Captain Philip Smith
(1837-1894)
12 February 1861
Volume 2, page 203, sitting number 2101.
Born on 10 January 1837 at Woodhall Park near Watton in Hertfordshire, Philip Smith was the third son of banker Abel Smith (1788-1859) and his wife Frances Anne née Calvert, daughter of General Sir Harry Calvert. His grandfather was the banker and Tory Member of Parliament Samuel Smith (1754-1834).
On the night that the 1861 census was taken, Captain Philip Smith was the ‘principal resident officer’ of the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards at Wellington Barracks in London.
When the census was taken in 1891 he was an unmarried Major-General living at 4 Hobart Place in Knightsbridge with a butler, a housemaid, a cook and a kitchen maid to look after him.
Lieutenant-General Philip Smith, C.B., ‘of B1 the Albany, Piccadilly’ died, aged 57, on 1 November 1894 at Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdonshire. He left an estate valued at £28,845.
‘[A]nd on Thursday last the death took place of General Philip Smith of the Grenadier Guards. The latter saw active service in Egypt, and had not been well since the battle of Tel-el-Kabir’ (Leeds Mercury, 6 November 1894).
‘Yesterday Lord Methuen issued the following order to the troops of all services in the Home District — “It is with feelings of the deepest regret that the Major-General announces to the District the death of Major-General PHILIP SMITH, C.B., on 1st November. A service will be held in his memory on Monday, 5th November, at noon, in the Military Chapel, Wellington Barracks.” General Philip Smith joined the Grenadier Guards as an ensign and lieutenant in 1855, and became brevet-colonel in 1876, major-general 1888, and lieutenant-general in 1892. He had held several staff appointments, the last being the command of the Home District, in which he immediately preceded Lord Methuen; and served with the Guards in Egypt in 1882 at Mahout and Tel-el-Kabir. For a considerable time he had been in failing health, and died at Lord Sandwich’s residence at Hinchingbrooke, from a recurrence of paralysis which seized him on Monday’ (Daily News, London, 3 November 1894).
[From an album of Grenadier Guards dated 1868. The legend on the album cover, embossed in gold, reads '3rd Batn Grenadier Guards / Dublin / 1868.']