THE GWALIOR CAMPAIGN, INDIA, 1843
Lieutenant Henry Stanger-Leathes, Bengal Artillery
St. Mary Abbots, Kensington
Ensign Theodore David Bray, 39th Regiment
All Saints Royal Garrison Church, Aldershot
The Men
Henry Stanger-Leathes and Theodore Bray were both very young when they fought at the Battle of Maharajpore, twenty and nineteen respectively, but that is about the only thing they had in common. The Brays were a military family from an Irish background. Theodore's father was a Major of the 39th Regiment, the regiment in which his middle son was an ensign, and had already seen action against the Marathas twenty-five years earlier. Henry's family were Cumbrian landowners, with no significant military connections, and while he was a junior officer in the Bengal Artillery, Bray was a junior officer in a British infantry regiment. Such differences in background, however, did not prevent them from being killed on the same day, in the same battle.
Stanger-Leathes is an unusual name, but there are concentrations of the family on Tyneside and in Australia, although really they are Stangers. The Leathes nomenclature is another example of an inheritance depending upon a name change.
The Leathes family bought Dale Head Hall, now a hotel on the western slopes of Helvellyn overlooking Thirlmere, in 1577, and it remained with them until the death of the last male heir, Thomas Leathes, in 1806. He left the estate to his nephew, Thomas Stanger, on condition that he adopted the Leathes name. This Thomas did, thus bestowing on his elder son the rather clumsy name of Thomas Leathes Stanger-Leathes (having said that, my own West Yorkshire family tree contains Milner Marshall Milner, so it was not just a landed gentry affectation).
The family were not plain Cumbrian farmers. The two sons, Thomas and Hugh, were born in Hanover Square and Westminster, and all that younger Thomas’ children were born in London, with Hugh’s born in Somerset and Wales. Dale Head Hall was the country seat, a summer retreat, which presumably explains why the memorial tablet to Thomas’ second son, Henry, is in Kensington.
Henry was born in 1823, and in his teens opted for a military career, going out to India and a commission in the Bengal Artillery. In December 1843 his company (4th Company of the 4th Battalion) was one of those posted to join the forces headed by Sir Hugh Gough that the Governor-General, the Earl of Ellenborough, was sending to Gwalior.
It was a strange campaign. There was no fighting until two battles were fought on the same day, and no fighting after that, but eight hundred British soldiers and over three thousand Marathas died.
The Background
Gwalior, two hundred miles south of Delhi, had been part of the Maratha Empire, which had ruled large swathes of India until its defeat by the British in 1818, a victory that established British control over most of the sub-continent. Since 1818 the city had been quiet under the rule of a British-approved maharajah, but in 1843 he died, and 1843 was not a good time for an established maharajah to die and be replaced by a young boy.
The previous year the British had suffered a severe and embarrassing defeat in Afghanistan, a defeat that encouraged independence ambitions elsewhere. Moreover the Sikh state in the Punjab, with its western-trained and -armed army, the Kalsa, was posing a threat to British power, so the last thing the British needed was trouble in the states where their control was established. Unfortunately that is what they got in Gwalior, when the young rajah, Jayâjî Râo Sindhia, was deposed and an anti-British government established. When diplomatic attempts to redeem the situation failed Ellenborough recalled the British Resident, and sent in Gough.
The Action
The action all took place on the 29th December. An early dawn march brought the British to face three villages (called, with various spellings, Chanda, Maharajpore and Chuna). Gough believed that the main Maratha army was still several miles away, but unknown to him they had moved, and were now concentrated in the villages.
As the 16th Lancers moved forward to reconnoitre the ground before the settlements - broken ground, split by awkward ravines – they came under artillery fire, and then musket fire from sharpshooters concealed behind stooks in a field of wheat.
Gough now had a problem. Before he could advance in force his sappers had to create means of crossing the ravines, but to give them cover for that he would need artillery. The main bulk of his artillery, however, was some distance behind his main force (in fact, it would never see action that day). Prudence might have suggested waiting for them, but Gough was known as an impatient, aggressive general, who had a fondness for direct frontal attack. The main artillery fire was coming from Maharajpore, so he ordered the troops of Bengal Horse Artillery he had available into action, deploying them in front of the infantry. They were outgunned, but Gough made much of them in his report.
