A Collection of Medals to the Rifle Brigade

Six: Orderly Room Quartermaster Sergeant T. Whitehead, Rifle Brigade
Queen’s Sudan 1896 (7269 Q.M.Sgt., 2/R. Bde.); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Defence of Ladysmith (7259 O.R. & Q.M.Sgt., Rifle Brigade); King’s South Africa, 2 clasps (7259 Qr.-Mr.-Serjt., Rifle Brigade); Army L.S. & G.C., E.VII.R. (7259 Q-Mr.-Serjt., Rifle Brigade); Meritorious Service Medal, G.V.R., Coinage Head (Qr.Mr.Sjt., Rif. Brig.); Khedive’s Sudan 1896-1908, no clasp, unnamed as issued, good very fine or better and a scarce group (6)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the Rifle Brigade.

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Orderly Room Q.M.S. Thomas Whitehead was born in 1862 and enlisted in the Rifle Brigade on 7 November, 1884. He joined the 2nd battalion as a recruit and remained with them until he left the Army. He served under Colonels Slade, Swaine, Lyttleton, Howard, Metcalfe, and H. F. M. Wilson and had the following foreign service: Malta 1897; Egypt for the Omdurman Campaign; the occupation of Crete, 1898-99; after which he went with the battalion to South Africa where, with the 2nd battalion, he was present in the Defence of Ladysmith. After South Africa he returned to Egypt and was there until the close of his service, which terminated at Khartoum in 1904. In 1906 he joined the Staff of Black Rod as a messenger, and in 1910 was appointed Resident Superintendant at the House of Lords. Early in his retirement he founded the Annual Veterans’ Dinner and ran it personally for several years. During the Great War he gave up his spare time serving as an Orderly at the Middlesex Hospital. He died at Speldhurst, Kent, on 1 January, 1938. Sold with copy service papers and Obituary from the Rifle Brigade Chronicle.