Casimir Cartwright van Straubenzee

Major-General Sir Casimir Cartwright van Straubenzee, (11 November 1867 – 28 March 1956) was a Canadian-born officer in the British Army, who served as General Officer Commanding Singapore and Malaya Command. In 1900, he played cricket for Canada.

Early life and family Born in Kingston, Ontario, van Straubenzee was the third son of Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee (1829–1898), a native of Spennithorne, Yorkshire, and his wife, Anne Macaulay Cartwright, daughter of The Hon. John Solomon Cartwright, of Kingston, Ontario. He was a nephew of General Sir Charles van Straubenzee, Commander of British Troops in China and Hong Kong and Governor of Malta.

Military career Van Straubenzee was educated at Trinity College School, Port Hope, and the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario. He joined the Royal Artillery and served with the 4th Ashanti expedition (1895–96) before returning to Canada as a professor on the RMC staff from 1898 to 1903,

He was promoted lieutenant colonel and, in June 1913, to colonel and served during the First World War from 1914. He was awarded the French Croix de guerre, and, after being promoted in August 1915 to the temporary rank of brigadier general, and after commanding the 19th (Western) Division's 56th Infantry Brigade from December 1915 to June 1916, was inspector general of the Royal Artillery from 1917 to 1918.

Promoted to substantive major general in June 1919, he became General Officer Commanding Singapore and then became General Officer Commanding 46th (North Midland) Division in June 1923, when he took over from Major General Sir Reginald Hoskins. In May 1927 he went on to be General Officer Commanding the Malaya Command, a command of British Commonwealth forces formed in the 1920s for the coordination of the defences of Malaya and Singapore, before retiring in February 1929. He was the author of Recollections of Sportsmen and Sport in Days of Yore. In 1909, he married Ethel Purcell VanKoughnet (d.1949), whose father, Mathew Robert VanKoughnet (1824–1874), was a first cousin of van Straubenzee's mother – sharing a common ancestor in James Macaulay. She was a niece of Philip Michael Matthew Scott VanKoughnet and the sister of Mrs Frederick Edmund Meredith. They lived between London and Bath. He died 28 March 1956, Lansdown, Bath, Somerset.

Legacy Van Straubenzee was the sitter for two of the portraits in the National Gallery, London.

Straubenzee, the fictional maker of Colonel Sebastian Moran's air-gun in Sherlock Holmes' 'The Adventure of the Empty House', is identified as Major General Casimir Cartwright Van Straubenzee (1866–1956).