I witnessed with much pride the rapidity of movement of the three
troops of horse artillery, which bore a conspicuous part in this action;
their leaders promptly brought them forward in every available position
and the precision of their fire was admirable.
Still only twenty, Henry Stanger-Leathes was one of the officers commanding that fire. Their artillery’s accurate shooting created the opportunity for the British to advance, but at some cost as they became the prime target for the Maratha gunners. Seven men from those three troops lost their lives, and Henry Stanger-Leathes was one of them. However, they had done their job. Frontal and flank assaults from the 40th Foot and two native infantry regiments charged into Maharajpore, and after fierce hand-to-hand fighting drove the Maratha forces out, although the Maratha gunners defended their guns to the last man, “with frantic desperation”. Chuna then fell, and the surviving Marathas fled; by midday the battle was over, and when news came that a second British force had defeated a second Maratha army at Punniar it was clear that Gwalior’s attempts to free itself from British control had failed. Within days the young maharajah was back on the throne, a British force was occupying the city, and a British Resident was in place. Gwalior became quiet again, for a few years at least.
So what happened to Theodore Bray? What we often forget is that a battle does not end with the fighting; the surgeons and chaplains and gravediggers still have to work. In his memoirs Charles Gordon described the scene on the the night following the battle:
during the evening the mangled remains of what in the morning had been a band of brave men
were committed to earth . . . . . . Meantime in tents the work of attending to the wounded went
steadily on. There officers and men whom we personally knew lay helpless, among them Major Bray,
of the 39th, and his son in adjoining cots, the former terribly burst by the explosions of a mine,
the life-blood of the latter ebbing through a bullet-wound in his chest.
Both father and son had stormed the villages of Maharajpore with the 39th, and had taken part in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting there, but occupying the village had not ended the battle. Chanda still had to be taken, and the Maratha sharpshooters were still firing from the surrounding fields. It was one of those snipers who sent the bullet into Theodore Bray's chest as he held the regiment's standard - the man carrying the flag is always going to be a target. His father was wounded soon afterwards, although he did survive to die at his home in Brighton in 1859. Theodore's brothers, Edward and George, both went on to become Major-Generals, as did some of the following generation; an Army family.
Afterwards
Henry Stanger-Leathes obviously never saw Dale Head again, but his family did not see it into the next century anyway. Thomas Leathes Stanger-Leathes died in 1875, at the age of ninety-six, and two years later his surviving children sold the estate to Manchester Corporation. The two valley tarns, Leathes Water and Wythburn Water, were swallowed up into Thirlmere Reservoir, and Dale Head Hall became a summer residence for Manchester’s Lord Mayor (a nice perk) and stayed so until it was sold in 1985, to become a hotel.
They may have lost their ancestral home, but some Stanger-Leathes still went on to distinguish themselves. Henry’s younger brother, Leonard, had one son, Hugh Ellis, who joined the Indian Medical Service and became Honorary Surgeon to George V, and another, Christopher Francis, became one of the select group to have represented England at both rugby and cricket.
Which leads to one last mystery. Very few of the men whose stories I am telling were married, but Henry was, and at a very young age. He was only 18 when, on February 14th 1842, at the Cathedral in Calcutta, was solemnized the marriage of “Henry Stanger-Leathes, Esq., Bengal Artillery, to Louise Charlotte, only daughter of the late Joseph Heatley, Esq., Surgeon, 17th Native Infantry”. The suspicion has to be that Louise was pregnant, but I can find no record of her or the putative child. I wonder what happened?
