1890-91 Manipur (NE Frontier of British India)

[Ian]

Hi I'm desperately trying to track down a copy of the medal roll for IGSM (Manipur Expedition) Burma clasp can anyone please help

[Liz]

Hi Ian

If you are still looking for this info, you may wish to post details of the individual who you are presumably researching in the Researching Individual Soldiers and Sailors forum. We have several members with an interest in the KRRC who may have what you are looking for, even if they don't have the entire Manipur roll. Cheers,

Liz

[Liz]

Here’s some more info on events in Manipur. Let’s start with the Reader’s Digest version of events from Byron Farwell’s Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Land Warfare (2001). Mr Farwell notes:

Manipur, Rebellion in (1891). This small state in north-eastern India southeast of Assam was a quasi-independent British protectorate ruled from 1834 by Chandra Kirti Singh (1832-1866). On his death his sons and other relatives formed numerous parties, each contending for the throne. In the midst of general unrest, on 24 March 1891 the British political agent and other resident British officials were murdered, and the residency in Manipur was attacked. The small surviving band of loyal sepoys was led to safety in India by Ethel St Clair Grimwood, the wife of the slain Political Resident. The British sent troops into the country and, after several encounters with the 3000-man Manipuri army, finally restored order. The offending princes were hanged or transported to the Andaman Islands. Mrs Grimwood was awarded the Royal Red Cross.

In his earlier work Queen Victoria’s Little Wars (1972), Farwell goes into considerably more detail but gives the Resident’s surname as Grimmond. (This is incorrect and in a book she published later, Ethel gives her name as Grimwood). Anyway, Farwell writes:

Manipur was a small hill state on the North-East Frontier, tucked in between Burma and Assam. Imphal was its capital and chief town. Although only 400 miles from Calcutta, it was cut off from India by mountains, rivers and jungles, and before 1900 there were no roads leading into it. Burma had conquered it in 1813, but it was restored as a separate state after the Burma War of 1826 and British political officer stationed there, guarded by 100 soldiers of the 43rd Gurkha Light Infantry. In 1891 the political agent was Frank St Clair Grimmond, and he had with him his beautiful wife Ethel.

When in September 1890 a palace coup overthrew the raja, the British decided to treat the matter as a rebellion. They planned to intervene and to banish one of the former raja’s brothers. The Sennaputti, or commander-in-chief of the Manipur army, who was suspected of engineering the coup. In March 1891, James Wallace Quinton, chief commissioner in Assam, marched to Manipur with 400 Gurkhas commanded by Lt-Col Charles Skene to carry out the British decision. The attempt to capture the Sennaputti miscarried and the Gurkhas were attacked by the Manipuri army. When Grimmond, Quinton and Skene went to the palace at Imphal to parley, they were seized and killed.

There appears to have been no capable junior officer to take charge of the situation, so the widowed young Ethel Grimmond, dressed in a white silk blouse, black patent leather shoes and a blue skirt that came well below her knees, led the Gurkhas and their British officers out of Imphal and through the jungle towards Assam. They had climbed 3000 feet above the Manipur plain, but they were exhausted, without food, and Ethel Grimwood had just sprained her ankle when they met 200 Gurkhas on their way to Manipur for a tour of normal duty. Only then did Ethel Grimwood, filled with grief, anxiety and pain, sit down and cry.

On 26 April 1891, when a British expedition consisting of 4000 men marching in three columns converged on Imphal they found it deserted. A determined search was made for the Sennaputti and he was finally found disguised as a coolie and brought in to face British justice. He was duly tried and hanged. Ethel Grimmond, ‘the heroine of Manipur’ as the Illustrated London News called her, was given the Royal Red Cross and a pension for life; the British officers in command of the Gurkhas whom she led to safety were cashiered. The British installed a six-year old boy, a great-grandson of the former raja on the throne of Manipur and then ruled in his name.

OK, Mr Farwell, but why is it so remarkable that Ethel’s skirt came well below her knees? What was she thinking, wearing patent leather shoes into the jungle? And what did the young and beautiful Ethel do with herself in later life? Likewise, what about the unfortunate British officers who were cashiered? Who were they and what exactly were they charged with anyway? And last but not least, what did the Gurkhas/Sikhs think of it all? It is all rather intriguing.

