The Scum of the Earth

by Colin Brown

  He died a pauper but was given a hero’s funeral and thousands of people came to pay their respects. On the top of his coffin lay his sword and a ring of laurel leaves, because when he was alive, on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, he wore a sprig of laurel leaves to remember that day.8

  Clay’s name appears among the 39,000 who received a Waterloo Medal for their service. The medals were issued to every soldier who had served at Waterloo, Quatre Bras or Ligny – the first time in British history a campaign medal had been issued to everyone who took part, including the ‘common soldiers’ who were drawn from the ‘scum of the earth’. Recipients were credited with two years’ extra service and pay, and a holder was known as a ‘Waterloo Man’.

  The silver medal carried the head of the Prince Regent on the front with the inscription ‘GEORGE P. REGENT’, while the reverse carried the seated figure of Victory with the words ‘WELLINGTON’ and ‘WATERLOO’ below and the date ‘JUNE 15 1815’.

  There is a portrait of Clay in the Guards Museum in London. He is proudly wearing his scarlet Guards post-Waterloo uniform, with the Waterloo Victory medal, but it is reversed; the side with the Prince Regent’s head is turned against his chest. A note by the Guards Museum is quite frank, given their close proximity to royalty (Buckingham Palace is across the road). It says he may have worn it reverse up, because he ‘did not like the Prince Regent who was not popular’.

  On his discharge papers, Clay was described as ‘a very good and efficient soldier, never in hospital, trustworthy and sober.’ The Guards Museum note points out this was high praise, given drunkenness was a scourge of the army, ‘paralleled by the pox’.

  Life for James Graham after Waterloo was bittersweet. James’s brother, Joe, died within a week from his injuries, despite James’s heroic efforts to save him from the flames. Then after only two years, Norcross stopped paying his pension.

  The reason why Norcross withdrew the annuity speaks volumes about the hard times suffered in Suffolk. The Curate’s Living at Framlingham was worth £1,300 per annum and, in addition to the Rectory of Framlingham – described as a ‘fair mansion house’ (now converted into six flats) – there were eighteen pieces of glebe land covering 70 acres, making it the richest of ten benefices in the gift of Pembroke College, apart from the vicarage of Soham in Cambridgeshire. Norcross became a victim of the hard times that hit rural areas after Waterloo, particularly in the Fenland country of Suffolk and Norfolk. Bad weather resulting from the effects of the Tambora volcano led to a huge fall in crop yields and farm incomes in 1816. Wheat yields in England fell from 37 bushels per acre (bpa) in 1815 to 25.3bpa in 1816 (a drop of over 31 per cent). Farmers could no longer afford to pay the tithes – a tenth of their income – that made Framlingham such a rich living or pay their farm workers. The bad weather added to the misery for the 250,000 ex-soldiers looking for work. East Anglia today may seem like a sleepy rural backwater, but it witnessed riots in 1816 at Littleport and Ely over the economic distress.

  Former BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman stumbled across the story of the hardship in Framlingham in his programme for the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? Paxman discovered one of his own ancestors, Thomas Paxman, an impoverished shoemaker in the village, had to turn to parish relief for regular hand-outs of ‘dole’ money for his family to survive. His ancestor was literally the poor man at the gate. Paxman, noted for his hard interviews, was moved to tears when he found in the parish accounts Thomas Paxman going for regular hand-outs from the dole office at Framlingham Castle – 6s 6d in one week, 7s 10d in another – for months. ‘Every week, he is turning up with his hand out,’ said Paxman.9

  Thomas Paxman joined a long-forgotten migration scheme from the Fens to work in the ‘satanic mills’ of the North of England. It split the Paxman family. A migration agent arranged for Paxman to be transported by canal barge with his wife and four of his seven children, but only those who were over 12 and permitted to work in factories were allowed to go. They were put to work in textile mills in Bradford, while the younger Paxman children were left behind to be looked after by in-laws.

  Andrew Phillips, a local historian, told Paxman: ‘Anyone who is anybody gets the hell out of Suffolk.’

  Poverty and the post-war slump led to a nasty dispute between the tenant farmers and Norcross. The farmers could no longer afford to pay the tithe and Norcross reluctantly stopped paying Sergeant Graham his Waterloo pension after only two years. Graham was told Norcross was ‘declared bankrupt’ but this is another of the myths surrounding his bequest. Norcross did not go bust. However, he was clearly so upset and embarrassed that he moved with his wife Eleanor to Dawlish in Devon, where he died in obscurity in March 1837 aged 75. While he kept the living at Framlingham, he paid for clergymen to conduct services in his absence.

