TOPIC:

Hello, attached is a photo of my great grandfather, John Reid Wilson when he served in the Second Boer War. I'm looking for any information that can be gleaned from the photo to help narrow my search in identifying the correct John Wilson (there are many). He was born 24 April 1870 in Inveresk and Musselburgh, Scotland. He was living near Glasgow in the late 1890s. I do know he was in South Africa in 1901 (per the Scotland Census of 1901). My grandmother always said he received a medal from Queen Victoria. If true, I'm assuming this was the Queen's South Africa Medal. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

His uniform is typical of a Mounted Infantry trooper / private.
The only clue I can see is the slouch hat badge. The flaming grenade on the slouch hat suggests a Fusilier regiment, like the Northumberland Fusiliers, though the same motif also featured in artillery and engineer uniforms. Can you scan the badge at higher resolution for us?
My wild guess would be the mounted infantry company of the Northumberland Fusiliers….
If you post a list of all the possible John Wilson’s you have found maybe we can whittle it down?

Thank you for your reply. I will try to get a better scan of the badge in the next day or two.

A slight caveat is that the photographers’ studios sometimes had props like rifles, bandoliers and headgear which could be used by the subject. I don’t strongly suspect that here, as everything looks correct - but I’ve been misled before…

I rescanned the photo, zooming in on the hat badge. This is about the best I can get it with my limited knowledge of the scanning software lol.

As Rob suggested, it looks like a Northumberland Fusiliers badge ....





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