§ MR. JORDANI beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been directed to a petition forwarded to Lord Wolseley, and his lordship's reply on the 15th October, 1890, that it had been forwarded to the proper quarter, from an old soldier named Thomas Black, of the 21st Regiment, Royal North British Fusiliers, No. 3,645, who served in the Crimean campaign and engaged in four general battles there, and was one of three who brought Captain Nolan's horse, with the dead officer thereon, into the camp after the historic Charge of the Six Hundred, and who, having been frost-bitten and paralysed before Sebastopol, was discharged from Chatham at sixpence per day pension for one and a half years, at the expiry of which he understood it to be renewed during life; but, on threat of losing his pension, was compelled to re-enter the Service, was drafted to India, and served in the Mutiny, and was then discharged without pension; whether he is aware that Black is now disabled, and an inmate in the Enniskillen Workhouse, County Fermanagh; and whether, taking all the circumstances into consideration, the Depart- 870 ment will make some provision for this old soldier?
§ * MR. E. STANHOPEAs I stated last year, in reply to a question by the hon. Member for South Donegal, there are special difficulties in the case of Thomas Black. He served in the Crimea for seven months only, and was discharged as unfit for service with a pension of sixpence a day pending recovery. In July, 1857, his health was so well restored that he enlisted in the Royal Artillery, denying altogether his former service. After eleven years' service he was discharged with a bad character.