Private LESLIE JOHN JACOB

79, Western Road , Winchester (No. 57 today)
Service numbers 4/3326 and 201125 2/4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment (attached 1/4th Battalion)
Died in captivity, Turkey, between October 1916 and 12 February 1918

Family Background

Leslie John Jacob was born at 9, Elm Road, Fulflood, Winchester, on 3 February 1895, the son of John Henry and Winifred Annie Jacob. In the years before the Great War the Jacobs were a well-known family in Fulflood, with Leslie’s parents, grandparents, uncle and cousins all living in the parish. In the summer of 2020, a family link still existed in the person of Leslie Jacob’s niece, Christine Vear, who was living at 39, Stockbridge Road. This is the same house in which Leslie’s parents lived after the Great War.

John Henry Jacob, Leslie’s father, was born in Winchester around 1870 and spent most of his working life as a carpenter. John Henry came from a thriving working-class background. His father, John Wise Jacob, born in Tichborne, near Alresford, in 1849, owned his own building company and in 1871 he had seven men and one boy working for him. The census of the same year showed John Wise and his family living at 20, Clifton Road, Winchester, where they employed one servant.

John Wise Jacob’s wife, Sarah, was born in Wimborne, Dorset, around 1849. The couple had three other children besides John Henry - Eva, born in 1873, William (1877) and Arthur (1883). By 1881 the family had moved to 40, Weeke Terrace, Winchester, with John Wise working as a carpenter employing one man and two boys. By 1891 the Jacobs were living at 27, Lower Stockbridge Road, Winchester. On that year’s Census John Wise was listed as a builder while his son John Henry was working as a carpenter and William as an apprentice. Eva was a dressmaker.

John Leslie Jacob’s mother was born Winifred Annie Andrews in Winchester on 18 January 1871. Her father, Jacob Andrews, had been born in Leckford, near Stockbridge, on 10 February 1842. He spent most of his life working as a tenant farmer across the county. On 5 April 1862 Jacob married Emily Eades, who had been born on 13 March 1842 in Hazeley Heath, near Hook, Hampshire. Winifred was one of 11 children, all of whom survived into early adulthood and beyond.

John Henry Jacob and Winifred Andrews married in Botley, near Southampton, on 7 August 1893. By 1895 the couple had moved to Fulflood, living first at 5, Fairfield Terrace (which became 25, Fairfield Road when the street was renumbered around this time) and then 9, Elm Road, the house where Leslie was born. By 1901, the Jacobs had moved a short distance to 79, Western Road. The house became No. 57 when the street was renumbered after the war, which explains the discrepancy in addresses between the Warren’s Directory of 1914 and the Winchester War Service Register (WWSR) published in 1921.

On 11 December 1902 Winifred gave birth to a daughter, Winifred Marjorie, who was usually known by her middle name, presumably to distinguish her from her mother. According to Marjorie’s daughter, Christine Vear, her mother attended Western Primary School in Elm Road. It is likely that Leslie was also a pupil there. He is then believed to have moved on to St Thomas Higher National Church of England Boys’ School – the school records list an L. Jacob as being a pupil there.

The extended Jacob family would have been familiar faces in Fulflood. In 1911, Leslie, by then working as a dentist’s assistant, and his parents and sister were still at 79, Western Road. Meanwhile, his grandparents lived at 57, Lower Stockbridge Road with their daughter Eva, then aged 38 and married with a 12-year-old daughter, Audrey Eva. William Jacob, Leslie’s uncle, was living with his wife Ada and their two children at 41, Lower Stockbridge Road.

Leslie’s mother Winifred played an active role in the local community. At the turn of the 20th Century she helped to start the Salvation Army movement in Winchester and was for many years in charge of its Sunday School. During the Great War, when large numbers of troops were billeted in the city and great concern was being expressed in some circles about the moral welfare of women, Winifred joined the voluntary force of women who patrolled Winchester offering help and advice. Leading on from this, she became an important figure in the establishment of the Winchester Women Citizens’ Association.

Great War Record

Leslie Jacob enlisted as a volunteer with the 4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment in September 1914, one month after the start of the Great War. Although several records place him with the 1/4th Battalion it appears that he was originally assigned to the 2/4th Battalion before later joining the 1/4th. The 2/4th Hampshires sailed for India in December 1914, arriving in Bombay the following month. From here they moved to the British Army base at Quetta (in modern Pakistan) where the men spent the following months training and acclimatising.

