Hi John,

The fact that he had two regimental numbers might indicate that he was transferred between the two regiments. Both were heavy light* cavalry units and so the riding/fighting skills would have been transferable, although there was no formal affiliation between the two regiments, as far as I am aware.  Later, in 1922 when it became necessary to reduce the size of the cavalry, the 7th Dragoons merged with the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards,  and 20th Hussars merged with the 14th Hussars.

Over the period 1884 to 1895 the 20th Hussars were based in England with troop sized detachments being sent to serve in Sudan and Egypt, meaning that  individual troopers will have moved back and forth to England for various reasons during that time. In 1895 the whole regiment moved to India and remained there until it was deployed to South Africa in 1901 to fight in the Boer War. The 7th Dragoons also served in Egypt in the later part of the nineteenth century but over the period we are talking about, they were on garrison duties in either England or India, before deploying to South Africe in 1899. On the basis of the dates when he was in the UK (particularly when he married), being attached to the 7th Dragoons makes more sense.

Unfortunately I have no information about who was occupying the St James Barracks in 1892.  There are some records for the 7th Dragoons in the York Army Museum, but as far as I know the former museum of the 14/20 Hussars has now closed and I have no idea where their holdings went.

* text corrected 2 April 2022. At that time (1890s) only the Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards, the Royal Dragoons and the Scots Greys were referred to as 'heavy' cavalry. In part this referred to the amount of armour worn by the mounted troopers, but more importantly it referred to the size of the horses and the men in each type of regiment. Tactically, heavy cavalry would normally charge straight at the enemy, whereas light cavalry would more usually be used to reconnoitre and skirmish, especially on the enemy's flanks. The latter's horses tended to be lighter and faster and consequently their riders tended to be lighter. For instance see The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War 40 years before.

John,

Just to add to my last posting, in March 1898 the deployment list [pdf] of the British Army shows the following: 7th Dragoon Guards stationed in Norwich and 20th Hussars stationed at Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, India.  The depot for those cavalry regiments stationed overseas was in Canterbury, so that tends to suggest that your man was not part of the 20th Hussars rear party in the UK if he was getting married in Norwich.

A couple of photographs of the old cavalry barracks, Norwich, if you haven't seen them before:

Stable block

General view

Hello John,

Can I suggest that you send an email to

assistant@horsepowermuseum.co.uk

or give them a call on

​01962 828541

Their website can be found at

https://www.winchestersmilitaryquarter.org/horsepower.html

If they cannot help they should be in a position to advise who can.

Hi John,

I'm not sure I can add much more to what you already know. I assume the attestation form you mention is the Form 265 (should be on the top right of the image).  Regular service was normally for a total of 12 years, although the split between full time (ie active service) and reserve did change at different times. So I would assume that he was on the active service part of his engagement when he married in 1898 and then would have started his reserve service when he would have returned home with his wife, before being called back to the colours for service in South Africa. As you can see from his overall service dates he did serve for exactly 12 years, which should mean he got his pension.  I take it you haven't found any pension records for him.

I really can't say why there is no mention of him serving with 7th Dragoon Guards on his record. I think it is fairly clear that he was in Norwich at the same time that the Dragoon Guards were stationed there so he probably wasn't making it up for the marriage register. Also the 20th Hussars didn't deploy to South Africa until 1901, whereas he was there from 1900 which tends to suggest he was recalled to serve with the Dragoon Guards who went out in 1899.

Going back to the regimental number issue you mentioned in your opening posting, number 3230 was issued in the 20th Hussars sometime before March 1891 - so that fits with his actual enlistment in the previous Autumn. The second number, 3932, was issued in the 7th Dragoon Guards sometime before April 1892 and so if this was his new number when he transferred, this gives you a rough date for when this occurred. Much more information on regimental numbers on this excellent site, and on army forms on its sister site here.

I thought I would just do a quick check for him on FMP. If you look closely at the image of his form 265 it says 7 DG underneath where his original regimental number is shown and above the new number, 3923.  I think this confirms that he did transfer.

However more intriguingly, looking on TNA  there is also a record  in WO100/299  which shows that a Pte G Cliff service number 3923 7 DG served with the staff in South Africa 1900-1902. From the entry it looks like he may have been batman to a Colonel Haig. WO100/299 lists the returns for those who were to be awarded the South Africa Medal. You can either download a pdf copy from TNA or I can email it to you. The FMP transcription says he was serving with the Staffordshire Regiment but this is clearly wrong when looking at the actual document below which comes from TNA.

