Auction Catalogue

16 & 17 September 2010

Starting at 1:00 PM

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Orders, Decorations and Medals

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

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Lot

№ 1336

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17 September 2010

Hammer Price:
£7,000

A fine Light Brigade group of four awarded to Private John Mortimer, 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, a confirmed charger at Balaklava

Crimea 1854-56, 4 clasps, Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, Sebastopol (Pte. Jno. Mortimer, 8th Hus...) contemporary engraved naming; Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Central India (John Mortimer, 8th Hussars); Army L.S. & G.C., V.R., small letter reverse (938 John Mortimer, 8th Hussars); Turkish Crimea, Sardinian issue (No. 938 Jn. Mortimer. 8. Hussars) depot impressed naming, fitted with Crimea type suspension, the first two with re-fixed suspension, severe edge bruising and contact marks, otherwise fine and better (4) £6000-8000

Ex John Darwent Collection, D.N.W. April 2004. Previously sold at Glendining’s in June 1907, November 1912, and November 1935.

John Mortimer was born at Raheen, Maryborough, Co. Queens, Ireland and enlisted into the 8th Hussars in May 1846. Landing with his regiment at Calamita Bay in the Crimea in September 1854, he was present at the battle of Alma later that month, and went on to participate in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, the Battle of Inkermann and in the operations before Sebastopol.

Mortimer returned to the U.K. in 1856 but was re-embarked in the S.S.
Great Britain in October 1857 for service in the Indian Mutiny. He was subsequently present in the action at Kotah, part of the operations conducted in Central India. Awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal at the time of his discharge back at Dundalk in June 1870, after 24 years with the Colours, he attended the First Balaklava Banquet in 1875 and became a member of the Balaklava Commemoration Society in 1879. He is also known to have attended the Annual Dinner as late as 1895.

Mortimer, who found employment as a night watchman, was onetime resident at Halifax in Yorkshire, but latterly he lived in Liverpool at Union Street in the Paddington district, and, less happily, as an inmate of a workhouse in the Walton district of the city. He died in June 1896. The following notice appeared in The Liverpool Daily Post:

‘Death of Balaklava Hero: another of the survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade, whose numbers are rapidly diminishing, died on Monday last in the Walton Workhouse, aged seventy-four years. The deceased, John Mortimer, was formerly a trooper in the 8th Hussars, being present at Inkermann. He also passed through the Indian Mutiny. He was in possession of two Crimean medals and four bars, Mutiny medal and a long service medal. He was generally present at the Annual Dinners given to the survivors by the Committee of the Balaklava Fund, either at London, Birmingham or Manchester and was well respected by his comrades.’