Colour Sergeant and Private of the Grenadier Guards, Buckingham Palace

Photograph of a Colour Sergeant and a Private of the Grenadier Guards who served in the Crimean War. They are wearing dress uniform and are each holding a rifle with a bayonet. Buckingham Palace can be seen behind. This photograph, printed by Jabez Hughes in 1883, is a carbon print pasted over the original photograph.

Throughout the war Queen Victoria had taken an active interest in the welfare of the troops and on their return to Britain she met a number of veterans at Buckingham Palace and at the military hospital at Chatham. Guards regiments returned from the Crimea in 1856 and paraded in front of Bucking Palace on 9 July 1856 (see also the watercolour painting by William Simpson, RCIN 916792). It is likely that this, and other associated photographs, were taken around the same time.