The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The Indian Mutiny medal to Martin Richard Gubbins, Financial Commissioner and manager of the Intelligence Department at Lucknow throughout the siege, author of ‘Mutinies in Oudh’

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Defence of Lucknow (Martin Rd. Gubbins, Civil Service) good 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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Martin Richard Gubbins, the capable, energetic but sometimes ‘wrong-headed’ Financial Commissioner at Lucknow during the Great Mutiny, was born in Nova Scotia on 27 January 1812. The third son of Major-General Joseph Gubbins, of South Stoneham House, near Southampton, and Charlotte, daughter of John Bathoe of Bath, he was educated privately at home, and in 1829 entered Haileybury, the H.E.I.C’s College opened by the Directors in 1806 to train students for the Company’s Civil Service. Haileybury, as it existed until 1857, was something of a cross between a public school and an Oxbridge college with students living in small bed-sitting rooms. ‘The day began at about seven, when an aged bedmaker came in, lit the fire and disappeared. Then came the scout who filled the bath with cold water, laid the table for breakfast, cleaned the boots and made as much noise as he could in order to awaken the sleeping student. Gradually we got up, dressed, put on cap and gown and hurried off to chapel at 8.’ Breakfast was ‘ingeniously balanced on the tongs before the fire’, ‘curried soles being a great favourite; the morning was packed with lectures and the more conscientious spent the early afternoon writing up their notes ... There was no regular lunch - that meal still being a feminine flippancy - but beer and cheese were to be had at the ‘trap’ ... There were fives and cricket and rowing and some managed to hunt. In the afternoon some went off to play games, the fast men on dogcarts to play billiards at Hertford or Ware, or perhaps to slip up to town by train for the afternoon, and the steady men to take a solemn constitutional along the roads.’ Gubbins, who most probably ranked among the latter, was an exceptional student and in the four terms of his two year course he carried off no less than eleven prizes for Oriental languages, as well as one for Drawing.

Gubbins left Haileybury in 1830 at the age of eighteen, and, being appointed Writer on 30 April 1830, sailed almost immediately for India to take up his post in the Bengal Civil Service. Sixteen years later he became Financial Commissioner of Oudh, and on 3 August 1841, he married Harriet Louise, daughter of Frederick Nepean, B.C.S.

In early 1857, Sir Henry Lawrence, British Resident at Lahore, disagreeing with the policies of Lord Dalhousie and his own younger brother, John, was obliged to resign. Further distressed over the death of his wife and in poor health, he was on the point of returning home when Dalhousie’s successor, Charles Canning, offered him the appointment of Chief Commissioner of Oudh. He accepted at once and was ‘hailed with pleasure’ by Gubbins, who though himself short-tempered and stubborn, had been no match for Lawrence’s predecessor, Coverley Jackson, a man of violent temper who had ‘severely mauled’ him on more than one occasion. Jackson spent eight days handing over to Lawrence and warned him that Gubbins might be ‘troublesome’. Indeed Gubbins quickly proved himself ‘almost insubordinate’ in personal encounters with the Chief Commissioner, and was soon writing to the Governor-General to complain of Lawrence’s ‘inability in letters’. ‘Sir Henry Lawrence came to us attenuated and weak’, runs one of Gubbins’s letters to Canning, ‘and the severe mental anxiety he has undergone has prostrated him greatly. Sir Henry Lawrence is no longer, I think, firm nor his mental vision clear.’ Canning meanwhile warned Lawrence, ‘I am sure that it will be necessary for you to keep a close watch and a tight hand upon that officer [Gubbins]’.

