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Name: TARLTON, Leslie Jefferis
Nee: son of Robert Alfred and Sophia, bro of Elliot and Henry Herbert
Birth Date: 29 July 1877 Somerton, Glenelg, South Australia
Death Date: 27 Oct 1951 Nairobi
Nationality: Australian
First Date: 1901 from Transvaal 1891-1901, serving some months in Boer War
Last Date: 1951
Profession: Farmer. Accompanied Roosevelt expedition as joint manager with R.J. Cunninghame 1914-16 then joined V.M. Newland in the safari outfitting firm which extended its business to Estate Agency and Auctioneering. Well known as big-game hunter
Area: Nairobi, 1925 Kiambu, 1930 Safariland, Nbi.
Married: Jessie Wright b. 1887 Barrow in Furness
Author: Bookref cont: Barnes, Leader14, Chandler, Red Book 1912
Book Reference: Gillett, HBEA, Cuckoo, KFA, McCutcheon, Unger, Kill, Downey, Cranworth, Rundgren, Roosevelt, Tracks, Brightest, EAHB 1905, KAD, Red 25, Red 31, Hut, North, Playne, Macmillan, Drumkey, Land, Red 22, Into Africa, EAHB 1906, Gazette, Medals, EAHB 1907, SKP,
War Service: Served through the SA War
School: Prince Alfred's College, Adelaide & Launceston High School, Tasmania
General Information:
Was in charge of many safaris and expeditions. 1915-17 a member of Nairobi Municipal Council
KFA - In 1921, Unga Ltd. started to grist wheat at Njoro. Mr Leslie Tarlton took over the management for a short period, but the Company was by now in such a bad financial way that in November he resigned, saying that he did not wish to be associated with an enforced bankruptcy.
McCutcheon - 'small, with short cropped red hair - a sort of Scotchman in appearance - is also a remarkable type. He has a quiet voice, never raised in tone, and talks like the university man that he is. He is a famous lion hunter and has killed numbers of lions and elephants, but now says he is through with dangerous game. "I've had enough of it." he says [1909]
Unger - 1909 - Roosevelt Trip - Leslie A. Tarlton - a citizen of Naivasha. [Unger seems to be very bad at names and places]
Kill - Tarlton is known to have killed more lions than any other man.
Cranworth - 1906 - Nairobi - met at the station by Victor Newland, the big-game outfitter, who later became a great personal friend. ........... 'shortly before the War joined the board of Newland and Tralton. Original partners were V.M. Newland, Leslie Tarlton and Claude Tritton. Tritton ran the London end - he had been running a seed store in Nairobi and arrived in Nairobi some 2 years before us. Newland and Tarlton had come out as young men with some ludicrously small capital, I think about £200, and had built up what was till the war about the biggest business in the country ..... The original business of N. & T. had extended with great rapidity, and to it had been grafted on two most admirable side-lines in land agency and auctioneering ....….
N. & T. hadn't a monopoly in any of their main enterprises. The Boma Trading Co. competed in the outfitting, and H.F. Ward in the land agency, but it is safe to say that 75% of the business in each direction was retained, and that was enough to produce a very handsome profit indeed. Tarlton was the principal in the shooting Dept. He was himself a noted hunter and a remarkable rifle shot, with a bag of lions to his credit. Newland was the prime mover in everything else, and even found time to be a Legislative Councillor, and a most efficient one withal. He was the hardest-working man I've known ..... the downfall was, not, as cobblers, sticking to their last; ill luck; and Newland's absence during the Great War. After the war they stocked up for the anticipated boom which never came. - they employed 37 Europeans at an average salary of £500 p.a.
Tracks - was a master of the hunting game, a fine wing shot and equally at home with any calibre rifle ..... (story of killing two leopards in Parklands)
Brightest - one of the best shots that has ever hunted game in Africa ..... 1905 - Akeley heard someone typing at the rear of an empty building ......... a red-haired man called Leslie J. Tarlton ........ no description of BEA is complete without some reference to Tarlton, the Boer War veteran now known to hunters the world over ....... Tarlton and his partner, Newland, were Australians who had served in the Boer War. At its close they set out to make their fortunes somewhere in Africa. Coming to Nairobi with none too much of this world's goods but plenty of ambition and enthusiasm, they were casting about for an objective when, on that morning in 1905, I stumbled upon Tarlton's iron house. The safari business into which they fell that day helped to make them prosperous men until the opening of the World War in 1914 put an end to African hunting for a time. Tarlton afterward confessed to me that the typewriter that first attracted my attention would not write at all. Its only use was to make a noise when a prospective client came in sight ........…..
Playne - Newland, Tarlton & Co. Ltd. - The sportsman bent on big game shooting in BEA, perhaps the finest district in the world for his purpose, is always anxious to obtain some fore-knowledge of the condition of things generally, and to know what provision he must make to meet the particular requirements of the country in which he proposes to travel. He could not do better in the circumstances than to consult Messrs Newland, Tarlton & Co. Ltd., of Nairobi, who will willingly supply him with any information he needs, and, if so desired, will fit out any expedition he has in view. The firm was established in 1904 as land and stock agents, and in 1905 started safari outfitting, and has been associated with this country for the last 5 years. Mr V.M. Newland was born in South Australia, as also was Mr L.J. Tarlton, their respective fathers both having been pioneers in that colony. Mr C.H. Tritton, another partner, manages the London business, his father being a partner in Barclay's Bank, London.
Macmillan - 1930 - Active Managing Director of Safariland Ltd. Which was registered in 1922
Drumkey 1909 - Cattle Brand - T1N - Newland & Tarlton - Nairobi
Land - Lord Cardross leased 10046 acres at West Kenya, passed to C.A. Tritton and L.J. Tarlton
Land - 1906 - L.J. Tarlton - Building, 17500 sq.ft., Nairobi, 21-6-05, Registered 12-12-06
Land - 1907 - L.J. Tarlton - Building, 5.2 acres, Ngong Road, Registered 10-6-07
Into Africa - Leslie Tarlton was an Anglo-Australian with an easy, 'gentlemanly' manner and quiet but very real authority. He stayed out of the more passionate disputes of early Nairobi, yet became highly respected by other settlers. The most visible member of the firm in the safari end, he was the ideal man to forward it, able to meet the President of the United States on terms neither superior nor servile, at home in the bush or the Muthaiga Club, comfortable with hunters as well as their wives and sons.
Into Africa - Leslie Tarlton is remembered better as founder of Newland & Tarlton and of Safarilands [sic] than as a hunter, but it was as a hunter that Roosevelt hired him. A noted rifle shot, he none the less said 'he was through with dangerous game' as early as 1910: 'I've had enough of it', he was quoted as saying. Roosevelt and Kermit apparently called him 'Bwana Safari', perhaps because they picked the name up from the Africans, although 'Safari' was the Newland & Tarlton cable name; Tarlton even jokingly referred to his wife as 'Mrs Safari' in a letter. His health was poor because of gallstones in 1910-11; he considered emigrating to America. But he stayed and became a pillar of the colony, serving as a founding member of the East African Professional Hunters Association in 1934. He had had to give up Safarilands the year before however: 'the financial depression has knocked me pretty badly'.
Land 1909 - V.M. Newland, L.J. Tarlton, C.H. Tritton and others - Stock Sale Yards, 5 acres - Nakuru - 6/6/06 - Leasehold for 25 years from 1/1/09 - Registered 17/7/09
Gazette - 7/4/15 - Liable for Jury service, Nairobi District - L.J. Tarlton, Newland Tarlton and Co.
Medals - East African Intelligence Department - Lieutenant
SKP - 1938 - Society of Kenya Pioneers - over 30 years in Colony - arrived Dec 1903 - Limuru
Barnes - Nairobi City Park Cemetery - Leslie Jefferis Tarlton, died 27 Oct 1951 aged 74
Chandler - Newland and Tarlton had a run of 15 years and then dissolved in 1919. The next year Tarlton started Safariland, Ltd. With much the same clientele and many of the same hunt…[more]
Red Book 1912 - L. Tarlton - Nairobi
Web - Vice President of Anzac Society newly formed in Nairobi 1932
Gazette 6 Dec 1938 Kiambu Voters List as accountant, Limuru