The recipients of the Victoria Cross are very well documented and William Henry CORY is not amongst them.
After returning from the Crimean War he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to four years penal servitude for forgery.
"Central Criminal Court, Jan. 4."
Times [London, England] 5 Jan. 1859: 11. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 18 Jan. 2014
"William Henry Cory, 27, clerk, pleaded "Guilty" to two charges of forgery.......The learned COUNSEL for the prosecution said it was a painful thing to have to prefer so serious a charge against a young man who was undoubtedly respectably connected and who had conducted himself with considerable gallantry during the recent war in the Crimea; but there was too much reason to believe that he had been carrying on a regular system of forgery since his return to this country, and the protection of the public therefore rendered it necessary to institute the present proceedings. The prisoner, since his return to England, it appeared, had been going about the country lecturing upon the Crimea, and he had ingratiated himself into the confidence of a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Croydon, to whom he had uttered the checks in question........Mr Robinson said that the prisoner had conducted himself with great bravery at Balaclava, and he was also at the battle of Inkermann and had a horse shot under him. He had gone to the Crimea as a volunteer during the Russian war, and at its conclusion he was discharged, and he had no doubt that since then he had got into difficulties, and this had led to the commission of these offences.....and he therefore felt it to be his duty to order the prisoner to be kept in penal servitude for four years."A full account of the case details had previously appeared in The Times (London, England), Friday, Dec 10, 1858; pg. 11; Issue 23173
Licence granted 28 February 1862, for early release from Portland prison.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C10551462I believe you will find him on the 1861 census at Portland Prison, Dorset as "WHC", Clerk, aged 29.
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