3-065-591 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Lieutenant Alfred Charteris, 1874. Engraving from a photograph. 'The death of Lieutenant Alfred Walter Charteris, the second son and eldest that survived of Lord Elcho's five sons, has been mentioned with sincere regret, as the premature and sudden end of a promising young officer's career...among the first sacrifices that our best English and Scottish families are called upon to offer to the risks of a West African war. Lieutenant Charteris had not...an opportunity of meeting the enemy and receiving his mortal wound in action. He died of fever, on board H.M.S. Simoom, from the pestilential climate of that coast, on Nov. 23, having been attacked by illness very early in the campaign, for which he had volunteered with chivalrous gallantry and devotion to a soldier's duty. He had obtained the appointment of aide decamp to Major-General Sir Garnet Wolseley. The Hon. Alfred Walter Charteris was twenty-six years of age, having been born on June 2, 1847. He was educated at Harrow, and first entered the Army in the 71st Regiment, but, in August, 1869, exchanged into the Coldstream Guards...[His] ancestry is traced back to Macduff, the thane of Fife who overthrew Macbeth'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.