John Kendall and Willie Leyland

Born in 1856, John Kendall was the second son of William and Rosetta Kendall of Ness Hall, East Ness, Yorkshire. The 1861 census lists his father as a ‘Landed Proprietor / Farmer of 496 acres / employing 5 labourers and 3 boys.’ The household included nine servants, among them a groom and two ploughboys. John was elsewhere on the night that the census was taken.

According to an inked inscription verso in a period hand ‘John died at sea on Christmas Eve, aged 16 ½.’ The Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths at Sea shows that he died in 1872 but on Christmas Day not Christmas Eve. He was midshipman aboard the Windsor Castle and he ‘fell overboard.’

A short report appeared in the Leeds Mercury (28 February 1873) under the heading ‘A Gentleman’s Son Drowns.’

‘Yesterday news arrived in England of the death, by drowning, of Mr John Kendall (16), son of Mr Wm. Kendall, of Ness Hall, North Yorkshire, who was on a voyage to Melbourne, in the Windsor Castle, belonging to Messrs Green and Co, of Leadenhall-street, London. When about ninety miles off Cape St Vincent the ship encountered a severe gale, and Mr Kendall fell overboard and was lost.’

The seated man in the portrait is identified verso as Willie Leyland.

Photographer unidentified.