Description
Physical description
Gilding metal cap badge in the form of the Prince of Wales' feathers within a Royal Ducal crown (wide version) with an angular scroll bearing the motto 'ICH DIEN' above another straight edged scroll bearing 'THE LEINSTER'. On reverse, two lugs.
History note
Lieutenant Colonel Heneker was commissioned into the Leinster Regiment. He was an instructor at Sandhurst pre-1914 and his name appears on the Sandhurst Memorial. He was seconded to the 2nd 'Tyneside Scottish' (21st Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers) as Battalion Commanding Officer on 30 June 1916 and was killed (aged 43) on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916, during the attack at La Boisselle. The 'Tyneside Scottish' then formed part of the 34th Division (commanded by Major-General E C Ingouville-Williams, popularly known as 'Inky Bill').
Heneker is buried in Ovillers Military Cemetery (Plot III Row A Grave 1). He was the son of the late Richard William and Elizabeth Tuson Heneker, of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada; and husband of Constance Heneker, of Berily House, Southlands Grove, Bickley, Kent.
This pattern of badge worn 1898 to 1922
The predecessor Regiment was raised in Canada in 1857/8 as 100th (Prince of Wales's Royal Canadian) Regiment of Foot. The Regiment was raised to provide additional strength in the face of the Indian Mutiny, but the Mutiny was over by the time the Regiment reached the UK in July 1858.
In 1853 the Honourable East India Company had raised the 3rd Bombay (European) regiment. This passed to the Crown in 1859 and was co-opted into the British Army in 1861 as the 109th (Bombay Infantry) Regiment of Foot, the highest numbered Regiment in the British Army, saving the un-numbered Rifle Brigade.
In the Cardwell/Childers reforms of 1881 the 100th and the 109th amalgamated to form the Prince of Wales's Royal Canadian Regiment but almost immediately this was modified to The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians), the Irish connection deriving from the 1873 policy of associating Regiments with geographical localities for the purposes of recruiting. The badge at this time was the Prince of Wales's feathers, coronet and motto scroll above a pair of crossed maple leaves with a scroll marked CENTRAL INDIA. This latter derived from the 109th and its service in the Central India Field Force during the Mutiny of 1857.
By 1898 the badge had become simply the Prince of Wales's feathers, coronet and motto scroll with a straight scroll across the bottom marked THE LEINSTER.
The Regiment was disbanded in 1922 on the formation of the Irish Free State.