Born at Swallowfield, near Reading, Berkshire c.1833
Enlisted at Westminster on the 19th of July 1852.
Age: 19.
Height: 5' 8".
Trade: Tailor.
At Scutari General Hospital from the 4th of April — 10th of May 1855.
"Deserted" from Shorncliffe Camp on the 5th of April 1859.
Can find no further trace to 1879.
Entitled to the Crimean medal with clasps for Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman and Sebastopol, and the Turkish medal.
No trace can be found of his ever rejoining the Regiment from desertion and this is probably the reason, if he did indeed ride, why he is never known to have attended any of the veteran's functions.
[RM: He appears on the 1891 Census.]
29, Cuthbert St, Paddington.
Tailor, aged 56, born at Newbury Berks, living with his wife Emma, a dressmaker, 56, born Uxbridge.
Rowland Crocker died in Kensington Workhouse Infirmary on the 16th of December 1906 and is said to have been buried in Kensington Cemetery on the 20th of December 1906.
Extract from the Broad Arrow, December 1906:
"R. Crocker died in Kensington Infirmary recently, aged 74 years. He had been an inmate for many years, but only on the 13th of December, when he was admitted to the Infirmary Hospital was his connection with Balaclava discovered by the Master when reading some papers which came into his possession. After communicating with the War Office he was told that the old soldier was to be buried decently and not as a pauper. The officer commanding the A.S.C. at Kensington Barracks sent a gun-carriage and a detachment of the 11th Hussars came over from Ireland to attend the funeral which took place on the 20th inst. at Kensington."