  Graham, like Clay and other old soldiers, faced hardship when his fame faded. His official discharge papers from 1829, which I have obtained, show that within a year of Waterloo the hero of Hougoumont was reduced to the rank of private, no doubt with a cut in his pay. He was discharged by the Coldstream Guards on 24 July 1820 for reasons not given and the next day, 25 July 1820, he was signed on as a private with the 12th Dragoons, who were then in Ireland but later posted to Portugal during a civil war. He clearly had a rough life, because he was finally invalided out of the army with a severe chest injury, caused when his own horse fell on him, which must have been an occupational hazard for the Dragoons.

  Discharge papers of Sergeant James Graham.

  His army record says he was discharged ‘in consequence of worn out constitution and a severe injury of his chest by his horse falling back with him in Portugal in July 1827’. His conduct was described as ‘good’, his age was ‘about 38’, his height 5ft 9¾in, with brown hair, grey eyes and fair complexion. His trade was given as ‘weaver’, though he had been in the army since 25 March 1812, when he joined the Coldstream Guards at the age of 21. His total service, including two extra years for Waterloo, was 19 years and 294 days. He was given a ‘Chelsea’ pension of 9d a day on 13 January 1830. That is pitiful sum for a national hero.

  James Graham was from Clones, County Monaghan – he is said to have been one of three brothers who joined the British Army (possibly including John Graham, the soldier discharged because he was ‘undersized’). I could find no contemporary description of James, but there is a crudely drawn pencil portrait of James Graham in the national portrait gallery in Dublin. He has long, jet-black curly sideboards, giving him the dark handsome looks of a gypsy or the singer Tom Jones in his prime. He is wearing his scarlet tunic and a post-Waterloo shako topped by a green plume and a stringed bugle badge, denoting a light company. He is wearing a medal, possibly the Waterloo Medal, but like Clay it appears he wore it reversed as a mute protest to the times. A memorial plaque was put up to his memory at Kilmainham in 1906 saying:

  To the Glory of God and Sergeant James Graham 2nd Btn Coldstream Guards Born 1791–1845: He was one of the five Coldstreamers who successfully defended the main gate …

  However, after the Irish Free State was created, Kilmainham was taken out of the hands of the British and Graham’s fame was all but forgotten. An eminent Dublin surgeon, Seton Pringle, who was also a Clones man, arranged in 1929 for the plaque to be put up in the protestant St Tiernach’s church that towers over the cobbled square in Clones.

  A plaque praising a hero of the British Army may seem incongruous there now. Clones is in the Irish Republic, a strongly Republican area, hard up on the border with County Fermanagh and it has seen its fair share of the Troubles. It was the scene of a bloody shoot-out between the IRA and the special constabulary in 1921, when one IRA man and four constables were killed. A farm in Tirconey with links to the Graham family was firebombed in the 1970s when Billy Fox, an Irish politician, was murdered. I asked one of the locals in Clones whether the 200th anniversary celebrations for this hero of the British Army would be a cause of pride or embarrassment in this strongly republican bo
rder area. He told me: ‘I don’t think there will be any embarrassment – it’s just that there aren’t many here who know who James Graham was.’

  The archives on Sergeant Graham today are surprisingly elusive for someone who was a national hero. His Irish records are thought to have been destroyed by fire at the national archive in Dublin in the Republican uprising of 1922. Graham’s army records held by the Coldstream regiment may also have gone up in flames with their other archives in the 1940–41 Blitz.

  In 1904, the War Office made a search for his papers after a relative in Toronto, Canada, made some inquiries. They found nothing, because they got his name wrong: they looked for ‘John’ Graham instead of James. Finally, after months of correspondence, they made inquiries under the right name and his discharge papers were found at Kilmainham Hospital. A set was kept in London (now at the National Archives in Kew)10 and, with the help of researcher Kevin Asplin, I was able to read them again. They reveal that in July 1835, James Graham – perhaps still suffering with the chest injury – was driven by poverty to appeal to the board of the Chelsea Pensioners’ Hospital for ‘an augmentation’ of his meager army pension.