Lieutenant Henry Stanger-Leathes, Bengal Artillery
St. Mary Abbots, Kensington
Ensign Theodore David Bray, 39th Regiment
All Saints Royal Garrison Church, Aldershot
The Men
Henry Stanger-Leathes and Theodore Bray were both very young when they fought at the Battle of Maharajpore, twenty and nineteen respectively, but that is about the only thing they had in common. The Brays were a military family from an Irish background. Theodore's father was a Major of the 39th Regiment, the regiment in which his middle son was an ensign, and had already seen action against the Marathas twenty-five years earlier. Henry's family were Cumbrian landowners, with no significant military connections, and while he was a junior officer in the Bengal Artillery, Bray was a junior officer in a British infantry regiment. Such differences in background, however, did not prevent them from being killed on the same day, in the same battle.
Stanger-Leathes is an unusual name, but there are concentrations of the family on Tyneside and in Australia, although really they are Stangers. The Leathes nomenclature is another example of an inheritance depending upon a name change.
The Leathes family bought Dale Head Hall, now a hotel on the western slopes of Helvellyn overlooking Thirlmere, in 1577, and it remained with them until the death of the last male heir, Thomas Leathes, in 1806. He left the estate to his nephew, Thomas Stanger, on condition that he adopted the Leathes name. This Thomas did, thus bestowing on his elder son the rather clumsy name of Thomas Leathes Stanger-Leathes (having said that, my own West Yorkshire family tree contains Milner Marshall Milner, so it was not just a landed gentry affectation).
The family were not plain Cumbrian farmers. The two sons, Thomas and Hugh, were born in Hanover Square and Westminster, and all that younger Thomas’ children were born in London, with Hugh’s born in Somerset and Wales. Dale Head Hall was the country seat, a summer retreat, which presumably explains why the memorial tablet to Thomas’ second son, Henry, is in Kensington.
Henry was born in 1823, and in his teens opted for a military career, going out to India and a commission in the Bengal Artillery. In December 1843 his company (4th Company of the 4th Battalion) was one of those posted to join the forces headed by Sir Hugh Gough that the Governor-General, the Earl of Ellenborough, was sending to Gwalior.
It was a strange campaign. There was no fighting until two battles were fought on the same day, and no fighting after that, but eight hundred British soldiers and over three thousand Marathas died.
The Background
Gwalior, two hundred miles south of Delhi, had been part of the Maratha Empire, which had ruled large swathes of India until its defeat by the British in 1818, a victory that established British control over most of the sub-continent. Since 1818 the city had been quiet under the rule of a British-approved maharajah, but in 1843 he died, and 1843 was not a good time for an established maharajah to die and be replaced by a young boy.
The previous year the British had suffered a severe and embarrassing defeat in Afghanistan, a defeat that encouraged independence ambitions elsewhere. Moreover the Sikh state in the Punjab, with its western-trained and -armed army, the Kalsa, was posing a threat to British power, so the last thing the British needed was trouble in the states where their control was established. Unfortunately that is what they got in Gwalior, when the young rajah, Jayâjî Râo Sindhia, was deposed and an anti-British government established. When diplomatic attempts to redeem the situation failed Ellenborough recalled the British Resident, and sent in Gough.
The Action
The action all took place on the 29th December. An early dawn march brought the British to face three villages (called, with various spellings, Chanda, Maharajpore and Chuna). Gough believed that the main Maratha army was still several miles away, but unknown to him they had moved, and were now concentrated in the villages.
As the 16th Lancers moved forward to reconnoitre the ground before the settlements - broken ground, split by awkward ravines – they came under artillery fire, and then musket fire from sharpshooters concealed behind stooks in a field of wheat.
Gough now had a problem. Before he could advance in force his sappers had to create means of crossing the ravines, but to give them cover for that he would need artillery. The main bulk of his artillery, however, was some distance behind his main force (in fact, it would never see action that day). Prudence might have suggested waiting for them, but Gough was known as an impatient, aggressive general, who had a fondness for direct frontal attack. The main artillery fire was coming from Maharajpore, so he ordered the troops of Bengal Horse Artillery he had available into action, deploying them in front of the infantry. They were outgunned, but Gough made much of them in his report.
I witnessed with much pride the rapidity of movement of the three
troops of horse artillery, which bore a conspicuous part in this action;
their leaders promptly brought them forward in every available position
and the precision of their fire was admirable.
