Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie

• General Notes
  • The tenth baronet was born in December 1819 at Orton-on-the-Hill. He preceded his youngest brother Wolstan to St. Andrew where in 1842 he became an MD, his address being given as "Sussex". On 29th June in the following year he and Maria Catherine Waters were married in Bramdean Parish Church by the bride's father who was Rector. The witnesses included Richard Wolstan Dixie the bridegroom's brother and two of his sisters, Rosamond and Clementina.
    
    The Medical Directory of 1847 mentions "A. Dixit of Bognor" who doubtless can be identified as Dixie, for he and his wife lived at Manor Lodge in that resort. Here he practised as a physician, presumably until he succeeded to the baronetcy in 1857. Thereafter he was a Commissioner of Assessed Taxes. At his death, which occurred suddenly at Bosworth Hall in January 1872, he left one son and seven daughters.
    
    His will is dated 1863. It was apparently not expected that his widow would remain at Bosworth, for all household goods, furniture, plate, linen, wines and securities, together with some of the real estate were to be sold and the proceeds invested for her benefit during her life. A rent charge of £500 on some Leicestershire properties of which Sir Alexander had been tenant for life under Eleanor Pochin's Will was not to become payable to Lady Dixie until after the death of the widow of the eighth baronet. In the event, however, that lady died in the following year. Sir Alexander's assets at his death in 1872 were £20,000. He was buried next to his father in Bosworth churchyard and the headstone of his grave also commemorates his wife Maria Catherine who was eighty five when she died in April 1902.
    
    A Return of Owners of Land published by H.M. Stationery Office in 1873 shows the Dixies of Market Bosworth owned 5,491¼ acres in Leicestershire with a gross estimated rental of  £10,618. In Nottinghamshire they had 523½ acres with a rental of £666 and in Derbyshire, 31½ acres with a rental of £45. They were by no means the largest of the Leicestershire landowners; the properties of the Hastings family for instance amounted to 10,175 acres and the Duke of Rutland owned 31, 109 acres in the county.
    
    It was during Sir Alexander's lifetime – in 1863 – that the School Governors instituted yet another Chancery Suit. This was with the object of removing the patronage from the Dixies. The action failed, however, and cost the School £552. The Dixies retained the patronage and Queen Victoria became the Official Visitor, albeit she never once came to Bosworth.
    
    After the death of the Rev. A.B. Evans in 1854 there was a succession of no fewer than five Headmasters during a period of thirty-two years. At one stage, in the 1880s there were only five pupils but the appointment of the Rev. L.H. Pearson in 1886 marked the beginning of an improvement and thereafter numbers rose steadily.
    
    Sir Alexander's only son was given the same three Christian names as his father but seems to have been generally to have been known as Beaumont. And old Bosworthian who entered the School in 1884 recalls in his memoirs that "Squirrel" Wright, once a page boy at the Hall, told him that Sir Alexander was determined that his son should become a good cricketer. A pitch was prepared on the lawn and Wright was set to bowl to the future baronet whose father had promised him half a crown for every time he succeeded in hitting a ball through one of the windows. But the two young players thought of a better plan: that "Squirrel" should do his best to throw the ball through a window in return for a share in the cash reward.
    

Details of Alexander's family with Lady Maria Catharine Walters