PRIVATE LESLIE HUDSON
10TH BTTN CANADIAN INFANTRY
3RD JUNE 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: BRANDHOECK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Leslie Hudson, born in 1895, was the adopted son of William George Hardham and his first wife Lizzie Sarah Barrett. In 1905 the three of them emigrated to Canada, where Lizzie died in 1908. The following year William Hardham married Edith Amy Barrass and they had two children: Harry born in 1910 and Dorothy in 1912. It was William Hardham who chose Leslie Hudson's inscription and who would therefore presumably have been 'Uncle', 'Auntie' would have been Edith, and Harry and Dorothy their two children - none of them any blood relation to Leslie.
Leslie Hudson's origins are a bit of a mystery. He was born in Erpingham, Norfolk in 1895. In the 1901 census he's living as a five-year-old boarder with William and Lizzie Hardman, in 1905 he's listed with them on the passenger list of the SS Tunisian on its way to Quebec. I thought at one time that he could have been Lizzie Sarah's illigitimate son but as he was born after she and William were married that doesn't appear to be likely. His epitaph, however, anchor's him firmly within a family circle - his name honored.