A Soapy Family Story

We have discovered this old article from August 2013

Dr Jenny Davies has dropped us a line to tell us about another notable grave in All Saints' Churchyard, Milford on Sea.

 

Jenny writes: "My grandfather, Walter Lee is buried in Milford on Sea churchyard. He was related to Lord Leverhulm of Sunlight Soap fame. 

My grandfather's father, Frederick Foxen Lee used to help Lord Leverhulm (William Lever) when he was a lad going round Bolton selling his grocery items from his barrow in the streets near to his fathers' grocery store. (all documented in William Lever's biography; The King of Sunlight).  We still have an original bar of sunlight soap! 

My great grandfather (Frederick Foxen Lee) had married Joanna Lever, so my grandfather was a relation of William Lever himself! 

 

My grandfather Walter Lee's great Aunt, Elizabeth Foxen (nee Lever) was tayloress to Queen Victoria. 

During WW1 my grandfather (Walter Lee) served in the Royal North Lancashire Regiment. He was a gunner, and I have a map of a farmhouse in Ypres which his unit had to capture. They tried, but he received bullet wounds, was taken to the field hospital. He was so badly wounded that he was going to die a painful death as the hospital had run low on medicines. 

The practise in the field hospitals was to use a pillow to smoother patients who were not going to recover. The concept was to humanely stop pain and help them to die.

My great grandfather, (his father, Frederick Foxen Lee), was a herbalist, and he went over to join my grandfather in the field hospital, where he then used leaches and herbs as medicines. Walter Lee recovered and they both came home to Bolton. My grandmother Lucy Lee (nee Hamer) had family who were killed in the Boer war. Her grandfather and great uncle were in the Lancashire Regiment who died in Boer campaigns." 

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Other notable Graves at All Saints' Churchyard: Identified by Jim Butterworth (MoS Historical Society) 

• Sir Stephen Hope Carhill
• Charles Dickens Granddaughter
• Charles Augustus Lord, Officer of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Service
• William Saville Kent. Suspected murderer, featured in book: The murder at Road Hill House.
• Two brothers who drowned at Hurst Castle
• Revd Willis, Bishop of Honolulu 1872-1902
• Admiral Cornwallis & Family
• and more... which I am sure the Milford on Sea Historical Record Society could tell you about.