He came from middle England near Shakespeare’s hometown in the county of Warwickshire.
A member of British Parliament and of England’s upper crust, the Honorable Gilbert H.C. Leigh had blue blood in his veins — the “Lliberal” party kind. His father was a lord, his mother a lady and his brother, Dudley, a successful sheep farmer in California.
Educated at Magdalen College, Cambridge, his late grandfather on his mother’s side was the Duke of Westminster.
At 34, Leigh was captain of a troop of the Warwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry, a deputy lieutenant of the county, and also a Warwickshire magistrate.
Leigh was elected to the British Parliament in 1880 representing South Warwickshire by defeating the Earl of Yarmouth by just 43 votes.
Prior to heading to America during the 1884 parliamentary recess, the 34-year-old and other representatives had grappled with England’s National Debt Act, dealt with the nation’s contagious diseases law as it related to animals, amended the Women’s Property Act, and created law to “remove doubts as to the validity of certain marriages of members of the Greek Church in England.”
No doubt, heading across the pond to his nation’s former colony on the White Star Steamer SS Germanic on Aug. 12, 1884, brought some relief to the single adventurer.
He had already let it be known he would not stand for election again.
However, he would not live long enough to see that day.
“Distressing Death Of The Hon. Gilbert Leigh, M.P,” read the headline in the local paper, The Coventry Times and Warwick Journal on Oct. 1, 1884:
“The first intimation of the melancholy occurrence would seem to have been contained in a cablegram from (the) Reuter’s agent at New York, received shortly before noon on Wednesday reporting the discovery of the mangled remains of the hon. gentleman at the back of a precipice in the Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming," the story reported.
To be more specific, Leigh died in a fall into Tensleep Canyon.
A sign in the Bighorn Mountains speaks of a Leigh Creek monument erected by Gilbert Leigh’s hunting guide. (Courtesy The Historical Marker Database, Barry Swackhamer) 
In 1884, a 34-year-old member of the British Parliament named Gilbert Leigh headed across the sea during a legislative break to hunt sheep in the Bighorn Mountains. He fell off a cliff more than 100 feet into Tensleep Canyon to his death. 
The family mausoleum in England carries a plaque honoring Gilbert Leigh. (Courtesy Find A Grave))
‘Very Popular’
The description of Leigh in his local newspaper was that he was “very popular” among the tenants who lived on his father’s estate and was known to be kind and genial.
His younger brother, Dudley, had been in America for two years and had “much success,” the paper reported.
His father who presided over the Warwickshire Agricultural Society at Stratford-Avon on Sept. 2 and “apologized for the absence of his son” who typically was there to award prizes for the neatest cottages and gardens.
He had last been seen at the family’s estate at a cricket match.
Lord William Leigh reported to the farmers that his oldest son had gone to America to see how his brother was doing in California and “would come home, he hoped and trusted, having gained experience that would be useful to him in this country,” the local reporter wrote.
However, the account given by a friend of Leigh, W. H. Grenfell, a noted athlete in Britain — and at that time former member of Parliament — told a different story.
He was interviewed by a New York Tribune reporter after helping bring Leigh’s body back to New York City.
The story was reprinted in The Coventry Times and Warwick Journal on Oct. 29, 1884.
Grenfell told the reporter that the trip to Wyoming was his first and they arrived in New York where they separated for a few days while he took a side trip to swim “across the pool” at Niagara.
They met up again in Chicago and took a train to Custer, South Dakota. From there they headed to the Bighorns.
In addition to Leigh and himself, there were two other hunters in the party, Robert Stewart, a well-known guide in the region, a man Grenfell knew as “Ted,” and another man who served as a cook.
“I had not been in this country before, but it was nothing new to Leigh,” Grenfell told the Tribune reporter. “He had been here half a dozen times and knew almost every foot of ground in the district we went to.”
Search For Leigh
In their quest for bighorn sheep, Leigh on Sept. 14 failed to return to camp. They found his body on Sept 21.
“We had a camp at the bottom of a canyon and he saddled his horse and left about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We waited until very late in the evening, but he did not come in nor did he reach camp all night,” Grenfell said.
His campmates found his horse two miles up the canyon with Leigh’s coat tied on its back.
