Medal awarded to British soldier killed during Easter Rising sold for £1,300

Updated

A medal awarded to a British soldier killed during the Easter Rising after he was mistaken for a Sinn Fein spy has sold at auction for £1,300.

Lieutenant Basil Worswick died on April 29 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.

Auction house representative Christopher Mellor-Hill said: “The medal attracted a lot of interest and was bought by a collector who had owned Lieutenant 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.”

Easter Rising medal
(Dix Noonan Webb/PA)

Lt Worswick went with the 2nd Battalion to Ireland to help quell the rebellion in Dublin.

On the night of April 28-29, a detachment of 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 from the Royal Dubliners, auction house Dix Noonan Webb said.

Mistaken for Sinn Fein independence supporters trying to infiltrate the brewery, the guard shot the night clerk and Lt Lucas dead.

Lt Worswick, in the next picket along, heard the commotion and went to the malt house.

The auction house said: “Challenged and searched by a sergeant of the Dublin Fusiliers, he rushed at him, knocked the man down.

“The guard, seeing this, and believing Worswick also to be a Sinn Fein spy, killed him instantly.”

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