Butler and Saunders, who had been joined by Mr Garrard, a veterinary surgeon, prepared to defend their lives at all costs. Armed with revolvers, they slowly retreated into a bathroom, where the women and children had taken cover. According to Butler:
‘the men of the 46th now were breaking open the doors and firing as they came along the corridors and into the rooms. On one making his appearance in the bathing room, I pointed my revolver at him, this was not a sepoy, but apparently one of the servants pointing out where we were, for on seeing my pistol and hearing it snap, he cried out, “Sahib log wahan haen, hun naheen jahye, marna ko moostaid haen” [“The Masters are over there, they cannot escape, they are preparing to fight till the end.”]’65
Meanwhile the women and children fled into a small godown, or lumber room, attached to the main building by a side door. However, upon seeing the cramped space, Sarah Graham decided to try her luck elsewhere. Never one to compromise her comfort, she could not stand the prospect of being cooped up in such a small space with so many people, and instead left to hide in the big garden.66 Here Sarah was immediately discovered by two sowars, who dragged her away. In stark contrast to the many horror stories of rape and violence allegedly perpetrated against white women by Indian rebels during 1857, Sarah nevertheless managed to negotiate with her captors: ‘Able to speak the Hindustani language [Hindi] fluently, she made a pathetic appeal to them, which touched their hard hearts, and promised besides to reward them liberally if they would spare her life.’67 Not only did Sarah convince the sowars to spare her life, but she also got them to fetch her a carriage and eventually escort her down to the Quarter Guard of the 9th, where she joined Mrs Campbell and the others.68 Against all odds, Sarah had proved to be quite capable of looking after herself.
Back at the Hearsey compound, Butler and the others were still hiding in the lumber room, while the sepoys were turning the house upside down, firing into every room and breaking doors and furniture. At one point, Butler recounts, ‘a sepoy of the 46th with a most fiend-like expression I ever saw’, fired at the door to their hiding-place, but quickly retreated when Garrard fired at him with a revolver. They now expected more troops to gather, but the sepoy did not return. It was a nerve-wracking experience for the small group:
‘The yell that ever and anon arose, and the crashing noise caused by the plunderers breaking open the wardrobes, almirahs and chests, kept us in a constant state of alarm as we could hear the troopers riding about; the chowkidar said our only security was in keeping quiet, which was no easy task with eight young children, as the least noise might reveal to the villains our hiding place.’69
The desperate parents had to gag the children to prevent them from crying out.70 At one point they heard the soldiers trying to force the chaukidar, or watchman, Abdul Razak, to reveal their hiding place—but the old servant, the only remaining member of the household, claimed that they had all left. Razak later brought them some chapattis and a pitcher of water, to alleviate their thirst and hunger. As the hours passed and the sun rose higher in the sky, the small dark room grew increasingly hot and stuffy as Butler described it:
‘In this godown there were most providentially two small windows, the glass of one was broken, and we were able to have some ventilation, but the heat and stench of the place was most trying. The godown adjoining was broken into, and when the magazine exploded, we thought, such was the shock we felt, they had mined the wall, and were going to blow it in; when the second magazine was blown up, there was so much noise and riding about that we imagined the mutineers had brought the cannon to bear upon the place to induce us to come to be massacred. The suspense and anxiety was awful’71
Razak would come from time to time to tell Butler and the others what was going on, but with soldiers still milling about and searching for Saunders, he did so at considerable risk to his own life. Gordon described how,
‘Again and again the faithful watchman, Abdul Razak, was pressed to tell where the English refugees were. The four sowars who thirsted for Major Saunders’ blood took Razak away for the 9th Cavalry lines, and offered him one thousand rupees if he would tell where they were concealed; but he insisted that he knew not. They then threatened to kill him if he would not inform them. At that juncture a man whom he had at some former time befriended, stepped forward and deliberately affirmed that he had just seen Major Saunders lying dead in Palkhu creek, north of the cantonments.’72
Razak was ultimately released and able to make his way back to the house. Throughout the day, several people came near to where the Europeans were hiding, but no concerted effort was made to flush them out. At one point Butler heard someone just outside the door: ‘and then a savage looking man give it a tremendous blow, but not succeeding he looked through the grating. I took a steady aim with my revolver and fired, he fell back and groaned, but never spoke more, he was dead…’73 The sowars may have suspected where Saunders and the others were hiding but Razak managed to divert them and apparently no one wanted to risk their lives approaching the lumber room. And so Butler and the others remained hidden in the sweltering heat of that small dark room.
