Edward Luke Henry Bagot was born on 18 October 1896 the younger child of Major, The Honourable, Walter Lewis Bagot, DSO (1864-1927) and Margaret Jane Caroline Bagot née Cadogan (1856-1941). His birth was registered in the 4th quarter of 1896 in the Chelsea registration district. On 21 November 1896 he was baptised in St Paul's Church, 32a Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, where the baptismal register shows the family residing at 21 Hans Place, Knightsbridge and that his father was a Captain in the Grenadier Guards.
The 1901 census shows him living at 43 Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge, with his mother and his sister Marjorie Olive Bagot (1893-1954), together with a cook, a nurse, a nursery-maid, a housemaid, a lady's maid, a kitchen maid and a footman. His mother was shown as of private means. His father had left England to fight in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), but at the conclusion he did not return home, leading in 1905 for his mother to petition The High Court of Justice, Probate, Divorce & Admiralty Division for the restitution of conjugal rights. His father claimed that it had been an unhappy marriage and refused to return from South Africa where he subsequently died in 1927. Court papers show that his mother's address was 24 Montague Street, Fitzrovia, London.
He does not appear on the 1911 census although his mother and sister were shown residing in a ten roomed property at 203 Knightsbridge, Westminster, together with one male and three female servants.
On 28 December 1913 he is listed on the manifest of the SS El Argentino of the British & Argentine Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. line, leaving Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, on a voyage to the River Plate. On 1 June 1914 he arrived back in Liverpool, Lancashire, aboard the SS El Uruguayo of the same shipping line having embarked at Buenos Aires.
The London Gazette shows that as a Cadet in the Officers Training Corps he was commissioned as a temporary Second Lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards on 15 August 1914 and a subsequent edition of the London Gazette on 23 November 1915 confirms that he was appointed as a Second Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards.
He was serving in the Prince of Wales Company, 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards, when he was killed in action, aged 19 years, on 10 September 1916. His body was initially buried near where he fell but on 19 March 1919 it was exhumed and reburied in Plot 13, Row N, Grave 1 in The Guards' Cemetery, Lesboeufs, Somme, France. From the epitaph shown on his headstone 'FLOREAT ETONA', that can be translated as 'May Eton Flourish' or 'Let Eton Flourish', confirms that he was educated at Eton College, Windsor, Berkshire.
By 8 October 1919 his army effects totalling £32-8s-2d had been credited to his father's army account. He was posthumously awarded to British War Medal 1914-1918 and the Victory Medal.
His surname and regiment on the Quebec Chapel War memorial has, over time, become illegible with just his initials, the rank of Lieutenant and Guards clearly remaining, but we have been able to deduce his correct name, etc. He is also commemorated on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's website, on the Imperial War Museum's Lives of the First World War website, in the List of Etonians who fought in The Great War and on Page 146 of The Welsh National Book of Remembrance.
Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.
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