First World War Memorial, St Margaret’s Church, Oxford

Alexander Moultrie WALLACE (1881–1915)

© Images & Voices, Oxon County Council

See also Alexander’s younger brother, Cyril Walter Wallace

Alexander Moultrie Wallace was born at South Leigh, Oxfordshire in 1881, the eldest son of Walter Edward Wallace (born in India on 12 September 1856, the son of John Duncan Campbell Wallace and Emily Hogg, and baptised at Cannanore, Madras on 23 October 1856) and Eleanor May Moultrie (born in Houghton-le-Spring, Durham and baptised there on 9 July 1856). Alexander’s parents were married in the Witney Registration District in the third quarter of 1880, and had the following children:

• Alexander Moultrie Wallace (born in South Leigh, Oxfordshire and baptised there on 5 June 1881)
• Hugh Duncan Wallace (born in South Leigh, Oxfordshire and baptised there on 6 August 1882; died aged two and buried there on 29 January 1885)
• Gerard Percy Wallace (born in South Leigh, Oxfordshire and baptised there on 2 May 1885)
• Margaret Wallace (born in South Leigh, Oxfordshire and baptised there on 16 June 1887)
• Cyril Walter Wallace (born in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire in 1890).

Alexander’s father, Walter Edward Wallace, had come up to Worcester College, Oxford in May 1877 at the age of 20. When he married Alexander’s mother (who was the daughter of Gerard Moultrie, the Vicar of South Leigh) in 1880 he was still an undergraduate, and at the time of the 1881 census was living with his new wife at The College, South Leigh, with 15 boy boarders aged between 10 and 15. He continued to work as a tutor until he obtained his B.A. in 1884; but when his son Gerard was baptised in 1885, he was described as a Clergyman of St James College, South Leigh.

By 1890 Alexander’s parents had moved to Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, where they appear to have run a small boarding school for boys in their home. At the time of the 1891 census Alexander was nine years old, and there were six pupils, aged between 13 and 16, living in his family’s house.

Alexander Wallace in the Rugby XV of 1899
© St Edward’s School Archives

Alexander entered St Edward’s School in north Oxford in Christmas Term 1894. He was a School Prefect, and a member of the Rugby Fifteen and Cricket Eleven. His father died at the age of 38 in the Marylebone registration district in the third quarter of 1895.

Alexander left St Edward’s School in 1899. He travelled widely in Africa and Mexico, and then probably joined the regular army, as he served in the South African War in 1901.

At the time of the 1901 census his widowed mother Eleanor was living with her own widowed mother Elizabeth Moultrie (71) and her two unmarried sisters Ada (43) and Agatha (34) at The College, South Leigh (where Alexander’s parents had been living from 1881 to 1887). Of her children, only Margaret (13) was with her.

Alexander was probably out of the country at the time of the 1911 census, as he was certainly in Sierra Leone in 1913. Meanwhile his widowed mother Eleanor was still living in South Leigh with her own mother and sisters.

 

 

In the First World War Alexander Moultrie Wallace served as a Captain in the 3rd Battalion attached 2nd Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.

He was killed in action at Neuve Chapelle in France at the age of 33 on 12 March 1915 and has no known grave. He is remembered on the Le Touret Memorial (Panel 28 to 30), on a plaque in the chapel of St Edward’s School (right), in St Stephen’s Lady Chapel in Windsor, and on the war memorial outside St Margaret’s Church in north Oxford.

 

There is also a memorial to Alexander and his younger brother Cyril Walter Wallace (who died in Mesopotamia at the age of 26 a year later on 8 March 1916) in the churchyard at South Leigh, where the family had lived previously.