Military: Henry (Henry Joseph) Lowe — Victorian Era

Henry Lowe (who is shown in some records as Joseph Henry Lowe) was born in Bury, Lancashire, the child of an army private in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. He moved to Dublin with his mother and siblings shortly after his birth and his father, Henry Sr., followed with the army. Henry Joseph would have grown up in Dublin, and he followed in his father's footsteps by joining the same regiment, the 3rd Dragoon Guards, probably in 1868 when he was 18 years old. However, his army service record has not been found, so the exact date and location for his enlistment is not known.

Henry Joseph married in York in 1875. His marriage record shows he was a private serving in the 3rd Dragoon Guards stationed at the Fulford Barracks at the time. 

Click on images to enlarge.

There is no place officially called "Fulford Barracks," as the military installation was known as the York Garrison, but this image shows the cavalry barracks at York, which were in a neighbourhood called Fulford so likely was referred to as Fulford barracks.

The only military record I have found so far is a single line showing a Henry Lowe discharged in 1880 from the 3rd Dragoon Guards. His service number as listed was 1253. I have been unable to find any other military records for him, including his attestation, in any online database. However, the UK National Archives has muster/payroll records for the Henry Lowe that appears in the discharge record. More research into Henry Joseph's military career would likely require an in-person visit to England.

Last line in this document shows Henry Lowe discharge. 

Henry Joseph Lowe was born in 1851, which would work out with that discharge record as that would have him joining the army around 1868 when he was approximately 17 or 18 years old. 

The registry book from the 3rd Dragoon Guards shows Henry Lowe being discharged on 20 September 1880. This date was just after his son death in Ireland where he was stationed, and by 1881 Henry was working as a miner in Lancashire, England. The registry record, if this is for our Henry, indicates that he'd been in the army 11 years and 357 days and gives his service number as 1253.

Although Henry Joseph's service record is missing, we can use army records and newspapers to following the 3rd Dragoon Guards history during the time he was with the regiment. 

While the regimental history shows that 3rd Dragoon Guards troops were sent to Abyssinia in 1868, it is unclear if Henry would have gone since he'd just joined the regiment and may have still been in training. It is also likely that not all units of the regiment were in one place, and in fact it appears that the 3rd Dragoon Guards had a presence in Ireland and the south of England during the first few years of Henry Joseph's military service. 

In 1873 newspapers show that his regiment's troops that had been in Ireland were moved to Scotland. Then in 1874, the units that had been in the south of England were moved to York. The Essex County Standard dated 17 July 1874 reported, "The dismounted detachments 3rd Dragoon Guards were moved by rail from Norwich, Ispwich, and Colchester to York..." Not long after, the regiment was moved to Ireland.

The Yorkshire Herald 4 June 1875

I have been able to piece together some of his movements in the army after 1875 through births and deaths of Henry Joseph's children. He was sent to Ireland shortly after his marriage in 1875. His wife, Georgina, was born in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, but it's possible that Georgina had moved to York before they met. It's also possible that he met Georgina while he was stationed somewhere else, possible the south of England or even Scotland as she may have lived there for a time. If he did meet her elsewhere, he may have sent for her to marry him in York before being deployed to Ireland. 

We know for sure that he and Georgina had a daughter in Dublin in 1877. In 1878 they had a son in Waterford. They were back in Dublin in 1880 where they had a daughter and where their son died that same year. 

In a book titled, Those Terrible Grey Horses: An Illustrated History of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, author Stephen Wood writes, "The 3rd Dragoon Guards remained in Southern England for the next seven years until being posted to Ireland in 1875. England had quietened[sic] down a lot since the days of Chartism and Reform but Ireland was gradually moving toward unified and articulate concepts of Home Rule and the more violent manifestations of these were to keep British soldiers in Ireland actively engaged in attempting to keep the peace throughout the island for the next 50 years. The regiment remained in Ireland until 1882." To read more from this book and view illustrations of the regiment painted in the 1800s, please visit: Google Books: Those Terrible Grey Horses. Water colours of the 3rd Dragoon Guards shown on page 103 (painted by Orlando Norie) would have been at the time Joseph Henry Lowe served. Many of Orlando Norie's illustrations are available in a book called: Queen Victoria’s Army in Color: The British Military Paintings of Orlando Norie by Peter Harrington and Michel Tomasek available for sale online at Amazon and other retailers. You can also find a large collection of British military illustrations from the period in the Brown University Library Digital Repository.

Henry left the army in 1880, and he and his family moved to England where he remained for the rest of his life. In a letter written in 1940, Henry Joseph's son James Alfred, who was a military tailor at the time, wrote: "I learned the trade from my father who was a Sergeant Master tailor to the the 3rd Dragoon Guards." Since Henry Joseph's father (Henry senior) had become a tailor after he left the military, it is likely that this was a family trade passed on from father to son. This is supported by the fact that Henry Joseph was shown as a tailor on one of his children's birth registration in 1885 as well as in the 1891 census. It would also seem from that letter that, that at least by the end of his military career, Henry Joseph was a sergeant.

Image of a 3rd (The Prince of Wales') Dragoon Guards Troop Sergeant-Major,
circa 1880 (the same year Henry Joseph left the army)

Hopefully at some point his service record will be found and more information about his army career known.

For more information about Henry and his life before and after his military service, please visit the family biography: Biography: Joseph Henry Lowe and Georgiana Dawson

Last updated 04 August 2021.