Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Military General Service 1793-1814, 1 clasp, Guadaloupe (J. Munro, 25th Foot.) minor edge bruising and light contact marks , otherwise good very fine £1,000-£1,200

Provenance: Baldwin 1935; Spink 1975; Glendining’s 1976 and May 1980; Hamilton 1981; Spink, May 1998.

This is the only Munro on the roll of the 25th Foot, who received 125 medals including 104 clasps for Guadaloupe. The Musters at the time, however, show two men named James Munro; an American Tailor born in Anapolis in 1786, and a Scottish Shoemaker, the latter being the more likely recipient and proven to have lived long enough to make a claim.

James Munro was born in Linlithgow in 1790 and was christened on September 5th of that year. He was the son of Samuel (a gardener) and Mary (née Sutherland). He was transferred from the 2nd battalion on 6 July 1809, after serving a year with that battalion. In the 1841 census he shown to be living in the historic Bailie Fyfe's Close in Edinburgh with his 75-year-old mother and soon to be wife Helen. He married Helen Fraser who was 11 years his junior and a native of the city, on 21 November 1841. He is shown in the 1861 census as a Shoemaker still living in Bailie Fyfe's Close in Edinburgh and died at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum on 7 May 1866. His cause of death was listed as gradual decay.