A medal awarded to a British soldier killed in Dublin during the Easter Rising after he was mistaken for a Sinn Fein spy has sold at auction for £1,300.
The 1914-15 Star plus copied research was being sold by a private collector and was expected to fetch £400-500.
Lieutenant Basil Worswick died on 29th April 1916 at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin after he was confronted by a guard.
He served for the King Edward’s Horse, a cavalry regiment of the British Army.
He went with the 2nd Battalion to Ireland, following the outbreak of the Easter Rising, to help quell the disturbance in the city.
On the night of 28th-29th April, a detachment of the Dublin Fusiliers was stationed at the malt house of the brewery.
When the night clerk of the brewery, accompanied by Lieutenant Lucas of the King Edward’s Horse, was making his nightly round of the brewery buildings, he was challenged by the “very nervous and jumpy” guard of Royal Dubliners, auction house Dix Noonan Webb said.
Mistaken for Sinn Feiners trying to infiltrate the brewery premises, the guard shot both the night clerk and Lt Lucas dead. Lt Worswick, in the next picket along, heard the commotion and went to the malt house.
“Challenged and searched by a sergeant of the Dublin Fusiliers, he rushed at him, knocked the man down,” said Dix Noonan Webb.
“The guard, seeing this, and believing Worswick also to be a Sinn Fein spy, killed him instantly.”
Lt Worswick was buried in the grounds of Dublin Castle; his body was exhumed in 1963 and he is now buried in Grangegorman Military cemetery, Co. Dublin. He is also commemorated on the Glasnevin Memorial.
Christopher Mellor-Hill, of Dix Noonan Webb, said: “The medal attracted a lot of interest and was bought by a collector who had owned Lt Worswick’s other two World War One medals for over 30 years and has been looking for his 1914-15 Star all this time, so we are very pleased to have been able to reunite them at long last!”
Main Picture: Lieutenant Basil Worswick. (Dix Noonan Webb).
