"A MUTINOUS SEPOY", VELLORE, INDIA, 1858
Captain Henry Douglas Hart, 39th Madras Native Infantry
St. Leonard's, Hythe, Kent
St. Leonard's, Hythe, Kent
He relates how
As with most of the subjects of these stories it is difficult to get many details about the life of Captain Henry Douglas Hart, but enough is available to give a structure to his life. He was born in Hythe, Kent, in 1823 into a well-established family in the town, where both his parents were also born. Father Richard was an army Captain, on half-pay in all the sources I have found, from the census in 1841 up to his death in Hythe in 1863. Richard's regiment is not clear; in 1851 he is of the 66th regiment, but on the memorial in Hythe church it is the 78th. Did half-pay officers swop regiments, possibly to avoid being posted overseas?
Henry followed his father into the military, but went to India to join the 39th Madras Native Infantry, and was made a Lieutenant in 1840. Sometime in the following few years he married, to Eliza Elizabeth but surname unknown, and had at least three children: Hannah in 1846; Richard Henry Douglas in 1848; and Eliza Rose in 1849. He got his promotion to Captain and by 1858 was with his regiment in Vellore in Southern India, presumably grateful that he and his family were not in the north, where the Indian Mutiny (or, depending on your point of view, the War of Independence) was raging, with brutality on both sides.
What happened to Henry on the 25th September, 1858 depends on the source you read. Two articles from this century suggest that the belief that the Mutiny did not penetrate the South is mistaken. Both state that in Vellore "some sepoys of the 18th Native Infantry revolted". Vellore had experienced this before, being the scene of a mutiny in 1806, so a repetition in 1858, when the north of the country was in such turmoil, is clearly possible. Each article then states that "in the armed struggle Captain Hart and Jailer Stafford were killed".
That sounds clear enough, and certainly on the family memorial tablet in St. Leonard's Church, Hythe, it states that Henry was killed by "a mutinous sepoy". Given all the evidence it seems reasonable to class Henry as a victim of the Indian Mutiny.
However there is another, more contemporary, source. The Collector of Arcot compiled a list of tombstone inscriptions and in his book he quotes a correspondent who was living near Vellore in 1858. He tells of how the incident started with a sepoy (we never get his name) discharging his musket. The jailer, described as "old Stafford", came out to see what was happening and was shot. A British woman in the nearby officers' quarters, who heard the shots, sent for help and Henry Hart was the first officer on the scene. He arrived driving a phaeton, an open carriage, and was shot before he could get out. When other officers and men arrived the sepoy threatened to kill them all, but obviously couldn't. The officer commanding the guard, pitting his sword against the sepoy's bayonet, disarmed him and took him into custody. He was tried and, not surprisingly, hanged.
So, according to Le Fanu's correspondent, no groups of rebels, no armed struggle, just one man. Was he a mutineer or had he just lost his mind? There is no way of knowing, but to the grieving family in England and to today's nationalist Indians it was and is better that Henry Hart was a victim of the Mutiny.
And what of the family Hart left behind? Of Eliza Elizabeth and Hannah I can find no trace, but Richard and Eliza Rose were back in England by 1861; Richard was at Chatham House School in Ramsgate, and Eliza was at Hazelden House Ladies' School in Cranbrook. Richard went on to become a Marine Insurance Broker, to marry and father seven children before his premature death at Sidcup in 1887. Eliza Rose married a Gum merchant, Ernest Meers, and had four children, but hers appears not to have been a happy marriage. From the 1880s she and Ernest appear to have been separated, with Eliza bringing up the children by herself. She died at The Poplars in Sturry near Canterbury in 1934, and then the story becomes a circle - she was buried at St. Leonard's in Hythe.
As with most of the subjects of these stories it is difficult to get many details about the life of Captain Henry Douglas Hart, but enough is available to give a structure to his life. He was born in Hythe, Kent, in 1823 into a well-established family in the town, where both his parents were also born. Father Richard was an army Captain, on half-pay in all the sources I have found, from the census in 1841 up to his death in Hythe in 1863. Richard's regiment is not clear; in 1851 he is of the 66th regiment, but on the memorial in Hythe church it is the 78th. Did half-pay officers swop regiments, possibly to avoid being posted overseas?