  His letter, in his own spidery handwriting, was sent on 23 July 1835 – after struggling for five years on his army pension of 9d per day. It is a poignant and remarkable document. As far as I know, it has not been published before and it speaks volumes of the hardship suffered by some of the heroes of Waterloo, like Graham. He addressed his letter to the Right Honourable Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital:

  Gentlemen,

  Having served in the Coldstream Guards for 8 years and in the 12th Dragoons for 9 years and six months, 2 years of Waterloo service, and having been discharged on a pension of 9d per day, I am induced to write to you hoping that you will take my service into consideration and grant me an augmentation of pension. The Rector of Framlingham in Suffolk, soon after the battle of Waterloo, wrote to the Duke of Wellington, stating that in his opinion the non-commissioned officers of the British Army that for their conduct on that day, entitled themselves to some distinct mark of their country’s approbation and therefore felt disposed to offer his humble tribute to their merit. In order that this might be properly applied, he requested that his Grace would point out to him the non-commissioned officer whose valorous conduct, from the representations which his Grace had received, appeared the most meritorious to whom the Rector meant to convey in perpetuity a freehold farm value £10 per annum. The Duke set the inquiry immediately on foot through all the commanding officers of the line and in consequence learned that a Sergeant Graham (the writer of this) of the Coldstream Guards and a corporal of the 1st Regiment of Guards [believed to be Private John Lister of the 3rd Guards] had so distinguished themselves that it was felt difficult to point out the most meritorious. But the Rector having become bankrupt, as I was informed by Colonel Woodford, now Major General, I received the £10 but two years. I had two brothers at the battle of Waterloo, one serving under Colonel [Frederick Cavendish] Ponsonby [of the] 12th Dragoons, the other under Colonel McDonald and Colonel Woodford. What caused more attention to be paid to the humbler writer of this than to almost any other person, was that, having begged permission to retire from the ranks at the battle of Waterloo for a moment, I extricated my wounded brother from the flames of a farmhouse set on fire by the enemy in their retreat and conveyed him away on my shoulders.

  As to my character, I can refer you to Sir John Byng, Lieutenant General to Colonel Wyndham. I was informed by Dr McGregor that I was entitled to a rising pension … I was discharged from the 12th Regiment of Dragoons in consequence of an injury of the chest, which I received in Portugal. Your humble servant, James Graham.

  He said if they should ‘deign to communicate’ with him, the commissioners could write to him at ‘Captain Buttens, Broomville, near Tullow, County Carlow’, which is south of Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. I could find no record of any additional pension being paid to him, but it seems likely that the Commissioners eventually decided to admit him to Kilmainham on 1 July 1841, where he died four years later at the age of 54 and was buried with full military honours.

  Part of Sergeant James Graham’s letter.

  And there is no sign of Graham at Kilmainham, modelled on Les Invalides in Paris, which now houses the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I was told ‘it does seem that the nineteenth-century headstones for “Rank and File” soldiers buried in the Hospital grounds have all been removed’. As a result, although Sergeant Graham’s heroism will be celebrated with the bicentenary of the battle, it is unclear where this national hero was buried.

  There was one other intriguing story about Graham I had to track down, however. The Navy and Military Gazette edition of May 1845 reported Graham later performed another act of heroism, saving the life of Captain (afterwards Lord Frederick) FitzClarence of the Coldstream Guards and helping to stop a plot to assassinate the Cabinet, including the Duke of Wellington.

  Notes

  * Hougoumont is rising from the ashes thanks to Project Hougoumont, the Walloon authorities and a donation of £1m from the taxpayer by Chancellor George Osborne, who turned out to be a battlefield enthusiast.

  * Ramsay’s body was disinterred three weeks later and taken back to his native Scotland where he was reburied.

  * The metal lock is on display in the Guards Museum, Bird Cage Walk, London.

  * Wellington’s message on a strip of ass’s skin is preserved at the Wellington Museum, Apsley House.

  1. Charles Dalton, Waterloo Roll Call (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1904), p. 212.

  2. Major-Gen H.T. Siborne (ed.), Waterloo Letters, (London: Cassell and co., 1891), p. 262.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Colonel Petiet, Memoires du general Auguste Petiet, hussar de l’Empire (Paris: Kronos Collection, Spm, 1997) p. 443.

