Private LESLIE JOHN JACOB

79, Western Road , Winchester (No. 57 today)

Family Background

Leslie John Jacob was born at 9, Elm Road, Fulflood, Winchester, on 3 February 1895. His father, John Henry Jacob, was a carpenter and probably worked for Leslie’s grandfather, John Wise Jacob, who lived in Fulflood and ran his own building company. Leslie’s mother, Winifred, was the daughter of a tenant farmer who worked across Hampshire.

John and Winifred married in Winchester in 1893. By 1895 they were living in Fairfield Road. They moved to 9, Elm Road, where Leslie was born, and then to 79, Western Road. The house became No. 57 when the street was renumbered after the war.

Leslie had one sister, Winifred Marjorie, who was born in 1902 and was usually known by her middle name. She attended Western Primary School in Elm Road. It is likely that Leslie was also a pupil there. He is believed to have moved on to St Thomas Higher National Church of England Boys’ School in Mews Lane – 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 while his uncle William was living with his wife and their two children at 41, Lower Stockbridge Road.

Leslie’s mother Winifred played an active role in the local community. She helped to start the Salvation Army movement in Winchester and was for many years in charge of its Sunday School. Later 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 Hampshire Regiment in September 1914, one month after the start of the Great War. He sailed for India in December 1914, arriving there in early January. He then spent the following nine months training.

In October 1915 Leslie was sent as a reinforcement to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) where British and Indian forces were fighting the Turks. In December he and thousands of other troops were trapped inside the garrison at Kut-al-Amara by a Turkish army. When the garrison surrendered in April 1916 Leslie was marched off into captivity. Among his captured comrades were Andrew Bogie, and several other Fulflood and Weeke men who are listed on the parish memorials.

By early October Leslie was a prisoner of war at Entilli, Turkey, where he was forced to work on the construction of a railway. Conditions at the camp were extremely harsh, and only those prisoners fit enough to work were given food. Leslie died while in captivity, probably from disease. The precise date of his death is unknown, but it was sometime between October 1916 and 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 died in 1937, aged 67, and his mother in 1955 at the age of 84. Leslie’s sister Marjorie married Arthur Vear in 1924. Arthur and Marjorie had two daughters, Mavis and Christine. The family lived at 39, Stockbridge Road, the house in which Christine Vear still resided in 2021.

Private Leslie John Jacob was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, 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 Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq. He is mentioned on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.

Activities: Learn more about the siege of Kut and what happened to the British soldiers afterwards.