The campaign and long service group of four to Private Joseph Ellicock, 32nd Light Infantry, an original defender and personal orderly to Brigadier Inglis at Lucknow

(a) Punjab 1848-49, 2 clasps, Mooltan, Goojerat (Joseph Ellicock, 32nd Foot)

(b) India General Service 1854-94, 1 clasp, North West Frontier (1873 J. Ellicock, H.Ms 32nd Regt.)

(c) Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Defence of Lucknow (J. Ellicock, 32nd L.I.)

(d) Army L.S. & G.C., V.R., small letter reverse (1873 J. Ellicock, 32nd Regt.) contact marks and edge bruising, otherwise generally very fine £2500-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Joseph Ellicock was born in the parish of St Mary, Nottingham, circa 1820, and attested for H.M’s 32nd Regiment at Nottingham on 29 February 1840. A ‘Frame Work Knitter’ by trade, he landed in India with his regiment in 1846 and served in the Second Sikh War at Mooltan and Goojerat. Evidently a steady, plodding fellow, he was granted penny increments in Good Conduct Pay every three or four years from 1846, but never attained a stripe. In 1857 he was present with his regiment at Lucknow and served in a combatant role during the defence of the Residency until being forced into hospital by sickness. On 2 September 1857, he was made orderly to the garrison commander, Brigadier John Inglis, 32nd, of whom Private Robert Waterfield (See Lot 62) wrote in 1853, ‘Lieutenant-Colonel J. E. W. Inglis has ... returned with the daughter of Sir F. Thessiger [sic], to whom he has been married sometime, and a greater reformation never was made in any man, than was made in Col. John by his excellent Lady. He had the appellation of ‘Scaly Jack’ before he went on leave to England, but now he is as another being. He is now kind and affable in his manners, generous in principle, benevolent where benevolence is required, and walks in the path of righteousness, as far as a soldier possibly can do. His present goodness ought to erase [malice] from the minds of those who formerly disliked him.’

Ellicock obtained his post, scarcely a demanding one since the garrison had long ‘deserted the red and blue’ and now looked more like buccaneers than British soldiers, due to the death of Inglis’s servant Vokins who had lost a leg earlier in the Defence. The Brigadier’s ‘excellent Lady’, the Hon. Mrs. Julia Inglis, recorded in her account of the siege how Ellicock came to join their circle: ‘Ellicock, a private in the 32nd, now did the little John required; he also had been very ill in hospital, but he [Inglis] took him out and brought him down to us, and the change of air and better food soon made a different man of him. John used to visit the hospital every day, and would often give the men cigars, which they thoroughly appreciated.’ A few weeks later Ellicock was again mentioned in Lady Inglis’s journal, this time digging a 32-pounder shot out of the archway in Inglis’s courtyard - ‘It made a tremendous crash, and certainly was not a pleasant visitor’.

On 25 September, a day of excitement and anxiety as the thunder of guns and the crackle of rifles belonging to Havelock and Outram’s Relief Force drew nearer, Lieutenant Frederick Birch, A.D.C., in an effort to make his Brigadier look more like the ‘invading generals’, ordered Ellicock to fetch his chief’s sword which had not been used since Chinhut. Ellicock obliged but Birch was forced to admit that the addition of a sword to the two pistols in the Brigadier’s waistbelt only enhanced his piratical appearance, especially when compared with that of Major-General Havelock, who, smartly dressed in a blue coat buttoned up at the chin, stepped through the battered Baillie Guard Gate shortly before six o’clock in the evening to shake Inglis by the hand. Next day the commotion caused by the occupation of the extended position reminded Ellicock ‘more of the Donnybrook Fair than anything else’. Ellicock was duly allowed to reckon an additional year’s service for the Defence, so that on his discharge at Devonport he was credited with having completed twenty-one years service. He was then forty years of age, five feet ten inches in height, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. He was discharged from the service at Devonport on 25 May 1860.

Refs: WO 97/1495; The Siege of Lucknow; A Diary (Hon Lady Inglis); Ordeal at Lucknow (Joyce).