Reginald Woodifield Appleby (18 September 1865 – 30 August 1948) was an English lawyer, practising in

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

, who in 1898 founded the predecessor of the law firm that now trades as Appleby. He served as a major in the

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps The Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) was created in 1894 as a reserve for the British Army, Regular Army infantry component of the Bermuda Garrison. Renamed the ''Bermuda Rifles'' in 1951, it was amalgamated into the Bermuda Regiment in 1965 ...

during the First World War, and was a member of the Legislative Council of Bermuda.

Early life and family

Reginald Appleby was born at

Portsea Island Portsea Island is a flat and low-lying natural island in area, just off the southern coast of Hampshire in England. The island contains the majority of the city of Portsmouth. Portsea Island has the third-largest population of all the i ...

, Hampshire, England, in 1865 to George Walton Appleby of Durham and Agnes Sterry Tucker of ''Tankfield'', Paget East, Bermuda. His parents had married at St. Paul's Church (Church of England), Paget, on 8 September 1859. His father, at the time, resided in Pembroke, Bermuda, and was an officer in the

26th (Cameronian) Regiment of Foot The 26th (Cameronian) Regiment of Foot was an infantry regiment of the Scots Army and subsequently a Scottish infantry regiment of the British Army, active from 1689 to 1881. Although the regiment took the name of its first colonel as James Dougl ...

, into which he had been commissioned as an ensign with seniority from 18 August 1854, and promoted to lieutenant with seniority from 30 March 1855. His regiment served as part of the

Bermuda Garrison The Bermuda Garrison was the military establishment maintained on the British Overseas Territory and Imperial fortress of Bermuda by the regular British Army and its local-service militia and voluntary reserves from 1701 to 1957. The garrison ev ...

from 1854 until October 1859 (with the Regimental Depot at

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

, Ireland), after which it sailed to Portsmouth, before being posted to

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, Ireland. His father was described in the 1871 census as widowed and "Late Captain Landowner" and in

1881 Events January * January 1– 24 – Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans. * January 13 – War of the Pacific – Battle of San Juan and Chorrillos: The Chilean army ...

as "Late Cpt 31st Regmt". Reginald had three brothers and a sister. His mother was born in Pembroke, Bermuda, on the 5 May 1839, the daughter of Benjamin Jennings Tucker (appointed Commissioner of Pilotage in December 1840, and July 1843) and Catharine Dickinson Tucker. The Tucker family had been prominent in Bermuda since Daniel Tucker was appointed

Governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

in 1616. The Jennings family of Bermuda included the privateer Henry Jennings (died 1745). She died in 1870 and his father remarried, to Drusilla Matthews, his former servant who had been with the family when his first wife was alive. George and Drusilla gave Reginald several

half-siblings A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised ...

. Reginald Appleby married Edith Mary Gosling at St. Paul's Church, in Paget, Bermuda, on 18 September 1899, and they had a daughter, Prudence Tucker (1905–1976), later Prudence Pearman. The family lived in Westmoreland,

Pembroke Parish Pembroke Parish is one of the nine parishes of Bermuda. It is named after English aristocrat William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (1580–1630). It occupies most of the short peninsula which juts from the central north coast of Bermuda's main ...

, Bermuda.

Career

Appleby passed his final law exams in England in November 1887. He was in partnership with Reginald Gray, later Sir Reginald Gray, attorney-general of Bermuda, from 1893 to 1897 in Bermuda as Gray & Appleby. In 1898 he founded his own eponymous law firm.Appleby, the offshore law firm with a record of compliance failures.
Will Fitzgibbon, ''The Irish Times'', 5 November 2017. Retrieved 6 November 2017. By 1903 he was a justice of the peace when he sat on the marine court of inquiry into the wreck of the S.S. ''Madiana''. In 1938 he and Sir Dudley Spurling merged their practices to establish Appleby & Spurling. The year after Appleby's death in 1948, that firm merged with William Kempe to become Appleby Spurling Kempe (or Kemp), one of the predecessors of the firm that now trades as Appleby, the firm at the centre of the

Paradise Papers The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsche Z ...

leaks in 2017. He served in the

(BVRC), commissioned as a second-lieutenant with seniority from 9 March 1895. In 1900 he was the acting adjutant, with the rank of captain. On 12 April 1901, the Officer Commanding Troops of the

received notification that the Governor and military Commander-in-Chief had appointed Captain ''R.W. Appleby'', BVRC, to be a Captain with the Cadet Corps at

Saltus Grammar School Saltus Grammar School, founded in 1880, is an independent school in Pembroke Parish, Bermuda. It was a boys' school until 1992, when it became co-educational. It has two campuses, one for the Lower Primary (Foundation - Year 2) and one for the Up ...

(dated 11 February). He was promoted to major on 5 November 1903, on becoming the commanding officer. In 1916 he was awarded the

Volunteer Officers' Decoration The Volunteer Officers' Decoration, post-nominal letters VD, was instituted in 1892 as an award for long and meritorious service by officers of the United Kingdom's Volunteer Force (Great Britain), Volunteer Force. Award of the decoration was di ...

. During the First World War, the BVRC fulfilled its role within the Bermuda Garrison while also sending a contingent of 88 other ranks under the command of Appleby's cousin, Captain Richard Jennings Tucker, to join the 1st Battalion of the

Lincolnshire Regiment The Royal Lincolnshire Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army raised on 20 June 1685 as the Earl of Bath's Regiment for its first Colonel, John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath. In 1751, it was numbered like most other Army regim ...

on the Western Front in June 1915. Appleby remained in command of the BVRC 'til succeeded by Major Richard Jennings Tucker (later lieutenant-colonel) in 1920 (another cousin, Lieutenant-Colonel AT Gosling, ED, was to be commanding officer from 1935 to 1941). The BVRC (renamed the ''Bermuda Rifles'' in 1949) was amalgamated with the

Bermuda Militia Artillery The Bermuda Militia Artillery was a unit of part-time soldiers organised in 1895 as a reserve for the Royal Garrison Artillery detachment of the Regular Army garrison in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda. Militia Artillery units of the Un ...

to form the

Royal Bermuda Regiment The Royal Bermuda Regiment (RBR) is the home defence unit of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is a single Territorial Army (United Kingdom), territorial infantry battalion#British Army, battalion that was formed on the amalgamation ...

in 1965, with Lieutenant-Colonel John Brownlow Tucker, another cousin, becoming the first commanding officer). He was appointed to the Legislative Council of Bermuda in 1928 and according to ''The Irish Times'', citing reports in Bermuda's '' The Royal Gazette'', spoke against the idea of the introduction of an income tax in Bermuda at a Legislative Council meeting in 1940, siding with "those who look on all income tax as man's last refinement of torture, to be resisted at all costs".

Later life

Appleby was made a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

in King George VI's 1947 New Year Honours for "Public services in Bermuda". He died on at Doctor's Hospital, New York, and was buried at Pembroke Cemetery in Bermuda.''The Bermudian'', Vol. 19 (1948), p. ccxi.

References

External links

Appleby one-name study and DNA project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Appleby, Reginald 1865 births People from Portsea, Portsmouth 19th-century English lawyers Bermudian soldiers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire 1948 deaths Bermudian justices of the peace British Army personnel of World War I 20th-century Bermudian lawyers Bermudian politicians Paradise Papers 19th-century Bermudian lawyers Military personnel from Portsmouth