Baldwin's
Lot 3880
ORDERS, DECORATIONS AND MILITARY MEDALS, Single British Campaign Medals, A Grenadier Guards Waterloo Casualty, comprising Waterloo Medal 1815 awarded to Thomas Byram, who suffered a gunshot wound through the elbow joints 18 June 1815 (Thomas Byram. 2nd Batt. Grenad. Guards.). Original steel clip and ring suspension, edge bruise at 12’ o’clock to obverse, otherwise very fine, toned. Thomas Byram enlisted in the Grenadier Guards on the 4 May 1812. Muster Rolls at the National Archives* show him in various companies of the Regiment between June 1812 until June 1815, being on Foreign Service for the second half of 1812. He was discharged to pension at Whitehall after 3 years and 287 days service “in consequence of stiff elbow joints by gunshot wound through the elbow joints at Waterloo”. He was credited with the usual 2 years’ service for Waterloo men, which brought his pension to 9d/day. His name occurs on the muster roll for Lt. Col. Streatfield’s Company, 25 June to 24 December 1185 as “Waterloo sick”. His name also appears on the Roll of Waterloo Men in Sir Ulysses Burgh’s Company, 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, Paris, 8 September 1815 as discharged. He received payment of £2 11s 4d prize money on the 9 August 1817. After discharge Thomas went home to Workly, Leeds, he married Mary Ann Wallis at St Peter’s Leeds some time in 1816 (register date illegible). The 1842 Census shows him living at Haymount Building, Leeds married to Mary aged 41 and with his son James, aged 20. Both Thomas and his son are listed as brick makers. Thomas died of apoplexy at Haymount on 17 October 1850 aged 60. He was buried in a pauper’s grave along with 15 other in Becket Street Cemetery. The 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards were part of the 1st Brigade (Lt Col Henry Askew), 1st Division (Major General P. Maitland). It fell to the Guards on the Mont St Jean Ridge, placed between the farms of Hougoumont and Le Hay Saint (today just to the right of the Lion Mound), in the closing phase of the battle, to repel the final attack of Napoleon’s much vaunted, never defeated until that day, Old Guard. On the morning of the 18 June 1815 the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards comprised 35 Officers and 919 other ranks, the roll call that evening showed 4 officers and 78 other ranks as killed and 8 officers and 351 other ranks as wounded. Sold with extensive photocopied research. *TNA Reference WO 12/1589, 1590, 1591, 1592 refers.