John,

I was doing some Ancestry work in my local library this morning so I thought I'd do a quick search for Gervase. Have you seen a Birmingham rate book entry for April 1906 for a Gervase Cliff living at No 1 Court 6, 49 William Street? It shows he was due to pay a rate of £1 5s 6d although this hadn't been paid at the time the entry was made. Could this have been your man before he changed his name?

Andy

Hi John,

The date of Gervase's marriage in 1898 may have a significance which is not immediately obvious. Soldiers of all ranks who wanted to marry were required to get the permission of their commanding officer. It was possible to get married without permission but the existence of the wife and any children would not be acknowledged by the Army. So for instance the soldier who "married without leave" still had to live in the barracks and had to return to the barracks each night by 11pm. Conversely where permissions to marry was granted, an allowance was paid to subsidise the family's accommodation and in most overseas garrisons families were actually quartered within the barracks, as well as being provided with free transportation to and from the overseas station. In addition there was an enhanced ration allowance for married soldiers. Only 3-4% the soldiers below the rank of sergeant were allowed permission to marry - that equates to between 18 and 24 corporals/privates in a cavalry regiment. They had to meet certain criteria: "The commanding officer may not give leave to a corporal or a private to marry unless he has £5 in the savings bank, two good conduct badges, and seven years' service". For this reason, many had to delay getting married until they started the reserve portion of their service.

So either Gervase had to wait until he had completed 7 years service before he could get permission, or alternatively he waited until he was about to begin his reserve commitment, when permission would not have been required.

All single soldiers were required to live in the barracks. I'm not sure how rigidly this was enforced. Soldiers were allowed out in the evenings after their daily routine had ended with a dismissal parade. He would certainly have been in trouble if he was late on parade the following morning after staying out all night. It's not entirely clear from his records when he transferred to the reserve. As he was on an engagement of 7 years regular service and 5 years on the reserve, I would have expected him to have started his reserve service around the end of September 1897 given his date of enlistment. However if his marriage register entry shows his address as the cavalry barracks, that suggests he was not in the reserve at that point. I assume that he was called back from the reserve in 1900 to go out to South Africa.

I would expect something like that to be recorded on the last page of his Form B 265, under item 15 "Character on being discharged". The fact that it isn't, and the next heading "Place of Discharge" has been filled in suggests that the dishonourable discharge story may well not be true. I think it's likely that he would have been discharged almost immediately once he returned from the Boer War as he had completed his service, and since he wouldn't have had much opportunity to beat his wife in the mean time, I would have thought it unlikely the Army would have cared much about anything which might have occurred while he was not embodied in the regular army.

And to answer your last question, there might have been a record of any court martial (note spelling) had one taken place, but it would depend on what level of CM it was as to where the record might be held. There were 3 levels of court martial: regimental ie conducted by his commanding officer. I don't think any records from a regimental court martial will have survived. They were very routine, low level affairs and I suspect the only record of the fact that they occurred would be in the records of the soldier concerned (see below). The next level is the District Court Martial (DCM) convened by the General Officer commanding his district (in this case the North East District). Records for DCMs are likely to be found in the National Archives in series WO 86. The highest level is the General Court Martial (or its special case 'brother' the Field General Court Martial - only used in wartime). A GCM would only have been convened for the most serious types of offence committed by soldiers,  or offences involving offiicers, so I think we can discount the GCM.  Each soldier had 2 types of conduct sheet: the Army Form 120 his Regimental conduct sheet (example here) and his Army Form B 121 the Company/Squadron conduct sheet (example here). As their names suggest they are used for recording disciplinary action by the soldier's Commanding Officer and his squadron commander. The latter only has fairly limited punishment powers. The 121's didn't leave the soldier's unit and were routinely destroyed after a period of time, so few of them have survived. The 120 was copied to the depot of the regiment but again only a small percentage of pre-WW1 records survive. The best place to look for them is the Royal Hospital Chelsea records, but as I think all of those records which survive have already been digitised, I doubt if you will find anything for Gervase if it's not on Ancestry or FMP.