The Honourable Rowland Leigh
(1859-1943)
17 July 1862

Volume 8, page 268, sitting number 10,692. 

[The sitter is identified in the Silvy daybooks as ‘The Honble. Roland [sic] C.F. Leigh.’ He had previously been brought to Silvy’s studio in 1860, when he was photographed sitting on his mother’s lap.]

The Honourable Rowland Charles Frederick Leigh was born at Stoneleigh Abbey on 23 May 1859, the son of William Henry Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh, and his wife Lady Caroline Amelia Leigh (née Grosvenor), daughter of the 2nd Marquess of Westminster. 

Educated at Wellington and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a practising barrister (he was called to the Bar on 26 January 1887).  On 31 October 1898 he married Mabel Gordon, daughter of General William Washington Gordon of the United States Army. Their marriage produced two children. The Honourable Rowland Leigh died, aged 83, on 26 January 1943 at Hutton Park, New Jersey. 

‘The Hon. Rowland Charles Frederick Leigh died at Hutton Park, New Jersey, last Tuesday. Born on May 23rd, 1859, he was educated at Cambridge, was called to the Bar, and entered politics. From 1892 to 1895 he was private secretary to the Secretary of State for War (Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman). In 1898 he married Mabel, daughter of General W.W. Gordon of the United States Army, and had a son and a daughter’ (Leamington Spa Courier, 29 January 1943). 

‘The Hon. Rowland Leigh, whose death at Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 83, is announced, was for many years handicapper at Lingfield Park, Kempton Park, Sandown Park and Hurst Park’ (Daily News, 30 January 1943).