There is a way to do it using reflection. It works with .NET 4.0. It accesses a private field and may not work in other versions of .NET without modifications.
I have no idea why Microsoft did not expose this field with a property.
private static int GetStatusCode(WebClient client, out string statusDescription)
{
FieldInfo responseField = client.GetType().GetField("m_WebResponse", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
if (responseField != null)
{
HttpWebResponse response = responseField.GetValue(client) as HttpWebResponse;
if (response != null)
{
statusDescription = response.StatusDescription;
return (int)response.StatusCode;
}
}
statusDescription = null;
return 0;
}