  5. Major-Gen H.T. Siborne (ed.), Waterloo Letters, p. 256.

  6. Daniel Mackinnon, The Coldstream Guards (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), p. 217.

  7. Wellington Despatch to Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for War, 19 June 1815.

  8. Matthew Clay, note by a family descendant Christine Dabbs Clay, Blidworth and District Historical and Heritage Society.

  9. Who Do You Think You Are, Series Two, Acorn Media, 2006.

  10. WO 97/55, War Office papers, National Archives, Kew.

  8

  THE MAN WHO MADE A KILLING

  AFTER WATERLOO

  Major the Honourable Henry Percy, Wellington’s ADC, is officially credited with bringing the Waterloo Despatch to London. But the first man in Britain to receive definitive news that Wellington had defeated Napoleon was the financier Nathan Mayer Rothschild.

  It was already dusk on Tuesday, 20 June 1815, when a rider clattered into the small cobbled Georgian square at New Court in St Swithin’s Lane and rushed inside the counting house in search of the financier to give him the news. It would be another thirty hours before Percy got to London.

  Rothschild was perturbed by what he had heard. Rothschild had been banking on a long war. He had bought millions of pounds worth of gold bullion to supply to Wellington to maintain his army on the Continent over the coming months. The last thing he had expected was that it would all be over in a single weekend. The scale and speed of Wellington’s great victory had left him facing huge losses.

  In the first week of April, Rothschild bought 100,000 guineas in gold, 100,000 Spanish gold dollars and nearly £200,000 in bills of exchange. By 13 June – just five days before the battle – Rothschild had sent £250,000 in gold to Wellington’s army. When the tallies were added up on 20 October, he had dispatched 884 boxes and 55 casks of gold coins worth £2.1 million. Now he would be stuck with the gold, and like any commodity in sudden surplus its value was likely to depreciate sharply. He was facing losses, not just for himself, but also for his four brothers, who ran branches of the family finance house in the major capitals of Europe – Amschel in Frankfurt, James in Paris, Carl in Naples and Salomon in Vi
enna.

  An unflattering engraving of Nathan Mayer Rothschild – Wellington’s banker and a target for crude anti-Semitism. (Mary Evans/Epic/Tallandier)

  What happened next has been the source of controversy for 200 years. Put bluntly, Rothschild is accused of using his advance news from Waterloo to make a killing on the Stock Exchange. It is alleged he fed rumours already circulating in London that Bonaparte had won by dumping government stocks and then secretly buying them back when the price crashed. It was said Rothschild made his first million pounds and founded the House of Rothschild – one of the greatest financial institutions in the world – on the profits of a Stock Exchange fraud.

  I am walking north up one of the small lanes that are the arteries in the heart of the Square Mile in London to find out the truth about the man who made a killing on the news from Waterloo. The shiny steel, glass office of Nathan Mayer Rothschild – ten floors of open-plan offices, a rooftop garden and a glazed ‘sky pavilion’ – has been shoe-horned onto the same plot of land at 2 New Court, St Swithin’s Lane in the medieval heart of the City, where Rothschild founded his financial empire.

  The architects have cleverly created a peek-a-boo entrance, with a space between the two glass entrances framing a view of a Wren gem beyond, the church of St Stephen Walbrook. The Rothschilds are proud of their heritage – there are murals of the family on the wall of the top-floor boardroom and the glass entrance to the Rothschild Archive on the ground floor is dominated by a huge family portrait of Nathan and his family. The canvas is over 3m high and 3.5m wide and shows Nathan and his wife Hannah sitting in an elegant drawing room with their children, Charlotte, Lionel, Anthony, Nathaniel, Hannah Mayer, Mayer Amschel and baby Louise, with the friendly family pet, a Newfoundland dog. The setting is domestic but the room is expensively decorated with a tasteful classical pillar. Nathan sits contentedly on the left on a comfortable red sofa, looking benignly across at the family. It was painted in 1821, barely a decade after Nathan had arrived in London to found the family banking arm by William Armfield Hobday, the son of a wealthy spoon manufacturer from Birmingham who specialised in uninspiring portraits of the newly rich manufacturing middle classes. The most striking feature is the head – Nathan has a great bald dome, like a mini St Paul’s, with brown hair at the sides. Despite its domestic simplicity, it is intended to convey the message that Nathan Mayer Rothschild has made it.