The Hero of the Crimea Turned Hotel Keeper.

Major Johnson was new to hotel management having spent his whole career in the army. He retired from the army in 1880 and was given a retirement lunch at the Royal Hotel in Scarborough, where he was living. He was further honoured on his retirement, with a painting presented by the countess of Cardigan of Lords Cardigan’s charger. Lord Cardigan was the leader of Major Johnson’s regiment. Major Johnson’s life was an interesting one. He was born in 1824 in Maidstone, Kent and joined the 4th Light Dragoons aged 14 in 1837. He became a trumpeter later on in 1837. By 1846 he had joined the 13th Light Dragoons in Manchester and was promoted to Corporal, by 1853 he was further promoted to Sergeant. In 1854 he travelled to The Crimea. This is the part of his military career that becomes much more interesting. One of the most famous battles in history, as well known as the Battle of Hastings, was the Charge of the Light Brigade, which took place in Balaklava in Crimea. The “Light” in Light Brigade refers to the regiments who took part and Major Johnson’s 13th Light Dragoons was one of them. These Light Brigade regiments were made up pf the light cavalry force, the men were armed with lances and sabres on fast unarmoured horses. They specialised in chasing down retreating enemy units rather than charging aggressively. Any initial charges were supposed to be carried out by the Heavy Brigade with their large heavy horses, cavalry swords and metal helmets. The Charge of the Light Brigade took place on 25th October 1854 in the same year that Thomas arrived in the Crimea. Major Johnson had been injured in September 1854, when he fell down a hatchway on board ship and was severely injured. He spent 2 weeks in hospital at Scutari before re-joining his regiment in time to take part in the Charge (he left before the arrival of Florence Nightingale the following month). The Charge of the Light Brigade is famous for being a disaster for British forces, causing a total of 278 casualties and the deaths of 335 horses. No decisive gains were made by the action, shockingly, the whole thing had been a mistake. The intention was to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russian enemy from removing guns they had captured, but because of a misinterpretation of the orders, they attacked a different artillery battery, one which was well prepared to defend itself. The men charged but were quickly forced to retreat resulting in the high number of casualties. Major Johnson went on to fight in all the other battles of the Crimean War and was twice honoured by the French emperor. After the “Charge”, in November 1854, Major Johnson wrote to his brother Francis, who was also serving and followed a similar career. This letter was one of only a handful of first accounts of the battle.

You may wonder why he would go into running a hotel once he had retired from such an active military career. The answer was his second wife Ada. Thomas married his first wife Ellen Bowler in Ireland in 1856, on his return from the Crimean War. They moved to Hamilton in Scotland where they lived in the barracks and Thomas was serving as a lieutenant. They then moved to West Yorkshire to be with his regiment again. Sadly, Ellen died, and Thomas remarried. His new wife was much younger than him. She was born in Whitby in 1860, close to Scarborough and had been brought up as the daughter of a lodging housekeeper. Ada Louise Appleby had been married and had two children, although her son died. She married Thomas after they both had lost their partners, but she brought a daughter with her who took on Thomas’ surname as her own. He hadn’t had any children with his first wife and so had a ready-made family when he married Ada. The retirement dinner at the Royal hotel, coupled with Ada’s experience in hospitality probably made the idea of running a hotel together an exciting prospect and an optimistic chapter in their lives after their troubles. They settled in Scarborough until Thomas died in 1908, and then Ada moved to Bournemouth where she died in 1922. Her daughter Jessie Ellen Smith Johnson was able to spend the later years of her life living in hotels on the south coast (one in Torquay and one in Bournemouth) until she died unmarried in 1957, leaving a substantial amount in her will, but no children to leave it to.