Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Peninsula War medal awarded to Private Joseph James, who fought with the 40th Foot in the Peninsula, in North America, and at Waterloo, before joining the N.S.W. Veteran Company, employed escorting prisoners to Sydney N.S.W., where he eventually settled with his family and was later a well-known inn-keeper at Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains; he is buried in St John’s Church at Parramatta

Military General Service 1793-1814, no clasp (Joseph James, 40th Foot) suspension re-affixed and fitted with blank clasp, heavy edge bruise to reverse, therefore good fine or better £1,500-£2,000

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

View
Collection

Provenance: Acquired as a disc, without suspension or clasps; since reconstituted with a genuine suspension and entitled to clasps for Pyrenees and Toulouse.

Joseph James was born in the Parish of Appleside, near Taunton, Somerset, and was baptised on Christmas Day 1797. He enlisted into the 40th Regiment at Wells, Somerset, on 4 June 1811, aged 15 years. He served in the Peninsula, North America, and at Waterloo and was discharged on 6 February 1821, in consequence of ‘The contents of a fowling piece [having] passed through his right hand by accident when on furlough about twelve months back which incapacitates him from using the musket properly.’

James enlisted into the New South Wales Royal Veteran Company at Chatham on 9 January 1826, and church records in Sydney indicate that he was there by the end of that year with his family. He was discharged at Sydney on 30 September 1831 upon the disbandment of the Company. He was subsequently granted sixty acres of land (number three of Veterans Allotments) about sixty miles west of Sydney on 24 June 1839, by Governor Sir George Gipps, which he sold for 330 pounds on 4 August 1840. He then either acquired or built the ‘Welcome Inn’ at Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains. Here, in 1846, he hosted the Governor, Sir Charles Fitzroy, and his A.D.C. Colonel G. C. Mundy who later mentions James in his important book Our Antipodes, which remains in print today:

‘At nine miles from Nepean, having been one hour and fifteen minutes in performing that distance, we reached the ‘Welcome Inn’, kept by a jolly old soldier named James, who rejoiced in a Waterloo medal, a pretty daughter, and, what was more to our purpose than either, some excellent bottled ale. In these parts this delicacy costs 3s. a bottle - not a wonderful price when one considers the distance and difficulties between its native brewery on the banks of Trent and the top of the Australian Cordillera.

The old campaigner had fought through the Peninsula in the 40th Regiment, and came out to this country in a company of veterans escorting prisoners. Three years later, when I paid him a second visit, his Waterloo medal had been joined by another, granted by Her Majesty for Peninsular service, with two or three clasps for general actions; his pretty daughter had married and left him; and his ale had come down 6d. a-bottle.’

Joseph James died on 19 December 1852, aged 55, and was buried in the cemetery of St John’s Church at Parramatta, which is the oldest existing European burial ground in Australia, a headstone marking his grave still in place. In 1937, a grandson of Joseph James wrote from Wentworth Falls to the Sydney Morning Herald about the ‘Welcome Inn’, stating that “He fought at Waterloo, and the family still have in their possession the medals and ribbons presented to him. His pretty daughter was my mother...”

Sold with copied discharge papers and extensive additional research including several copied images of the ‘Welcome Inn’ and also the ‘Pilgrim Inn’ at Blaxland, which James may well have been associated with.