Rudolph Albert Peters, 13 April 1889 - 29 January 1982

Abstract

Rudolph Albert Peters was born in Kensington on 13 April 1889. His grandfather, Ralph Benjamin, had been born in Denmark, the son of Rudolph Daniel Benjamin Peters (1781-1861) who was a Captain in the Danish Army (2nd Battalion, the Altona Infantry) under King Christian VIII, and who had been appointed by him a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog for his services in defending the neutrality of Altona in the face of Napoleon’s army. His father, Albert Edward Duncan Ralph Peters, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (1863-1945), was a younger son of Ralph Benjamin Peters, who had come to England as a young man and had married Elizabeth Sewell Pape, who belonged to a Lincolnshire family said to have been friends of the Wesleys. His mother was Agnes Malvina Watts (1867-1950), the granddaughter of Commander C. N. Watts, R.N., whose father, Admiral George Edward Watts, C.B., had been engaged in many naval actions in the time of Napoleon. Admiral Watts was himself the only son of John Watts, an officer in the army who fell while serving under the Duke of Kent at the storming of Fort Bourbon, Martinique, in 1794. The Watts ancestors also include a Captain of Infantry who had fought under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden, and who was a first cousin of Dr Isaac Watts, the writer of a number of well known hymns including ‘O God, our help in ages past’.