Edward Thornton and James Sclater

Founded in 1841 to educate the sons of gentlemen, Cheltenham College became one of the great public schools of the Victorian era. Its Rifle Corps was enrolled in 1862 but it was not until the following year that Cheltenham made their first appearance at the annual national rifle meeting held in Wimbledon ‘for the promotion of marksmanship in the interests of Defence of the Realm.’

This portrait of Edward Brooke Thornton (1846-1899), standing on the left, and James Robert Charles Sclater (1848-1897), seated on the right, comes from an album of carte-de-visite portraits all showing members of the school’s Rifle XI during the mid-1860s. The album was compiled by John Reid (1844-1889), afterwards John James Reid, son of Sir James John Reid, Chief Justice of Corfu. Reid was Captain of the Rifle Corps from November 1863 to June 1864. After finishing his education at Trinity College in Cambridge and at Edinburgh University, he was called to the Scottish bar; he died in Edinburgh on 10 November 1889, age 45.

James Robert Charles Sclater was born on 15 February 1848, a son of James Henry Sclater of Newick Park near Uckfield in Sussex. He was Captain of Cheltenham College’s Rifle XI from August 1864 to June 1866. From 1866 to 1868 he attended the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. In 1868 he joined the Royal Artillery as a Lieutenant, rising to the rank of Captain in 1879. He retired from the Army in 1888. At the time of the 1891 census he was a ‘visitor’ at a private hospital on Harley Street. He died at Newick Park on 27 December 1897, aged 48, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Newick. His estate was valued at £65,331.

Photographer unidentified.