Orders, Decorations and Medals

Pair: Corporal John Slater, 52nd Foot, one of the small detachment present at the battle of Talavera, wounded in the head at Nivelle, and a ‘Waterloo man’

Military General Service 1793-1814, 12 clasps, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes D’Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse (John Slater, Corpl. 52nd Foot); Waterloo 1815, (Corporal Iohn Slater, 1st Batt. 52nd Reg. Light Infantry) contemporary re-engraved naming, fitted with wide silver hinged bar suspension, edge bruising and contact marks, otherwise nearly very fine and scarce (2) £6000-8000

Ex Hyde Gregg Collection 1877 and Whitaker Collection 1890.

Only 2 officers and 24 men of the 52nd received the clasp for Talavera, where they served in the 1st Battalion Detachments. Only 87 medals were issued with 12 clasps including 18 to the 52nd Foot, one other with this combination of clasps.

John Slater was born in the Parish of Ilkestone, Derby, and enlisted into the 52nd Foot at Battle, Sussex, on 6 May 1804, for unlimited service, aged twenty. A Stocking Weaver by profession, he served with the 52nd in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. He was wounded by a musket ball in the head at Sare, a fortified village on the Nivelle, on 10 November 1813, and was discharged on reduction of the establishment of the regiment, at Uxbridge, on 6 December 1818.

According to Dalton’s Waterloo Roll Call (A Few Waterloo Heroes - p 273) he ‘afterwards exchanged into the 69th. In 1848 Slater claimed his right to the silver war medal with 14 clasps - one clasp more than Wellington obtained - but only got a medal with 12 clasps. He died at Nottingham in 1860.’

Sold with copied discharge papers.