I can't answer these questions, but if you are interested in knowing more, allow me to suggest some further reading. One is a book Ethel herself released shortly after getting back to England called My Three Years in Manipur and Escape from the Recent Mutiny. You can download this for free in a range of formats at http://www.archive.org/details/mythreeyearsinma015058mbp. I haven't a chance to read it all yet, but I have to say my eye was caught by this passage towards the end:

I felt a tremendous blow on the neck, and stuggered and fell... but feeling the wound with my finger, and being able to speak, and feeling no violent flow of blood, I discovered I wasn't dead just yet. So I reloaded my revolver and got up. Meanwhile my Sikhs were swarming over the wall. I ran in...

After I had seen all the Manipuris near the fort polished off, I sent for a [wound] dresser and lay down in one of the huts in the fort. Soon had my clothes off, and found the bullet had gone through the root of my neck, just above the shoulder, and carried some of the cloth of my collar and shirt right through the wound, leaving it quite clean. I was soon bound up, and men shampooed me and kept away cramp...

General Collett, commanding the army, came to-day to see me, and said all sorts of nice things to me, and his A-G asked me when I would be a captain, and said I would not be one long, meaning I would get a brevet majority...

I have asked leave if I might stick to my men, as they had stuck so well to me at Thobal. I have had such luck, the men in this regiment will do anything for me, and I hate the idea of changing regiments again, so I may remain if a vacancy occurs.

Readers wanting to know more about events in Manipur or about Ethel in later life may also want to track down a copy of the biography of Ethel released only last year (2008). By Belinda Morse, it's called Calamity and Courage: A Heroine of the Raj and apparently covers not only Manipur and its aftermath but also what Ethel did in later life. If you do, please post details here. I haven't had time to track down a copy myself but it sounds interesting and it has been rated 5/5 by two reviewers on a certain worldwide bookseller's website.

[Mike Thomas]

I am aware that the Surma Valley Light Horse served in the Manipur Expedition of 1891 being awarded the India General Service Medal, 1854-95 with the clasp ‘N. E. Frontier 1891’.

Until recently, I had seen only two awards to this unit. Both surfaced when the Magor Collection was sold in 2003.

http://www.dnw.co.uk/medals/auctionarch ... emid=35222

http://www.dnw.co.uk/medals/auctionarch ... emid=29554

Has anybody seen any others? And does anybody have any information pertaining to the Unit’s strength during this campaign?

[Mike Thomas]

505 Trooper T. Row, Surma Valley Light Horse (DNW 2003, Lot 51 (Magor Collection))

412 Trooper A. D. Forbes, Surma Valley Light Horse ( DNW 2003, Lot 52 (Magor Collection))

3393 Sgt Instructor A. Kearney, Surma Valley Light Horse (In my possession)

Naming unknown but in a group of three with Delhi Durbar, 1903 and Colonial Decoration, VR (seen approximately eleven years ago)

Surely more than four awards to this Unit must have survived.

Anybody out there got one (or more) awards?

[Maureene]

One is a book Ethel herself released shortly after getting back to England called My Three Years in Manipur and Escape from the Recent Mutiny. You can download this for free in a range of formats at http://www.archive.org/details/mythreey ... a015058mbp. I haven't a chance to read it all yet, but I have to say my eye was caught by this passage towards the end:

I felt a tremendous blow on the neck, and stuggered and fell... but feeling the wound with my finger, and being able to speak, and feeling no violent flow of blood, I discovered I wasn't dead just yet. So I reloaded my revolver and got up. Meanwhile my Sikhs were swarming over the wall. I ran in............

The paragraphs quoted here are in a section headed "Major Grant's Narrative" which commences page 289. Major Grant of the 12th Regiment ( 2nd Burma Bn) Madras Infantry, later called the 72nd Punjab Regiment, was awarded the Victoria Cross.
http://archive.org/stream/mythreeyearsi ... 7/mode/2up

Cheers
Maureen

[webbllangarron]

I can help with this. My great uncle was Walter Mason, a tea-planter in Assam and he was a member of the SVLH and took part in the Manipur Expedition. The definitive work is a slim volume, of which the only copy is in the British Library, by William Henry Sidney Wood and called 'Through Fifty Years: A History of the Surma Valley Light Horse' pub. 1930. It's not indexed, but has lists of Medals awarded etc. as well as photos. You can only see it by applying to the BL and going there, as it's now too fragile to go on inter-library loan. Both Walter and his brother-in-law, Frank Jeffries, an Indian Magistrate, served with the SVLH up to and into the 1st WW.
JSW via Bill Webb