Lieutenant L.V. Swaine
(1840-1931)
13 May 1862

Volume 6, page 299, sitting number 8066.

Born on 15 December 1840, Leopold Victor Swaine was the son of Robert Victor Swaine, an English merchant resident in Hamburg who was also the Consul-General for Belgium in Hamburg. His mother was Jeannette Antoinette, daughter of Gravenhorst- Lowenstierna of Copenhagen. The King of the Belgians was one of Leopold's godfathers.

He joined the Rifle Brigade as an Ensign by purchase on 24 July 1859, rising to the rank of Lieutenant on 16 August 1864. He was later military attaché at Berlin and Lord Wolseley's military secretary in the Egyptian campaign.

In 1866 at Montreal in Canada he married Charlotte Jane Price, daughter of John Banner 
Price, Commissary-General. Their marriage produced at least two sons. 

Major-General Sir Leopold Victor Swaine died, aged 90, on 13 March 1931 at his residence, 14 Queen's Gate in Kensington. He left an estate valued at £29,214. 

According to his obituary in The Scotsman (16 March 1931), he 'had served as Military Attaché in three capitals under seven Ambassadors. [...] He started his Army life in the Rifle Brigade in 1859, and 20 years later he began his long career as a Military Attaché in St Petersburg. Later he went as Attaché to Constantinople, and in 1882 he was transferred to Berlin to occupy a similar post. It was while in Berlin that he became a friend of the Kaiser.'

[From an album compiled by Charles Francis Blackett, a fellow officer in the Rifle Brigade.]