Captain Sir William Peel V.C. K.C.B painting by John Lucas

Interest in William Peel has come about from my being a committee member of the Peel Society and from a visit to Tamworth town hall.  On the wall was an oil painting of William Peel VC and out of curiosity I did a little research into him.

As I am interested in orders and medals when I found that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross, effectively three times over in the Crimean War, I naturally researched him and found him to be one of Great Britain's Naval heroes.

This then is the story from the research and is basically the text of a lecture I gave to the Peel Society on the subject in 2002.

Lecture to the Peel Society

Since I gave the lecture The Peel Society has been able to establish a permanent exhibition of Peel related memorabilia at Middleton Hall near Tamworth(UK) primarily to commemorating the life and death of Sir Robert Peel.  This gave us the opportunity to arrange a small exhibition of items belonging to his third Son Capt. Sir William Peel V.C. K.C.B.  This was held over the May Bank holiday of 2005.

Medal group

Dirk

Sword

Guard and grip

I had obtained permission from the family for a loan of his group of medals, his naval sword and his Midshipman's dirk.  Since I last borrowed his Orders and decorations their present custodian had paid for them to be cleaned, new ribbons fitted and mounted in a display frame by no less a company than Spink's.  Some medal collectors would regard this as heresy, however the original ribbons and fixtures were returned to the family.  The coal black toning had gone, but it did look smart in its display case and the group was a lot easier to photograph.

Here then are photographs of the group as described in the lecture and his sword and dirk.  Click the thumbnails on the left for a bigger view.

The sword is a pipe-back 1840 pattern and is the one depicted in the print painted by John Lucas, engraved by J. J. Chant and published by Henry Graves & Co.  His Midshipman's dirk was the one he would have worn during the Syrian campaign where he was awarded the Naval General Service medal with the clasp 'Syria' and the Jean d Acre medal.

Again I have had to return the group and the sword and dirk to their owner, however as my wife and I had to go on the New Forest run for MG cars earlier in June we took the opportunity to return them in 'Flivver'.  This meant that the William Peel section of the web site came together with the MG section even if it was for only half a day!