S is for saving a language

Many of my distant relatives were soldiers. One was my first cousin five times removed Lieutenant General George Byres Mainwaring, eighth of the fourteen children of George Mainwaring and Isabella née Byres. He was born on 18 July 1825 and baptised on 21 October 1825 in Banda, Bengal, India. (Three more soldiers were his older brothers, General Rowland Rees Mainwaring, Captain Norman Mainwaring, and a younger brother, Cornet Charles Mainwaring.)

George’s mother Isabella was the illegitimate daughter of Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers of the East India Company’s Infantry, who in 1817 inherited a family estate at Tonley, near Tough, 20 miles west of Aberdeen. Isabella was probably Anglo-Indian, with an Indian mother.

George attended school at Mr Tulloch’s Academy, Aberdeen, not far from the residence of his maternal grandfather Patrick Byers, who took an interest in his grandsons. George was later taught Classics and mathematics at the school of Messrs Stoton and Mayor in Wimbledon, London.

At the age of seventeen, Mainwaring was commissioned into the 16th Bengal Native Infantry regiment, probably through the influence of his grandfather Byers. On 8 January 1842 he sailed for India.

In 1843 Mainwaring fought in the Battle of Maharajpur in the Gwalior campaign, and was awarded the ‘Gwalior Campaign Bronze Star’. He took part in the Sutlej campaign of 1845-46, including the battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon. He was awarded the ‘Sutlej Campaign Medal’ and two clasps in 1846.

Death of Major-General Churchill at the battle of Maharajpore. 1844 lithograph from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1854 Mainwaring returned to England. A considerable linguist, fluent in both Hindi and Urdu, he returned to India in 1857 at the time of the Mutiny to serve as an interpreter. He was posted first to Cawnpore (where his brother Charles had been murdered), and later transferred to the Punjab region.

In August 1860 at Chini [Kalpa] in the Valley of the Sutlej River, 125 miles (200km) north-east of Simla, Captain Mainwaring encountered the war-correspondent and artist William Simpson.

Simpson describes his their meeting:

A few days before our departure from Chini a Captain Mainwaring arrived from Simla. Mainwaring had travelled among the Lepchas in the Darjeeling district, and he told me a great deal about that race. The noted peculiarity of this man might be expressed by saying that he was a serpentphil. He seldom went out but he brought back a serpent in his hands, "all alive 0!" He stroked them, expressed his admiration for their great beauty, and wondered how any one could kill such lovely things. He seemed to have acquired some manner of handling the serpents, and whether they were poisonous or not appeared to make no difference to him. Somehow he had the power of a serpent-charmer. We learned afterwards that at some station where he had been quartered he collected some hundreds of serpents, and when a change of quarters took place he could not carry off his pets, nor would he kill them ; they were all set free in his garden, to the horror and fright of every one at the station, particularly of the ladies.

We had now been over two months at Chini, and on the 28th of August we began our march back to Simla. Mainwaring accompanied us.

George Mainwaring, it seems, had earlier been posted to Darjeeling and had travelled widely in Sikkim. For a while he lived with the Lepcha ethnic group of the Lebong area near Darjeeling, before moving to to a village called Polungdong (present day Phalut). Lebong is a valley about 1,000 feet below Darjeeling, a few miles to the north. Phalut is 50 miles north-west of Darjeeling in very remote country.

Lepcha is spoken in Sikkim and the Darjeeling area of West Bengal. In his travels Mainwaring became acquainted with the language, and 1876 published a Lepcha grammar. He had great affection for the Lepchas and their language. ‘Lepcha’, he said, ‘was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden’. Mainwaring also compiled a dictionary of Lepcha, published posthumously.

Phalut, with Mt Kangchenjunga at background Photographed by user Rkb95 2017 Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0

A view of the Himalayan peaks of (from the left) Mt.Lhotse, Mt.Everest, Mt.Makalu and Mt.Chomolonzo from Phalut in West Bengal, India. Photographed by user Shilbhadra in 2011. Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0

Lepcha man and woman from Dalton’s “Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,” 1872. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Mainwaring’s Lepcha grammar can be read through GoogleBooks

Mainwaring spent over 30 years among the Lepcha. He has been described as “Lepcha Mad”:

Mainwaring’s involvement with the Lepcha people was not confined to their grammar and dictionary only for he actually lived like a Lepcha and one could almost claim that he thought like a Lepcha. He opened up a Lepcha school at Lebong and has been credited for buying a hundred acres of land for a collective farm for the Lepchas. He dressed in the Lepcha costume and even while attending official matters in Darjeeling he would not shed the Lepcha dress.

In the forward to his 1876 Lepcha grammar Mainwaring wrote that:

“Of the language I cannot speak too highly. The simple and primitive state in which the Lepchas lived is admirably shown by it. It has no primary word (beyond the words for gold and silver) to express money, merchants or merchandise, fairs or markets. Their peaceful and gentle character is evinced by their numerous terms and tenderness and compassion, and by the fact that not one word of abuse exists in their language. Nevertheless the language itself is most copious, abounding in synonyms and possessing words to express every slightest change, every varying shade of meaning, it admits of flow and power of speech which is wonderful, and which renders it capable of giving expression to the highest degree of eloquence. The language also arrests the astonishing knowledge possessed by the Lepchas. I shall here again make an extract from the letter before quoted:- “Of all the almost inconceivable diversity of trees with which the hills are covered ; of all the almost incalculable variety of plants and flowers with which the forests are filled ; the Lepchas can tell you the names of all, they can distinguish at a glance the difference in the species of each genus of plants, which would require the skill of a practiced botanist to perceive ; and this information and nomenclature extends to beasts, to birds, to insects, and to everything around them, animate and inanimate ; without instruction, they seem to acquire their knowledge by intuition alone. The trees and the flowers, and the birds, and the insects have therefore been their friends and companions. But now, this simple knowledge, this beautiful language, this once happy people are fast dying out. The Lepchas have left their woods and innocence and have fallen into sin and misery, and is there no one that will help them, no one that will save?

Mainwaring’s army career continued alongside his involvement with the Lepchas and their language and customs. In 1862 he was promoted to captain, and in 1867 to major with the Bengal Staff Corps. His promotion continued and he reached Lieutenant General on 1 January 1887.

He died on 16 January 1893 at Serampore, near Calcutta. He is buried in the Danish cemetery, Serampore.The gravestone reads:

GENERAL GEORGE BYERS MAINWARING
60 Grenadiers.
Born 18th July 1824
died 16th January 1893.

Obituary in the ‘Englishman’s Overland Mail‘ (Calcutta, West Bengal) 25 January 1893:

On the 16th instant, General G.B. Mainwaring, of the Indian Staff Corps, died at Serampur, where he had lived for many years. On the military authoriteis at Barrackpur being made aware of hte fact, they ordered a public funeral, which took place on Tuesday afternoon. The Commanding Officer at Barrackpur, Lieutenant-Colonel J.D. Douglas, and a number of other officers were present, and the body was conveyed to the grave by Artillerymen. A Battery of Artillery stationed at Flagstaff Ghat, on the Barrackpur side of the river, fired the regulation number of minute guns as the funeral procession set forth. General Mainwaring, whose first commission was in the 16th Native Infantry, was present at the battle of Maharajpur, in the Gwalior campaign. He went through both the Punjab campaigns, and was also on service during the Mutiny. General Mainwaring was a student of Eastern languages, and had published a Lepcha Grammar. For some years he had been employed in preparing a dictionary of the same language. He claimed to have made some remarkable discoveries with regard to the origin of language, or what he called the "powers of letters," and he is supposed to have left some writings on the subject.

Obituary in the Madras Weekly Mail 2 February 1893:

General Mainwaring. 
The death of General G. B. Mainwaring, of the Staff Corps, says the Pioneer, carried off one of the few living students of the little known language of the Lepchas of the Darjeeling hills, For many years of his service General Mainwaring was on "general duty" at Darjeeling, engaged in the work of preparing a Grammar and Dictionary of the Lepcha language. The Grammar he lived to complete, and it was published by the Bengal Government some years ago. The body of the work is admirable, and it remains, and is likely to remain, the standard authority on the obscure language of a tribe which is rapidly dying out. For the Dictionary the General collected and collated very ample materials ; but towards the end of his life his health was weak, and he could not bring himself to face the task of carrying the work through the press. It will not, however, be lost to the scientific world. Some months before the General's death the Bengal Government had entrusted the task of bringing out the Dictionary to Dr. Adolf Grünwedel, Director of the Indian Section of the Museum of Ethnography in Berlin, a well known authority on Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Lepcha, who has already published a small glossary of the latter tongue. The fact that the work is in Dr. Grünwedel's hands is a guarantee that it will be a worthy monument of the labours of General Mainwaring, and of the German savant who has succeeded to the fruits of so many years' toil. 

Obituary in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 26 January 1893:

The late Lieutenant-General G.B. Mainwaring, of the Indian Army, whose death is announced this week, was a cousin of our fellow citizen, Lieutenant-General R.Q. Mainwaring. He was born in India and nearly the whole of a useful life was spent among the natives of our great dependency. For many years he dwelt among the hills in West Calcutta, and became so conversant with the language of the Lepcha tribe that by direction of the Government he prepared and wrote a Lepcha dictionary. He rarely visited England, but once when he went to Reading to see a sister, an amusing incident occurred. He left a hamper in the cloakroom at the railway station and told the porter in charge of heard anything moving, to pour a little warm water on the basket. When he returned, and inquired after his deposit, he found the official, having detected mysterious movements in the hamper, had deluged it with boiling water and administered an effective quietus to a rare and valuable snake. The deceased, who was in his 68th year, entered the army in 1842, and was placed in the Indian supernumerary list in 1884. He served with distinction in the Punjab and Indian Mutiny Campaigns.

