A Windsor Victoria Cross

Lord Gowrie (1872-1955)

Published in Windlesora 14 (1995)

© WLHG

Since its institution by Royal Warrant in January 1856, the Victoria Cross (VC) has been awarded for outstanding bravery to 1,351 men, in military campaigns from Crimea to the Falkland Islands. It is perhaps surprising that, for a town with such traditional military connections, there have been only two Victoria Cross winners born in Windsor, although many other recipients (most notably Lord Freyberg) have been connected in some way with the town or castle.

1995 is the 40th anniversary of the death of one of these local heroes and an appropriate occasion to record his life, particularly that part spent in Windsor, and the events which led to his receiving the nation’s highest award for valour. The motto – FOR VALOUR – said to have been chosen by Queen Victoria, is inscribed on the obverse of the medal.

Brigadier-General Sir Alexander Hore-Ruthven, the Ist Earl of Gowrie, VC, PC, GCMG, CB, DSO, (1872-1955) was a distinguished soldier and statesman, Governor-General of Australia, and Deputy Constable and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle. He won the VC in Sudan in 1898, becoming the 432nd person to achieve this honour.

He was born as the Hon. Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven on 6 July 1872, the second of four sons. His father was Walter James Ruthven, the 8th Baron Ruthven of Freeland and head of an historic Scottish family. His mother was Lady Caroline Annesley-Gore, daughter of the 4th Earl of Arran. According to a later account of the VC action “These Ruthvens are a daring race, renowned in Scottish history and in military annals”, and were also said to have played a large part in public affairs in Windsor. Various sources, including local newspaper reports, record Alexander Hore-Ruthven’s birthplace as ‘The Hatch’, which is said to have been near the Willows in Maidenhead Road. However, the entry in the Register of Births at St Catherine’s House, London shows his birthplace as ‘The Hermitage, Clewer, Berks’. This is confirmed on the front page of The Times of 9 July 1872 and in the Windsor Express of 13 July with the announcement in the births section “On the 6th inst. at The Hermitage, Windsor, the Lady Ruthven of a son.”

The 1871 census returns show that on the night of 2 April 1871 Lord and Lady Ruthven, their son, Walter and six servants were resident at ‘The Hermitage’. The census places the house next to ‘Spital Road’, which is the former name for St Leonard’s Road. The Hermitage still stands, in Hermitage Lane, just off St Leonard’s Road in Clewer Without. The first mention of the house is in 1795 when it was owned by a John Adam. A private chapel built on to the end of the house was said to have been the first local Roman Catholic Chapel since the dissolution. There are, unfortunately, gaps in the documented history and there is no record of the house having been owned by Lord Ruthven. However, the absence of another house called The Hermitage in Clewer would seem to indicate that this is where Alexander Hore-Ruthven was born in 1872.

Apart from the disputed birthplace, the birth certificate has another unusual feature. It shows his second name as ‘Harry’, but there is no mention of it in any of the other documents, nor is the name known to the present Lord Gowrie. It is likely that this name, chosen by his parents at birth, was not given to him when he was baptised. He was known throughout his life as ‘Sandie’.

Alexander Hore-Ruthven was educated at Winchester, and also at Eton College, where he was a pupil from January 1886 to December 1888. (Thirty-seven former pupils of Eton College have won the Victoria Cross.)

Aged 19, he joined the 3rd Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry in 1891 and was promoted to Captain in 1896. His militia battalion was attached to the Egyptian Army during the Sudan Campaign of 1898-99, under overall command of General Kitchener. The forces from Kassala Garrison, led by Colonel Parsons, consisted of approximately 1,350 Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers (mostly untrained and ill-disciplined) with no artillery support and only seven British officers to lead them. Captain Hore-Ruthven led 80 old and medically unfit Sudanese camel men from the Egyptian Slavery Department. He commanded this Camel Corps detachment during the attack upon the last Dervish stronghold at Gedaref in September 1898 and was present at subsequent operations in the Sudan in 1899, including the final defeat of the Khalifa. It was at Gedaref that he won the Victoria Cross for saving an Egyptian officer from advancing Dervishes.

The London Gazette, in which all Victoria Cross awards are officially announced, recorded in its edition of 28 February 1899:

“On the 22nd September, 1898, during the action of Gedarif, Captain Hore-Ruthven, seeing an Egyptian officer lying wounded within 50 yards of the advancing Dervishes, who were firing and charging, picked him up and carried him towards the 16th Egyptian Battalion. He dropped the wounded officer two or three times, and fired upon the Dervishes, who were following, to check their advance. Had the officer been left where he first dropped, he must have been killed.”

London Gazette of 28 February 1899

Winston S. Churchill, who was in the Sudan with the 21st Lancers, was covering the campaign for the Morning Post and for his second book, which was published as The River War in 1899. The action in Gedaref (sometimes spelt Gedarif) is covered in some detail, although there is no evidence that Churchill himself was there or knew Hore-Ruthven. He described the Captain as “being a man of great physical strength” and said that “the heavy fire of the regular battalion checked the Dervish advance . . . and Hore-Ruthven still carrying his native officer, found safety in their ranks”. Though his courage was never questioned, there was some doubt at the time whether he was eligible for any (British) award. The Victoria Cross recommendation was made by the Adjutant General of the Egyptian Army but when the papers reached London “it was pointed out that Hore-Ruthven was not serving in his capacity of Captain of the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, but as an officer in the Egyptian Army“, and therefore, outside the scope of the original Royal Warrant. However, despite this, and previous cases where officers serving with the Egyptian Army had not received the VC when recommended, the submission was approved. Many publications have since wrongly claimed that Captain Hore-Ruthven was the first militiaman to win the Victoria Cross. He was in fact the second, although he was the first to benefit from the Royal Warrant of 1881 extending eligibility to auxiliary and reserve forces of the British Army.

