Born c.1830.
Enlisted at Chichester on the 11th of December 1854.
Age: 24.
Height: 5' 6".
Trade: None shown.
Embarked for the Crimea on the 18th of June and joining the regiment on the 15th of July.
Embarked for India from Cork aboard the S.S. "Great Britain " on the 8th of October 1857.
Discharged, "by purchase", from Colchester, on the 3rd of August 1865. Payment of £10.
Served 10 years 235 days.
Conduct: "good." and in possession of two Good Conduct badges.
Awarded a Special Campaign Pension, (no date shown) but likely around 1893 when these payments were first instigated.
Entitled to the Crimean medal with clasp for Sebastopol, and the Turkish medal.
Can find no trace on the Mutiny medal roll.
The musters for July-September of 1858 show him as being "On Field Service" from September of this period.
[RM: A man of this name is shown on the 1881 Census as aged 50, born at Boston, Lincolnshire, an Agricultural labourer, living at Sibsey Road, Thornton Le Fen, Lincs. He was then married to Mary aged 35 with ten children the oldest 14, the youngest being twin girls aged 7 months, all born in Lincolnshire.]
(He was married to Mary Tomlinson at Boston in June 1866.)
William Gash further appears on the 1901 Census aged 70, an "Army Pensioner" living at Rawmarsh, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was living in the household of Willie Hickling and his wife Mary. Gash is shown as being a father-in-law and by this time he was a widower, his wife Mary having died aged 48 in the March quarter of 1894.
From family information, his father David Gash had served at Waterloo. UPDATE THIS >
His great-grandson, a Mr. D. Braithwaite, living in British Columbia, Canada, came to England in 1975 and during his stay visited Belvoir Castle, the Regimental Museum. He provided a photograph of an oil painting, said to be of William Gash, now in the possession of the family. Whether this is a true likeness, or merely a stereotyped picture with the name added to give it authenticity is not known. No other information about the life of Gash after his discharge is known by the family. (See copy of this photograph in the 17th Lancer file.)