Orders, Decorations and Medals

India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Pegu (Lieutt. Wm. Tate Groom, 1st Madras Fusrs.) minor edge bruise and slight contact marks, good very fine £300-360

William Tate Groom was born in London on 20 August 1831. He was educated privately at Bognor Regis and at Rugby School. He was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Madras Fusiliers on 20 August 1850 and was advanced to Lieutenant in March 1854. Groom served in the relief of Pegu in December 1852 and the second investment of the city in January 1853. Serving in the supression of the Indian Mutiny, he was dangerously wounded in the right thigh at Lucknow on 5 October 1857, and subsequently died of his wounds.

Lieutenant Groom was dangerously wounded during the taking of the “Yellow House” between Alumbagh and Charbagh on 5 October 1857. Colonel R. Napier in his despatch of the same date to Major-General Sir James Outram mentions Groom in action a day or two earlier:

‘In the afternoon of the 1st, the column formed in the road leading to the Paen Bagh, and advanced through the buildings near the gaol, occupied the mass of houses on the left and front of Phillips’ Garden, under guidance of Mr Phillips the former occupant, and the enemy were driven from some houses and a barricade on the left of our advance, by fifty men of the Madras Fusiliers, led by Lieutenant Groom under a sharp fire of musketry, in a very spirited manner’. Sold with copied research.