Queen Victoria presented him with his VC at an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle on 11 May 1899. Windsor was, at this time, preparing to celebrate the Queen’s 80th birthday 13 days later. Less than a week after receiving his award, Hore-Ruthven was granted a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, and returned to the Sudan campaign. He was promoted to Lieutenant in the following year. Churchill noted in The River War that “the independent promptness of Hore-Ruthven in meeting the rear attack was proportionate to his personal gallantry, and a commission in the Cameron Highlanders, was no less deserved than the Victoria Cross.”

From 1903 to 1904 he was Special Service Officer in Somaliland, where he saw action at Jidballi in January 1904, and received a further campaign medal and two clasps.

From 1905 to 1908 he was military secretary and ADC to two successive Viceroys of Ireland, Lords Dudley and Aberdeen. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Zara Eileen Pollok, and they were married at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London in June 1908. Zara was born in Lismay, Galway in January 1879. Her family opposed the marriage. They had a son, Alexander Harding Patrick Hore-Ruthven, born in August 1913 and a second son died in infancy.

In April 1908 he had been promoted to Captain with the 1st Dragoons, and later that year was, for the second time, military secretary to Lord Dudley, who had become Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. This tour of duty lasted until June 1910, but was to be the start of a long and successful link with Australia. In 1909 Hore-Ruthven had returned to England to join Lord Kitchener’ s staff and accompanied him on his tour of Australia to investigate the country’s defences.

July 1912 found him posted to Ambala, India with the 1st Dragoons and in 1914 he graduated at the Staff College at Quetta. Following the outbreak of war in 1914 he was back in England, and in the early months of the Great War was a Brigade Major in France. In April 1915 he was appointed Major and GSO2 (second in command) of the newly formed Welsh Guards Regiment. By the end of the war he had earned a DSO and bar, was mentioned five times in despatches, was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. In addition he received several foreign medals, notably the Croix de Guerre (French) and the Croix de Guerre (Belgian). During the General Strike of 1926 he commanded the 1st Infantry Brigade of the Welsh Guards in London, and was appointed KCMG in 1928.

His previous experience in Australia between 1908 and 1910 made him the ideal appointment as Governor of South Australia in 1928, a position he held until 1934. On leave in London in 1933 he helped to mediate in the infamous ‘body-line’ cricket crisis. He was appointed Governor of New South Wales in February 1935, but had not been there long before he was promoted to higher office. In January 1936, on the day after his appointment in New South Wales was terminated, he was sworn in at Melbourne as Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.

In 1935 he had been raised to the peerage as Baron Gowrie of Canberra and of Dirleton, County of East Lothian. Because of the Second World War this appointment was extended to November 1944, when he was succeeded by the Duke of Gloucester. The tragedy of this war was experienced first hand by Lord and Lady Gowrie when their only son was fatally wounded in a commando raid on Tripoli. He died of his wounds in an Italian hospital in North Africa in December 1942.

As Governor-General Lord Gowrie proved to be a brilliant administrator and statesman and was respected and admired by the Australian public, particularly for his war efforts at a time when the country stood in direct and imminent peril. During the war he decorated many Australians with the Victoria Cross and took a great interest in the welfare of serving and ex-service men. Five Australian Prime Ministers served under him and his nine years became a record term as Governor-General.

Return home did not mean retirement, however, and in January 1945 Lord Gowrie was appointed Deputy Constable and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle, a position he retained until he finally retired from public life in 1953. (The holder of this office, which dates from 1087, is usually a high ranking officer of the armed services. The appointment is made by the Sovereign and in the absence of any member of the Royal Family, the Governor takes precedence in the castle.) In January 1945 he was created 1st Earl of Gowrie and Viscount Ruthven of Canberra and of Dirleton, County of East Lothian. (The Earldom of Gowrie was held by the Ruthven family in Scotland in the 16th century, but was forfeited in 1600 for high treason.)

While Governor he officiated at the disbandment of the 2nd Battalion of the Welsh Guards – his own regiment then and during the First World War. The last ceremonial parade of the 2nd Battalion took place in June 1947 in the quadrangle of the Castle. The colours were handed over to King George VI, the Colonel in Chief, for safe keeping. The King handed the colour to Lord Gowrie, as Colonel of the regiment and he took it into the castle at the end of the parade. Lord Gowrie remained Colonel of the Welsh Guards until 1953.

He accepted the post of President of the Royal Windsor Horse Show and in that capacity was a familiar figure in the Home Park at shows for several years. He became a Governor of Haileybury and Imperial Service College, Windsor and retained his links with Eton College, and in 1947 was elected President of the Old Etonian Association.

Lord Gowrie died at Shipton Moyne, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire on 2 May 1955. As his son had pre-deceased him in 1942 the Earldom passed to his elder grandson, Alexander Patrick Greysteil Hore-Ruthven. The 2nd Earl of Gowrie, a former government minister and former Chairman of Sotheby’s is currently Chairman of the Arts Council of England.

The 1st Earl of Gowrie’s medals, including his Victoria Cross were auctioned at Christie’s in November 1989 and bought by an anonymous telephone buyer for £60,500.

Derek Hunt

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Derek Hunt lives in Windsor and is a freelance researcher and amateur historian. He is a member of the Military Historical Society.

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