The Danish cemetery is heritage listed by the West Bengal Heritage Commission. The listing of the cemetery in the Hooghly district mentions General Mainwaring, author of Lepcha language dictionary, who died at Srirampur.

It has been suggested that Mainwaring’s studies of the Lepcha grammar and lexicon helped save the language from extinction. He is still remembered by the Lepchas:

• The Sikkim Lepcha Youth Association confers the ‘G.B.Mainwaring Award’ annually to recognise and encourage contributions to the field of Lepcha language in Sikkim.
• The Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association (ILTA), Kalimpong, celebrates the G.B. Mainwaring Birth Anniversary.

Map of places associated with George Byres Mainwaring

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING:

• H is for Haileybury about George’s father George Mainwaring
• I is for Indian Mutiny George’s brother Charles was killed at Cawnpore and George and his brothers, Rowland and Norman, were caught up in the mutiny.
• R is for railway accident

• Roy, D.C. “George Byres Mainwaring: A More Lepcha Than Most Lepchas.” Aachuley, 4 Oct. 2013, https://aachuley.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/george-byres-mainwaring-a-more-lepcha-than-most-lepchas/
• Wangyal, Sonam. ““Lepcha Mad” – Dr. Sonam Wangyal.” Kalimpong news and information: Kalimpong.info, 10 May 2008, https://kalimponginfo.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/lepcha-mad-dr-sonam-wangyal/

Wikitree: George Byers Mainwaring (1825 – 1893)

George’s grandparents, Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane Mainwaring née Latham (1755 – 1809), are my 5th great grandparents.

R is for Railway Accident

My first cousin five times removed Norman William Mainwaring, son of George Mainwaring and Isabella née Byres, was born on 21 July 1821 and baptised on 10 October in Benares, Bengal. He was the fifth of their fourteen children. Norman’s mother Isabella was the illegitimate daughter of Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers. She was probably Anglo-Indian, with an Indian mother.

Norman Mainwaring was educated in both classical and mathematical subjects by a Mr Tulloch at Bellevue school, Aberdeen, Scotland. His brothers Rowland, Harry, and George also attended this school. Norman was later a pupil at Kings College, Aberdeen; it is probably not a coincidence that his maternal grandfather Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers lived nearby.

On 26 August 1840 Mainwaring, 19 years old, petitioned to join the East India Company as a cadet in the Bengal Infantry. He was nominated by William Butterworth Bayley Esq, director and chairman of the British East India Company, to whom he had been recommended by his mother.

His application successful, Mainwaring joined the Company’s Bengal army. By 1841 he was firmly established in the 73rd Native Infantry regiment. In 1843 he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1854 to captain.

Mainwaring served in the Punjab campaign of 1848-49, which ended in its annexation by the British.

On 21 April 1849 Norman Mainwaring married Jane Kent in Lahore, at that time the capital of the Punjab region. Jane Kent was the illegitimate Anglo-Indian daughter of Robert Kent of the Bengal Army, quite likely Lieutenant Colonel R. Kent of the 18th Regiment Native Infantry, who had died at Lahore in 1848.

Norman Mainwaring and Jane Mainwaring née Kent had seven children:

• Isabella Jane Mainwaring 1850–1934
• Georgeanne Agnes Emma Mainwaring 1852–1863
• Robert Byres Mainwaring 1854– died young
• Norman Hawthorn Mainwaring 1855–1856
• Rowland Kent Mainwaring 1855–1938
• Edward Currie Mainwaring 1856–1914
• Norman Hall Mainwaring 1857–1910

In 1851 Mainwaring, at the time a Lieutenant of the 73rd N.I. was seconded to a civilian engineering project, placed at the disposal of the director of the Ganges irrigation canal for employment as assistant executive engineer. He was attached to the 2nd division of the Ganges Division of the Canal Department of the Bengal Department of Public Works.

The Ganges Canal was constructed between 1842 and 1854 in response to a disastrous famine, the Agra famine of 1837–38, in which some 800,000 people died. The British East India Company sponsored the project; the driving force behind it was Colonel Proby Cautley (1802-1871), British palaeontologist and engineer.

Hindu priests opposed the canal, believing that it would imprison the waters of the holy river Ganges. In response Cautley undertook to leave gaps in the dams through which water could flow unchecked. He further appeased the priests by  repairing  bathing ghats along the river, and he inaugurated  dams by ceremonies honouring Lord Ganesh, the god of good beginnings.

The Canal opened on 8 April 1854. When irrigation commenced a year late,r over 3000 square kilometres, encompassing 5,000 villages, were able to draw on Canal water.

The Ganges Canal at Roorkee in the Saharanpur District of Uttar Pradesh, watercolour by William Simpson dated 1863. Image from the collection of the British Library.

In 1854, recently promoted to Captain, 73rd Native Infantry regiment, and with the civilian title of Deputy Superintendent Second Division Ganges Canal, Mainwaring resigned pleading poor health, and asked to be permitted to rejoin his regiment. A sceptical newspaper, the Indian Standard, commented “that any one acquainted with the late and present ongoings of that division of the canal would be able to form their own opinion as regards this excellent officer’s resignation”.

Two of Captain Mainwaring’s children were baptised in St. John’s Anglican Church Wynberg, Capetown, South Africa: Edward on 2 February 1857 and Norman on 14 March 1858. I cannot find any record of Norman Mainwaring serving in South Africa, however. He may have been passing through, for Captain N.W. Mainwaring of the 73rd Regt. B.N.I. [Bengal Native Infantry] was reported to have arrived on 21 September 1857 in Calcutta on HMS Belleisle. The Belleisle had sailed from Plymouth, possibly stopping over in South Africa.

In January 1858 the Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affaires reported that Captain N.W. Mainwaring of the 73rd N.I. was to remain at the Presidency (Calcutta, the capital of Bengal) from 1st November 1857 to 1 January 1858 on a medical certificate. I know nothing about the illness or the injury covered by the medical certificate.

On 21 April 1858 Captain N. Mainwaring 73rd N.I. was appointed to act as a probationary assistant in the Department of Public Works in the Hyderabad assigned districts, also known as Berar Province.

Norman Mainwaring’s career as a engineer, however, and as a soldier, came to a sudden end on 3 June 1858, when he was accidentally killed in a railway accident at Howrah station near Calcutta:

A dreadful accident happened at the Howrah Station on the 1st of June. Captain Mainwaring of the 73rd N. I. was a passenger by the down train. When the train stopped at Howrah that the guard might collect the tickets, Captain Mainwaring attempted to get out under the impression that the train was to go no further. The train moved on, there was no standing room between the door of the carriage and a brick work buttress. Horrible to relate, Captain Mainwaring was thus crushed and dragged between the train and the brickwork till the bones of the pelvis had been almost reduced to powder, and other frightful lacerations had been inflicted. Captain Mainwaring lingered for forty-eight hours in great agony and then expired.

Friend of India and Statesman of 10 June 1858

‘Railway station near Calcutta’ photographed in 1895 by American photographer, William Henry Jackson (1843-1942). Image retrieved puronokolkata.com : Howrah Railway Junction Station, Howrah, 1854 – https://puronokolkata.com/2015/11/18/howrah-railway-junction-station-howrah-1854/ The present very grand station building at Howrah was built in the early 20th century.

Mainwaring was 37 years old when he was killed. His widow Jane née Kent received a pension and the five surviving young children were provided with assistance by the Bengal Military Orphan Society.

Not long after her husband’s death Jane Mainwaring took the children to England. At the time of the 1861 census she and the children, aged 3 to 10, were living in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. The household included a cook and a nurse.

Jane died in 1870 in Exeter, Devon. One daughter had died in 1863. Isabella married an English clergyman. Rowland emigrated to Queensland, Australia. Edward Mainwaring emigrated to America. Norman Mainwaring lived in Yorkshire.

RELATED POSTS:

• H is for Haileybury about Norman’s father George Mainwaring
• I is for Indian Mutiny Norman’s brother Charles was killed at Cawnpore and his brothers, Rowland and George, were caught up in the mutiny. I do not know about Norman’s experience in the mutiny.

Wikitree:

• Norman William Mainwaring, born at Jaunpore and baptised 1821 at Benares, was killed in 1858 in a railway accident at Howrah. Son of George Mainwaring (1790 – 1865), and grandson of Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane Mainwaring née Latham (1755 – 1809), my 5th great grandparents.

P is for palanquin

Colonel George Wymer (1788 – 1868), husband of my 4th great aunt Emily Crespigny Wymer née Hindes (see F is for Ferozepore and A Passage to India), was a colonel of the 27th Regiment of the Bengal Army. In 1840 he was attacked and robbed on the road between Ferozepore to Loodianah, a section of the Grand Trunk Road.

Rudyard Kipling has a marvellous description of this great highway in ‘Kim’ (1901). Kim is travelling with a lama. The speaker is an old soldier:

“And now we come to the Big Road,” said he, after receiving the compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. “It is long since I have ridden this way, but thy boy’s talk stirred me. See, Holy One—the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road—all hard—takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for the heavy carts—grain and cotton and timber, fodder, lime and hides. A man goes in safety here for at every few kos is a police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself would patrol it with cavalry—young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of men move here.

“Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters—all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.”

And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India’s traffic for fifteen hundred miles—such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed police-station opposite.

The robbery was reported the Asiatic Journal And Monthly Register of 1840:

Col. Wymer, of the 27th regt. was travelling from Ferozepore to Loodianah; when near Dummkot, a dozen or more fellows, in appearance Affghan apple-merchants, stopped his palanquin. The Colonel immediately dashed out with a walking stick, but was knocked down and pricked with their spears. The ruffians then helped themselves to a few articles, and threw away others with contempt; made him strip off his upper garments, to see if any valuables were concealed in them, and on being told that the Banghy petarrahs contained eatables, let them pass without examination. Col. Wymer lost a good deal of blood.

Hobson-Jobson the glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases explains some of the terms:

PALANQUIN, A box-litter for travelling in, with a pole projecting before and behind, which is borne on the shoulders of 4 or 6 men — 4 always in Bengal, 6 sometimes in the Telugu country.
BANGHY
a. A shoulder-yoke for carrying loads, the yoke or bangy resting on the shoulder, while the load is apportioned at either end in two equal weights, and generally hung by cords. The milkmaid’s yoke is the nearest approach to a survival of the bangy- staff in England. Also such a yoke with its pair of baskets or boxes. — (See PITARRAH).
b. Hence a parcel post, carried originally in this way, was called bangy or dawk-bangy, even when the primitive mode of transport had long become obsolete. “A bangy parcel” is a parcel received or sent by such post.
PITARRAH, A coffer or box used in travelling by palankin, to carry the traveller’s clothes, two such being slung to a banghy. The thing was properly a basket made of cane ; but in later practice of tin sheet, with a light wooden frame.

DAWK was transport by relays of men. To travel by palanquin one ‘lay a dawk‘ which was to order relays of bearers, or horses, to be posted on a road. As regards palankin bearers this used to be done either through the post-office, or through local chowdries (headman of a craft in a town, and more particularly to the person who is selected by Government as the agent through whom supplies, workmen, &c., are supplied for public purposes) of bearers.

George Dodd’s History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856 explained how the system worked:

There are so few good roads in India, that wheel-carriages can scarcely be trusted for any long distances. The prevailing modes of travel are on horseback or in a palanquin. … as it is almost impossible to travel on horseback during the heat of the day, the more expensive but more regular dâk is in greater request.
The dâk is a sort of government post, available for private individuals as for officials. A traveller having planned his journey, he applies to the postmaster of the district, who requires from one to three days’ notice, according to the extent of accommodation needed. The usual complement for one traveller consists of eight palkee-burdars or palanquin-bearers, two mussanjees or torch-bearers, and two bangey-burdars or luggage-porters: if less than this number be needed, the fact must be notified. The time and place of starting, and the duration and localities of the halts, must also be stated; for everything is to be paid beforehand, on the basis of a regular tariff. The charge is about one shilling per mile for the entire set of twelve men—shewing at how humble a rate personal services are purchasable in India. There is also an extra charge for demurrage or delays on the road, attributable to the traveller himself. For these charges, the postmaster undertakes that there shall be relays of dâk servants throughout the whole distance, even if it be the nine hundred miles from Calcutta to Delhi; and to insure this, he writes to the different villages and post stations, ordering relays to be ready at the appointed hours. The stages average about ten miles each, accomplished in three hours; at the end of which time the twelve men retrace their steps, and are succeeded by another twelve; for each set of men belong to a particular station, in the same way as each team of horses for an English stage-coach belongs to a particular town. ...
The palanquin, palankeen, or palkee, is a kind of wooden box opening at the sides by sliding shutters; it is about six feet in length by four in height, and is suspended by two poles, borne on the shoulders of four men. The eight bearers relieve one another in two gangs of four each. ...
On account of the weight, nothing is carried that can be easily dispensed with; but the traveller manages to fit up his palanquin with a few books, his shaving and washing apparatus, his writing materials, and a few articles in frequent use. The regular fittings of the palanquin are a cushion or bed, a bolster, and a few light coverings. The traveller’s luggage is mostly carried in petarrahs, tin boxes or wicker-baskets about half a yard square: a porter can carry two of these; and one or two porters will suffice for the demands of any ordinary traveller, running before or by the side of the palanquin. The petarrahs are hung, each from one end of a bangey or bamboo pole, the middle of which rests on the bearer’s shoulder. The torch-bearers run by the side of the palanquin to give light during night-travelling; the torch is simply a short stick bound round at one end with a piece of rag or a tuft of hemp, on which oil is occasionally dropped from a flask or a hollow bamboo; the odour of the oil-smoke is disagreeable, and most travellers are glad to dispense with the services of a second torch-bearer.

Palanquin from “The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China, and Japan 1856-7-8.” by George Dodd

Firozpur (formerly Ferozepore) is close to the present day border with Pakistan and 75 km to Lahore. Map shows the road from from Ferozepore to Loodianah and Dummkot (now known as Dharamkot) where Colonel Wymer was attacked.

Firozpur to Ludhiana (Loodianah) is more than 100 kilometers, a 25 hour walk. Dharamkot (Dummkot) is about half way. When I read about Wymer’s palanquin I thought it would have been silly to travel such a long way in a large carried box. Why not ride? After reading Dodd’s explanation of the system of relays of bearers and avoiding the heat by travelling overnight it makes more sense to me. I can understand why Colonel Wymer was not on horseback and why he had no escort.

Related posts and further reading

• A Passage to India
• F is for Ferozepore

• Asiatic Journal And Monthly Register (1840) Vol.31 pages 221-2 retrieved through archive.org
• Dodd, George. “The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China, and Japan 1856-7-8.”, 1859, retrieved through Free EBooks | Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53360/53360-h/53360-h.htm
• Yule, Henry; Burnell, A.C. (1903). Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. William Crooke ed. London: J. Murray. Retrieved through archive.org
• Mondal, Mouni. “How the British Were Mesmerised by Bengal’s ‘Palanquins’.” Get Bengal, 12 Jan. 2023, https://www.getbengal.com/details/how-the-british-were-mesmerised-by-bengals-palanquins 

Wikitree: George Petre Wymer K.C.B. (1788 – 1868)

O is for Opportunities Lost and Found

Joseph Sherburne, the husband of my 4th great grand aunt (1751–1805), was born in 1751 in Falmouth, Cornwall. His father, also named Joseph (c. 1721–1763), was a seaman, captain of the pacquet “Hanover” (a ‘pacquet’ or ‘packet’ was a small-to-medium mail, passenger, and general-cargo boat, usually coastal). In 1763, when young Joseph was twelve, the “Hanover” was wrecked in a hurricane and his father drowned.

EAST INDIA COMPANY

In 1767 Joseph Sherburne junior, aged 16, was appointed a writer (junior clerk) in the East India Company. He quickly rose to Head Assistant in the Accountant’s Office, and in 1870 was promoted to Assistant under William Harwood, the Collector of two Districts, Rajemehal [Rajmahal] and Boglipore [Bhagalpur], 200 miles north of Calcutta. Hoping to succeed to the collectorship, Sherburne took the opportunity to study the local language and the administration of collections.

A Collector was head of a district’s revenue management, responsible for the registration, alteration, and partition of holdings; the settlement of disputes; the management of indebted estates; loans to agriculturists, and famine relief. A Collector also served as District Magistrate, exercising general supervision over inferior courts and directing police work.

SUPERSEDED

In 1773 Sherburne missed out on promotion to Harwood’s position, superseded by another candidate, James Barton. Sherburne claimed that Barton was his junior in the service and less experienced. He ‘returned to the Presidency‘—was moved to Calcutta. For the next five years he held no substantial position in the Company and received only a small monthly retainer.

SUPERSEDED AGAIN

In 1778 he gained an appointment, becoming Superintendent of Police in Calcutta under Charles Stafford Playdell. When Playdell died in 1779 Sherburne was again passed over for promotion, superseded by a Mr Motte who, Sherburne noted, was not at the time even in the Company’s employment.

In 1781, Joseph Sherburne, Deputy Jemedar [a police rank, roughly equivalent to army Lieutenant] was a Member of the Grand Jury in the Calcutta trial of Mr James Augustus Hicky, printer of the Bengal Gazette. Hicky, a strong critic of Governor Hastings, was found guilty of libel and sentenced to jail. The newspaper was shut down.

MEMORIALISING THE COMPANY

In 1784 and 1785 Sherburne, by then senior merchant at Fort William, Calcutta on the Bengal Establishment wrote a series of memorials to John Macpherson, acting Governor General, to Warren Hastings, the Governor-General, and to “The Honorable Court of Directors for the Affairs of the Honorable United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies”, giving a history of his employment with the Company and petitioning to be appointed again, in a different capacity.

Sherburne’s memorials were published and can be read through GoogleBooks

BAZAAR

In the early 1780s Sherburne established Sherburne Bazar in Calcutta, where the Chandni Chawk now stands. Sherburne and two other merchants separately petitioned the Governor General and Council for permission to build market places in accordance with a 1781 Bye Law. They pledged to set up bazaars with pucca (lit. ‘ripe’, here, ‘well-constructed’, ‘permanent’) buildings, tiled shops and stalls instead of the straw huts of the desi (native Indian) bazaars.

Sherburne’s was a private bazaar, specialising in articles catering to European demands. Of the private bazaars his is said to have stocked the largest number of articles.

