Francis Lionel GARDINER (1851-1883)

Francis Lionel Gardiner (1851-1883), known as Lionel, was the brother of Caroline Florence Mourilyan (née Gardiner), who was the sister-in-law of Eugénie Sladden (née Mourilyan). 

Lionel Gardiner was born on 24th June 1851 at Bonn, Rheinland, Prussia, the eighth of nine children of the Reverend George Gregory, the English Chaplain in Bonn, and his wife, Frances Mary (née Touchet).

At the age of eight, Lionel moved with his family in 1859 to Paris, where Reverend Gardiner had accepted a post as Chaplain of the English Protestant Chapel in Avenue Marboeuf.

He married Victorine Beaudry [surname unknown] in about 1878.  In a letter of 30th August 1878, Fred Mourilyan described meeting Lionel’s wife for the first time.

Lionel and Victorine went to live in America but returned in October 1881.  Fred Mourilyan indicated in a letter of 23rd December 1881 that he had not been at all well.  They stayed at St Leonards, Sussex, where Lionel’s parents then lived.

Lionel was staying with his brother, the Reverend Frederic Evelyn Gardiner, at St Paul’s Vicarage, Truro, where he died on 2nd September 1883, aged 32.  He was buried at St Paul’s Church, Kenwyn, Cornwall.