Rank Major-General Name Casimir van | Service/branch British Army Unit Royal Artillery | |
 | ||
Born 11 November 1867
Kingston, Ontario, Canada ( 1867-11-11 ) Allegiance Canada,
United Kingdom Died March 28, 1956, Lansdown, Bath, Bath and North East Somerset, United Kingdom Awards Order of the British Empire, Order of the Bath, Order of St Michael and St George | ||
Major-General Sir Casimir Cartwright van Straubenzee KBE CB CMG (11 November 1867 – 28 March 1956), was a Canadian officer in the British Army (Royal Artillery); GOC Singapore and Malaya Command. In 1900, he played cricket for Canada.
Contents
Military Career
Born at Kingston, Ontario, he was the third son of Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee (1829–1898), a native of Spennithorne, Yorkshire, and his wife, Anne Macaulay Cartwright, daughter of The Hon. John Solomon Cartwright, of Kingston, Ontario. He was a nephew of General Sir Charles van Straubenzee, Commander of British Troops in China and Hong Kong and Governor of Malta.
He was educated at Trinity College School, Port Hope, and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. He joined the Royal Artillery and served with the 4th Ashanti expedition (1895-6) before returning Canada as Professor with the RMC staff 1898-1903, with the local rank of major from 18 August 1898, and was promoted to the substantive rank of major on 27 February 1902. He was promoted Lt-.Colonel and served during World War One from 1914 (awarded the Croix de guerre). He was Inspector-General of the Royal Artillery from 1917 to 1918. He was promoted Major-General in 1919 and then served as General Officer Commanding Singapore. He was commanding officer of the Malaya Command from 1927 to 1931. This command of British Commonwealth forces was formed in the 1920s for the coordination of the defences of Malaya and Singapore.
He played cricket for the Royal Engineers from 1892 to 1908, and one first-class game in 1899 for the MCC. He also played for Canada in 1900. He was the author of Recollections of Sportsmen and Sport in Days of Yore. In 1909, he married Ethel Purcell VanKoughnet (d.1949), whose father, Mathew Robert VanKoughnet (1824–1874), was a first cousin of van Straubenzee's mother - sharing a common ancestor in James Macaulay. She was a niece of Philip Michael Matthew Scott VanKoughnet and the sister of Mrs Frederick Edmund Meredith. They lived between London and Bath. He died 28 March 1956, Lansdown, Bath, Somerset.
Legacy
He was the sitter for two of the portraits in the National Gallery, London.
Straubenzee, the fictional maker of Colonel Sebastian Moran's air-gun in Sherlock Holmes' 'The Adventure of the Empty House', is identified as Major-General Casimir Cartwright Van Straubenzee (1866–1956).