In October 1915 Leslie Jacob was one of 250 men of the 2/4th Battalion sent as drafts to the 1/4th Battalion in Mesopotamia. Leslie’s move to the 1/4th Battalion is confirmed both by his Medal Index Card, which shows him entering the Asiatic theatre of war (Mesopotamia) on 25 October 1915, and by the Prisoner of War Comforts Fund records of Mrs Esme Bowker which state that Leslie was ‘2/4th attached to the 1/4th’.

Once in Mesopotamia, Leslie Jacob is believed to have been assigned to ‘A’ Company of the 1/4th Battalion which, just over a month later, found itself trapped inside the British garrison at Kut-al-Amara by a besieging Turkish force. When the British surrendered the garrison on 29 April 1916 Leslie was not initially among the thousands of British and Indian troops marched off into captivity in Turkey. According to Regimental Sergeant Major William Leach, a fellow prisoner, Leslie stayed behind at Kut as a guard at the hospital which housed those men too sick to travel. However, he must have subsequently re-joined his comrades because, according to Mrs Bowker, by 4 October 1916 he was incarcerated at Baghdadbau II PoW Camp, Entilli, Turkey.

Under the headline ‘Casualties Among Local Men’, the Hampshire Regimental Journal of September 1917 states:

Pte L.J Jacob - Mrs J. Jacob, 79, Western Road, Winchester, has received official information that Pte L. J. Jacob, 3326 Hampshire Regiment, is a prisoner of war at Entilli, Turkey.

Prisoners of war at Entilli, in the Amanus Mountains, were used as forced labour in the building of the Baghdad Railway. The camp was under the control of a German construction company, but conditions were nevertheless extremely harsh with only those prisoners fit enough to work provided with food. Mrs Bowker’s records of July 1916 provide some interesting details about Leslie Jacob. He was a tall man for the time, 6ft 1ins, with size nine boots and a 7⅛ cap. As a PoW, he was adopted by Mr Lionel Dugdale of Crathorne Hall Farm, Yarm, Yorkshire, who sent him parcels of clothing and blankets in October and November 1916.

Whether or not Leslie was still alive to receive the parcels is not known because the precise date of his death is unknown. According to the WWSR it was in September 1916 but given that Mrs Bowker placed him at Entilli in October this seems unlikely. Both the CWGC and SDGW state that he died on 12 February 1918, but the fact is we do not know for certain. The most we can say is that Leslie died in captivity sometime between October 1916 and 12 February 1918.

Family after the Great War

After the war Leslie’s parents moved to 39, Stockbridge Road and later to the house next door, No. 41. His father John died at Park House Nursing Home, Winchester, in October 1937, aged 67. Winifred, his mother, died in March 1955, aged 84. The couple are buried together at West Hill Cemetery, Winchester.

Leslie Jacob’s sister Marjorie married Arthur Vear in Winchester on 23 August 1924. Arthur had served overseas with the Rifle Brigade during the Great War. In 1959 he was awarded the MBE for his services with the Royal Observer Corps in Winchester during the Second World War. Arthur and Marjorie had two daughters: Mavis, born in September 1929, and Christine, on 28 November 1935. The family were living at 39, Stockbridge Road – Marjorie’s parents’ old house – in 1939. Arthur, who worked as a local government accountant, died in 1973, aged 74.

Leslie’s uncle William lived at 43, Stockbridge Road in the 1930s meaning that, for a time, members of the Jacob family occupied three successive properties. William died in Winchester in June 1954, aged 77, and Leslie’s aunt Eva in March 1956 at the age of 83. Eva’s daughter Audrey died in Winchester in July 1986, aged 87.

Medals and Memorials for Leslie John Jacob

Private Leslie John Jacob was entitled to the 1914-15 Star (right), the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. In 1927 his body was among hundreds exhumed from PoW graves across Turkey and reburied in the CWGC Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq (GR. XXI. P. 7). He is mentioned on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.

Researcher – DEREK WHITFIELD

Additional sources

• Interview with Christine Vear, niece of Leslie Jacob.