Irish Hero of the Crimean War
Taken from Derry Journal Tuesday 23rd September 2008

150 years ago, a Crimean War veteran with strong links with the North West became one of the first recipients of the British Army's supreme award for gallantry - the Victoria Cross.

Colour Sergeant George Gardiner would bring home his VC to the garrison town of Lifford, in Donegal, where he raised his family at Lifford House. His military career is well-documented - he was also decorated with the Distinguished Conduct Medal - but his grave, in a quiet corner of the old Clonliffe Cemetery near Lifford, tells a different story - of a man who was to bury four of his children, each of whom died before reaching their teens, in tragic circumstances.

Over the summer, Lynne Edgar and Felicity McCall of the Derry Scriptwriting Group set about tracing his story - and discovered remarkable details of Irish families who spent the 1860s building their own communities around the Mediterranean, and some of whom never came home. Their research has become a long term project. In this article Felicity McCall shares the story of one of Lifford's most famous citizens, George Gardiner VC.

Fragments of George Gardiner's story had been passed on to me some twenty years ago; among them, that his was almost unquestionably the first VC to be brought home to the North West of Ireland. This seems highly probable as the first VCs were awarded in 1857, each one individually struck from the molten metal of Russian guns captured at the Battle of Sevastopol, in the Crimean War. Sergeant (later Colour Sergeant) Gardiner, who had himself fought with the 57th Regiment at Sevastopol, was awarded his a year later, in 1858. His citation reads:

"Sergeant Gardiner acted with great gallantry upon the occasion of a sortie by the enemy, in having rallied the covering parties which had been driven in by the Russians, thus regaining the trenches.' (This was in March 1855).

Only 1400 VC's have ever been awarded and Sergeant Gardiner would later be decorated a second time, winning the DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal.) Both medals are on permanent loan to his regimental museum.

Poignant Memorial

George Gardiner died in Lifford in 1891, at the age of seventy. He is buried in a peaceful corner of the old Church of Ireland graveyard at Clonliffe. It is the inscription on the gravestone which gives the first indication of the personal tragedy which was to blight his family life. As well as his wife Elizabeth, who predeceased him at the comparatively young age of fifty-two, it commemorates the brief life of four of their children. All died before reaching their teens. For the eldest two it is a memorial only five year-year-old George and two-year-old Arthur Trafalgar died at sea, off the coast of Spain. Their remains could not be brought back to Ireland. Two others - their only daughter, Elizabeth Jane and their youngest, Richard, were victims of an epidemic which swept Donegal in 1869.

Twenty-seven year old serving soldier George Gardiner married Elizabeth Courtney in Dublin in 1848. She was ten years his junior. Both had already seen much more of the world than many of their contemporaries. He was born in Gelwillan, Warrenpoint, Co Down. In 1821 and as a young man enlisted in the 57th (later the Middlesex) Regiment. The regiment was based in Ireland from 1818-31, but his career as a professional soldier was to take him first to India where he was to serve until April 1846.

Elizabeth Courtney was born into a French Huguenot family who had settled in Cavan and was later educated by family friends in Donegal. Sergeant Gardiner was posted to Lifford barracks in September 1846, when Elizabeth was fifteen, and it's understood they met around this time.

Less than two years later they were married. Their eldest son, George, was born a year later, in 1849. George's regiment was soon on the move, to the Mediterranean, to join the garrison in Corfu.

I had naively assumed that the Irish soldiers' wives would have remained at home but it was not so. They followed the troop ships to the planned destination, often arriving within weeks of their husbands. It may have seemed a logical move for Elizabeth Gardiner, who was already well-travelled. For the scores of young Irishwomen, many from the Lifford area and from suburban Dublin, who set sail with their babies and small children to travel half way across the world, it must have been a major culture shock. Elizabeth and George's second son Arthur Trafalgar, was born in Corfu in 1852, one of dozens of Irish infants born to the regiment there. The soldiers' families were to remain there when the troops set off to support their fellow regiment, the 77th, in the war against the Russian forces in Crimea, in September, 1853.

Buried at sea

The Regiment engaged in the Crimean War late in 1853 and was to distinguish itself at the Battle of Inkerman. The troops were making advances on the Russian stronghold on Sevastopol in November 1854, when word reached Sgt. Gardiner of the death of his young sons. History has obscured the details but research shows they were on board ship with their mother when George died, on November 22nd 1854. His brother died seven days later, as the ship was making its way across Trafalgar Bay. No records exist for their interment on any of the British Mediterranean cemeteries so it seems probable that, they were buried, quickly, at sea.

Four months later the army records the first of the acts of bravery which were to win the Gardiner VC as the British troops took Sevastopol. His regiment would remain there until the overall victory in 1856. By then Elizabeth had given birth to a third son, whom she called George. The regiment was posted on garrison duty in another Mediterranean island which was then a British colony, Malta. Malta's records are easily the most extensive and best documented of the Mediterranean. Church records show that the Gardiner's only daughter, Elizabeth Jane, was born and christened there in 1857. From there Sgt. Gardiner was off to India as the British government sent in troops in an attempt to suppress mutiny and it was en route to India that Brigadier General WM Coughlan, of the commanding forces, presented George Gardiner with his VC.

Colour Sergeant Gardiner's last posting abroad was to the Maori wars in New Zealand, where another son was born. George was discharged from the regiment on 11th June, 1861 and re-posted as Sergeant Major to the permanent staff of the Prince of Wales Own Donegal Militia based at Lifford. By the time of his discharge he had been decorated with the VC, DCM, Crimea Medal, and the New Zealand Medal.

Lifford House

Back in Ireland for good, the family settled in Lifford House. The boys enrolled in Royal and Prior school in Raphoe as weekly boarders. Tales are recorded of the boys loving the countryside around Lifford and dreading the return to school by pony and trap on Sunday evenings. Elizabeth Jane was educated at home and the Gardiners' last child, Richard was born in Lifford House in 1866. Ireland was till suffering the legacy of the Famine years and epidemics of contagious diseases were an almost annual occurrence. In April 1869 both children contacted what's thought to have been a strain of influenza; Elizabeth Jane died on the 7th April, her younger brother a week later. They were buried in the plot that their father had reserved in Clonliffe Cemetery. The short life of their two elder brothers was recorded on their headstone. Thirteen years later their mother would be buried in the same plot, aged fifty-two.

Only one of George and Elizabeth's children was to remain in Lifford. His father lived to see his son and namesake 'George marry Elizabeth Cunningham in September 1883 when he was twenty-seven; her address is also given as 'Lifford House,' suggesting that she was employed there. The paper trail then becomes blurred as most of the parish records for the following decades were destroyed in the fire at the Four Courts in Dublin. It's confirmed that they had a daughter, Eva May, born in May 1886, a son George is mentioned as having been born around a year later. Jane Gardiner of Lifford is recorded, as having been confirmed in Clonliffe Parish in 1894, suggesting her year of birth was around 1880-82, although unlike Eva, no record remains of her baptism. It's confirmed that George and Elizabeth also had a daughter Elizabeth who married Mr. Hunter from Derry and whose descendants remain in the area today. One family's story. And there are scores of other families from the North West who were involved in the Crimean War, or in garrison duty around the Mediterranean, who have their own history to tell. Some undoubtedly have relatives in the Ionian Islands, and in Malta.

It's a chapter in history I didn't even know existed. This is most definitely a work-in-progress.

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