A solid silver wedding present for Lieut. Fowler, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders

The officer is standing in full dress with medals, Lee Enfield rifle and tall feathered bonnet, on a large mounted and ebonised plinth with battle honours on each side and a plaque on the front inscribed ‘Presented to Lieut A. A. Fowler, The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders by his Brother Officers on the occasion of his marriage Dec 14th 1912, by the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co Ltd. London 1912.’ 

The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders regiment was raised as the 79th Regiment of Foot (Cameronian Volunteers) on 17 August 1793 at Fort William from among the members of the Clan Cameron by Sir Alan Cameron of Erracht as a result of the threat from France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Serving in theatres as varied as the West Indies, Spain, Egypt (including receiving the surrender of French forces at Cairo), Menorca, Denmark and Portugal for the duration of the Peninsular War. The regiment took part in the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars at Quatre Bras and Waterloo in June 1815. Of the 675 men who participated, 103 were killed and a further 353 wounded. The 79th were one of only four regiments specifically mentioned by the Duke of Wellington in his Waterloo dispatch.

Captain Alan Arthur Fowler, born 1887, was killed in action in 1915. He was the younger son of Sir John Arthur Fowler and grandson of Sir John Fowler, engineer of the Forth Bridge. After Harrow School and The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he received his Commission in 1907 and, joining his Battalion in South Africa, served in China and India. When he was transferred to Reserve, he joined the Metropolitan Police. In 1912, he married Alice Mary, youngest daughter of Sir Charles Bayley, Lieutenant Governor of Bihar and Orissa. He was mobilized in August 1914 and killed, in command of “B” Company on ‘Hill 60’, with his subaltern and several men by a single minenwerfer bomb. He is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.