Queer Places:
Southampton Old Cemetery
Southampton, Southampton Unitary Authority, Hampshire, England
Sydney Lomer (1880 – June 30, 1926) was a poet and soldier. He published poetry under the name Sydney Oswald.
Born Sydney Frederick McIllree Lomer, son of Cecil Wilson Lomer of Badgeworth Court, nr Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, he attended Rugby School from 1894 to 1896.
As a professional soldier he served from August 1899 to July 1919 first with the First Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers and then with the First Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. In the First World War, as a Captain, he was sent to France in February 1915 but was sent home in March due to contracting pneumonia. In September 1915 he was promoted to Major and in March 1916 he was attached to the Egyptian Army until 1917. He was then made a temporary Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1919 he was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire).
After the War, the Lieutenant-Colonel took his "most attractive" batman with him into civilian life. The young man was Leo Marshall.
Lomer was friend of Philip Streatfeild, mentor to the then-14-year-old actor and later famed author Noël Coward. Sydney was also a patron of Henry Scott Tuke, the artist and Leo posed nude for one of his paintings. It is said that when Sydney Lomar saw the painting "The Diving Place" (1907) he asked Tuke to define the genitals more clearly which he did but when Lomar did not buy the painting he changed it back. Lomer corresponded with Edward Carpenter.
In 1919 Sydney Lomer had a house in the barrack town of Colchester, Essex. Later he lived at Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and died in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
My published books:
