Source: Michael Doyle Their Name Liveth For Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for Leicestershire and Rutland.
He was the son of the Reverend David Dewar, MA., a clergyman of the Church of England, born 1862 in Sheffield, Yorks., and his wife Annie Maria Irene Dewar (nee Hill), born 1859 in Chichester, Sussex. Lancelot John Austen was born on the 8th October 1896 in Northampton, he had one sibling, a sister Margaret Grace, born 1895, in Northampton, in March 1901 the family home was at St. Thomas’s Vicarage, 1, Blaby Road, Glen Parva, Leics. In April 1911 Lancelot was a schoolboy and was residing in the family home at 8, Melbourne Street, Leicester together with his father a clergyman of the Established Church, and his mother. Lancelot’s parents later resided at Holy Trinity Vicarage, Loughborough, Leics., his father died on the 5th August 1921, aged 59 and his widowed mother later resided at 31, Gledhow Gardens, South Kensington, Middx. His elder brother Temporary Lieutenant David (Sonnie) Dewar who was Mentioned in Despatches whilst serving with the 14th Battalion Machine Gun Corps., was killed in action on the 22nd March 1918. His service record and medal rolls record that Lancelot was commissioned into the Royal Marines as a Temporary 2nd Lieutenant on the 15/1/16. Drafted to the British Expeditionary Force on the 8/7/16, he joined the 2nd Royal Marine Battalion in the field on the 12/7/16 and served with this unit until being killed in action on the 13/11/16. His body was buried in 57d.Q.17.d Gordon Trench and No-Mans-Land, later recovered and reburied in Ancre British Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel, France. On the 31st January 1920 the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester published a Roll of Honour of former pupils, this records that Lancelot attended the school between the years 1905 and 1906. He is shown on the memorial as L.J.A. (Jack).