Edward Arthur Last Smith was born on 22 March 1884 in Torquay, Devon, the second of the five children of Edward Last Smith (1856-1937) and Emily Phyllis Smith née Dixon (1863-1936). His father was a physician and surgeon. The 1891 census shows him living at Mayfield, St Marychurch Road, Torquay, with his parents, elder sister Muriel Phyllis Last Smith (1882-1969), his brother Sinclair Osborne Last Smith (b.1886), his maternal grandmother Emily Dixon, a butler, a cook and a housemaid.
His two younger sisters were Eileen Isabel Last Smith (1894-1965) and Phyllis Gertrude Last Smith (1897-1902). By the time of the 1901 census the family were using Last-Smith as their surname and he is shown as a schoolboy boarder at Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon, residing at North Close, Tiverton.
On 7 January 1902 he was indentured and made an apprentice of Arthur Wesley Townsend, a Citizen and Haberdasher of London to serve for four years and was made Free of The Haberdashers Company on 6 February 1906. In early 1907 he married Alice Hubertha Pelegrina Milner (1881-1927) in the Kensington registration district and they had one son Edward Sinclair Last-Smith (1907-1907) who died in infancy.
The 1911 census shows him as a solicitor living at Flat H, 63 Drayton Gardens, South Kensington, with his wife who was shown as a British subject by parentage having been born in British Guiana (now Guyana). Electoral registers from 1919 to 1936 show him registered at both 63H Drayton Gardens and 5 Grey's Inn Square, Holborn and the London Gazette informs that the solicitor's partnership of H. E. Griffith and Son at 5 Grey's Inn Square that he had with Edward Arthur Bayly Griffith was dissolved by mutual consent on 31 December 1936.
He was also on the voters register for his residence at Hazelbury Cottage, New Street, Painswick, Stroud, Gloucester, from 1926 to 1962. The 1939 England and Wales Register confirms him at this address as a solicitor and also records that he was a member of Air Raid Precautions in Westminster. The plaque in Pitfield Street, Islington, confirms that he was the Master of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers in 1952.
He died, aged 84 years, on 9 May 1968 at the Bath Club, Brook Street, Westminster and when probate was granted on 5 June 1968 his effects totalled £42,387. He was buried on 22 May 1968 in Plot A, Grave 1127, in Littlehampton Cemetery, Horsham Road, Littlehampton, BN17 6LX.
Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.
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