Hugh St. Leger
He turned his experiences in the Merchant Navy and as a Hussar in a solid background for boy's adventure fiction.
His siblings were: In 1868 St. Leger followed in his brother Warham's footsteps and was elected to the Clergy Orphan School, aged c. 11.
[38][39] Under the bye-laws of the Clergy Orphan Corporation, no boy could remain in the school past 15 years of age without the special leave of the committee.
The title of the charity specifically referred to "clothing, maintaining, and educating poor orphans of clergymen ...until of age to be put apprentice".
A boy named Hugh Anthony St. Leger, of the right age became a Merchant Navy apprentice indentured to C. F. Ellis of London for four years from 23 November 1872.
[45] St. Leger married Catherine Ledger (1856–1912) In St. George's Church in Hanover Square in the third quarter of 1889.
[49] His trustee, the public received, was released from the trust on 23 November 1903[note 14][50] For the 1911 census, Catherine was living at 3 Rupert Road, Bedford Park, London while St. Leger was in Ipswich, Boarding with Henrietta Frazer Williamson, a widow who had two sons, only one of whom was still living.
St. Leger then married his former landlady, Henrietta Frazer Williamson, at All Angels Church in Bedford Park.
In 1893, The North Queensland Register republished a nautical short-story by St. Leger that had already run in Black and White.
[88] No record of an earlier publication of Billets and Bullets could be found on Jisc Library Hub Discover, on press reviews or advertisements, nor on second-hand book sites.
Even so, it is still perfectly possible the St. Leger wrote the book in 1882 or 1883, and later republished it to take advantage of the military enthusiasm accompanying the Anglo-Boer War.
The following illustrations, made by William Rainey RI RBA ROI (21 July 1852 – 24 January 1936) for An Ocean Outlaw: a story of adventure in the good ship "Margaret" (London: Blackie & Son, 1896) give some idea of the frenetic pace of Huge St. Leger's books.
