Name
Benjamin Eastlake Leader
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
12/10/1916
39
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Captain
The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment)
3rd Bn., attached 2nd Bn. Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment)
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
THIEPVAL MEMORIAL
Pier and Face 5 D and 6 D.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Bushey Town Memorial
Pre War
Born in Pershore, Worcestershire on 17 June 1877, Benjamin Eastlake Leader was the son of Benjamin Williams Leader (Royal Academy) and his artist wife Mary Alexandra Eastlake. His parents were married in 1876, registered in the Tavistock district.
At the 1881 Census, Benjamin was three years old and living with his family at The Lodge, Terrace Street, Wittington in Worcestershire. His father, aged 50, was working as a landscape artist and his mother was 29 years old. Benjamin had three siblings; Ethel, Beatrice and Mary, whose ages are 2, 1 and 4 months respectively. The birthplace for Mary is Plymouth, whilst the rest of the family were born in Worcester. Also present were one visitor and five servants. It has not been possible to locate any other the Census records for Benjamin.
Benjamin was educated at Charterhouse and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. On leaving there he studied as a landscape painter under Sir H Von Herkomer at Herkomer Art School in Bushey and later at Newlyn in Cornwall. He formed part of the Artists’ Colony at Lamorna, near Penzance and, for five years, was a well known exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He sold his first painting in 1904.
Benjamin married in Glasgow on 8 September 1910 to Isabella Anderson, of 1 Grosvenor Crescent, Glasgow, the third daughter of William Boyd Anderson. They had two children; Benjamin John, born 7 June 1914 and Alison Mary, born 1 June 1916.
Between 1911 and 1913, he lived at Oakhill and then built a house called Rosemerryn in the style of a Cornish manor in 1914-15. He loaned his cottage at Oakhill to the well-known Cornish artists, Laura and Harold Knight when he and his wife, Isabella Leader, moved on to their new home.
Wartime Service
Benjamin enlisted on 25 September 1914 with the Queens (Royal West Surrey) Regiment, gazetted initially as 2nd Lieutenant, promoted to Lieutenant on 20 November 1914 and then as Captain with the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion on 22 May 1915. He served with the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders from January 1915 and was killed in action, at the age of 39, at Le Transloy on 12 October 1916. The Battle of Le Transloy was the last big attack by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the 1916 Battle of the Somme.
The entry in the Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects names his grantee as William Boyd Anderson. His medal record names his widow Mrs B E Leader with an address of Dulverton, Crooklets, Bude, North Cornwall.
He is commemorated on the Bushey Memorial, Clay Hill and on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. There is also an entry in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour (Volume 3) and in the Cambridge University Alumni.
Additional Information
Dianne Payne - www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk, Jonty Wild
Acknowledgments
Andrew Palmer
Dianne Payne - www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk, Jonty Wild
