The Trumpeter at the Charge of the Light Brigade |
As recorded on the page that brought you here various newspapers of 1854 reported that an Edward Lovelock, a trumpeter in the Crimea with the 4th Light Dragoons, possibly went missing or was killed at the Siege of Sebastopol or in the battle of Balaclava.
Also reported on that page was information drawn from the November 1967 issue of the Bulletin of the Military Historical Society. Obviously based on research amongst documents that were not the newspapers mentioned above the Bulletin named the Trumpeter from the 4th Light Dragoons as Thomas Lovelock and declared that he was Wiltshire-born and had enlisted in the Army on 26 March 1846.
The publication Honour the Light Brigade by Canon William Murrell Lummis M.C. (Edited, arranged and additional material supplied by Kenneth G. Wynn) Published by J. B. Hayward and Son of London in 1973 has a list of the men of the 4th Light Dragoons who were in the Charge. The only Lovelock in the list is Thomas, enlisted in 1846, Regimental Number 1247, Rank or Position Trumpeter.
We know of no less than nine Lovelocks named Thomas who appeared in the 1841 Census for Wiltshire. We can obviously discount those born in 1771, 1781, 1791, 1837 and 1839, which leaves us with four candidates, born in 1821, 1826, 1832 and 1833 based on the ages recorded:
Thomas born 1821: He was a member of the Wroughton-Tidcombe Tree, married Rebecca Smith in 1844 and was with wife and two sons at Tidcombe in 1851 and, with the addition of a daughter, in 1861.
Thomas born 1826: He was probably the member of the Lieflock Line baptised at Great Bedwyn on 24 July 1825 who was buried at East Grafton on 30 March 1849.
Thomas born 1832: He was a member of the Wootton Rivers Tree baptised on 22 January 1832 and buried at Burbage on 5 November 1846.
Thomas born 1833: He was a member of the Lyneham Line, was still living with his parents in Lyneham in 1851, and was in Glamorgan in Wales in 1861.
So who then was that Trumpeter really? Could the newspapers actually be correct and his true name was Edward? Returning to the 1841 Census there were only two Edwards living in Wiltshire:
Edward born 1801: He was a member of the Wroughton-Tidcombe Tree but, apart from probably being far too old to enlist and become a trumpeter, he died in 1849.
Edward born 1832: He was the son of Edward above and in 1851 was in the Royal Marine Barracks in Alverstoke so could not have been in the 4th Light Dragoons. Moreover, he married Jane Nightengale in 1860 and did not die until 1906.
It is possible, of course, that the man we seek was not living in Wiltshire at the time of the 1841 Census. There are eight Thomas Lovelocks who appear in 1841 who were not living in the County of their birth. Once again we can discount the ones born in 1771, 1776 and 1837 leaving five for further consideration:
Thomas born in 1816: We have been unable to identify this man from the Census entry, so he may be the one who became a trumpeter. Counting against that is the fact that at enlistment he would have been 30 years old, which might have been considered too old to become a trumpeter.
Thomas born in 1821: We have also been unable to identify this man from the Census entry.
Thomas born in 1826: Despite the fact that the 1841 entry appears to indicate that he was born elsewhere we believe he was born in Sanderstead in Surrey. He was a member of the Tangley Tree and was to be found in Addington, Surrey in 1851 and in Lambeth, Surrey in 1861 so can not be the Trumpeter.
Thomas born in 1832: Once again we have been unable to identify the origins of this Thomas. However, he was housed in the Royal Military Asylum in Chelsea, Middlesex which must raise our expectations. The Asylum had been founded in 1801 by a Royal Warrant at the instigation of Frederick, Duke of York, the second son of George III and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army throughout the conflict known at the time as the 'Great War' which ended with the Battle of Waterloo. The Asylum became home to the children of fallen rank and file soldiers, the first entering in 1803, and is extensively described on this Web Site. We may deduce, therefore that Thomas's father had died somewhere whilst in Army service, and Thomas may even have been an orphan.
Thomas born in 1833: He was a member of the Tangley Tree and in 1841 was living in Dorking, Surrey with his stepmother's parents, James and Ann Anscomb. He was in the parish of St Sepulchre, London in 1851, and was buried in Stratford, Essex in 1859.
So although the evidence is, admittedly, circumstantial it seems that the Crimean Trumpeter is most probably the boy in the Royal Military Asylum in 1841. The Bulletin of the Military Historical Society did provide one more clue to the identity of Thomas which may also be considered circumstantial, but may on the other hand be particularly relevant. The Bulletin states that Thomas’s next of kin was his Aunt Eliza who was resident in Chelsea. The Ancestry.co.uk Web Site tells us that there were no less than 1337 ladies living in Chelsea in 1851 named Eliza, none of whom were named Lovelock. Even eliminating, on an arbitrary basis, those born before 1790 or after 1831 still leaves over 700 possibles, and with nothing else to go on this is clearly an unfortunate dead end.