Plain monument to a colourful life recorded in Carlisle Cathedral

James Armstrong, Head Verger, Carlisle Cathedral, introduced me to a man with a varied Army career, including fighting pirates, who is recorded in the Cathedral.

The monument is to a man who served in the Royal Marines, The Rifle Brigade as well as the Royal Irish Fusiliers, though his monument does not even hint at his colourful past.

"To the memory of Thomas Drury Esquire. Pay Master of the 87th Regiment of Foot, or Royal Irish Fusiliers, who died in garrison, at the Castle near this city, on the 21st Feb 1841, aged 51"

Captain Thomas Drury was Paymaster at Carlisle Depot. He had been appointed to the Depot despite a bout of ill health that had led him to transfer to the half pay list in 1825.

Royal Marines

Thomas had joined the Royal Marines aged 16 in February at 1806, as a Second Lieutenant. He served in several anti-piracy campaigns in the Persian Gulf and Indian Oceans, before transferring to the 3rd Battalion The Rifle Brigade as a Second Lieutenant in 1813.

It was with the Rifles that he served at the battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The battle that was immortalised in a an early Rock and Roll song by Lonnie Donnegan!

The Rifles

When the Third Battalion was reduced at the end of the Napoleonic Wars Drury transferred, first as a First Lieutenant in the First Battalion, The Rifle Brigade and then in 1820 to the 8th Regiment of Foot and became its Adjutant.

Drury’s health was evidently not good and he exchanged his position for half-pay in May 1825. In July 1828 he returned to full pay as the Paymaster to the 97the Foot and shortly after in 1829 transferred to the 87th Foot – the Royal Irish Fusiliers – as their pay master. The Depot Companies of the 87th were garrisoned at Carlisle, when he died.

The Editor