09/11/1872 –08/06/1958
Retired Colonel, Indian Army, served in Mesopotamia in WWI awarded D.S.O.
Relatives
Research:
Plot 1126: Colonel Arthur Lennard Barrett DSO (1872-1958)
Arthur Lennard was born 9th November 1872 in Bombay (Mumbai), India, the son of Arthur Barrett and Marianne (née Hinsley). He was baptised in St Thomas’s Cathedral, Bombay 21st January 1873. The unusual spelling Lennard reflects an old family name.
Arthur snr. was a Welshman whose father was organist at St David’s cathedral and he was in India as a teacher with the Bombay Educational Department. An article in the Lampeter Society Journal gives more information:
“Arthur was listed in The Bombay University Calendar for the year 1868–69 as an Examiner
in Latin and Greek. The next year he married Marianne Hinsley in Calaba, Bombay, and
the couple had two children, Arthur Leonard Barrett, born c. 1872, and Unwin Sankey
Barrett, born in 1874 at the Presidency of Bombay. Arthur Leonard went on to become
a soldier in the Hong Kong regiment and retired in 1924 after valiant service in the Afghan campaign in 1921. Unwin attended Cambridge University before going on to become Master of the Supreme Court of South Africa … By…1884–85, Arthur had been appointed a Fellow of the University of Bombay…A year later [he] was also an acting professor in the Deccan College, the third oldest educational institute in India, founded in 1821 by Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone as a postgraduate and research institution… As well as his university duties, Arthur also edited a version of The Traveller and the Deserted Village in 1888. Around 1896 Arthur retired and he and Marianne moved to the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, where Unwin had been living since 1892. Arthur died in Queenstown on 26 July, 1898, at the age of 62.” [Lampeter Society Journal LXXIV Summer 2019]
Arthur Lennard returned to England and was educated from 9th November 1872 until 1889 at Bedford Grammar School, as was his younger brother.
By 1891 Arthur Lennard, then aged eighteen, was living as a boarder in the house of a clergyman in Hornsey and described as “scholar”.
He may have been cramming for university, but in the event decided on a military career
and the Army List gives his appointment as 2nd Lieutenant on 30th August 1893. He joined the Indian Army in 1895 as a Lieutenant and transferred to the Hong Kong Regiment between March 1897 and April 1902 before returning to the Indian Army where he was promoted to Captain that August.
In 1903 Arthur married Janet Jamieson Somerville in India. Janet, aged thirty three, was born in Scotland and was a medically trained nurse who may have gone out to India in that capacity.
In 1908 at the age of thirty six he is listed in the 126th Baluchistan Infantry [Hart’s Army List]. He reached the rank of Major in 1911.
In 1917 Arthur commanded the 49th Bengali Infantry Regiment in Mesopotamia and subsequently the 2/33rd Punjabis, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
[Confusingly there is another Arthur Lennard Barret serving in the Army during the 1st World War who was killed in 1917. There is no connection.]
The London Gazette for 3rd August 1920 records the award of the Distinguished Service Order. Arthur retired 9th November 1924.
There is little evidence for the couple’s movements between 1924 and 1939, although they may have lived in India for some years.
The 1939 Register, shows Arthur Lennard and Janet, both aged sixty seven, living at “Grays”, North Road, Berkhamsted. He gives his occupation as “Colonel, Indian Army, Retired.”
Janet died in 1943 and Arthur Lennard moved to Meyrick House, Trinity Crescent, Folkestone, at some point after that. He died at a private clinic in the town 8th June 1958 aged eighty six and was brought back to Berkhamsted to lie alongside his wife.