Still only twenty, Henry Stanger-Leathes was one of the officers commanding that fire. Their artillery’s accurate shooting created the opportunity for the British to advance, but at some cost as they became the prime target for the Maratha gunners. Seven men from those three troops lost their lives, and Henry Stanger-Leathes was one of them. However, they had done their job. Frontal and flank assaults from the 40th Foot and two native infantry regiments charged into Maharajpore, and after fierce hand-to-hand fighting drove the Maratha forces out, although the Maratha gunners defended their guns to the last man, “with frantic desperation”. Chuna then fell, and the surviving Marathas fled; by midday the battle was over, and when news came that a second British force had defeated a second Maratha army at Punniar it was clear that Gwalior’s attempts to free itself from British control had failed. Within days the young maharajah was back on the throne, a British force was occupying the city, and a British Resident was in place. Gwalior became quiet again, for a few years at least.
So what happened to Theodore Bray? What we often forget is that a battle does not end with the fighting; the surgeons and chaplains and gravediggers still have to work. In his memoirs Charles Gordon described the scene on the the night following the battle:
during the evening the mangled remains of what in the morning had been a band of brave men
were committed to earth . . . . . . Meantime in tents the work of attending to the wounded went
steadily on. There officers and men whom we personally knew lay helpless, among them Major Bray,
of the 39th, and his son in adjoining cots, the former terribly burst by the explosions of a mine,
the life-blood of the latter ebbing through a bullet-wound in his chest.
Both father and son had stormed the villages of Maharajpore with the 39th, and had taken part in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting there, but occupying the village had not ended the battle. Chanda still had to be taken, and the Maratha sharpshooters were still firing from the surrounding fields. It was one of those snipers who sent the bullet into Theodore Bray's chest as he held the regiment's standard - the man carrying the flag is always going to be a target. His father was wounded soon afterwards, although he did survive to die at his home in Brighton in 1859. Theodore's brothers, Edward and George, both went on to become Major-Generals, as did some of the following generation; an Army family.
Afterwards
Henry Stanger-Leathes obviously never saw Dale Head again, but his family did not see it into the next century anyway. Thomas Leathes Stanger-Leathes died in 1875, at the age of ninety-six, and two years later his surviving children sold the estate to Manchester Corporation. The two valley tarns, Leathes Water and Wythburn Water, were swallowed up into Thirlmere Reservoir, and Dale Head Hall became a summer residence for Manchester’s Lord Mayor (a nice perk) and stayed so until it was sold in 1985, to become a hotel.
They may have lost their ancestral home, but some Stanger-Leathes still went on to distinguish themselves. Henry’s younger brother, Leonard, had one son, Hugh Ellis, who joined the Indian Medical Service and became Honorary Surgeon to George V, and another, Christopher Francis, became one of the select group to have represented England at both rugby and cricket.
Which leads to one last mystery. Very few of the men whose stories I am telling were married, but Henry was, and at a very young age. He was only 18 when, on February 14th 1842, at the Cathedral in Calcutta, was solemnized the marriage of “Henry Stanger-Leathes, Esq., Bengal Artillery, to Louise Charlotte, only daughter of the late Joseph Heatley, Esq., Surgeon, 17th Native Infantry”. The suspicion has to be that Louise was pregnant, but I can find no record of her or the putative child. I wonder what happened?
In memoriam
Henry Stangar-Leathes, Lieutenant His Majesty's regiment of Artillery, slain in the Battle of Maharajpore at the taking of the fortress of Gwalior 29th December 1843, aged 24, buried on the battlefield. Son of Thomas Leathes Stangar-Leathes of Dale Head hall, Thirlmere, Cumbria
Sacred to the memory of Colonel Edward William Bray, CB who served with the 67th Regiment through the Maharatta Campaign of 1817 and 1818, and at the siege and capture of Amulnair, Ryghur, and Asseeghur. He afterwards served with the 31st Regiment for 17 years, and was with the right wing on board the Kent Indiamen when she was burnt in the Bay of Biscay on the 1st of March 1825. He commanded the 39th Regiment at the Battle of Maharajpore on the 23rd December 1843, and was desperately wounded in the last battery taken on that day, which was stormed by his regiment with the terrible loss in killed and wounded of 300 officers and men. He died on the 3rd December 1859, aged 74 years. Also to the memory of Ensign Theodore David Bray, his son, who at the age of 19 years fell while gallantly carrying the Regimental Colour of the 39th at the Battle of Maharajpore. Also to that of Belinda Bray, wife of Col. E.W. Bray, who died at Brighton on the 2nd March 1872, aged 74.
