Crimean War Pair to Vicount Ensign Malcolm Drummond

Crimean War Pair to Ensign Malcolm Drummond, Viscount Forth, 42nd Royal Highlanders, who carried the Regimental Colour at the battle of Alma.

Crimea 1854-56, 2 clasps, Alma Sebastopol, Ensign. Vist. Forth. 42nd. Foot. contemporary engraved naming: Turkish Crimea 1855, Sardinia issue, Hunt and Roskell die, unamed, both fitted with silver Hunt & Roskell ribbon buckles.

Ex Spink Medal Circular, September 1998. DNW 17th May 2016.

George Henry Charles Francis Malcom Drummond, later Viscount Forth, born in Naples on 13th May1834.  He was the only surviving child of George Drummond, soldier and his first wife, the Countess Rapp, Nee Baroness Albertine von Rothberg Rheinweiler Coligni, who died in 1842.

In 1853 his father was restored as fifth Earl of Perth and second Earl of Melfort, but failed to recover Drummond Castle estates from the Willoughby Eresby family. From this date he took the title Viscount Forth.

He was appointed Ensign in the Black Watch on 4 November 1853 and reached the Crimea on 14 September 1854. On the 20th September  and present at the Battle of Alma.

He is seen carrying the Regimental colour in the famous painting, Forward the 42nd by Robert Gibb RSA,

Captain Peter Halkett, (later to become Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Peter, Bart.) carried the Queen's Colour on the same occasion and later recorded. "I had now some trouble and anxiety, as when advancing in line, the whole regiment “dresses” upon the Colours, which are in the centre of the line, and Forth kept hanging back, requiring me to constantly keep saying “Come on will you, you’re putting out the whole line”, and the Major of the left line, old Tom Tulloch rode up at once and pitched into him”. 

Forth served on trench and picket duty before requesting leave to sell out his commission, as soon as Sebastopol, was taken. He then clashed with his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel D.A. Cameron. By Forth’s own account,having not eaten for twenty four hours, he refused to accompany a covering party until he had dined. Cameron, however, charged him with cowardice or insubordination. Forth resigned his commission on 17th October 1854 amid widely circulated detrimental versions of this incident.

Forth married on 24 October 1855, at St Peter's Church, Pimlico, Harriet Mary, daughter of the Hon. Adolphus Capel. They lived with her parents at Wroughton, Wiltshire, where Forth soon manifested delirium tremens. He was violent and abusive to his wife and threatened to contract syphilis so as to infect her and their only child, a son born in 1856. She separated from him in 1858, and petitioned for divorce in 1860 on the grounds of cruelty and adultery. In 1861 the Queen's proctor intervened to prevent her suit, on the grounds of her adultery with Edward Cholmeley Dering. Sir Creswell ruled that a wife “guilty of adultery” could not petition for relief on account of cruelty. 

Shortly afterwards Forth, who wished to avoid his creditors in London settled at the Spa Hotel in Gloucester under the name of Captain Drummond, together with a woman who passed as his wife. She fell ill after delivering a daughter on 19 September 1861 and was nursed by Forth in the hotel room. 

Forth was grief stricken at her death on 8 October 1861 and drank three-quarters of a pint of brandy and swallowed a half bottle of laudanum, dying at the hotel a few hours later. A verdict of suicide was recorded. Forth was buried in Gloucester.

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