Cabinet Photograph
The Photographic Art Company - Photographer
92 Queens Road, Bayswater, W.,  England
c. 1900s

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A fine late Victorian portrait of Lieutenant R. E. Martin of the 1st Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment in levee dress.  the Times of London and The London Gazette outlined his appointments and promotions:

Lieutenant, 1st Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - September 190?
Captain, 1st Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - 16 July 1902
Captain, 5th Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - 25 September 1908
Captain/Instructor of Musketry, 5th Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - 10 June 1910
Major, 5th Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - 19 March 1913
Lieutenant Colonel, 4th Volunteer Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment - 16 June 1917

All of the above sources listed Martin by his first two initials and not his full name. This was even the case with his World War I medal card and the medal rolls themselves. The rolls do confirm his entitlement to the British War and Victory Medals.

The following information, which includes Martin's first and middle names is from a memorial plaque in St. George's Chapel at St Martin's Cathedral, Leicester:

Edmund Martin

In memory of Lieut-Colonel Edmund Martin CMG TD VL JP MH LLD
Served with the 5th Battalion 1908-1915. Commanded 4th Battalion 1915 until badly wounded. During his 36 years as Chairman of The Leicestershire County Council he gave outstanding help to the Regiment. Died 12th June 1961.

Robert Edmund Martin was born on the first day of December 1874 to Robert F. Martin and Henrietta S. Larkin in Whitehaven, Cumberland. Educated at Eaton and Kings College Cambridge, he became the managing director of a granite mining company.

During the Great War he served in France and Belgium where he was twice wounded and twice mentioned in dispatches.

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Martin is mentioned in the 1935 book Footprints of the 1/4th Leicestershire Regiment - August 1914 to November 1918 by John Milne:

"He was a big man, but a thin man; he never looked very well and probably never felt very well; he wore spectacles and a big fair mustache;  he spoke highbrow English in a high-pitched voice;  he called a dead cow a 'vociferous heifer,' and a tin mug a 'drinking receptacle'; but he knew how to build dug-outs; he understood the bonding of sandbags, he procured timber from unlikely places and corrugated iron and tarred felt as if by
sleight of hand.  He thought of everything and everybody except possibly himself;  he never appeared to be put out;  he seldom 'straffed'; but he expected much and his expectations were generally realised.  He was the best all-round soldier in the battalion, and the battalion knew it and only got annoyed with him when he exposed himself to danger unnecessarily, which was one of his habits."

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In 1916 he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of the county and, in 1919, Vice Lieutenant of Leicestershire. Chiefly responsible for the fund raising for the restoration of the bishopric, in 1926 he was a member of the House of Laity of the National Assembly of the Church of England as well as a lay canon of the Cathedral. He was a member of the County Council for over fifty years, 36 as chairman. In 1955, on his 80th birthday over 1,000 school children took part in a pageant in his honour. Granted the Freedom of Leicester in 1960; Sir Robert died in Loughborough Hospital a year later, aged 86.
 

He married Ethel Laura Brooks on 19 November 1925. The couple had one child, a daughter, Susan Mary Ethel (b. 10 April 1927, d. 2 February 1945).

One interesting if minor fact that I have uncovered was a passenger manifest for the The East Asiatic Company ship SS Canada which listed Robert Edm. Martin, Justice of the Peace and Ethel Laura Martin of Loughborough as passengers. The ship departed Vancouver, British Columbia with stops in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, Kingston and St Thomas arriving in London, England on 2 November, 1937.