Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (W. A. Bews) nearly extremely fine £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from the Collection of Gordon Everson.

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Walter Anstruther Bews was born at Valetta, Malta, on 16 November 1830. He was the third son and seventh child of Paymaster John Bews, 73rd Regiment. The youngest child, Norah Henrietta, married the future Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1859. At the outbreak of the Mutiny, Walter Bews was in employment as a Railway Superintendent on the Indian Railways. He joined Havelock’s Volunteer Cavalry and in a letter dated 15 December 1857, from Captain Barrow, Commander of the unit, to Major-General Outram, it is stated: ‘Mr Bews accompanied Gen. Havelock’s force as a Cavalry Volunteer from Allahabad at the beginning of July 1857 and remained with the force for rather more than 2 months and was at every action which took place prior to Gen. Outram’s arrival at Cawnpore. Mr Bews was compelled by a severe attack of illness to return to Allahabad without accompanying Gen, Outram to Lucknow.’

Walter Bews was one of the first of Havelock’s men to see the atrocities that had been committed at Cawnpore. In his Daily Life During The Indian Mutiny, J. W. Sherer, C.S.I., to whom Bews had been ordered to act as escort, described the scene at the well: ‘When we got to the coping of the well, and looked over, we saw, at no great depth, a ghastly tangle of naked limbs. I heard a low cry of pain, and saw Bews almost crouching with a sickening anguish. There is no object in saying more.’

Sherer’s last meeting with Walter Bews took place at the end of July 1857, of which occasion he wrote: ‘Many sick men came in, and amongst them poor Bews, who had fallen ill with dysentery. He came back to my tent, and rested for a day or two, till, as he was worse instead of better, he took an opportunity of getting to Allahabad, and so our adventures together ended, for he was not able to appear again on the scene. Marriage cards, received long afterwards from New Zealand, were the only token of his existence I could afterwards obtain.’