6
THEIR BLOOD HAVE THEY SHED LIKE WATER
Outside the cantonment, the British residents did not escape the turmoil. At Monckton’s house, Jones, who had the second watch of the night, fell asleep just as things went off in the Cavalry lines. A servant heard a disturbance in the direction of the jail and woke up McMahon, who had to stir his unreliable friend: ‘At half-past 5 M’Mahon came into my room, saying, “There’s a row at the gaol;” I offered to go down with him, but he said “Do not trouble.” Two minutes later he came in, saying, “Well, J—, it is come at last.”’1 Stepping outside, they were treated to the spectacle of several sowars galloping through Monckton’s garden with their swords drawn, and Lieutenant Princep fleeing for his life in the direction of the Wazirabad road. The sound of musket fire could now be heard from the cantonment, so they alerted Monckton and Boyle and assembled their guard of newly levied Sikhs.2 While McMahon and Jones went to the lines of the Mounted Police, Monckton and Boyle ran over to Hill’s house to alert the Hunters, but discovered that they had already left. After looking through the house, Boyle found himself ‘left among the trees in the grounds, peeping out to see how near the wretches came; after staying and occasionally moving and again hiding, I made up my mind to take my heels across the plains.’3 The good Reverend eventually made it to the safety of the fort, while Monckton, who was quite ill, managed to escape to a nearby village.4
Meanwhile, McMahon and Jones had hastened down to the Police lines, a few hundred yards away from the house, along with twelve brand new Sikh recruits. Once they arrived, McMahon ordered the one hundred-man-strong force of the mounted police to saddle up and follow them. To their surprise, they found that not a single man was prepared to follow orders—‘they responded only by angry and sullen looks.’5 There were at the time several sowars of the 9th riding about within the police lines and the two officers realised that these Indian troopers were the ones in charge. One of the sowars even called out to the recruits of McMahon’s tiny force: ‘Come you also and join us.’6 Realising that their survival rested entirely on the recruits remaining faithful, McMahon addressed his men earnestly: ‘Fifteen years’ service on good pay,’ he said, ‘with a liberal pension the rest of your lives. Are you ready to forfeit all this, and be hanged besides?’7 After some wavering, the recruits finally declared their loyalty, and McMahon and Jones carefully led them out of the police lines, giving up on the men there as a lost cause. When they learned that the Hunters had already left, they too set out for the fort and Jones later described their tense march past the jail where the sowars were in the process of releasing the prisoners:
‘I and M’Mahon walked off at the head of our raw recruits, going slowly for the rest to come up, and then having to stop and make them load, and see that they did it well, as it was the first time many of them had put a cartridge into a musket. We then
went slowly across the plain, till two or three cavalry rode up very close, calling to our men to come with them, and at first, taken in by the ruse, they moved a few paces towards them. We told them they were mutineers, who wanted to take away their bread from them, and, patting one or two of them, told them that this was a time when we and they were going to be brothers. They then marched on as pluckily as possible, laughing and joking with us, though we felt in anything but a laughing humour. Twice, as we moved along, bodies of cavalry came very near. We made our men face round to them, and, telling them that Punjabees were not to be alarmed at the sight of such cowards, they showed so bold a front that the wrenches went off, though they might with ease have cut us all up. Our horses were led after us, but we thought it best not to mount, lest it might discourage our men. After getting past the gaol we found no difficulty in reaching the fort, where we found numbers of officers had preceded us.’8
It was only after they reached the fort, that McMahon and Jones found out that Thomas and Jane Hunter never made it. The anxious missionaries had probably stayed awake the previous night, in anticipation of their departure, and were thus likely to have been among the first to be alerted when the sowars rode down to the prison before the break of dawn. Following this, they had immediately packed up the carriage and left Hill’s house with the baby, quietly passing the Monckton house where Jones was sleeping on his watch; the others were as yet unaware that the outbreak they had all been anticipating had commenced.9 Rather than heading straight out of Sialkot, and westwards towards Wazirabad, Thomas Hunter stuck with their original plan to make for Lahore, which meant they had to drive south and down through the city. Accordingly, they took the road that led down past the jail, court-house and treasury, and unbeknownst to them, the same path the sowars had taken just shortly before.
