Leonard Dobbie Cane BA (Cantab.), Chorister 1894–97

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born : 13 May 1883

• Died: 24 January 1916

• Regiment: Royal Fusiliers

• Grave/Memorial: Cambrin Churchyard (Extension): E.3

Family background

b. 13 May 1883 in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, as the fourth son (seventh and youngest child) of Henry Drake Cane (1834–1913), and the only son of Henry Drake Cane and his second wife Margaret Agatha Cane (née Jessopp) (1846–1929) (m. 1880 in Derbyshire), of Sturt St, Ballarat, Australia; by the time of the 1911 Census the family had moved to England and was living at 24, South St, Louth, Lincolnshire.

 

 

Parents and ancestors

Henry Drake Cane was a clergyman’s son from Louth, Lincolnshire, and emigrated to Australia, probably between 1851 and 1861, where he became a landowner and, between 1863 and 1868, a shareholder in various companies around Ballarat, Victoria, mainly to do with mining. In 1866 Henry Drake returned to England to marry his first wife, Amelia Hutchinson (1838–79), in Southwell, Nottingham, but the couple were back in Australia by the time of the birth of their first son in January 1867. In 1875, the Ballarat Directory describes Henry Drake as a maltster living at 27, Wendouree Parade, in a western suburb of Ballarat, and he must have been a prosperous one, too, since in 1876 he could afford to visit England with his wife and five children. The family started the journey back to Australia in December 1876 aboard the ill-fated sea-going paddle steamer the HMPS Hankow (1874–1906; sunk by fire on 14 October 1906 with the loss of 130 lives), arrived in Melbourne in February 1877, and returned to Wendouree, where Henry Drake still had his maltster’s business.

 

 

 He returned to England once again, this time on his own, to marry his second wife, the daughter of a Derby solicitor, in Derby in December 1880: the couple arrived back in Australia in March 1910, having travelled on the SS Orient (1879–1910; broken up), at one point the second largest ship in the world).

 

 

By 1883, the Victoria Government Gazette described Henry Drake as a “Gentleman living at Ballarat per shareholding”, and over the next ten years he had the spare time and money to undertake three more round trips from Melbourne to London, the last of which began in November 1893 aboard the recently launched brigantine SS Matiana (1894; torpedoed without loss of life on 1 May 1918 after running aground on a reef off Tunisia) and was made in the company of his wife and a child aged eight years.

 

 

The child must have been Leonard Dobbie, and the purpose of the journey was almost certainly to deposit him in Oxford, where he had gained a place at Magdalen College School as a Chorister. By 1894, Henry Drake had moved to Sturt St, Ballarat, and he was still living there in 1903 (when his name last appears on the Ballarat electoral register) and 1904 (when the District Directory described him as being “of independent means”. He probably retired to England in about 1904 when he turned 70 and his youngest son obtained his BA and began a career in education. Nevertheless, the 1911 English Census does record that Henry Drake and his wife Margaret Agatha were living on private means at 24, South St, Louth – his home town in Lincolnshire, England.

Cane’s mother was probably the daughter of an Assistant Overseer who was also a Wesleyan Lay Preacher.

Several members of Cane’s family had a naval or military background.

Cane’s great-grandfather, Captain (RN) William Hugh Dobbie (1771–1830), JP, who became the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Essex, was the grandson of a naval officer who was killed in action on active service; in 1806 he was awarded £300 worth of plate by the East India Company and was Mentioned in Dispatches by Sir Edward Pellew (1757–1833), the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Station from 1804 to 1809, for his gallantry and success in an expedition against the pirates of Dwarka in the eastern Indian Ocean between December 1805 and January 1806. One of Captain Dobbie’s sisters was married to a descendant of the famous Admiral Benbow (1653–1702).

Vice-Admiral William Hugh Dobbie (1812–89) was the son of Captain William Hugh Dobbie and so Cane’s grandfather. He served on the North America and West India stations in various ships of war, but did not see much action and finished his career on half-pay. He became a Vice-Admiral in 1846.

Cane’s paternal uncle, the Revd Alfred Grainger Cane (1844–1919), was also distantly related to Captain (RN) William Hugh Dobbie through Cane’s mother. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge (BA 1867; MA 1870), and ordained deacon in 1867 and priest in 1868. After serving as Curate of St Swithin’s, Lincoln, from 1867 to 1871, he moved to India and held down three chaplaincies before becoming Voluntary Chaplain to the South Afghanistan Field Force during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1880). He was Mentioned in Dispatches for his gallantry at the Battle of Maiwand (1880), when two Brigades of the British Army were routed by an Afghan force under the command of Ayub Khan (1857–1914), and the Battle of Kandahar (1880), when a force commanded by General Lord Roberts (1832–1914) defeated the Afghans and ended the conflict. He stayed in India until 1890 and then returned to England to become Vicar of Great Paxton with Little Paxton and Toseland, a living in Huntingdonshire with a stipend of £325 and a total population of 637.