A view in the Bazaar, leading to the Chitpore Road in about 1815 by James Baillie Fraser from his ‘Views of Calcutta and its Environs’ . Image retrieved from the British Library.

Chandni Chowk Street, Kolkata 2008 photograph by P.K.Niyogi Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

SCAVENGER OF CALCUTTA

In June 1785 Joseph Sherbourne was appointed” Scavenger of Calcutta” under the Commissioner of Police. “Scavenger” is derived from “Scavage”, a tax levied upon goods offered for sale subject to duty. A Scavenger was an officer charged with inspecting the goods and collecting the tax. In 1786, when he joined the Freemason Provincial Grand Lodge of Bengal, Joseph Sherburne described himself as “Scavenger of the Town of Calcutta”.

It seems Sherburne’s persistence in his memorials petitioning to be re-employed by the Company paid off, for in April 1787 Joseph Sherburne was appointed Collector of Beerbhoom [Birbhum] and Bishenpore [Bishnupur], 80 miles north-west of Calcutta.

COLLECTOR

In histories of rural Bengal, Sherburne’s appointment of April 1787 as Collector of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore is regarded as the beginning of a new period of order and prosperity in those districts. Sherburne is said to have ruled sternly, “as a governor of a newly subjected frontier ought to rule”. During Sherburne’s brief administration—a year and a half—“the capital of the united district was transferred from Bishenpore, on the south of the Adjii, to Soorie [Suri] the present headquarters in Beerbhoom, on the north of the river; the larger bodies of marauders were broken up, and two hereditary princes reduced to the rank of private country gentlemen.”

Under Sherburne’s administration of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore, “the two frontier principalities had passed from the condition of military fiefs into that of a regular British district administered by a collector and covenanted assistants, defended by the Company’s troops, studded with fortified factories, intersected by a new military road, and possessing daily communication with the seat of government in Calcutta.”

In November 1788 Sherburne was removed as Collector, recalled on suspicion of corruption. With the charge no longer an impediment to his employment in the Company, however, 12 years later, in 1801 he was again employed by the East India Company.

Water-colour painting of the Fort of Rajanagar in the district of Beerbhom [Rajnagar, Birbhum] dated 1790, during the third Mysore War, by Colin MacKenzie (1754-1821). Image from the collection of the British Library.

DEBTOR

Discussing the ruinous interest rates that debtors in 18th century Calcutta sometimes incurred, the memoirist William Hickey, who knew Sherburne, recounts that he, “upon his first arrival from England, borrowed from a Bengal sitcar [probably sowcar, a native banker] nine hundred sicca rupees [coined money] for which he executed a bond and warrant of attorney to confess judgment, payable in six months, and not having a command of money he continued to renew the security every six months ; I myself [Hickey] saw this gentleman prosecuted in the Supreme Court for fifty-eight thousand odd hundred rupees, to which enormous amount the comparatively trifling sum of nine hundred had swelled in the manner above mentioned.”

(On these figures, Sherburne was being sued for 65 times the original loan.)

MARRIAGE

At some point in the twelve years between his removal as Collector in 1788 and his re-employment in 1801, Sherburne appears to have left India to travel to Boston Massachusetts, where he had distant cousins. He was possibly hoping to find a wife. There, on 7 July 1793, Joseph Sherburn married Frances Johnstone Dana (1768–1832). She was the older sister of my 4th great grandfather William Pulteney Dana, and the aunt of my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Frances Dana. The marriage record is annotated “of Great Britain”. Frances Dana’s father had been born in Cambridge, Massachusetts; presumably she was visiting her cousins there.

Joseph Sherburne and his new wife returned to Bengal.

In June 1802 Joseph Sherburne was appointed Collector of Boglepore (present day Bhagalpur in Bihar).

Water-colour drawing of the Hill House at Bhagalpur by Sir Charles D’Oyly (1781-1845), September 1820. Image from the British Library. Hill House was built by Augustus Cleveland (1755-84) of the Bengal Civil Service who was Collector and Judge at Bhagalpur.

CHILDREN

In 1785 Eldred Thomas Sherburne, son of Mr. Joseph Sherburne, Senior Merchant, was baptised in Calcutta. His mother was ‘a Brahmin’. In the early years of the nineteenth century Thomas Eldred Sherburne kept a school in the Chitpore Road.

Joseph and Frances Sherburne had two children, both baptised in Boglepore [Bhagalpur]. Their son Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne was baptised on 16 December 1802 and their daughter Frances Henrietta Laura Sherburne on 3 October 1803.

DEATH

Joseph died 54 years old on 15 July 1805. His death notice in the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser of 10 February 1806 states that he was late Judge Magistrate of Purneah (Purnia, a district in the Baghalpur Division of Bengal), and Senior Merchant on the Bengal Establishment. He died intestate; administration was given to his widow.

Frances stayed in India for a number of years but eventually returned to England, probably in 1819 after 14 years of sorting out Joseph’s affairs and then the affairs of her brother Charles Patrick Dana who died in India in 1816. Frances died in England in 1832.

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING

• Frances Johnstone Sherburne (1768 – 1832)
• Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne (1802 – 1831)

• Hunter, W. Wilson. (1868). The Annals of Rural Bengal. London: Smith, Elder. pp 16-18. Retrieved through Hathitrust. 
• Mukhopadhyay, Asok. “CHANDNEY BAZAAR: A Neglected Element of Change Toward Social Awakening of Bengal.” PURONOKOLKATA, 13 Aug. 2019, https://puronokolkata.com/2019/07/01/chandney-bazaar-an-ignored-element-of-change-toward-social-awakening-of-bengal/

Wikitree: Joseph Sherburne (1751 – 1805)

L is for languages

My first cousin five times removed Alliston Champion Toker (1843-1936) was a soldier and translator.

He was born on 10 December 1843, third son and youngest of the eight children of Philip Champion Toker (1802–1882) and Elizabeth née Branthwayt (1808–1889).

Educated at Brighton College, Sussex, and Victoria College, St Helier, Jersey, Toker was nominated as a cadet for the Bengal Infantry by a distant relative, Major General Sir Robert Vivian KCB, the step-son of a sister of Toker’s paternal grandmother. He attended Addiscombe Military Seminary, military school of the British East India Company. In 1860 Toker entered the Bengal Infantry as an Ensign, the lowest grade of commissioned officer. (Beside Addiscombe, Toker also attended the School of Musketry, Hythe, and trained in army signalling at Aldershot.)

Toker had a distinguished career in India. In 1864-5 he served in the Bhootan Expedition (the Anglo-Bhutan War). In 1882 he was Deputy Assistant Adjutant General (a senior staff officer) to the Indian contingent at Tel-el-Kebir and the pursuit to Zagazig (an incident of the Anglo-Egyptian War); he was mentioned in despatches, brevetted as Lieutenant-Colonel and awarded the Order of Osmanieh, 4th Class. He was made a CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath), for services in the Burmese Expedition of 1886-7. He became a Colonel, Bengal Staff Corps, in 1886 and from September 1887 to August 1892 was Departmental Secretary to the Military Department of the Government of India. He was promoted to Major-General in 1897. In 1906 Toker was made Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB).

In the course of his career Toker became proficient in Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Urdu, and was Official Translator to the Government of India for 14 years. He oversaw the translation of all Indian Army military textbooks into Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi. It was said he spoke seven Oriental languages, as well as five European. At the age of 72 he thought he would like to get his degree in Oriental languages and went to Cambridge as an undergraduate, only to find that the tutor was a man he had coached for the job. He had no special privileges at the university, except that he was allowed to sit at the dons’ table.

During World War 1, when he was in his 70s, Toker was employed in France as a translator in the 1915-16 Indian Expeditionary Force and from 1916 to 1919 he served in British Postal Censorship.

Sir Alliston Champion Toker by Lafayette 1 March 1928
NPG x42362 © National Portrait Gallery, London

When Alliston Toker died age 92 in Bedfordshire, England, obituaries appeared in newspapers around the world. Even a small country newspaper in Yass, Australia noted his passing. All mentioned his university studies at Cambridge in Oriental languages when he was in his 70s.

From the Yass Tribune-Courier (NSW, Australia), Monday 24 August 1936, page 6:

GENERAL WHO COULD NOT BE RETIRED
Sir A. C. Toker Dies Aged 92
UNDERGRADUATE IN HIS SEVENTIES
Ninety-two years of age, a general who could not be retired died the other day. He was Major General Sir Alliston Champion Toker, and his death occurred at his Bedford home.
A relative stated: "He was probably the oldest general in the Indian Army, and was on the active list the whole time. He could not be retired.
"Sir Alliston carried out a survey of the Chindwin district in Burmah in 1886-7. For that he received from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Roberts, the honour that he could never be retired from the active list. It is a very uncommon honour, and I think probably only two others hold it.
"At the age of 72 he thought he would like to get his degree in Oriental languages and went to Cambridge as an undergraduate, only to find that the tutor was a man he had coached for the job!
"He had no special privileges at the university, except that he was allowed to sit at the dons' table.
"He was in France for 11 months during the war in 1915 until the Indian Division, to which he acted as interpreter, returned to India.
Bent For Languages 
"He was the first officer to translate any military text-books into Indian languages. He had a natural bent for languages, and spoke at least seven Oriental tongues, as well as five European.
"In effect, he retired 40 years ago, and after his retirement was awarded the K.B.E."
At the India Office it was stated that the official description of Sir Alliston's position was that he remained until his death on the unemployed supernumerary list of the Indian Army.
Sir Alliston was born at Hendon, Middlesex, and entered the Bengal Army in 1860. He became captain in 1872, major in 1880, brevet lieutenant-colonel two years later, colonel in 1886, and major-general in 1897.
Sir Alliston was twice married. His first wife died in 1878, and his second, in 1926.

