Lance-Corporal Goat (or Goate) was fighting at Lucknow on 6 Mar 1858 and saw an officer being killed. This was Major Percy Smith of the 2nd Dragoon Guards, and Goat was determined to rescue his body from mutilation. He dismounted in the presence of the enemy and attempted to take up the body but was forced to give up. However he went in a second time, under fire, and was successful in retrieving Major Smyth’s body. He was personally congratulated by Sir Colin Campbell and Sir James Hope Grant who recommended him for the VC in his despatch of the 8th April 1858. The citation was gazetted on 24 Dec.
William Goat was born on 12 Jan 1826, in Fritton, Norfolk. His father died when he was 5 and he worked on the family farm with his 10 siblings until he enlisted in the 9th Lancers on 21 Nov 1853. He fought with them at Delhi as well as Lucknow where he won his VC. Having reached the rank of corporal he returned to Britain with the 9th Lancers in 1859 and attended the ceremony at Windsor Castle on 4 Jan 1860 where he was presented with his medal by the Queen.
William Goat left the army and lived in Norfolk where he married Sarah Ling and had a son, William. When farm work dried up he tried work as a railway porter then a warehouseman. When his marriage ended he moved up north and worked in the shipbuilding works in Jarrow. But he fell on hard times and in May 1900 moved south to Hampshire to be near his son. He died of gastric cancer on 26 Oct 1901 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Highland Road Cemetery, Southsea. His son, William, died in November 1904, buried in the same grave.
