Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Waterloo 1815 (John Reed, 10th Royal Reg. Hussars.) fitted with unusual contemporary replacement ‘clasped hand’ silver clip and bar suspension, and with attractive ‘rose, thistle & shamrock’ silver ribbon slide, original old ribbon but rather fragile, edge bruising, polished and generally rather worn, therefore fine £1,400-£1,800

John Reed was born in the Parish of Aldbourne, Wiltshire, and attested for the 10th Hussars at Bath on 5 May 1809, aged twenty, a carpenter by trade. He served ‘in the Peninsula and in France in 1813 & 1814, and in Flanders and at the battle of Waterloo in 1815’, and was discharged at Leeds Barracks on 16 July 1830. He was, according to the Surgeon’s report, suffering from chronic rheumatism and ‘has been unable to ride for more than two years, on account of the motion invariably producing severe and lasting pain of the loins. Previous to this time he had suffered from rheumatism’.

Reed lived to claim the M.G.S. medal with clasps for Vittoria, Orthes and Toulouse. In the 1851 census he is living as a carpenter and army pensioner at ‘Waterloo Cottage’, 24, Great North Road, Finchley, North London. He died in Barnet in the first quarter of 1871, aged 83, his wife having died in Barnet in the same quarter the previous year.

Sold with copied discharge papers and other research.