Related posts

• A is for Addiscombe

Wikitree: Alliston Champion Toker KCB (1843 – 1936)

K is for Retreat from Kabul

In 1842, in a catastrophic conclusion to the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838–1842, 4,500 British and Indian troops, with more than 10,000 civilians, servants, and women and children, accepted a treacherous offer of safe-passage and attempted to retreat from their fortified cantonment in Kabul to the garrison town of Jalalabad. The retreat became a panic, the panic a rout, a shocking defeat and a bloody shambles.

‘Retraite De Caboul. Premiere Journee, 6 Jan 1842.’ Coloured engraving in the collection of the National Army Museum.

‘Retraite De Caboul. Premiere Journee, 9 January 1842’ Coloured engraving in the collection of the National Army Museum.

Among the civilians were Mrs Georgiana Mainwaring, wife of my first cousin five times removed, and her 3 month old son Edward.

One of the English gentlewomen captured in the retreat was a Lady Sale, who kept a diary of the catastrophe, which she published in 1843 as “A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, 1841–42“. Mrs Mainwaring is mentioned several times. A second account, “The Military Operations at Cabul, which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842“, and also Prison Sketches, Comprising Portraits of the Cabul Prisoners, and Other Subjects, were published in 1843 by a British gunner, Lieutenant Vincent Eyre. Eyre lists Georgiana Mainwaring and her son among the ladies and children imprisoned by the Afghans. A later autobiography by the British officer Lieutenant General Colin Mackenzie, published posthumously in 1884 as “Storms and Sunshine of a Soldier’s life” also mentions Mrs Mainwaring several times.

On 17 September 1842, nine months after their internment by Afghan forces, the prisoners were rescued by a relief force under the command of Sir Richmond Shakespear.

---

Georgiana Mainwaring was born Georgiana Caroline Barbara Meiselbach on 6 November 1812 in West Bengal. Her father was a Prussian merchant trading with the Dutch and British East India Companies; her mother was the daughter of a merchant.

In 1831 she married George Byron, a lieutenant of the 48th Native Infantry (second cousin of the poet). Three years afterwards he died of fever. Their one son was educated at a school for military orphans.

In 1838 Georgiana re-married, to Edward Rowland Mainwaring Esq., 16th regiment Native Infantry. Edward, my first cousin five times removed, was the oldest son of Thomas Mainwaring, of the Bengal Civil Service. His 1868 obituary in the Illustrated London News records his early career:

… he entered the Bengal Army when only sixteen years of age [about 1823]. He served throughout the whole of the Affghan campaign from 1839 to 1842, including the assault and capture of Ghurnee. He was engaged at the night attack at Babookoorgch, and the destruction of Khoodawah. He was one of the garrison of Jellalabad; and, in the general action and
defeat of Akbar Khan, and the subsequent operations leading to the reoccupation of Cabul …

In 1839 the British occupied Kabul and restored the former ruler, Shah Shujah Durrani, as emir.

By 1841 the Mainwarings had moved to Kabul, where their son Edward Phillipson Mainwaring was born. At the end of 1841 Mainwaring, now promoted to captain, was stationed at Jalalabad. His wife and son remained in Kabul.

An uprising in Kabul forced the British commander, Major-General William Elphinstone, to fall back to the British garrison at Jalalabad, 90 miles (140 km) from Kabul. As the army and its dependents and camp followers began their march, it came under attack from Afghan tribesmen. Many in the column died of exposure, frostbite or starvation, or were killed during the fighting. The Afghans attacked the column again and again as it moved slowly through the winter snow. The British army lost 4,500 troops and 12,000 civilians, including the families of Indian and British soldiers, workmen, servants and other followers.

Of the more than 16,000 people in the column commanded by Elphinstone, only one European (Assistant Surgeon William Brydon) and a few Indian sepoys reached Jalalabad. Over one hundred British prisoners and civilian hostages were captured, Georgiana Mainwaring and her infant son among them.

Lady Sale, 9 January 1842. Lithograph in the collection of the National Army Museum.

Lady Sale writes about the 8th of January 1842:

The ladies were mostly travelling in kajavas, and were mixed up with the baggage and column in the pass : here they were heavily fired on. Many camels were killed. On one camel were, in one kajava, Mrs. Boyd and her youngest boy Hugh ; and in the other Mrs. Mainwaring and her infant, scarcely three months old, and Mrs. Anderson's eldest child. This camel was shot. Mrs. Boyd got a horse to ride ; and her child was put on another behind a man, who being shortly after unfortunately killed, the child was carried off by the Affghans. Mrs. Mainwaring, less fortunate, took her own baby in her arms. Mary Anderson was carried off in the confusion. Meeting with a pony laden with treasure, Mrs. M. endeavoured to mount and sit on the boxes, but they upset ; and in the hurry pony and treasure were left behind ; and the unfortunate lady pursued her way on foot, until after a time an Affghan asked her if she was wounded, and told her to mount behind him. This apparently kind offer she declined, being fearful of treachery ; alleging as an excuse that she could not sit behind him on account of the difficulty of holding her child when so mounted. This man shortly after snatched her shawl off her shoulders, and left her to her fate. Mrs. M.'s sufferings were very great ; and she deserves much credit for having preserved her child through these dreadful scenes. She not only had to walk a considerable distance with her child in her arms through the deep snow, but had also to pick her way over the bodies of the dead, dying, and wounded, both men and cattle, and constantly to cross the streams of water, wet, up to the knees, pushed and shoved about by men and animals, the enemy keeping up a a sharp fire, and several persons being killed close to her. She, however, got safe to camp with her child, but had no opportunity to change her clothes ; and I know from experience that it was many days ere my wet habit became thawed, and can fully appreciate her discomforts.

Illustration of kajavas or kachavas from the Sepoy Rebellion: British officers travelling in panniers on the backs of camels and borne in a litter by Indian men. Tinted lithograph of 1859 in the Wellcome collection.

Colin Mackenzie’s account of the same day describes Mrs Mainwaring as “a young merry girl” and kind-hearted:

Towards the end of the pass the hills close in considerably, at this part the Afghans had erected on each side small stone breastworks, behind which they lay, dealing out death, with perfect impunity to themselves.
Those ladies who were on camels could do no more than crawl along at the slow rate of about two miles an hour. How can we sufficiently admire the behaviour of the Hindustanis who unflinchingly remained at their posts, and led the camels through the murderous fire !
Mrs. Vincent Eyre was the first lady who cleared the pass, owing to her horse taking fright and running away with her. Captain Anderson's eldest girl and Captain Boyd's youngest boy fell into the hands of the Afghans. Neither of these poor babes was five years old ; they had been placed in camel-panniers, the boy with his mother on one side, and the girl on the other, under the charge of Mrs. Mainwaring, a young merry girl, whose husband was at Jellalabad; although she had an infant ten weeks old of her own in her arms, generously volunteered this charitable office, seeing that Mrs. Anderson had another child, a baby, to take care of. The camel on which the above little party were was shot ; it lay down, leaving its helpless freight a stationary mark for the bullets of the Afghans. A Hindustani sawar took Mrs. Boyd on his horse and carried her through in safety. The kind-hearted Mrs. Mainwaring was nearly meeting a more wretched fate.She had just contrived to dismount with her own infant from the fallen camel, when an Afghan horseman rode up, threatening her with his sword, and desiring her to 'give him the shawl she wore. "While she was urging some vain remonstrance, a grenadier Sepoy of the 54th contrived to force his way to her rescue, and discharged the contents of his musket into the body of the Afghan. He then gave his arm to his fair protegee and supported her failing steps to near the exit from the pass, where, poor fellow, he fell by a bullet from one of the stone breastworks.

On 9 January 1842 the Afghan leader Akbar Khan persuaded General Elphinstone to hand over the women, children and wounded officers hostages in return for supplies and a safe escort for his army. Though Akbar Khan had broken all his previous promises, this arrangement was seen as the only way to protect the women and children from further suffering on the march. Four officers, ten women and twenty-two children were escorted to Khoord-Kabul fort where they joined the three officers taken the day before. They were then taken by stages to Badiabad Fort in the Lughman District, which they reached on 17 January.

Colin Mackenzie’s account of 15 January:

One ruffian nearly frightened poor Mrs. Mainwaring to death. She had unfortunately fallen from her pony, and was seated by the roadside with her baby in her arms crying, when Captain Lawrence overtook her, put her up again, and rode by her till they rejoined the column.

Later in his account Captain Colin McKenzie recorded how “young Mrs. Mainwaring, who, on receiving a box of useful articles from her husband at Jellalabad, most liberally distributed the contents among the other ladies, who were much in need”. Other captives, it is said, were not so willing to share.

From April until August the captives were held at Shewukee (Shewaki), 12 miles (20 km) south of Kabul. In her diary entry of 21 August 1824 Lady Sale wrote:

… Lady Macnaghten, Mrs. Mainwaring, Mrs. Boyd, Mrs. Sturt, and I, occupy the same apartment. Capt. Boyd makes his bed on the landing-place of the stairs, or on the roof of the house ; so that we have no man-kind amongst us, except the Boyds' two little boys, and Mrs. Mainwaring's baby. This little fellow was born just before the insurrection broke out in Cabul (in October) : his father had gone with Sale's brigade ; and we always call him Jung-i-Bahadur.

