Major Gerald Herbert Loxley AFC (1885–1950) was a decorated British aviator of the First World War deployed in military intelligence, before serving with the United Nations in Switzerland.www.ungeneva.org
Biography Born on 31 January 1885 at Fairford, Gloucestershire, a vicar's son, he was named after his godfather, Sir Herbert Brewer.
Loxley attended Summer Fields School and Malvern College before studying jurisprudence at Oriel College, Oxford.
His World War I service in the Royal Naval Air Service saw action as an air pilotwww.nationalarchives.gov.uk before being appointed to a distinguished position in aerial reconnaissance, advising the Director-General of Aircraft Production (Ministry of Munitions) in Paris. He was promoted to the rank of major upon the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1919.
Later in life Loxley served as a diplomat at the United Nations Organization at Geneva.www.treaties.un.org
Family
The 5th child and 4th son of the Revd Canon Arthur Smart Loxley, son of John Loxley of Norcott Court, a manor house at Northchurch in Hertfordshire, he was the only one of the Loxley brothers to survive World War I. In 1930 he married Alice Blundell Booth (died 1955, leaving no children), a cousin of the Booth baronets.Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, qv. BOOTH, Bt Through Julia Maria HeathByron: Letters and Journals, vol. 1, 1973, p. 165; Lord Byron to the Hon. Mrs Augusta Leigh, 26 April 1808 a collateral ancestor of his was the poet Lord Byron; and, with Cornish ancestry, his family was also closely related to Lord Dover and the Duncombes.
After suffering a severe stroke, Loxley died on 29 September 1950 at St Mary's Hospital, Burghill, near Hereford.
Honours and awards Loxley received the Air Force CrossBurke's Peerage & Baronetage (www.burkespeerage.com), qv. BOOTH, Bt: "2m Alice Blundell BOOTH, born 20 September 1908, married 10 September 1930 Major Gerald Herbert LOXLEY, AFC, Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre avec Palmes, late RAF (died without issue 29 September 1950), son of Rev Arthur Smart LOXLEY, Vicar of Fairford, Gloucestershire (see BYRON, B), and great-uncle of Elizabeth Patricia Loxley, Baroness Bingham of Cornhill (see BINGHAM OF CORNHILL, LP), and died without issue 29 August 1955". and was invested as a knight of the Legion of Honour by Ferdinand Foch in 1919, having previously been appointed an officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1916.www.carabinieri.it
He received many other military honours as well as being admitted as a freeman of the City of London "for war services".
See also
Baron Bingham of Cornhill
References
External links The Malvern Register www.nationalarchives.gov.uk