The amazing tale of Yorkshire’s bravest hotel manager

Scarborough born-and-bred Robert Walton champions off-beat attractions in the tourism sector - studying epitaphs on his tour of cemeteries and recording other talking points on his UK travels. ‘I’ve learned about some amazing people. Cemeteries are understandably little-talked about as places to visit or research but it is important to discover out-of-the-ordinary stories about people and we should remember them,’ he says.

He travelled extensively in his career as a construction consultant and here he tells the extraordinary story of Thomas George Johnson, who was appointed a cavalry officer in Wakefield, and survived The Charge of the Light Brigade … and later went on to manage the then-prestigious Royal Hotel in Scarborough before being finally being laid to rest in the town.

Thomas George Johnson ended up as the manager of one of Scarborough’s most celebrated hotels … a world away from the day he galloped towards the guns in The Charge of the Light Brigade. At just 13, he had signed up for a cavalry career , continuing a family tradition. He started as a private but at 24, he became a corporal in the 13th Light Dragoons (later the 13th Hussars), and a sergeant at 29.

He set off for the Crimea that is currently in the news with the RussianUkrainian conflict, and endured extremes of heat, thirst and hunger for 17 days on patrol against Cossacks.

While aboard a troop ship he suffered ‘a severe accident,’ falling through a hatch and ending up in hospital for three weeks. (‘I was lucky not be killed,’ he said).

He soon returned to his regiment in time for what became the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, October 25 1854.

He wrote about the terrible event in a letter to his brother 12 days later.

He said: ‘By some misunderstanding, we were ordered to charge their guns … a scene and act unparalleled in history.

‘… To our astonishment they had batteries on each side of the hills … a dreadful crossfire but we advanced in a style truly wonderful, every man feeling certainty that we must be annihilated.’

But he carried on to the guns – and sword aloft, he took the battery with some of the Charge survivors.

He wrote afterwards: ‘I entered the Russian Battery with my regiment … and had them cut down or disabled the artillerymen.’

Then ‘there being no support, we were obliged to retire, our regiment being almost cut up … reduced to nothing.’

He re-joined other brigade ranks which were then advancing – while still being cannoned and his horse was then shot in the head and hind.

‘It completely disabled him … he died afterwards,’ he wrote. Johnson himself had a Cossack lance pierced into his shoe case.

He said the Charge was ‘a most unwise and mad act’ but that the Earl of Cardigan was not to blame.

It was slaughter for the men and horses of the 670-strong regiment, in what became known as the Valley of Death.

An eyewitness war correspondent wrote in The Times that Russian commanders thought the British forces must have been drunk to ride into their battery.

Johnson was made Sergeant Major 11 days after the Charge - and went to battle at Inkerman and Sevastopol. He returned to England in 1856. leading the charge – both of which had been presented to the major at his home by the Countess of Cardigan, which must have been quite an honour.

In 1869 Kent-born Johnson joined the Halifax-based 2nd West Yorkshire Yeomanry Cavalry in Wakefield, becoming Lieutenant and Adjutant.

He retired with the honorary rank of major, having started as a private and trumpeter.

It wasn’t the end of his work life though as he was given the job of helping to manage a major business.

For 12 years he ran Scarborough’s 118-bedroom Royal Hotel, which was once owned by the family of actor Charles Laughton.

He is buried in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery, with his first wife. The gravestone once had a carved-foliage rustic stone cross atop - but that has fallen off and all that now remains in a shady corner is a small, very modest, mossy shield which doesn’t refer to his miraculous moment in history. It records just his name, age, the date of the departure of his soul and his 13th Hussars rank but an information display at the cemetery mentions his Charge of the Light Brigade gallop.

He had been awarded the Crimea medal, the Turkish war medal, the French medal for Valour and was a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

His medals sold at auction in 2018 for £13,000.

Johnson’s wife, Ellen, from Manchester, died in 1883 and he re-married a young woman from Whitby, Ada, 30 years his junior.

On his retirement, the hotel gave the major a farewell lunch, £1,000 and a diamond ring for his wife.

He died at 84 on Sunday May 24 1908 at his home, York Lodge, Westbourne Grove in Scarborough, now a house of multi-occupancy, and from where his plain, unpolished coffin was borne to a church a few hundred yards away.

It is not known what happened to the gifts of a painting of Lord Cardigan’s horse and an engraving of Cardigan

The Scarborough cemetery sites are also the resting places of Frank Allen Roberts who fought in the Boer War, James Weadley who died in the Battle of Shiloh in the American Civil War and Able Seaman Ed Ruston Reed who died at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Also, the 6th officer on the Titanic, James Paul Moody who dealt with the report of ‘Iceberg Ahead’ and went down with the ship in 1912, is briefly commemorated on the grave of his mother Evelyn.