Cane was also a first cousin of General Sir Edmund Henry Allenby, later the 1^st Viscount Allenby of Megiddo (1861–1936), the General Officer Commanding the 3^rd Army in France from 1916 to 1917 and the British Army in Palestine from 1917 to 1918, since Cane’s father was the brother of Allenby’s mother Catherine Anne Cane (1831–1922).

Cane was also related to Brigadier William Hugh Dobbie (1885–1921), who distinguished himself in the Third Burmese War (1885–87), when Britain deposed King Theebaw and assimilated Burma into the Empire in order to gain control of its rich mineral deposit

Another cousin, Lionel Alfred Francis Cane, was killed in action near Ploegsteert, Belgium, on 7 November 1914, aged 29, while serving with the 1^st Battalion, the East Lancashire Regiment, during the First Battle of Ypres (19 October–30 November 1914).

 

Siblings and their families

Half-brother of:

(1) Henry Percy (1867–77);

(2) Francis Alfred (1869–1933 [Victoria, Australia]);

(3) Violet Marian (b. 1872);

(4) Elfick Arthur (1874–1945 [Melbourne, Australia]); married (1906) Eliza Alison Cadden (1878–1957), four daughters;

(5) Mary (b. 1876–date of death unknown);

(6) Margaret Catherine (b. 1878–date of death unknown).

Francis Alfred attended Shrewsbury School from 1884 to 1885.

Elfick Arthur fought in the Second Boer War as a Private in the 3^rd (Bushmen’s) Contingent and was wounded at Ottoshoop on 22 August 1900. He was then invalided back to Australia, where he arrived on 2 May 1901 and subsequently made his living there as a poultry farmer.

 

Wife and children

Cane’s wife was Kathleen Frances Cane (née Haslam) (1884–1955) (m. 1910), the sixth daughter of a former assistant master (for 37 years) at Uppingham School, Rutland. They lived at 7, Keynsham Park, Cheltenham; later Dunchurch, Rugby and Eastholme, Wellington Square, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

He was the father of:

(1) Sidney Henry Kingsley (1911–97), who married (1957) Audrey Evans (1922–74);

(2) Doreen Margaret (b. 1915, probably still-born);

(3) Kathleen Margaret (1915–2001), later Baillie after her marriage (1948) to William J. Baillie (1900–81).

 

“His death will be severely felt in educational circles, in which he was held in great regard.”

 

Education and professional life

Cane attended Magdalen College School (MCS) as a boarder from 1894 to 1900 and was a chorister there from 1894 to 1897. He was a keen athlete and competed successfully in the MCS half-mile race at the University Running Ground in June 1897 (2^nd place) and in June 1898 (1^st place); he was also good at football, an enthusiastic if mediocre cricketer, and a talented comic actor. In 1897 he was awarded an Ellerton Exhibition (a Prize awarded for the best performance by a chorister in school examinations) and obtained his Junior School Certificate from the Oxford and Cambridge Public Schools Examination Board. After an impressive performance two years later in his Senior School Certificate, he gained an Open Scholarship in Classics to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, for October 1901 and graduated with a 1^st in Classics in Trinity Term 1904, when he was also awarded the Tripos Prize and elected to a BA Scholarship for £50. He took his BA on 21 June 1904 and his MA on 17 December 1908. A keen sportsman, he rowed for his College (Boat Secretary 1903–04) and was a good middle-distance runner and hockey player; he was also a keen cyclist and long-distance walker and enjoyed following foxhounds and beagles on foot. In Michaelmas Term 1903 he was Chairman of the College’s Debating Society, and during his second year he became a Private and then a Corporal in the Cambridge University Rifle Volunteer Corps.

After graduating, Cane spent seven months at the University of Rennes, France, before becoming a school-master from 1904 to 1909 (Durham School 1904–08, Highgate School, London N8, 1908–09). From 1909 to January 1913 he was a school inspector (Junior HMI) under the Bradford Board of Education, and by March 1911 he and his family lived at 17, Bertram Rd, Manningham, Bradford. From January 1913 to 1914 he was an HMI in the Weston-super-Mare District of Somerset and in 1914 he became an HMI in Manchester. After his death, the Chief Inspector of the Board of Education said of him in a letter:

Had he lived, I am sure he would have done most valuable work. He has found a nobler and more glorious way of serving his country. I was always sure the sense of duty which was so strong in him would make him as good a soldier as he was an Inspector. He is the first Inspector to fall in the war; though we are all grieved to have lost him, we are proud to have had him for a colleague and to feel that he has given his life so nobly for his country.

When Cane made his will, he gave his address as Littlewood, Worsley, Lancashire, the family home before its move to Bradford. By late 1915, his family was living at 6, Christchurch Rd, Reading, Berkshire.

