Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Crimea 1854-56, 3 clasps, Alma, Balaklava, Sebastopol (R. Duke, 13th Lt. Dragoons), officially impressed naming, with original Bailey of Coventry riband fitment, edge bruising, about very fine £5000-6000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals formed by the late John Darwent.

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Ex Glendining’s 14 March 1968.

[William] Robert Duke was born at Bantry, Co. Cork and was educated at the Royal Hibernian School, his father having served in the 34th Regiment. He enlisted at Dublin as a boy recruit in the 13th Light Dragoons in August 1847, aged 14 years.

Present at Alma and in the early operations before Sebastopol, he also charged with the Light Brigade at Balaklava and was wounded in numerous places and taken P.O.W. In his memoir, Reminiscences of Crimean Campaigning and Russian Imprisonment, R. S. Farquharson, a fellow “charger”, states:

‘Week after week, while in Veronitz, our numbers were increased by new arrivals of prisoners from the Crimea, including some of our wounded comrades whom we had left at Simferopol. Among these were Dryden of the 11th Hussars, who had no fewer than thirty-six wounds; Cooper and Duke of the 13th Light Dragoons, who had each been desperately wounded ... All of these fellows seemed to have been well cared for in hospital, for their hurts were well and solidly healed up ...’

Duke was “exchanged” in November 1855 and rejoined his regiment, shortly afterwards being appointed a Trumpeter. But in June 1858 his old wounds caught up with him, an examining Surgeon recommending his discharge:

‘Labours under confirmed epilepsy, the result of wounds received at the battle of Balaklava but more especially of a shell wound received at the vortex of the head. Number of wounds, fourteen. Wound from shell on head, gun-shot wound to right wrist, two sword wounds on knee and ten lance wounds to body and arms.’

Duke was living in Belfast in the mid-1870s.