Hugh Reginald Baldwin was born on 4 March 1898, the second of the three children of Edward Thomas Baldwin (1847-1937) and Emily Henry Louise Stoker (1866-1936). His birth was registered in the 1st quarter of 1898 in the Marylebone registration district. On 2 April 1898 he was baptised at St Matthew's Church, Marylebone, where the baptismal register shows the family residing at 1 Gloucester Place, Marylebone and that his father was a barrister-at-law.
When the 1901 census was undertaken his parents were shown as visitors at Tregenna Castle Hotel, St Ives, Cornwall, whilst he and his two siblings: Dorothy Ida Desiree Baldwin (1893-1940) and Anthony Edward Baldwin (1900-1916) were recorded as visitors at the home of lodging house keeper Mary E Newport at 17 Wellington Crescent, Ramsgate, Kent.
Both he and his brother were described as a schoolboys in the 1911 census, boarding at the Parkfield Preparatory School, Butlers Green, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, whilst his parents and elder sister were living in a 24 roomed property at 1 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, Marylebone, together with a butler, a lady's maid, a cook, two house-maids, a kitchen maid and a footman.
His education continued in September 1911 at Winchester College and he was in Du Boulay's House at 10-11 Edgar Road, Winchester, Hampshire. He left Winchester in April 1915 owing to ill-health but in 1916 he went on to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Berkshire and was Prize Cadet in April 1916, passing out in the following October. The London Gazette confirms that as a Gentleman Cadet he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Irish Guards on 27 October 1916. He was posted to France in March 1917, promoted to Lieutenant in July 1917 and joined the 1st Battalion in June 1918.
He was killed in action, aged 20 years, on 27 August 1918 near St. Leger, west of Bullecourt, France, while leading his platoon to the attack under heavy shell fire. His body was buried near where he fell but on 2 January 1920 it was exhumed and reburied in Plot 5, Row C, Grave 25 in the Mory Abbey Military Cemetery, Mory, Pas-de-Calais, France.
He was posthumously awarded the British War Medal 1914-1918 and the Victory Medal. He is shown as 'Baldwin H.R. Lieut. 1st. Batt. I. Gds.' on the Quebec Chapel WW1 war memorial at the Church of The Annunciation, Bryanston Street, Marylebone and is also commemorated on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's website, the Imperial War Museum's Lives of the First World War website and on the Winchester College War Cloister.
Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.
