Ralph Eyre Tanner was the eldest son of Grant’s Housemaster Ralph Tanner. His younger brother, Lawrence Tanner, went on to teach at Westminster before becoming Westminster Abbey’s Keeper of the Muniments. Our knowledge of Ralph Eyre Tanner’s life and death is largely thanks to Lawrence’s journals and records, which have been serialised online.

As with Major Maitland, Ralph Eyre Tanner was an experienced soldier who had served in India. He had been promoted to the rank of Captain in 1912.

Captain Tanner’s death is recorded in moving terms in The Elizabethan:

‘From an Officer in the Regiment we learn that Captain Tanner was slightly wounded in the leg, and went under heavy fire to help a wounded Prussian Officer who shot at him and missed. Captain Tanner took no notice, but gave the Prussian his own water-bottle and bound up his wounds. He then went back for a stretcher and as he came back the Prussian shot him in the chest.’

Tanner has been married just over a year when he died. His wife, Edith, gave birth to a son, Peter, not long after his death. Peter attended Westminster School in the late 1920s and sent his son to the school in the 1970s.