Herbert Taylor Reade

He charged the houses to save patients from the rooftop fire

Herbert Taylor Reade was born at Perth in Upper Canada on 20 September 1828. His father was an army surgeon, and Reade received education in Canada and Ireland before qualifying in medicine. He joined the British Army in November 1850 as assistant surgeon to the 61st Regiment of Foot, later part of the Gloucestershire Regiment.

During the assault on Delhi on 14 September 1857, he was treating wounded soldiers in a city street when an enemy party occupied nearby houses and began firing from their roofs. His patients could neither move readily nor defend themselves. Reade drew his sword and called on nearby soldiers to follow him. With about ten men he charged the occupied buildings and drove the attackers out. Two of his party were killed and most of the others wounded.

Two days later he joined the attack on the Delhi Magazine. Among the first through the breach, he helped a sergeant spike an enemy gun. His commanding officer recommended him for the Victoria Cross, but illness and subsequent changes in command delayed the case. The award was finally announced in February 1861, and he received the cross in Jersey the following year.

Reade remained a medical officer, moving into staff appointments and rising through brigade surgeon and deputy surgeon-general to surgeon-general in 1886. He retired at the end of 1887. Appointment as a Companion of the Bath recognized his later service, and in 1895 he became honorary surgeon to Queen Victoria.

He settled at Bath, where he died on 23 June 1897. He was buried at Locksbrook Cemetery. His surviving medals were preserved by the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum, while memorials in his Canadian birthplace recalled the physician who had temporarily exchanged medical work for armed action to protect the wounded.

Official Victoria Cross citation

During the siege of Delhi, on the 14th of September, 1857, while Surgeon Reade was attending to the wounded, at the end of one of the streets of the city, a party of rebels advanced from the direction of the Bank, and having established themselves in the houses in the street, commenced firing from the roofs. The wounded were thus in very great danger, and would have fallen into the hands of the enemy, had not Surgeon Reade drawn his sword, and calling upon the few soldiers who were near to follow, succeeded, under a very heavy fire, in dislodging the rebels from their position.

Surgeon Reade’s party consisted of about ten in all, of whom two were killed, and five or six wounded.

Surgeon Reade also accompanied the regiment at the assault of Delhi, and, on the morning of the 16th September, 1857, was one of the first up at the breach in the magazine, which was stormed by the 61st Regiment and Belooch Battalion, upon which occasion he, with a serjeant of the 61st Regiment, spiked one of the enemy’s guns.

The London Gazette of 5 February 1861, Numb. 22477, p. 449