As they crossed the bridge over the Palku Creek, the Hunters came within sight of the sowars and jail chauprassis who were in the process of releasing the prisoners from the jail. When the carriage was spotted, a sowar resolutely rode up and fired his pistol at Thomas at point-blank range, the ball ‘passing through Mr. Hunter’s face and entering Mrs Hunter’s body about the neck.’10 No one now seemed willing to finish the job, but after some discussion Hurmat Khan, the demoted chau-prassi with a grudge, stepped forward and ‘completed the murder with a sword, killing the child also.’11 According to Indian eye-witnesses questioned by Monckton, the Hunters ‘and their child were then dragged out of the carriage and hacked to pieces by the Kutcherry and Jail Chupprassees.’12 At least one account claims that the bodies were subsequently stripped naked by Hurmat Khan as an act of public humiliation—but this is not corroborated by any other sources and was indeed a standard trope in contemporary accounts of rebel atrocities.13 What is certain is that the bodies were left ‘weltering in their blood upon the ground.’ After news of the murder of the Hunters reached McMahon at the fort, he went out with some of the Sikh recruits and recovered the bodies. Even in death, Jane still clutched the body of her baby and, according to Gordon:
‘Mr Hunter was found lying with his head pillowed upon his arm, a position he seemed to have taken after he had received his mortal wound. Captain McMahon distinctly states that their bodies were not mutilated. Some Panjabi peasants who had seen them lying unguarded, drew near, and watched over them until they were removed to the fort.’14
In their desperation to leave, Thomas and Jane Hunter, along with their baby, might very well have become the very first European victims of the outbreak at Sialkot.
Back in the lines of the 9th BLC, Mrs Campbell, Sarah Graham and the others were still being protected by the sowars. They knew that the Scottish missionaries had not gotten away since a wounded horse had been brought in by a servant who said it belonged to Mr Hunter, ‘and that he, his wife and child, had been killed in their carriage, and were lying dead on the roadside.’15 Though afraid for what might befall her husband, Mrs Campbell managed to keep up a brave front and tried to comfort Sarah. Gordon later described, with some poetic license, how Sarah Graham had mourned her father:
‘As she sat sadly reflecting upon what had happened, her eyes rested accidently on a pair of diamond bracelets which adorned her fair hands, and caught a glimpse of blood-stains. The tragic events of the awful morning were instantly before her; and these thoughts flashed across her troubled mind: “How gently my father urged me to rise, disregarding what his courageous spirit deemed unnecessary alarm! How tenderly he sought to dispel my rising fears at the sight of those murderous troopers! Alas, how leisurely I arranged my toilet when moments were worth millions! Oh that we had made haste!”—and she dashed the bloody ornaments from her sight in horror! Poor bereaved child!’16
There was little time for such sentiments, however, and they kept getting news of various people who had been killed. There were also more Europeans being brought in, including one officer of the 9th who, along with his wife, was wearing the clothes of an Indian woman to avoid detection.17 The French nuns and their young female pupils had to escape from the convent on foot when their carriages were commandeered by sowars who also plundered all their valuables. None of them, however, were hurt and they were allowed to seek refuge at the Quarter Guard; although by their own accounts this was due only to divine intervention and a series of miracles worthy of a medieval chronicle.18 When the sowars at the Quarter Guard were distracted by the arrival of cash removed from the treasury, a Christian drummer of the regimental band helped the nuns and their wardens escape to the fort.19 At one point during her miraculous delivery, the Mother Superior also had to cover herself with a sheet, and, pretending to be a soldier’s wife, salaamed two sowars who were passing by.20 Considering how pervasive the image of the colonial officer disguised in local dress became in colonial literature after 1857, famously exemplified by Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’ or ‘Inspector Strickland’, or indeed any of John Master’s characters, the reality of such attempts at cultural cross-dressing is noteworthy. Where the fictional sahib in disguise personified the colonial state’s power and unhindered access to local society—spying on the secret plotting of ‘Thugs’ or rebellious rajas—the British reliance on disguise at Sialkot in 1857 reflected their vulnerability and complete helplessness during this moment of crisis. ‘Going native’ was not an expression of cultural mastery, but the desperate acts of people fleeing for their lives.