Henry Stangar-Leathes, Lieutenant His Majesty's regiment of Artillery, slain in the Battle of Maharajpore at the taking of the fortress of Gwalior 29th December 1843, aged 24, buried on the battlefield. Son of Thomas Leathes Stangar-Leathes of Dale Head hall, Thirlmere, Cumbria
Sacred to the memory of Colonel Edward William Bray, CB who served with the 67th Regiment through the Maharatta Campaign of 1817 and 1818, and at the siege and capture of Amulnair, Ryghur, and Asseeghur. He afterwards served with the 31st Regiment for 17 years, and was with the right wing on board the Kent Indiamen when she was burnt in the Bay of Biscay on the 1st of March 1825. He commanded the 39th Regiment at the Battle of Maharajpore on the 23rd December 1843, and was desperately wounded in the last battery taken on that day, which was stormed by his regiment with the terrible loss in killed and wounded of 300 officers and men. He died on the 3rd December 1859, aged 74 years. Also to the memory of Ensign Theodore David Bray, his son, who at the age of 19 years fell while gallantly carrying the Regimental Colour of the 39th at the Battle of Maharajpore. Also to that of Belinda Bray, wife of Col. E.W. Bray, who died at Brighton on the 2nd March 1872, aged 74.
Sources
Photos
The Maharaja of Gwalior, with state officials - Wikipedia
Old St. Mary Abbots Church, in 1869, shortly before its demolition - Wikipedia
Military
'Recollection of Thirty-Nine Years in the Army' by Sir Charles Alexander Gordon (Swan Sonneschein & Co., London, 1898) - viewable online at archive.org, courtesy of New York Public Library
'Ten Years in India, in the 16th Queen's Lancers' by W.J.D. Gould (Hunter, Rose & Co., Toronto, 1880) - viewable online on open library.org
'Further Papers Respecting Gwalior: presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1844' - viewable on books.google.co.uk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwalior_Campaign
www.victorianmilitarysociety.org.uk/reserach/2012-09-09-11-20-22/archive/55-nothing-could-be-more-beautiful-the-charge-of-hm-39th-regiment-at-maharajpore-december-29th-1843
Genealogy
'Magna Britannia: Cumberland' by Rev. Daniel Lyson & samuel Lyson (Cadell & Davies, London, 1816) - viewable on books.google.co.uk
www.daleheadhall.co.uk
www.ancestry.co.uk
www.espn.co.uk/england/rugby/player/1659.html
Photos
The Maharaja of Gwalior, with state officials - Wikipedia
Old St. Mary Abbots Church, in 1869, shortly before its demolition - Wikipedia
Military
'Recollection of Thirty-Nine Years in the Army' by Sir Charles Alexander Gordon (Swan Sonneschein & Co., London, 1898) - viewable online at archive.org, courtesy of New York Public Library
'Ten Years in India, in the 16th Queen's Lancers' by W.J.D. Gould (Hunter, Rose & Co., Toronto, 1880) - viewable online on open library.org
'Further Papers Respecting Gwalior: presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1844' - viewable on books.google.co.uk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwalior_Campaign
www.victorianmilitarysociety.org.uk/reserach/2012-09-09-11-20-22/archive/55-nothing-could-be-more-beautiful-the-charge-of-hm-39th-regiment-at-maharajpore-december-29th-1843
Genealogy
'Magna Britannia: Cumberland' by Rev. Daniel Lyson & samuel Lyson (Cadell & Davies, London, 1816) - viewable on books.google.co.uk
www.daleheadhall.co.uk
www.ancestry.co.uk
www.espn.co.uk/england/rugby/player/1659.html
