And in conclusion to this challenge...A biography from Malcolm.
Abraham Lionel Gilpin BLAND
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Abraham L G Bland was born on Monday 28th December 1874. He was the fourth child, all boys, of John Bland and his second wife Eliza Boardman.
Both John's wives were called Eliza! His elder brothers all had single names; John, William and Frank, but Abraham received three names, Abraham Lionel Gilpin.
Letters written by him to his brother and sister, John and Agnes, are signed
Len and I shall use this name in the following short biography.
Three more children were born to John and Eliza Bland at 117 Washway Road, Sale, Cheshire. They were Arthur [note the return to the single name for boys], Eliza Amy Helena and Elizabeth Agnes. The girls used the names Amy and Agnes.
Little is known of Len's childhood but family tradition suggests that the family were so poor at one stage that a relative offered to adopt three of the children.
Bearing in mind the fact that his father, John, progressed from being a gardener to become a jobbing gardener and, finally, a landscape gardener and that he had a nursery and a stall on Manchester market, this poverty seems a little surprising.
It was also likely to have been a strict upbringing as Len's father was a strict Sabbatarian. Weekend meals were cooked on Saturday and Sunday's meals were cold as John would countenance no work being done on the Sabbath.
At sixteen Len was working as a labourer but he moved on to work as a locomotive fireman. His eldest brother, John, was a railway clerk and elder brother, Frank, became a railway store man. William and Arthur followed in their father's footsteps and became gardeners.
By 1901, only John, Len [aged 26], Arthur and Amy still lived at home. Frank boarded in Cheadle, William was married and Agnes was a live-in housemaid in Ashton upon Mersey. A photo has been posted showing the family at this time.
For some reason both Len, 29, and Frank, 30, emigrated to Canada in 1904, possibly together. They certainly kept in close touch in Canada but their lives took different paths.
Frank became an accountant with a leading Regina legal firm but as early as November in the year that he had emigrated, Len had laid claim to a parcel of land at Pengarth, north of Regina. It therefore seems likely that Len emigrated on some sort of assisted passage subsidised by the Canadian government to attract settlers.
In 1905, Len broke six acres of land on his homestead. Mysteriously he did no work at all on his land the following year, 1906, but he is recorded as living in the home of an adjacent homesteader, Cecil Edmonson, and described as a servant.
In 1907 Len broke 10 acres and cropped 6 acres on his own homestead. By this time he had also built himself, probably with neighbourly help, a 10 x 12 frame house, an 18 x 20 sod stable and had acquired 3 horned cattle. A photo of Len at this time has also been posted.
In August 1908 Len was granted a patent for his homestead, having complied with all the requirements of the
Dominion Lands Act.
For the next eight years nothing else is known. It may be that for the diminutive fair-haired, blue-eyed Len Bland who stood only 5 foot 7" inches in his stocking feet and had only a modest 34 inch chest, homesteading proved to be too arduous, but in 1916 he was working as a warehouseman and living at 862 Angus Street, Regina.
On March 20th, at the age of 41, Lionel Gilpin Bland joined the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. So began the final chapter of his life. After six month's basic training he sailed on 1st November 1916 with the 28th Battalion CEF bound for England.
He spent the winter of 1916 and the spring of 1917 in Sandling Camp in Kent. Two letters home confirm this and he probably got home to Cheshire at some time because his niece Marjorie, Amy's daughter born 1911, remembered seeing her uncle Lionel off to war.
On 21st June 1917 he was posted overseas and attached to the 2nd Canadian Ent [?] Battalion with the rank of Acting Sergeant. On 11th August he left this battalion and returned, as a Private, to his own unit the 195th [Regina] in 28th Battalion to enter the battle for Vimy Ridge.
With these men, only six days later, Len went
over the top to attempt to capture a small eminence known only as
Hill 70 on the night of 21st/22nd August.
The Germans, by coincidence also launched an attack at this time and, quite unexpectedly, the two forces meet each other in hand to hand fighting in No Man's Land.
A note on Len's army record states:
Reported missing, now for all official purposes presumed to have died on or since 22nd August 1917.
He left no wife, he left no children and he was probably buried where he lay on Hill 70.