Henry followed his father into the military, but went to India to join the 39th Madras Native Infantry, and was made a Lieutenant in 1840. Sometime in the following few years he married, to Eliza Elizabeth but surname unknown, and had at least three children: Hannah in 1846; Richard Henry Douglas in 1848; and Eliza Rose in 1849. He got his promotion to Captain and by 1858 was with his regiment in Vellore in Southern India, presumably grateful that he and his family were not in the north, where the Indian Mutiny (or, depending on your point of view, the War of Independence) was raging, with brutality on both sides.
What happened to Henry on the 25th September, 1858 depends on the source you read. Two articles from this century suggest that the belief that the Mutiny did not penetrate the South is mistaken. Both state that in Vellore "some sepoys of the 18th Native Infantry revolted". Vellore had experienced this before, being the scene of a mutiny in 1806, so a repetition in 1858, when the north of the country was in such turmoil, is clearly possible. Each article then states that "in the armed struggle Captain Hart and Jailer Stafford were killed".
That sounds clear enough, and certainly on the family memorial tablet in St. Leonard's Church, Hythe, it states that Henry was killed by "a mutinous sepoy". Given all the evidence it seems reasonable to class Henry as a victim of the Indian Mutiny.
However there is another, more contemporary, source. The Collector of Arcot compiled a list of tombstone inscriptions and in his book he quotes a correspondent who was living near Vellore in 1858. He tells of how the incident started with a sepoy (we never get his name) discharging his musket. The jailer, described as "old Stafford", came out to see what was happening and was shot. A British woman in the nearby officers' quarters, who heard the shots, sent for help and Henry Hart was the first officer on the scene. He arrived driving a phaeton, an open carriage, and was shot before he could get out. When other officers and men arrived the sepoy threatened to kill them all, but obviously couldn't. The officer commanding the guard, pitting his sword against the sepoy's bayonet, disarmed him and took him into custody. He was tried and, not surprisingly, hanged.
So, according to Le Fanu's correspondent, no groups of rebels, no armed struggle, just one man. Was he a mutineer or had he just lost his mind? There is no way of knowing, but to the grieving family in England and to today's nationalist Indians it was and is better that Henry Hart was a victim of the Mutiny.
And what of the family Hart left behind? Of Eliza Elizabeth and Hannah I can find no trace, but Richard and Eliza Rose were back in England by 1861; Richard was at Chatham House School in Ramsgate, and Eliza was at Hazelden House Ladies' School in Cranbrook. Richard went on to become a Marine Insurance Broker, to marry and father seven children before his premature death at Sidcup in 1887. Eliza Rose married a Gum merchant, Ernest Meers, and had four children, but hers appears not to have been a happy marriage. From the 1880s she and Ernest appear to have been separated, with Eliza bringing up the children by herself. She died at The Poplars in Sturry near Canterbury in 1934, and then the story becomes a circle - she was buried at St. Leonard's in Hythe.
Captain Henry Douglas Hart who was killed at Vellroe by a mutinous sepoy on the 12th of November 1858 aged 35 years
Sources
Military
List of European Tombs in the North Arcot District with Inscriptions thereon (revised up to 1st January 1904) - compiled by H. Le Fanu, Collector of North Arcot, North Arcot Collectorate Press, Chittoor, 1905. This volume can be accessed online at www.tamildigitallibrary.in
The East India Register and Army List for 1849 - compiled by Francis Clark, Wm. H. Allan & Co., London, 1849
Remembering 1857 - paper from the 2007 Conference in Chennai of The Democratic Youth Federation of India
Upsurge in South - article by N. Rajendran in the Indian magazine Frontline, June 29th 2007
Genealogy
Ancestry
St. Leonard's Church, Hythe - article by Canon Scott Robertson in Archaelogia Cantiaria, Vol. 18, 1889 (viewable online on the Kent Archaeology site)
Military
List of European Tombs in the North Arcot District with Inscriptions thereon (revised up to 1st January 1904) - compiled by H. Le Fanu, Collector of North Arcot, North Arcot Collectorate Press, Chittoor, 1905. This volume can be accessed online at www.tamildigitallibrary.in
The East India Register and Army List for 1849 - compiled by Francis Clark, Wm. H. Allan & Co., London, 1849
Remembering 1857 - paper from the 2007 Conference in Chennai of The Democratic Youth Federation of India
Upsurge in South - article by N. Rajendran in the Indian magazine Frontline, June 29th 2007
Genealogy
Ancestry
St. Leonard's Church, Hythe - article by Canon Scott Robertson in Archaelogia Cantiaria, Vol. 18, 1889 (viewable online on the Kent Archaeology site)
