Thomas Adair Butler

He swam the river and signalled from the parapet under fire.

Thomas Adair Butler was born at Soberton, Hampshire, on 12 February 1836. Commissioned into the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers in 1854, he became a lieutenant and musketry instructor before the Indian uprising. He served at Delhi and Lucknow.

On 9 March 1858, British troops needed confirmation that an enemy position across the Gumti had been taken. Butler swam the river, climbed the parapet and remained exposed to musket fire while signalling the success to the troops beyond. The position was then occupied. Queen Victoria presented his Victoria Cross in June 1859.

He remained with the regiment when it transferred to Crown service as the 101st Regiment. He fought in the Umbeyla campaign of 1863, where he was wounded, and retired as an honorary major in 1874. Married twice, he settled at Camberley, where he died on 17 May 1901 and was buried at St Michael's Church.

Official Victoria Cross citation

“Of which success the skirmishers on the other side of the river were subsequently apprised by Lieutenant Butler, of the Bengal Fusiliers, who swam across the Goomtee, and, climbing the parapet, remained in that position for a considerable time, under a heavy fire of musketry, until the work was occupied.” (Extract of Lieutenant-General Sir James Outram’s memorandum of operations carried on under his command at the siege of Lucknow, published in the Governor-General’s Gazette Extraordinary, of the 5th April, 1858, and re-published in General Orders by the Commander- in-Chief in India, on the 27th of December, 1858.)

The London Gazette of 6 May 1859, Numb. 22260, p. 1867