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There is always a time of innocence. There is never a place.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
So one might say, using the word, in a practical way, that it means a state of never having done harm. One answer to your question is to say that if you have not done harm, you have not lost your innocence.
"he was still innocent of any knowledge of how harsh the world is" you really mean "not knowing" rather than "not guilty of causing harm," but of course the two things go together, since innocence depends on a sort of ignorance in some ways--part of why one might be "ignorant" of the harms of the world is that one has never caused a harm and is, in that sense, innocent.
In a lot of cultures, some behaviors are seen as having guilt attached to them, even if no harm is done.
When one gets hurt by others actions or words that's when one loses his/her innocence. Innocent people are not capable of getting hurt. They don't understand the complexities of other people's reactions, they are either Sad or Happy but they aren't hurt.
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
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