Leila Arthur Bate was born in 1877 in Aldershot, Surrey, England, as the oldest child of Major Henry Reginald Bate and his wife Elizabeth Fraser (née Whitehill). Her birth was registered as ‘Lilly Arthur Bate’.
The Littleport connection
On 15th December 1904 at Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace (by permission of King Edward VII) ‘in the presence of a large and fashionable congregation’, she married Henry Tansley Luddington, a JP of Littleport, and part of the local land-owning and influential Luddington family.
By 1911, Leila (33) and her husband Henry (56) can be found at Plantation House on Lynn Road, Littleport with their only child – Elizabeth Tansley Luddington who was born in 1908. With the family are six servants including a nurse, a lady’s maid, a cook, a butler, and an under nurse.
After the First World War, Leila was awarded the Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1920 by King George V for her work as ‘Chairman’ of the Ely Local District War Pensions Committee. She was also the founder of the Isle of Ely Prisoners of War Fund, Chairman of the Women’s Agricultural Committee, and a benefactor to members of the Women’s Land Army.
Leila was also an artist, and she painted a range of pieces. These periodically come up for auction.
Leila died at The Hope Nursing Home, Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge, England, on 3rd November 1975.
Leila’s younger sister was Dorothea Minola Alice Bate FGS (or Dorothy Bate) who was a Welsh palaeontologist and pioneer of archaeozoology. Leila is known to have drawn her circa 1906.