PRIVATE C. GALLAGHER, 30TH (CAMBRIDGESHIRE) REGIMENT (THE POST 1880 1ST BATTALION EAST LANCASHIRE REGIMENT). Crimea Medal, 2 clasps, Alma, Sebastopol

PRIVATE C. GALLAGHER, 30TH (CAMBRIDGESHIRE) REGIMENT (THE POST 1880 1ST BATTALION EAST LANCASHIRE REGIMENT). Crimea Medal, 2 clasps, Alma, Sebastopol (officially impressed: C. GALLAGHER. 30th. REGt.). Attractive old dark tone, Almost Extremely Fine.

Medal accompanied by photocopied extract from medal roll confirming medal and Alma clasp to 3045 Private Charles Gallagher (the Sebastopol clasp would have been automatically credited by the roll, since Private Gallagher’s period of service with the 30th Foot in the Crimea covered the opening weeks of the operations leading up to the investment of Sebastopol). Medal also accompanied by quarterly pay list from July – September 1854, which notes that Private Gallagher had been transferred “sick to ship” in September 1854, and was “missing 26th September” from the regimental muster. Latter roll also notes recipient as being “dead”. Private Gallagher’s entry in the “Removals” section records that he was born in Glasgow, a coalminer by trade, enlisted on 7th April 1849 and died on 27th September 1854 (this latter record housed in the Public Record Office is too fragile to photocopy by ordinary means, but the foregoing details have been extracted from it). Private Gallagher was possibly a casualty of the battle of the Alma River, which was fought on 20th September 1854 (the names of the men who were thought lightly wounded, had their wounds dressed, and then returned to duty after the battle, are not recorded as casualties in the regimental history, and the records of any of the lightly wounded who subsequently succumbed were later destroyed when the regimental hospital was closed down). Equally, he may have been a victim of the cholera epidemic that swept through the British army in the Crimea after the battle of the Alma River, as it moved across the peninsula towards Sebastopol.