‘One side of the Interior of the Square under the Hill at Shewukee where the British Prisoners resided: The Other Side of the Interior of the Square if the Zenana at Shewukee’, 1842 Lithograph based on a sketch by Vincent Eyre in the collection of the National Army Museum
The apartment of Mrs Mainwaring and child with Lady Sale (the I in the caption) and others was on the extreme right.

Prison Scene. Coloured lithograph after Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, 1842. From the collection of the National Army Museum

An Army of Retribution was formed, led by Sir George Pollock. As this force approached through the Khyber Pass, the hostages were moved and moved again by their Afghan captors. In August they managed to bribe their way to freedom. Reaching the Kalu Pass on 16 September the tattered remnants were met by Sir Richmond Shakespear and 600 cavalry and escorted from there to Kabul, nearly 90 miles (140 km) to the east. They had been prisoners of the Afghans for nine months.

Fort of Ali Musjeed, Khyber Pass Camp of the 4th Brigade of Major General Pollock’s Force, April 1842 Watercolour in the collection of the National Army Museum
In April 1842 Major-General George Pollock’s Army of Retribution forced the pass en route to relieving the besieged garrison at Jellalabad.

Georgiana and Edward Mainwaring were reunited. They had two more children born in India: Emily born 1844 in Cawnpore and Francis born in 1851 in Deyrah.

Edward died in 1868 in Madras. By 1871 Georgiana had returned to England, where in 1881 she died at her daughter’s house in West Teignmouth and was buried in Teignmouth cemetery. The inscription on her headstone describes Georgiana as “the last of the lady hostages …. Cabul disaster, Jan 1842”.

Google map of the captivity of the hostages created by Families in British India Society (FIBIS)
Hostages route to Badiabad (pink markers): Khoord Kabul 9 Jan 1842 Tezeen 11 Jan 1842 Seh Baba 12 Jan 1842 Jugdulluk 13 Jan 1842 Kutz-i-Mahommed Ali Khan 14 Jan 1842 Tigree 15 Jan 1842 Badiabad 17 Jan 1842
Hostages route to Bamian (green markers): Camp 11 Apr 1842 Camp 12 Apr 1842 Camp 13 Apr 1842 Kabul River 14 Apr 1842 Sarubi 15 Apr 1842 Tezeen 19 Apr 1842 Camp 23 Apr 1842 Zanduh 23 May 1842 Khoord-Kabul 23 May 1842 Noor Mohammed 24 May 1842 Babur’s Tomb 26 Aug 1842 Jalrez 28 Aug 1842 Bamian 3 Sept 1842
Return route from Bamian (orange markers): Killa Topchee 16 Sept 1842 Urgundee Kowt e Ashrow Kabul 21 Sep 1842
Hajjigak

Related posts and further reading

• Georgiana Caroline Barbara Mainwaring which was reposting a 2017 post by the Friends of the Old Teignmouth Cemetery Georgiana Caroline Barbara Mainwaring

• Florentia Lady Sale (1790-1853) – kept a diary and published an account
  • Sale, Florentia (1843). A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan, 1841–42. London: John Murray. Retrieved through archive.org
• Lieutenant Vincent Eyre (1811-1881) – kept a diary and published an account, also published his sketches of the event. He was among the prisoners as a wounded officer.
  • Eyre, Vincent (1842). The Military Operations at Cabul, which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842 (1 ed.). London: John Murray. Retrieved through the Wellcome Collection
  • ———— (1843). The Military Operations at Cabul, which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842 (2 ed.). London: John Murray. Retrieved through archive.org
  • ———— (1843). Prison Sketches, Comprising Portraits of the Cabul Prisoners, and Other Subjects. London: Dickinson & Son. Retrieved through Library of Congress
• Mackenzie, Helen (Douglas). “Storms and sunshine of a soldier’s life : Colin Mackenzie, 1825-1881.” Edinburgh : D. Douglas, 1884, retrieved through archive.org also includes an account of the first Afghan War by Colin Mackenzie (1806-1881). Account of retreat from page 256
• Macrory, Patrick Arthur. “Kabul Catastrophe : the Story of the Disastrous Retreat from Kabul, 1842” (a reprint of the 1966 Signal Catastrophe). Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1986. Can be read online through the internet archive (you need to log on)
• Families in British India Society (FIBIS) Captivity of the Hostages includes timeline and names

Wikitree:

• Georgiana Carolina Barbara (Meiselbach) Mainwaring (1812 – 1881)
• Edward Phillipson Mainwaring (1841 – 1922)
• Edward Rowland Mainwaring (1807 – 1868)
• Wikitree page on 1842 Retreat from Kabul – work in progress but includes links to profiles of some of those involved

I is for Indian Mutiny

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 put an end to the authority of the British East India Company and marked the beginning of direct Crown rule, the ‘British Raj’, which lasted until 1947.

Several of my relatives served in the Company’s army and in the British regular forces; some were directly caught up in the chaos and violence of the 1857 insurrection.

Last year I wrote about my second cousin five times removed Lieutenant Matthew Hugh Reveley of the 74th Native Infantry. On 11 May 1857 at the age of 27 he was killed in the capture of the Cashmere Gate, an incident of the Mutiny in Delhi.

“Kashmir Gate, Delhi, Punjab” photographed by Samuel Bourne  in the 1860s, showing damage from the Mutiny. In the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A relative from a different branch of my family, my first cousin five times removed Captain Rowland Mainwaring Smith of the 54th Bengal Native Infantry, was also killed that day, cut down by mutineers near the Delhi Church close to the Cashmere Gate. He was buried on the Ridge near Flagstaff Tower. His name is preserved on a memorial in Nicholson Cemetery, New Delhi:

Sacred To the Memory of Captain R. M. Smith, Captain C. Burrowes, Lieut't E. A. Edwards, Lieut't W. Waterfield. All of the 54th Reg't B. N. I. They were killed by the Mutineers of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry on the 11th May 1857, opposite the Church in the city of Delhi, this tribute to their memory and merits is erected by their surviving brother officers.

The inscription on the grave of Smith and his fellow officers, ‘on The Ridge near Flagstaff Tower’, was transcribed by Miles Irving in his A List of Inscriptions on Christian Tombs or Monuments in the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Kashmir and Afghanistan Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest published in 1910.

Irving described the murder of Smith and his fellow officers:

When the rebel cavalry entered Delhi, the 54th under Colonel Ripley were ordered to march down from cantonments with two guns. Two companies were left behind to escort the guns, and the rest of the regiment marched down to the Cashmere gate. Within, in the main guard, was a detachment of the 38th Native Infantry. While facing them, the rebels were surging down towards the gate. The 38th refused to fire, and the 54th excused themselves on the score of not being loaded. While they were loading, Ripley was cut down, and with him fell Smith, Burrowes, Edwards and Waterfield.

A month later sepoys under General Hugh Wheeler, commander of the garrison at Cawnpore, rebelled and besieged hastily-erected British defences. Another of my first cousins five times removed, Cornet Charles Mainwaring of the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry, was on lookout on the night of 22 June 1857:

All night long a series of false charges and surprises were made on the barrack, and not a man for an instant left his post. Towards dawn, the enemy being more quiet, Mr Mainwaring, a cavalry cadet, one of Captain Thomson’s picket, begged him to lie down, while he kept a look-out. Scarcely had the captain closed his eyes when Mainwaring shouted, “Here they come!” The enemy, with more pluck than they had hitherto shown, advanced close up to the doorway of the barrack. Mainwaring’s revolver despatched two of the enemy.

Charles Mainwaring survived the attack but Wheeler’s entrenchment was starving. Kingston continues “on the 25th of June General Wheeler entered into arrangements for the evacuation of the place with Nana Sahib. The next day the survivors proceeded to the river to embark on board boats prepared for them, when, with a treachery almost unparalleled in history, by the order of that demon in human shape, they were fired on and mostly killed.” Mainwaring was one of those killed in the infamous massacre.

Mainwaring is remembered on a tablet in All Souls Church, Cawnpore:

To the glory of God and in memory of more than a thousand Christian people, who met their deaths hard by, between 6th June & 15th July 1857. These tablets are placed in this the Memorial Church. All Souls Cawnpore by the Government N.W.P.
2nd Light Cavalry - Major E. Vibart. Capt E.J. Seppings, Wife and Children. Capt R.U. & Mrs Jenkins. Lieut R.O. Quin. Lieut C.W. Quin. Lieut J.H. Harrison. Lieut W.J. Manderson. Lieut F.S.M Wren. Lieut M.G. Daniell. Lieut M. Balfour. Cornet W.A. Stirling. Surgn. W.R. & Mrs Boyes. Vety. Surgn. E.G. Chalwin & Wife. Ridg. Mr. D. Walsh, Wife & Children. Sergt. Major H. Cladwell. Qr. Mr. Sergt. F. & Mrs Tress. Cornet C. Mainwaring 6th L.C. Lieut A.J. Boulton, 7th L.C.

Three of Charles Mainwaring’s brothers—Rowland, George, and Norman, were also caught up in the mutiny.