 

Military and war service

Although Cane was a subaltern in the Middlesex Regiment (Territorial Forces) before World War One, pressures of work had forced him to resign his commission when he became an HMI in 1909. But on 5 September 1914, having been given leave from the Inspectorate, he enlisted in Manchester as a Private in the 20^th (3^rd Public Schools) Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, part of the Public Schools Brigade that was raised at Woodcote Park Camp, Epsom, shortly after the outbreak of war (see C.R. Priest, V.A. Farrar). But being a graduate, a former officer, and 5 foot 10¾ inches tall, he was recognized as “potential officer material” almost immediately, and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 24 September 1914. He was then offered a Captaincy in one of the Territorial Battalions of the East Lancashire Regiment on 7 October 1914, but as he preferred to stay with his chosen Battalion in the Royal Fusiliers, he was commissioned Lieutenant in the 20^th (3^rd Public Schools) Battalion on 27 October 1914. Cane attended an officers’ course at Chelsea Barracks from 25 January to 6 February 1915, was made the Battalion’s Adjutant on 21 May 1915, and promoted Captain on 6 July 1915. Meanwhile, the 20^th Battalion trained for over a year at Woodcote Park Camp, Epsom, Clipstone Camp, near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and Tidworth, on Salisbury Plain, before finally disembarking at Calais on 14 November 1915 as part of the 98^th Brigade, 33^rd Division.

On 16 November the Battalion travelled by train to Thiennes and L’Ecleme and arrived at Béthune on 19 November 1915, where on 27 November 1915 it was transferred to the 19^th Brigade. From 21 November to 9 January it was in and out of the trenches at Annequin, about three miles east of Béthune, and then, after a four-day rest in Béthune, it returned to the trenches from 15 to 19 January. It spent 20 to 23 January in billets at Beuvry and returned to the firing line near Annequin on 24 January, with Cane, still the Battalion’s Adjutant, detailed by his Colonel to take charge of a Company in place of an officer who was on leave. The Battalion had arrived at night and was relatively unfamiliar with these trenches, and while performing his extra duty, Cane walked along a stretch of trench where the parapet was low. He stopped to speak to the Sergeant who was following him, raised his head, and was killed in action by a sniper, aged 32, at 21.30 hours on 24 January 1916. He was buried the same night in Cambrin Churchyard Extension, near Cuinchy Railway Station; Grave E.3. The inscription reads: “He sleeps in peace, May God remember him, for ever, Jesu mercy”. He is commemorated on Louth War Memorial, Lincolnshire. He left £1,469, 10s, 7d.

 

 

Cane’s family received many letters extolling his virtues as a scholar, a teacher, an HMI and an officer. One brother officer described him as “the personification of that which should be in a man” and in a letter to Cane’s mother, Lieutenant (later Colonel) Frederick Stewart Modera (later DSO MC; 1887–1958), who had replaced Cane as the Battalion’s Adjutant, wrote: “He is one of the many brave fellows who have given their lives in the endeavour – an endeavour which is bound to be successful in the end – to crush tyranny, not to say barbarism, in Europe.” A friend said in a letter: “I am sure he counted the cost before he offered himself for service in the Army. He knew what risks he was taking; he was not dazzled by any desire for glory. But he quietly and calmly accepted the dangerous course, and made his sacrifice; and it has been accepted in full.” A Cambridge friend wrote in similar vein: “He was a man to whom I looked up as the finest type of clean-living Englishman, to whom literature and athletics and religion were all intensely real.” His mother wrote to the War Office, asking whether, “as a mother of an only son killed in the War”, she was “not eligible for a copy of ‘The Scroll of Honour’ which I understand is now being presented to the nearest relatives of officers fallen?” The War Office replied, regretting that “owing to the large number of these memorials to be issued[,] only one can be sent to each individual case”. So as Cane’s memorial had been allocated to his widow, the War Office advised Cane’s mother to take a photograph of her son’s memorial instead. Besides getting the memorial, Cane’s widow was awarded a pension of £100 p.a. with effect from 25 January 1916 and a gratuity of £250; his two children each received pensions of £24 p.a. with effect from 25 November 1916 and a gratuity of £836s.8d., the sum of 6s.8d. being the equivalent of the medieval Mark. Some of Cane’s former colleagues also set up a fund for the education of his two children.

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

 Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘Captain and Adjutant Leonard Dobbie Cane’ [brief obituary], The Times, no. 41,076 (19 January 1916), p. 11.

[Anon.], ‘Old Magdalen School Boy Killed’ [obituary], The Oxford Chronicle, no. 4,197 (4 February 1916), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Roll of Honour: Leonard Dobbie Cane’, The Lily, 11, no. 6 (March 1916), pp.75–6.

De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour 1914–18, 5 vols (1914–18), III (1916), p. 47.

[Anon.] (1917), pp. 13–104.

[Anon.], ‘Captain and Adjutant Leonard Dobbie Cane’ [obituary], British Roll of Honour (no publisher, c.1919), unpaginated.

Bebbington (2014), pp. 97–102.

 

Archival sources:

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (Mss/87/027) (The Papers of Captain William Hugh Dobbie RN [1771–1830] and Admiral William Hugh Dobbie [1812–1889]).

WO95/2423.

WO339/147.