Biography
Born: 4 March 1905
Died: 26 June 1955
Grave Location: Private C, Section 09, Row 2, Grave 06
Achievements
In 1950, Ballarat became home to an Olympic gold medallist in Leslie Hammond.
Born in the Indian city of Madras (now Chennai) to English parentage, he worked in the 1920s for railway companies in northern India, with whom he also competed and won trophies in the Indian Railways Athletic Association in tennis and field hockey.
In 1928, he won India’s inaugural national field hockey championship with Uttar Pradesh and was selected for their first field hockey team to compete in the Olympics at Amsterdam that year. There, the team went on a blistering run scoring 29 goals in five matches and conceding none, and defeated the Netherlands 3-0 in the gold medal match.
Hammond played in three of India’s matches at left back, and at 184cm, his height was a great asset to the team that allowed him to quickly work up the field. He was selected again for the 1932 Los Angeles games and played another match for India, who again dominated the tournament with 35 goals in two games for their second straight gold medal.
Many Anglo-Indian members of the team emigrated to Australia in later years, including Hammond, who arrived in Ballarat in 1950. A collection of his gold medals, trophies and other memorabilia is now kept by the Sovereign Hill museum.
Did you Know?
Leslie Charles Hammond (1905-1955) was born in British Indian Empire Chennai (known as Madras until 1996) and worked as a Carriage Builder at the East Indian Railway.
He was selected for the 1928 Olympic team following the 1928 Inter-Provincial Tournament, where he had played for the winning team, the United Provinces. In Amsterdam he played three matches without allowing a goal. In Los Angeles in 1932 he was one of only four repeat players from the 1928 squad.
As well as working for the East Indian Railway, he also played in its hockey team. He was later one of several players from the 1932 team to emigrate to Australia. His widow left his gold medals to the Sovereign Hill Museum in Ballarat, Victoria.
Leslie died aged 50, and was buried in the Private C location. He was commemorated with a streamlined, Deco-inspired concrete/stone? memorial adorned with the relief of a large Latin cross on top of the ledger panel, likely to symbolise his Christian faith. At the foot of the grave is a built in flower vase with a grille cover.
A granite plaque features lines from the Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘To J.S.’: ‘God gives us love Something to love. He lends us’ below the epitaph. The full poem explores the bittersweet nature of love and loss, particularly the way love can be fragile and temporary.
Space was presumably left below the gold-etched lettering of the epitaph for Leslie’s wife, Charlotte Hammond (née Vincent; 20 July 1915–16 February 1983) but she was buried 23 years later with her mother in Roman Catholic C.
