Lee Leon Baldock, of New Zealand

Lee Baldock I am sorry to announce the death of Lee Baldock on 29 December 2008, after a long illness. Lee (also known as “Leon” or “Boyboy”) was my third cousin, hailing from the “Raphael line” of English Saltiels. As a youngster, Lee boxed at Stepney Jewish Boys club. He was a reluctant pugilist but stuck at it long enough to have the opportunity to admire the smart turn-out of the youthful Henry Cooper. At the age of twenty, he went to New Zealand to visit his maternal uncle, Shlomo Krushkoff, at the time President of the Communist Party of New Zealand. He decided to settle and started out as a “wharfie”, tallying the lading for the union (and making sure that it favoured the dockers). He then worked his way through the Labour Party, eventually becoming constituency agent for Gray Lynn, a district of Auckland. Sadly though, the docks had exposed him to asbestos, which eventually caught up with him. Leon’s first wife, Marie, was a real New Zealander, with Irish, Maori and Samoan blood. In the seventies, the union sent Leon off to university, with the customary disruptive effect. He fell in with a crowd of artists, dancers, singers and such like, took up with and married Denise, at that time a singer, became a pal of Rudolf Nureyev, and in 1987 President of New Zealand Actor’s Equity. He subsequently ran his own painting and decorating business in New Zealand and a hotel in Australia. In 2005 he returned to England with Denise.