Grenfell said they searched all week “going from ledge to ledge” looking in bear holes and caves and failed to find a trace of their friend. He then wrote a letter to Morton Fowler who managed a ranch for the Powder River Cattle Company and had hunted with Leigh several times.
After sending the letter off with Stewart, he and the remaining party members tried searching one more time and happened on a hat they immediately recognized as Leigh’s.
“We came upon the body soon afterwards. It was hidden in a kind of hollow, below a black rock about 80 feet high. His clothes were not torn.
“He must have been killed immediately,” Grenfell said. “The skull was smashed in and the back, thigh, and one of the legs broken. He was lying on his back with the head upward.”
Grenfell sent for a doctor to see if the body could be embalmed. It had been in a cool place where there was no sun and had not yet started to decompose. The place of his fall was three miles from their camp, and they had hunted it often.
The canyon’s walls were nearly perpendicular but there was a ledge 100 feet up that could be accessed another mile and a half up the canyon, Grenfell said. Leigh’s rifle could be seen in a tree 10- or 15-yards below the ledge.
Grenfell told the reporter that his friend’s death was not caused by “carelessness.”
Leigh was probably just trying to get back to his horse about 200 yards away and slipped on the loose stones. Grenfell described Leigh as “adventurous and plucky.”
“He was the most modest and unselfish man I ever knew and was a great favorite of everyone we met,” he said. “He had a singular nerve and resource in time of difficulty, but in this case no watchfulness could have saved him for the precipice was quite hidden until he was upon it.”
In 1884, a 34-year-old member of the British Parliament named Gilbert Leigh headed across the sea during a legislative break to hunt sheep in the Bighorn Mountains. He fell off a cliff more than 100 feet into Tensleep Canyon to his death. (Mike Decker via YouTube) 
In 1884, a 34-year-old member of the British Parliament named Gilbert Leigh headed across the sea during a legislative break to hunt sheep in the Bighorn Mountains. He fell off a cliff more than 100 feet into Tensleep Canyon to his death. (Mike Decker via YouTube) 
In 1884, a 34-year-old member of the British Parliament named Gilbert Leigh headed across the sea during a legislative break to hunt sheep in the Bighorn Mountains. He fell off a cliff more than 100 feet into Tensleep Canyon to his death. (Mike Decker via YouTube)
Trip Home
Leigh’s body was put on a makeshift “conveyance” consisting of two logs and hauled across the mountains 25 miles a day. They then put the body in a wagon for 130 miles before getting to the railway at Rock Creek, north of Laramie. There, Dudley Leigh met them, Grenfell said.
The Cheyenne Democratic Leader reported that Leigh’s brother was in the city and that Gilbert Leigh’s body was embalmed in the city and “hermetically sealed” in a metal casket for the trip to New York City and then England.
According to the paper, Dudley Leigh was in Honduras at the time and when friend Richard Frewen, a British cattle baron in Wyoming, found out about it, he telegraphed him and Dudley Leigh started back to the U.S. and Cheyenne.
“When discovered, Leigh’s body was little less than a shapeless mass of pulp,” The Democratic Leader reported on Oct. 7, 1884. “Scarcely a bone remained unbroken and even the jaw was horribly wrenched out of place.”
Once in New York City, the body was loaded aboard the aboard the steamer Britannic, with his brother, Dudley, and uncle, the Rev. J. W. Leigh on board.
Among those who sent their condolences to Leigh’s family were Queen Victoria via Lady Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother; a former American socialite; and wife of Lord Randolph Churchill.
His funeral was held at St. Mary’s Parish Church in Stoneleigh and the coffin was brought down a path to burial from a mile away as dozens of lords, ladies, and others of nobility took part in the procession.
Among those sending floral wreaths was Richard Frewen.
“The passage of the procession through the church field was witnessed by a very large numbers of persons who had flocked together from the adjoining villages,” The Coventry Times and Warwickshire Journal reported.
The family mausoleum was opened at the Stoney Abbey and the body placed inside. The local paper reported it hadn’t been opened for 20 years since the loss of his younger brother.
Stewart, the hunting guide, erected a monument to his British friend made of stone and dry mortar in Tensleep Canyon.
A creek was named to honor him.
A sign about the Leigh Creek monument is in the canyon.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