When the mutiny broke out in 1857, the first of these, Captain R.R. Mainwaring, was second-in-command of the 7th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. This regiment mutinied at Dinapur with the 8th and 40th. In his 1927 “A Postscript To The Records Of The Indian Mutiny”, Lieutenant-Colonel George Gimlette wrote:

The mutiny of this regiment together with that of the other two of the B.N.I. at Dinapur (8th and 40th) was precipitated by the weakness of the General commanding at that station; an old, inefficient man. Strongly urged by the European community of Calcutta the Governor-General had given permission, but not an order, to General Lloyd to disarm the three regiments. This as an old, infatuated sepoy officer, he was loath to do, and could only make up his mind to a fatal half measure, that of depriving them of their percussion caps. On the morning of July 25th, 1857, the European troops in the station, 10th Foot, two Companies of the 37th, and a Company of Artillery, were paraded in the great square, the caps in the magazine were removed by an officer with a small guard, and brought into the square. The sepoys of the 7th made noisy demonstrations, and threatened to prevent the removal; they were, however, pacified by their officers. At 10 o’clock an order was issued by General Lloyd for a parade of the three N.I. Regiments, and the collection of the caps in the sepoys’ possession. The immediate result was open mutiny. The men seized their arms and began to fire on their officers. The European troops were again paraded, but their advance was so delayed that the mutineers got clear away in the direction of Arrah, where the disaffected Rajput landowner, Kunwar Singh, at once joined them with all his followers.

A telegram from Colonel Rowcroft at Dinapore on 8 October 1857 to the Chief of Staff mentions Captain Mainwaring, 7th Regiment Native Infantry, commands 50 Nujeebs [irregular militia, of good family] in the opium godowns, Patna.

George Byers Mainwaring, Charles Mainwaring’s second brother, was a considerable linguist, fluent in both Hindi and Urdu. In 1854 he had returned to England where he spent three years. He was recalled to India in 1857 at the time of the mutiny and was employed as interpreter with 42nd and 49th Regiments. He was first posted first to Cawnpore and then the Punjab region.

Norman William Mainwaring, Charles Mainwaring’s third brother, probably saw some of the mutiny, for though he was stationed in South Africa in the early part of 1857, by 1858 he had returned to India.

Another relative, my 3rd great uncle Major Orfeur Cavenagh, survived the mutiny. In a letter of 1868 (Private letter book, 11) he describes his role in its suppression:

In 1854, at the special request of the then Governor General Lord Dalhousie, [I] accepted the appointment on his staff of Town Major of Fort William [the fort in Calcutta]. In this capacity as the Governor General’s representative, [I] recommended the numerous alterations in the European Barracks and other buildings as well as general sanitary improvements, which have led to the ordinarily satisfactory state of health of the Garrison.
On the 26th January, 1857, [these measures] frustrated the design of the Mutineers to seize Fort William (vide statement of Jemadar Durrion Sing, 34th Regiment, N.I.).
Throughout the Mutiny discharged all the arduous duties connected with the command of Fort William and Calcutta, including the charge of the state prisoners, the raising a Corps of Volunteers, the organisation of a body of Native Servants for the use of the troops arriving from England, the management of a large Military Canteen, the protection of the town, the control of all Public Departments, Military Buildings, Hospitals, etc., and the entire charge (arming, clothing and victualling) of all European invalids and recruits, numbering several thousands, of the company’s service. On four occasions received the thanks and commendation of the Supreme Government.

In recognition of his services during the Indian Mutiny Orfeur Cavenagh was offered the post of Governor of the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Malaya and Penang). He accepted and became Governor for eight years from 1859 to 1867.

The causes immediate and long-term of the Indian Mutiny are still debated by historians. No doubt my relatives had their own opinions. For them, however, it was no academic debate but a bloody vicious turbulent period of their lives and, unfortunately for some, a violent death.

RELATED POST AND READING:

• Death of Lieutenant Reveley in 1857
• O is for Orfeur

• Eva Chatterji: Mutiny Reflections
  • 14 September 2021: God Shall Wipe All Tears From Their Eyes II (a list of the dead at Delhi of 11 May 1857)
  • 23 June 2018: Anniversary (Cawnpore) includes link to a documentary film about Cawnpore and the Mutiny: Indian Sepahi rising 1857 https://youtu.be/fugzn8PAM48
  • 8 March 2022: Calcutta Panics (12 June 1857)
  • 9 March 2022: Calcutta Considers (May 1857)

Wikitree:

• Matthew Hugh Reveley (1829 – 1857)
  • Matthew was a grandson of Jane (Champion Crespigny) Reveley (1742 – 1829) and great grandson of Philip Champion de Crespigny and Anne (Fonnereau) Champion de Crespigny
• Rowland Mainwaring Smith (1825 – 1857)
  • Rowland was the grandson of my fifth great grandparents Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane (Latham) Mainwaring (1755 – 1809). He was a first cousin of Charles Mainwaring.
• Charles Mainwaring (1839 – 1857)
  • Charles was the grandson of my fifth great grandparents Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane (Latham) Mainwaring (1755 – 1809). He was a first cousin of Rowland Smith.
• Rowland Rees Mainwaring (1819 – 1906) brother of Charles
• Norman William Mainwaring (1821 – 1858), brother of Charles
• George Byers Mainwaring (1825 – 1893), brother of Charles
• Orfeur Cavenagh (1820 – 1891)
  • Orfeur is my 2nd great grand uncle, son of my third great grandparents James Gordon Cavenagh (1766 – 1844) and Ann (Coates) Cavenagh (1788 – 1846); brother of my great great grandfather Wentworth Cavenagh

H is for Haileybury

My 4th great uncle George Mainwaring (1791–1865) was the youngest son of my 5th great grandparents, Rowland Mainwaring and Jane Mainwaring née Latham. Three of Rowland’s sons, including George, joined the Honourable East India Company; a fourth son, also named Rowland, enlisted in the navy.

George Mainwaring’s petition to join the clerical and administrative arm of the Honourable East India Company is dated 23 December 1806. It was supported by his maternal grandmother’s second husband, Sir Henry Strachey, and a year later, at the age of fifteen or thereabouts, George was accepted as a Writer [junior clerk].

George’s career began with two years training—1807 to 1809—in the East India Company’s College. This had been temporarily accommodated in the Gatehouse buildings of Hertford Castle; by 1809 it had moved to new quarters, known as Haileybury College, in Hailey, Hertfordshire.

The former East India Company College, now Haileybury and Imperial Service College. Photograph in 2005 by Chris Hunt, CC BY-SA 2.0, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

The College had been established in 1806, the year before George began there, its purpose to train ‘young gentlemen’ sixteen to eighteen years old as clerks for the Company. General and vocational education was provided, and its graduates were assigned by Company directors to Writerships in the Company’s Indian bureaucracy. Officers of the Company’s Presidency armies were trained in Surrey at Addiscombe Military Seminary.

The curriculum at Haileybury was intended to equip students for their future responsibilities. They were taught political economy [economics], history, mathematics, natural philosophy [science], classics, law, philology, and languages including Arabic, Hindustani [Hindi–Urdu], Bengali, Marathi, Sanskrit, Telugu, and Persian.

Many of the College staff were noted figures in their field. Among George’s teachers were the linguist Alexander Hamilton, the jurist Edward Christian, Thomas Malthus the economist and demographer, the mathematicians William Dealtry and Bewick Bridge, and Classicists Edward Lewton and Joseph Hallett Batten (College Principal from 1815 to 1837).

In 1810, aged 18, George was appointed to the Company, arriving in India on 30 July. He rose steadily through the ranks, in 1832 becoming a Civil and Session Judge of Benares. After more than thirty years of service, in 1841 he retired and returned to England.

In 1816 George Mainwaring married Isabella Byers, daughter of an East India Company colonel. They had 13 children including five sons; all five joined the Bengal army. Three of these died as young men, one of them murdered in the Mutiny. Two of George’s sons became generals.

George Mainwaring died in London on 24 June 1865. From the Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser 5 July 1865:

On the 24th ultimo, at 9, Porchester-square, Hyde Park, London, George Mainwaring, Esq., late Judge of the Bengal Presidency, E.I.C.S., and brother of the late Admiral Mainwaring, Whitmore Hall, Staffordshire.

RELATED POSTS:

• Mainwaring younger sons go to India

Wikitree:

• George Mainwaring (1790 – 1865), fourth son of Rowland Mainwaring and Jane Latham
• Sons of George:
  • Rowland Rees, born in 1819 and baptised Calcutta, a General in the Bengal Native Infantry, died unmarried
  • Harry, born 1820 at Jaunpore, and died of smallpox, unmarried, at Agra, in 1845. He first joined the Bengal Army. At the time of his death Harry was Lieutenant And Adjutant, 2d Grenadiers.
  • Norman William, born at Jaunpore and baptised 1821 at Benares, and was killed in 1858 in a railway accident at Howrah. At the time of his death he was a Captain with the 73rd Regiment N.I.
  • George Byres born 1825 Banda, lieutenant-general in the Bengal army, died unmarried. He became a noted scholar of the  Lepcha language spoken in the Sikkim and Darjeeling district in West Bengal.
  • Charles, born at Calcutta in 1839, a Cornet in the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry killed on the boats at Cawnpore on 27 June 1857 age 18

G is for garden at Dapuri near Poona

My third cousin four times removed Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny (1821–1895), by profession a medical practitioner, was a keen amateur botanist who became Superintendent of the Government Botanical Gardens at Dapuri [Dapodi] near Poonah [Pune] in India.

