Charles Frederick Henry Leslie

Charles Frederick Henry Leslie (8 December 1861 – 12 February 1921) was an English businessman and cricketer. He played first-class cricket for eight years between 1881 and 1888, for Oxford University, Middlesex and England. Life He was the son of Henry David Leslie and his wife, Mary Betsy Perry. At Rugby School he was captain of cricket, and according to one opinion was, with Charles Thomas Studd of Eton, the best public school all-rounder of the year. He was compared favourably to Manley Kemp, cricket captain of Harrow School. Leslie matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1880. He became managing director of William France, Fenwick &. Co. Ltd., Fenchurch Street, London, coal merchants and ship owners, a company formed in 1901 when three shipping companies merged. They shipped mainly coal, and Baltic timber. As a director of Baku Russian Petroleum, he visited Baku in 1904, and struck up a friendship with the entrepreneur Leslie Urquhart. After the 1905 Russian Revolution and subsequent depression, Leslie went into business with Urquhart, investing in Russian oil and minerals. At board level, the existing Anglo-Siberian group was reconfigured as the Perm Corporation, including Sir Frederick Frankland of East Russian mines and the civil engineer Thomas Blair Reynolds (1860–1941), as well as Leslie and Urquhart.