but there is no sign of his gravestone; it may have vanished due to headstone removals or perhaps Lady Claridge was unable to afford one. No will was registered and when in 1897 a great nephew applied for probate on the Claridges’ estate, Lady Claridge having died in 1888, it was worth just over £130. There is a Byronic postscript. In 1857, Claridge, living from hand to mouth in genteel poverty, made a gift to his old school of a five volume set of the ‘Arabian Nights’. His inscription is roughly written across the frontispiece: This copy of the ‘Arabian Nights’ was given to me when I was at Harrow School, nearly 60 years ago (sic), by George Gordon, Lord Byron, Author of ‘Childe Harold’ Tenderly, Claridge goes on to recall both his headmaster Butler and master Henry Drury as ‘friend’, but there is no such epithet attached to the giver of the gift, the man who had once been ‘my dearest Byron’. References 1792 births 1868 deaths People educated at Harrow School 19th-century English judges British Malaya lawyers Straits Settlements judges People from Sevenoaks