Charles Swain 1820 - 1903
Death of a Crimean Veteran.- About a week before last Christmas Charles Swain, a labouring man of this village, 68 years of age, had the misfortune to loose his footing on the frosty causeway outside the ” School, whereby he sustained such severe injuries to his back and head that the services of Dr. Sinclair were called into requisition, and the poor fellow has been confined to his bed undergoing much suffering almost ever since, until Thursday evening when he breathed his last. The deceased joined the Army at Taunton in December, 1848, and served 10 years as a private in the Coldstream Guards, during which time he fought throughout the Crimean Campaign, undergoing tremendous hardships and privations. At the conclusion of his 10 years’ service in December, 1858, he took his discharge, and was awarded the then usual gratuity of £1. His certificate of discharge is endorsed as follows- “Conduct good; he was present at the battles of Alma and Balaclava and the siege of Sebastopol, for which he has a medal and three clasps. He is also in possession of a good conduct ring.—Signed, Fredk. Poulet,Colonel.” Swain returned to Seavington and settled down as a farm labourer, without the least recognition from successive Governments for the terrible hardships which he, in common with thousands of others, had undergone in the Crimea, until the summer of 1893, when he was awarded the “special campaign” pension of 9d a day for life, and for this he was indebted to the kind intervention of the Rev. J.P.BiIling, rector of Seavington; Colonel Hoskins; and Mr.M.W.Blake, of South Petherton; and, it is believed, Mr. Strachey, the sitting member for South Somerset. “Better late than never’ is an old saying, none the less true in this case than numberless others, for the poor felIow’s health and strength broke down of late years, and but for this timely allowance of 5s 3d a week and his club money he must have gone on the parish. He leaves a widow and a grown-up family. It is not a little singular that on the morning before his mishap he received through the post an invitation to dine with the veterans in London, which of course, he was unable to accept; and still more so that Sir John Astley, whose brother, Captain Astley, is now living within sight and hearing of the cottage in which Swain breathed his last, speaks in his “Fifty Years of My Life” of the time he was serving with the Scots Guards in the Crimea, and while ascending the heights of the Alma the Coldstream Guards were on their left and the Grenadiers on the right.