Margaret Melita Savory

The eldest child and daughter of Arthur Ledsam and Agnes Savory, Margaret Melita, known as Meg, married twice.

Her first husband was Ian Hew Stair Dalrymple-Clarke; 17th Lancers. They married in Delhi, India, on Christmas Day 1908. Because married subalterns were frowned upon in those days, he resigned his commission and in about 1911 joined the newly created Royal Navy Air Service. He has the distinction of being the first man in history to drop a bomb from a plane in war time. (see Winston Churchill, Vol III, p65 footnote). In 1916 he was appointed an instructor at the Central Flying School in Upavon, Wiltshire and rose to the rank Squadron Commander. On 8 September 1916, while flying in a Bristol Scout, he was killed in a collision with another aircraft, in mid air.

Meg’s second husband was Cecil Wright whom she married in 1918. Just before the Russian revolution he was sent by King George V on a personal mission to the Tsar. Soon after he joined Locker Lampson’s armoured car squadron working with the Russian army. Until 1940 they lived in Vence in the South of France when they had to escape in a hurry in a coal boat, an event that was recorded by the Riviera correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ newspaper:

“After a voyage of three weeks I have arrived in this country (UK) in the company of many British people well known on the Riviera. It was a never forgotten voyage, accomplished in a collier packed with passengers accustomed to a life of ease. I have a vivid recollection, for instance, of Mr Somerset Maughan, billycan in hand, taking his place in the daily queue for the issue of stew…Here were people owning fine villas or accustomed to living in first class hotels, herded, to the number of 700, in a 3000-ton coal boat, the Saltersgate, of London the ordinary human complement of which was her crew of 38.”

Cecil Wright was a very competent artis. His brother, Sir Norman Wright, was deputy Secretary General of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organistion.

The third daughter, Evelyn Beryl, married Lieut. L.G. Lamour, R.A. who in 1912 transferred to the Indian Army. He retired in 1938 as a Colonel in the Indian Army Ordance Corps. They had one daughter Elizabeth Prudence, who died 31st January 1954.

Meg died 0n 7 November 1964.