Born:
July 17, 1896 – March 5, 1917

Call Year:
Law Student 1915

Distinguished as:
Second Lieutenant with the 13th Hussars, 7th Cavalry Brigade

Geoffrey Lynch-Staunton was born on 17 July 1896 in Hamilton, Ontario. He was the son of Senator George S. and Adelaide (Dewar) Lynch-Staunton of Clydagh House, Hamilton. His father was a Barrister, a Law Society of Upper Canada Bencher and a Canadian Senator. He had one sister, Emily, and a brother, Victor.

Lynch Staunton was admitted as a law student in 1915. He was articling under his father. LynchStaunton was a student at Highfield School for Boys in Hamilton, Ontario and also studied in England, where he attended Downside School, a Catholic school in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, England.

When War began Lynch-Staunton was at Oxford University. In 1915, he returned to Canada to study at the Ontario Law School. He enlisted and served for some time in the Canadian Remount Depot – the department responsible for the purchase and training of horses for the Army, under Lieutenant Colonel William Hendrie, and was later appointed to staff at Camp Borden. He arrived in France in June of 1915 and in December of 1915 applied to join the British Army. On 1 July 1916 he was taken on strength with the 13th Hussars. The 13th Hussars arrived in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in January of 1917 as part of the 7th Cavalry Brigade. Lynch-Staunton was killed in action in Mesopotamia on 5 March 1917, during his first engagement with the enemy. He fell at Lajj on the River Tigris in a cavalry charge against an entrenched enemy position. He was 20.

Lynch-Staunton is memorialized at the Basra Memorial in Al Basrah, Iraq. The Basra Memorial commemorates the more than 40,500 men who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the Autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known. Those named on the Basra Memorial are also commemorated in a two volume Roll of Honour on display at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Head Office in Maidenhead, England. He is also memorialized on a memorial plaque in St. James Church in Chipping Campden, England.

Source: Shea, E. Patrick, CS “The Great War Law Student Memorial Project,” pg. 90.