Regiment: Bedfordshire, 8th Battalion, 6th Division (formerly with Suffolks)
Service No: 33285 (formerly 19566)
Date & place of birth: 26 May 1882 (baptism), Petworth
Date & place of death: 20 November 1917 (aged 35), Western Front
Private Pellett was a family man with children and rather older than many recruits; he was probably conscripted later in the war when it was no longer only young single men who were called up.
Family background
Leonard Pellett was born in Petworth in 1882, the son of Albert and Elizabeth Pellett. Albert was a farmer, no doubt on the Leconfield estate farms, as the family lived at 1 Hampers Common in 1891 and at Limbo Farm in 1901 and 1911, both of them still Leconfield Estate properties. Leonard had two brothers, Albert and George, and three sisters Florence, Elizabeth and Harriet. In 1911 Leonard was a hairdresser “on his own account” and working from home in Church Hill, Pulborough. He married Rose and they had Leonard Charles in 1908 and Beatrice in 1910.
Military service
Private Pellett enlisted in Petworth and for some reason was initially with the Suffolk Regiment rather than the Royal Sussex, and later transferred to the Bedfordshire regiment. In 1917 they were involved in the Battle of Hill 70 and the Cambrai operations.
Death and commemoration
Private Leonard Pellett was killed in action on the Western Front on 20 November 1917, aged 35. He is buried in the Ribecourt British Cemetery.
Subsequent family history
After the war, Leonard’s widow Rose was living in Rumbold’s Hill, Midhurst.