Talk:Samuel Hodge

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This article was created or added to during the Victoria Cross Reference Migration. It may contain material that was used with permission from victoriacross.net.

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From the article page:

please update if you know where his medal is publicly displayed

Alai 07:55, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think there is something hanging in Government House in Tortola - whether it is his original VC, or whether it is a copy, I could not say for sure, but I will try to find out. --Legis (talk - contribs) 12:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One of the first black VC winners

Someone has posted a cite needed for Samuel Hodge being one of the first black winners of the VC. Breaking that point down: the first ever black winner of a VC was clearly William Hall in 1857. Hodge won his VC only 11 years later, in 1868. Given the relatively small number of VC winners in total, most of them coming from countries with relatively small black populations, I don't have any problem extrapolating this and saying that Hodge was one of the first black VC winners and/or one of the few black VC winners from the last century PROVIDED he was in fact black. I had always understood that Samuel Hodge was the son of Balziel Hodge, and grandson of Arthur Hodge, both of whom were white. However, this link[3] suggests that Samuel Hodge was of African descent (and also indicates he was one of the first such people to win the VC). Does anyone have anything else to work with? --Legis (talk - contribs) 16:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"He was the first coloured soldier who was ever thus honoured...", 1868, Navy and Military Register^[1]

"The second man of colour to receive the Victoria Cross was a coal-black negro named Samuel Hodge..", 1898, "Britain's roll of glory: or the Victoria Cross : its heroes and their valor : from personal accounts, official records, and regimental tradition"^[2]

He's shown as black in the painting by Louis William Desanges on this page

Note that "coloured" in the first reference may be meant in the South African way to mean mulatto. Snori (talk) 10:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Hodge was a Private in a West India Regiment. That suggests to me, black. (2) He was a pioneer - a low class of soldier: a labourer, not an infantryman. That too suggests to me, black.

Props to the Boys' Own-type hero, George Abbas Kooli D'Arcy: reading between the lines, I suspect he used all the influence he could muster to make sure that this "nigger" (the word D'Arcy would have used) got the medal which he so rightly deserved. Narky Blert (talk) 00:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Footnotes

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