There is evidence that Alick was at St Paul's in 1893 and had left in April 1897 to join "Trooper in Paget's Horse" which were a unit in the Boer War. He returned by 1901 to go to live with his mother who was no longer in beautifully named, Sparepenny Lane in Kent, with five live in servants, but was now in Fulham (Kensington Hall Gardens) - and there were no servants. The family had obviously been given sufficient money by William Benson, but not enough to continue in the manner they had become accustomed.
The 1911 census shows he was employed "staff" working as a "Gentleman Companion" at the Ticehurst House Private Lunatic Asylum. This asylum was on a grandiose 500 acre estate and, apparently, attracted affluent clientele, including aristocratic and prominent society figures.
Whether Alick volunteered or was called up for WW1, I haven't discovered. The only reference to him I found was in the London Gazette in February 1915 when he was promoted to temporary Second Lieutenant in The Army Service Corps. No medal card or service record has yet been found.
He married for the first time in 1926 to Ada Gertrude MARCHETTI at St Barnabas Church, Kensington. His brother in law, my grandfather, Percy BIRD, was a witness. Ada is described as a widow, aged 44, and her father was Charles Augustus PASBACH, a “Gentleman”. Charles was described as a German “Naturalised British Subject” on the 1891 census. Whether the fact she had a German background caused her to be interned in 1939 is something I hadn't previously thought about but is perhaps something else to be investigated.
So, what happened to poor Alick ? I have visions of him enjoying a round of golf on the heath and heather on the Worplesdon Golf Course and suddenly having the heart attack which killed him. I have contacted the Club but they told me he was not listed as a member and they have no historical record of the incident. However, that is not to say he wasn’t playing as a guest of a member, which is now, I like to think, the most plausible scenario.