The wrath and violence unleashed against the British at Sialkot was neither random nor unique, but followed a well-established repertoire common to urban riots. The sowars and sepoys deliberately destroyed official buildings and institutions that symbolised colonial authority: they blew up the magazines, with its stores of ammunition; they burnt the court-house, and all the records and files; and they also plundered the treasury.21 While the local Punjabi population remained largely uninvolved, most of the Hindustani servants and camp-followers of the station immediately joined the sepoys. As one official report described it: ‘Khitmutgars, syces, grass-cutters, bazaar people, all appear to have joined them.’22 These were the subalterns and menials who serviced the military establishment, and most of the camp-followers, including prostitutes, blacksmiths, and merchants, lived in the Sudder Bazaar under direct British supervision. Like Alum Bheg and the other Purbiya troops, they were alien to Punjab; they lived under much the same conditions as did the Indian troops, and their fate was intimately tied up with that of the sepoys and sowars.
What might appear as mindless plunder and destruction at Sialkot during the outbreak, was the result of the carnivalesque excitement of the world being turned upside down: released prisoners, now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with prison guards, could do as they pleased, and servants suddenly found themselves in possession of their masters’ house and belongings. Under such circumstances no real distinction can be made between the attack on the authorities and plunder for personal enrichment. For the sepoys and servants systematically destroying the Hearsey mansion, in which Butler and the others were hiding, there would have
been little difference between smashing the china, or pocketing the silverware. It was furthermore not just the European bungalows that were plundered and torched. In the Sudder Bazaar the shops owned by Parsis appear to have been deliberately targeted by the sepoys, while those owned by Muslims were untouched.23 The details of this remain somewhat unclear, but there does seem to have been a sectarian aspect in the targeting of merchants. One particular merchant fared badly despite his support for the rebels:
‘One merchant who had private information of the intended mutiny at Delhi, and who gave information to the King of Delhi respecting our forces, stood on the bridge leading to the Fort and threw dirt at the ladies as they came up. The [sepoys] fined him 2,000 rupees, promising not to loot his shop, which was at that time well filled; having got the money they treated his shop worse than the others.’24
Later in the day, villagers from the surrounding countryside began to pour in. These were essentially poor peasants taking advantage of the outbreak to loot and their actions should thus be considered as separate from those of the sepoys. The involvement of villagers from the countryside nevertheless reflected the expanding dynamic of the outbreak, and what had started as a purely military mutiny, quickly came to involve other parts of the population. Yet how much Alum Bheg and the villagers of the countryside surrounding Sialkot really had in common was far from clear.25
Amidst the noise, smoke and general confusion of the outbreak, the Quarter Guard became an unlikely haven to the British men and women who found themselves caught up in the mutiny. The presence there of Lorne Campbell in particular appears to have been a deciding factor in how the sowars acted. By the afternoon of the 9th, the sowars finally seemed to be preparing to leave, as Mrs Campbell recounted:
The Skull of Alum Bheg Page 16