in 1883. Maxwell stayed on in Egypt with Sir Evelyn Wood, as assistant provost-marshal, and became one of the first British officers to enter the Egyptian service as a Staff Captain in the Egyptian Military Police.
As assistant provost-marshal and as headquarters Camp Commandant, he spent the winter of 1884–5 up the Nile with Wolseley on the Gordon relief expedition. When, in April 1885, Sir Francis Grenfell, his maternal grandfather's brother, succeeded Wood as Sirdar of the Egyptian army, he summoned Maxwell to his staff, first as aide-de-camp and then as assistant military secretary, although the appointment was not made permanent until September 1886. In that capacity Maxwell took part in the Sudan frontier operations, being present at Giniss on 30 December 1885, for which he was awarded the D.S.O., at Gemaizah, outside Suakin on 20 December 1888, which brought him the Osmanieh, and lastly, on 3 August 1889, at the more decisive battle of Toski, after which he was awarded a brevet majority.
Maxwell married in 1892 Louise Selina, daughter of Charles William Bonynge of New York and Dublin, a wealthy Irish American, and had one daughter, named appropriately Philae (b. 1893), who married U.S. Navy Lieutenant Clifford Carver of New York. Mrs Maxwell enjoyed a considerable fortune, and before her husband's retirement lived largely apart from him. She survived Maxwell and died in
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