Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The 1914-15 Star awarded to Lieutenant B. H. W. Worswick, King Edward’s Horse, who was killed at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin on 29 April 1916 during the height of the Easter Rising

1914-15 Star (876 Pte. B. Worswick, K. Edw. H.) very fine £400-£500

Basil Henry Worsley Worswick was born in 1881, the son of Colonel Worsley Worswick of Normanton Hall, Hinkley, Colonel Commandant of the Leicestershire Militia, and was educated at Downside. Emigrating to farm, first in Rhodesia, and then in Canada, he returned to the the U.K. just prior to the outbreak of the Great War, and attested for King Edward’s Horse in August 1914. He served with them as a trooper during the Great War on the Western Front from 4 May 1915, and was commissioned Second Lieutenant.

Proceeding with the 2nd Battalion to Ireland, following the outbreak of the East Rising the Regiment was sent to Dublin to help quell the disturbance in the city. On the night of 28-29 April, a detachment of the Dublin Fusiliers was stationed at the malt house of the Guinness brewery. When the night clerk of the brewery, accompanied by Lieutenant Lucas of the King Edward’s Horse, was making his nightly round of the brewery buildings, he was challenged by the very nervous and jumpy guard of Royal Dubliners. Mistaken for Sinn Feiners trying to infiltrate the brewery premises, the guard shot both the night clerk and Lucas dead. Worswick was in the next picket along and heard the commotion. Proceeding to investigate, he arrived at the malt house at dawn on 29 April 1916, and finding that his fellow officer had been killed, his suspicions were aroused. Challenged and searched by a sergeant of the Dublin Fusiliers, he rushed at him, knocked the man down. The guard, seeing this, and believing Worswick also to be a Sinn Fein spy, killed him instantly.

The Company Quartermaster Sergeant in charge of the party of Dublin Fusiliers, Robert Flood, was subsequently court-martialled for the deaths of Lieutenants Lucas and Worswick, but was acquitted, his actions attributed to the general confusion and panic that surrounded Dublin during the Easter Rising, and the responsibility for the unfortunate deaths deemed to rest entirely upon those who engineered the revolt. He was subsequently killed in action on the Dorian front in Macedonia the following year.

Worswick was buried in the grounds of Dublin Castle; his body was exhumed in 1963 and he is now buried in Grangegorman Military cemetery, Co. Dublin. He is also commemorated on the Glasnevin Memorial.

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