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blue plaque · Leeds

Lawrence Oates

Photograph at the Lawrence Oates blue plaque

Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, known as 'Titus', is remembered for his role in the Terra Nova Expedition. An army officer by profession, his journey to the Antarctic led to a tragic end. He succumbed to hypothermia during the expedition, walking out of his tent into a severe snowstorm on his 32nd birthday.

His final act is widely regarded as one of self-sacrifice. Suffering greatly from frostbite and gangrene, Oates believed his condition was dangerously impacting the survival prospects of his three companions. He chose to face the blizzard alone, an act intended to alleviate the burden of his care from the others.

Original summary by TributeLegacy, informed by public sources.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) - never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

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