Leslie was born in Walsoken, a village in the County of Norfolk, less than two miles distance from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, at times also listed as his place of birth.
After Rollins retired in January, Leslie was unable to keep the financially strapped theatre afloat and was forced to close within a month or two.
In 1870 he toured with his own company performing The Princess of Trebizonde: an Opera Bouffe in Three Acts by Jacques Offenbach that was adapted for the English stage by Charles Lamb Kenney.
[5] Leslie wrote the novel The Mariner's Compass in 1865 and the story "How the Ghost Walked", which appeared in Andrew Halliday's Savage Club Papers in 1868.
[6] The very successful American play Hearts of Oak (1879) by James Herne and David Belasco was an adaptation of Leslie's Mariner's Compass.