He was born on 7 May 1821 in Switzerland, near Montreaux, oldest child of the Reverend Heaton Champion de Crespigny (1796-1858) and Caroline née Bathurst (1797-1861).

Following a succession of scandals in the late 1820s Heaton, improvident and unstable, was committed in 1832 to a debtors’ prison, and the family was rendered destitute.

By 1834, however, through Caroline’s family and friends, means were found to send Eyre to Segrave House, in Cheltenham, where he received a book prize, early evidence, perhaps, of his abilities.

On 2 March 1835 Eyre, now aged 13, ‘son of Heaton de Crespigny, clergyman of 27 Queen Street Grosvenor Square’, is recorded as having been admitted to St Paul’s School, London.

In the late 1830s Eyre and several of his brothers moved to Heidelberg with his mother, now separated from her husband Heaton.

In 1842, at the age of 21, Eyre graduated from Heidelberg University with a medical degree. He returned to England, and gained medical experience as an intern in St Bartholomew’s and Guy’s Hospitals. In 1845 he took up an appointment with the Medical Establishment of the East India Company in Bombay, arriving there in September. In 1846 he was posted to Rutnagherry [Ratnagiri], a port city some 300 km south.

On 5 November 1850, at Malligaum [Malegaon, a town in Maharashtra, 300 km northeast of Bombay], Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny, Esq., Bombay Medical Establishment, married Augusta Cunningham, daughter of a wealthy West Indian planter.

They had five children, one of whom died an infant. Their first child was born 1853 at Ahmedabad in Gujarat, 500 km north of Bombay. Four more children were born at Rutnagherry.

During his residence in India Eyre was employed in several different military, naval, and civil medical roles for the East India Company .

In 1859 he became Acting Conservator of Forests and Superintendent of the Government Botanical Gardens at Dapooree [Dapuri], Poonah [Pune].

The gardens had been established on the estate of Major-General Sir John Malcolm at his residence there. Malcolm, Governor of Bombay from 1827, had purchased the Dapooree estate, originally owned and developed by an English Naval commander, Captain Ford.

Malcolm was keen to convert the Dapooree garden into a botanical establishment, where scientific experiments would be conducted for the naturalisation of fruits, vegetables, and timber, to be obtained from all over the world. The first superintendent was Assistant Surgeon Williamson, who died shortly after taking up the post. He was succeeded by Dr Charles Lush, also an Assistant Surgeon. The most notable superintendent was Alexander Gibson (1800 – 1867), a surgeon of the East India Company. He served as superintendent of the Dapuri botanical gardens from 1838 to 1847, becoming the first Conservator of Forests of India in 1847. Eyre de Crespigny’s move to the gardens from the post of Assistant Surgeon was quite in line with previous appointments, all of them medical men.

In 1862 Eyre returned to England. Though unwell he continued his enthusiasm for botany as an active member of the Botanical Exchange Club, which later became the Botanical Society of the British Isles. In 1877 he published A New London Flora. His obituary in the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign notes that “Beyond this Dr. de Crespigny did not publish, but devoted himself quietly to the study which had for many years been his chief interest.”

Eyre de Crespigny died in 1895. He was survived by his widow, a son and three daughters.

During his residence in India Eyre had collected coloured drawings of plants. After his death these were acquired by the Botanical Department of the British Museum. He had also compiled a herbarium of botanical specimens, which was donated, with 42 snake skins, to Manchester Museum.

From the 2002 book The Dapuri Drawings: Alexander Gibson & the Bombay Botanic Gardens.

Page from the 2002 book The Dapuri Drawings showing an 1865 plan and some views of the bungalow at Dapuri. Image retrieved through AbeBooks.

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING

• I is for interested in India

• Obituary in the 1895 issue of the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, page 127 retrieved through archive.org
• Middleton, Richard. “De Crespigny, Eyre Nicholas Champion (1821 – 1895).” Natural History Biographies http://www.natstand.org.uk, 29 Mar. 2023, http://www.natstand.org.uk/time/DeCrespignyECtime.htm
• “The Weird and Wonderful World of Collecting.” Conservation at The Manchester Museum, 18 Apr. 2013, https://conservationmanchester.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-collecting/

• Sahoni, Pushkar. “Planting the Roots of Empire.” Latest Pune News & Updates | Pimpri Chinchwad Local News, 16 Sept. 2017, https://punemirror.com/entertainment/unwind/planting-the-roots-of-empire/cid5100446.htm 
• Damle, Chinmay. “Taste of Life: How Sir Malcolm Built a Botanical Garden in Poona.” Hindustan Times, 16 Feb. 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/pune-news/taste-of-life-how-sir-malcolm-built-a-botanical-garden-in-poona-101676543622765.html 
• Damle, Chinmay. “Taste of Life: How Dapooree Botanical Garden Was Instrumental in Bringing New Fruits, Vegetables to India.” Hindustan Times, 23 Feb. 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/pune-news/taste-of-life-how-dapooree-botanical-garden-was-instrumental-in-bringing-new-fruits-vegetables-to-india-101677148626959.html 

Wikitree: Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny (1821 – 1895)

F is for Ferozepore

Present-day Firozpur [Ferozepore] is a city of some 100,000 people on the left bank of the Sutlej, in the Punjab, India. Partition in 1947 placed it a few miles on the Indian side of the border with Pakistan.

Ferozepore came under the rule of the East India Company in 1835, when the British took control of it from the Sikh ruling family by an instrument of escheat (ownership passing to the Crown when an estate has no heir). Ferozepore Fort (Cantonment) was established four years later.

I have a family connection to the area, through my 1st cousin four times removed, George Bannatyne Wymer (1839–1908), who was the third child of my third great aunt Emily Crespigny Wymer née Hindes. George was born on 10 December 1839 and christened on 5 January 1840. (Emily’s previous children had died in infancy.)

Emily Hindes (1813–1891) was the illegitimate daughter of my fourth great grandfather, Charles Fox Champion de Crespigny (1785–1875). Charles sponsored her trip to India in 1830, almost certainly with the expectation that she would find a husband there. On 1 December 1832 at Neemuch, in what is now Madya Pradesh, she duly married George Petre Wymer (1788–1868), a Major of the Honourable East India Company.

India – The Town and Fort of Ferozepore coloured lithograph 1846 by Henry Pilleau – published by Dickinson & Sons, London, after a sketch by H. Pilleau Esq. late 16th Lancers, C. 1846. Image retrieved from Mullock’s Auctions.

Wymer had entered military service in the East India Company in August, 1804, by 1833 gaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was active in the first Anglo-Afghan War of 1838–42, fought between the British and the Emirate of Kabul over a succession dispute.

The British achieved their objective of re-installing the former emir and occupying Kabul, but with a fragile peace and continuing hostility toward them, a military expedition with Wymer in command was sent to Kabul, leaving Ferozepore in February and arriving in the first week of April.

The Bombay Gazette 8 January 1840 reported:

Colonel Wymer proceeds with the 2d Regiment N. I. from Ferozepore, in command of the grand convoy.

The convoy was reported in the Asiatic Journal And Monthly Register (1840) Vol.32 page 17

A letter from Ferozepore, dated 24th January, says, “the grand convoy about to proceed into Affghanistan, under the command of Brigadier Wallace, will probably move from this in the first week in February. The troops composing the convoy will amount to about 2,000 fighting men. The force consists of the 2d Reg. N. I., six depot companies of native regiments, drafts for H. M.’s 13th Light Infantry and drafts for the 1st European regiment, and the mountain-train for the service of his majesty Shah Soojah ul Moolk, with upwards of 200 remount horses, 21 lakhs of rupees, with some 800 camels with stores, &c., will accompany the troops, besides numerous private stores, merchandise, &c.”

In addition to regular and Bengal Army troops there were about 4,000 camp followers and 2,000 camels.

A convoy to Afghanistan pictured in 1839, the year before Wymer led the convoy. The Army of the Indus forcing the Bolan Pass, 1839 Tinted lithograph from ‘Sketches in Afghanistan’, 1838-42, after James Atkinson. Image in the collection of the National Army Museum

I do not know if Emily Wymer and little George were part of the convoy, but it seems likely, for Wymer was posted to many different places in the course of his career in India and it was usual for the wife of a senior officer to accompany her husband. In 1840 we find him in Kandahar [Candahar], Afghanistan, under Sir William Nott, and in 1843 Emily gave birth to a daughter in Mussoorie, a Himalayan hill station near Dehradun, north of Delhi. If she was with him then she probably had been with him earlier.

Firozpur (formerly Ferozepore) is close to the present day border with Pakistan and 75 km to Lahore.The distance as the crow flies between Firozpur and Kabul is 402 miles (647 kilometers).

Related posts and further reading:

• A Passage to India
• A is for Agra: Rosa Symes, wife of George senior died at Ferozepore in 1892

• Rai, Swati. “A town of many tales.” The Tribune (India), 25 Sept. 2016, https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/arts/a-town-of-many-tales-299701
• Makepeace, Margaret. “A British Army Route March in India.” British Library Blog, 18 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2021/02/a-british-army-route-march-in-india.html
• Starmans, Barbara J. “Women and the Victorian Regiment.” The Social Historian, 24 Feb. 2023,  https://www.thesocialhistorian.com/women-and-the-victorian-regiment/

Wikitree:

• George Bannatyne Wymer (1839 – 1908)
• Emily Crespigny (Hindes) Wymer (abt. 1813 – 1891)
• George Petre Wymer K.C.B. (1788 – 1868)