On Tuesday, April 19, Fr. Edmund Legros, S.J., died at Bury St. Edmunds. He was born at Beernem, near Bruges, Belgium, in 1861, and educated there in one of the Jesuit Colleges. He sought admission into the English province of the Society of Jesus, and was received as a novice at Manresa, Roehampton, in 1881. After his first vows he studied rhetoric for two years, and in 1885 he was sent to study philosophy, first at St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, and afterwards at Otia in Castille, Spain. In 1888 he began his theology at Beuno's College, near Rhyl, North Wales; was ordained there on September 21, 1891, and did his third year of probation at Roehampton, London.
As a. priest he tried the missions of
British Honduras in 1893, and at Morucca, in British Guiana, in 1904, for which he seemed eminently gifted as he was very skilled in all kinds of handicraft, and could speak Dutch, Flemish, French, Spanish and English fluently. But the climate did not suit his constitution and after a few years he returned to England. He worked at St. Ignatius', Preston, Isom 1894 till 1899, and aid excellent work among the poor at Citasgow from 1906 till 1914.
From the beginning of the Great War he was appointed Military Chaplain, first with the depot at Stobhill, Cilasgow, but on April 29, 1915, he sailed for me East. Severe attacks of dysentery, however, forced him buck to Malta, whence he was invalided to Florence for a while, and then he went back to his old post in the Eastern Mediterranean. la May, 1916, he was serving with the troops in France, and by June 3 it was announced in The Times that he had been awarded the Military Cross, which he received from the King at Buckingham Palace on January 24, 1917.
During a bombing air-raid in July he was wounded in the back and invalided to England, where he was in hospital an Manchester till October, when he returned to France. In 1919 he returned to England and was demobilised.
For the past thirteen years Fr. Legros was
in charge of the old church of Our Lady and St. Joseph at Lawshall, near Bury St. Edmunds. After a short illness he gave his soul to God, fortified with all the rites of Holy Church, and he was buried among
the Jesuit Fathers who formerly served the parish church of Bury St. Edmunds.