[5][6][7][8] As was the case with his older brother William,[9][10] Honey was educated at Caulfield Grammar School, in St Kilda East,[11] and he attended from 1895, when he was 10 years old.

[16] In early 1904, at the age of 18, Honey became part owner of a small magazine called Spectre in Palmerston North,[17] New Zealand which went bankrupt.

Before going there, however, Honey went to the races at Epsom the next day, where he was spotted by other journalists, and upon his return to London found his pay cheque and dismissal notice ready for him.

[20] He apparently missed an opportunity for an assignment as a war correspondent in late 1914 working for one of London's leading editors, when his wife could not find him in all of "his usual haunts in Fleet Street".

Honey used multiple nom de plumes for his freelance articles e.g. Warren Foster, Margaret Graham and Joan Sinclair.

[14] He also drew upon the experience he had in a train travelling in the west of England during a silent interlude for the funeral of King Edward VII.

However, his wife Millie said that journalists in Fleet Street believed Honey was the instigator of the silence[29][30] Nearly 7 months after Honey's letter, records close to King George V show that on 27 October 1919, a suggestion from South African author and politician Sir Percy Fitzpatrick for a similar idea for a moment of silence was forwarded to George V, then King of the United Kingdom.

The letter was sent though Lord Milner, who had previously held high office in South Africa, On 7 November 1919, King George V formally requested the observance of the two minutes' silence throughout the British Empire.

[44] A letter to an Australian newspaper in 1925 suggests that Honey may have been inspired by silences observed in the United States when the Maine was finally sunk in 1912.

[33] The contribution of Honey was recognised by the then-principal of Caulfield Grammar School, Walter Murray Buntine,[45] in the school's 1931 golden jubilee publication:[46] Eric Harding's booklet written in support of the monument to Honey erected in 1965 acknowledges that other silences had been held before (upon the death of King Edward, the silences in South Africa "when the war was going badly for the Allies", ceremonies in Australia for lost miners, in the US when the Maine was sunk, amongst others), but in his words "the originality of Honey's suggestion is based on the fact that this was the first time in history that a victory had been celebrated as a tribute to those who sacrificed their lives and their health to make the victory possible".

[Note 3] Harding also acknowledges that, despite extensive research, no evidence of Honey's attendance at any rehearsal at Buckingham Palace, nor any record of an official communication mentioning Honey's letter having played a part in the adoption of the remembrance tradition, could be found, and that the only "proof" was that the letter preceded the formal approach to the King by several months.

"[2] According to an Australian War Memorial article, Honey attended a trial of the event with the Grenadier guards at Buckingham Palace, as did Fitzpatrick (although it was not known whether they ever actually met or discussed their ideas).