Enlistment
Enlisted at Maidstone Cavalry Depot into Boy's service, on the 20th of February 1829.
Trade: "None."
No other details are shown.
Service
To Man's Pay (at 15 years of age) from the 25th of April 1831.
Appointed Trumpeter on the 5th of March 1832.
"Absent without leave", 4th-6th of April 1837. In Military confinement from the 7th and reduced to Private.
Embarked for India on the 28th of July 1837, joining the regiment at Kirkee on the 14th of October 1837.
Appointed Trumpeter, 26th of July 1839.
Embarked for England aboard the "Repulse" and arriving at Gravesend on the 28th of March 1842.
[PB: Wendy Leahy, ShadowsofTime, states:
- embarked from England 28.7.1837, arrived Bombay, India, 14.12.1837;
- embarked Bombay, India, on "Repulse", 6.11.1841, arrived Gravesend, England, 28.3.1842.
Source: shadowsoftime.co.nz/4ths/dragoonh/harrold1.html (accessed 20.3.2015)]
Promoted Trumpet-Major on the 24th of May 1848, vice Thomas King.
Sent to Scutari [presumably from Balaclava] on the 18th of September 1854, and died (according to Robert Farquharson's Reminiscences") en route on the 22nd of September.
In his will he left £2/8/2d in his credits to his brother, John Harrold, serving in the 16th Lancers.
Medals
He is shown on the Alma/Inkerman medal roll (which covers the entitlement of a man to receive a medal for service in the Crimea) but with no clasp entitlement, neither is he shown on the Sebastopol clasp roll.
Death & burial
Sent to Scutari on the 18th of September 1854, where he died on the 22nd of September 1854.
Robert Farquharson's account of Thomas Harrold's death, Crimea, September 1854.
(Click on image to enlarge)
When we got back to camp, I was told that our trumpet-major, Thomas Harold [sic], had been taken to the hospital tent. I went to see him, and found him lying very ill with (I think) enteric fever. He was very weak, and had been ailing from the time we left Varna [2nd September]. All our ex-bandsmen went to see him, which seemed to gratify him very much. The following day he was carried to the beach and put into a boat, which took him to a steamer that was going to Scutari, where he would be sent to the General Hospital; but we afterwards heard that poor Tom Harold died on the voyage, and was buried in the Black Sea.
[Source: "Reminiscences", Newcastle Courant, 8 August 1891. Harrold is not mentioned in the book edition of 1882(?).]
