Enlisted at Birmingham on the 26th of April 1846.
Age: 20.
Height: 5' 6".
Trade: None shown.
Taken prisoner of war at Balaclava, 25th October 1854, and died soon after in Simpheropol in 1854.
Entitled to the Crimean medal with clasps for Alma, Balaclava and Sebastopol. The medal rolls state that he was "Killed-in-action", but this was not so.
According to a letter from Lieutenant Chadwick, 17th Lancers, dated 2nd of April 1855:
"Of twelve men of the 17th Lancers who were taken prisoners on the same day that I was, five only are living....The seven dead [include private] Harrison."
The circumstances of his death in a hospital at Simpheropol (about the middle of November 1854) are described in James Wightman's memoir:
"William Kirk of the Lancers, lying sick in the next ward to me a among a number of Russian soldiers, was spit on by two of them. He up like a shot, and went at the crowd of them with his fists. After a struggle he was overpowered, thrust by the orderlies into something like a strait-jacket, and tied down on his bed, where he remained till that evening, when the surgeon released him, threatening him with severe punishment if he used his fists again. He died very soon after, and our suspicion that he had been poisoned that same night."
See also the record of 597, Thomas Perry, 8th Hussars.