Ellis Léon de la MARE (1903–1904)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 33, Grave L65
IN EVER LOVING MEMORY
OF
ELLIS LEON DE LA MARE
BORN JULY 2ND 1903
DIED APRIL 1ST 1904
FOR OF SUCH IS THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Ellis Léon de la Mare was born in Oxford on 2 July 1903 (reg. with surname spelt Delamare).
His parents were Eugene Gruchy de la Mare (born at St Peter Port, Guernsey on 19 August 1865) and Ethel Selina Prior (born in Cambridge in 1873). Both of Ellis’s parents had moved with their families to Oxford by 1881: Eugene (15) was then an apprentice grocer, living with his widowed mother at 70 Walton Street; and Ethel (7) was living with her parents at 35 Wellington Square, and her father was a carpenter; she was still there with them ten years later and working as a dressmaker.
Ellis’s parents were married at George Street Independent Chapel in Oxford on 2 March 1899 and moved into 75 George Street: this was a private house on the south side, sandwiched between two pubs (the Plume of Feathers and the Packet). This site has now been rebuilt, but their home used to be the third house east of the junction with Worcester Street. At the time of the 1901 census his father was a baker and his mother a confectioner. They had three children:
- Eric Eugene de la Mare (born at 75 George Street in 1901, reg. second quarter)
- Ellis Léon de la Mare (born at 75 George Street on 2 July 1903)
- (Robert) Donovan Alec de la Mare (born at 75 George Street in 1905, reg. second quarter).
Ellis only lived nine months:
† Ellis Léon de la Mare died at 75 George Street at the age of nine months on 1 April 1904 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 4 April (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).
The register states that his burial was certified under the Burial Law Amendment Act of 1880, which allowed nonconformists to be buried without the Church of England service for the burial of the dead.
At the time of the 1911 census Ellis’s parents were living at 22 Walton Well Road with their surviving children Eric (10) and Alec (6): his father was now a general warehouseman
Ellis’s mother died at 93 Cumnor Hill on 28 May 1946, and his father (who was still working as a warehouseman) on 6 June 1948. Ellis’s brothers were both executors to their father’s will: Eric Eugene De La Mare was then an engineer, and Robert Donovan Alec De La Mare a company director. By 1968 Robert was Chairman of the Oxford Trustee Savings Bank.
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