The situation in Lucknow at the time of Lawrence’s arrival was far from settled. There was widespread discontent amongst the native population stemming from the annexation of Oudh, and the native regiments were awaiting the slightest provocation to demonstrate their pent-up anger. In early April, the provocation came. The Surgeon of the 48th N.I. was visiting the hospital dispensary and, feeling unwell at the time, took a few sips from a bottle of carminative, thus defiling it in the minds of his Hindu patients. This action was reported by the native apothecary to the Sepoys, who took revenge by burning down the Surgeon’s bungalow. Shortly afterwards, the 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry refused to bite their cartridges and threatened to murder all their officers, but Lawrence marching towards them with as many Europeans as he could quickly assemble gave them cause to disperse. From the first Gubbins perceived the coming danger and suggested that a party of soldiers from H.M’s 32nd should be moved into the Residency in case of attack. Initially, Lawrence refused for fear of showing distrust, but later, when backed by several army officers, the idea was adopted, and the women and children belonging to the 32nd were brought into the Residency. Gubbins was also strongly in favour of disarming the Lucknow regiments, a course which Sir Henry, who could be equally adamant, refused to contemplate, for fear that others in outlying districts might mutiny in protest.


During May Gubbins was given further reason to doubt whether the present uneasiness would pass without serious incident. Nana Sahib, who enjoyed social intercourse with the European community on his own doorstep at Cawnpore, decided to make one of his rare trips away from his palace at Bithur, and visit Lucknow, where he was received by Gubbins in his capacity as Financial Commissioner. Gubbins regarded him far less favourably than his European acquaintances at Cawnpore. ‘His manner was arrogant and presuming. To make a show of dignity and importance, he brought six or seven followers with him into the room, for whom chairs were demanded. He appeared to be of middle age and height, and, as Hindoos of rank generally are in India corpulent. Mahrattas of pure descent are usually fair in complexion but the Nana is darker than they generally are.’ Nana Sahib left Lucknow in a great hurry claiming that events at Cawnpore demanded his return. Gubbins, considering this ‘highly suspicious’, conveyed his distrust to Lawrence, who in turn sent General Wheeler a note of warning. Unfortunately Wheeler had no reason to distrust the man who had always been perfectly agreeable and was in fact the same caste as his wife.

Gubbins who complained that most Europeans were taking the crisis far too lightly, soon began to turn his large house situated near the Residency into a formidable defensive position, employing an Indian architect and seventy-five native workmen to throw up bastions and dig ditches, until it was turned ‘into a fort which would not have disgraced Marshal Vauban himself’. He emptied his library shelves for the barricades, and after some experimentation found that a volume of Lardner’s Encyclopaedia could stop a musket ball after passing through 120 pages, and that a quarto copy of Finden’s Illustrations of Byron could stop a three-pound roundshot.

On Saturday 30 May, the Lucknow regiments mutinied and most Europeans began to realise the disaster for which Gubbins had been so visibly preparing was close at hand. Every day saw the arrival of more and more families at the Residency with dramatic tales of their escapes from the outlying stations. By the third week in June there was not a single representative of the Government anywhere in Oudh, and virtually the whole country was in a state of open rebellion. Gubbins, however, was disinclined to believe the intelligence reports regarding the strength of the rebels and across one scrawled,‘What stuff!’, meaning he thought it a wild exaggeration. He urged Lawrence to disperse them immediately, but Sir Henry was disinclined to do so. His reluctance caused Gubbins to exclaim from the safety of his armchair, “Well, Sir Henry, we shall all be branded at the bar of history as cowards!” After this remark Gubbins much to his chagrin was neither consulted on nor informed of the decision to march out to Chinhut on 30 June, which some afterwards believed had only been taken by Lawrence due to Gubbins’ continual advocacy in favour of aggressive policy.

Towards the end of May, Lawrence, well aware of his growing weakness, wrote to Calcutta suggesting that if he became unfit for command, that Major John Sherbroke Banks should succeed him as Chief Commissioner and that command of the troops be given to Colonel John Inglis of the 32nd. They were in Lawrence’s words ‘the right men’ and ‘in fact the only men for their places’. But soon afterwards he felt compelled to delegate his authority to a provisional council which met under Gubbins’ presidency, though Gubbins’ grasp on the reins of power was not destined to last for long. One of his first acts was to persuade the other members of the council to agree on disarming a company of Sepoys which thus far had remained loyal but had not openly declared their support for the Company. The moment Lawrence heard of this move, he immediately resumed command and invited the Sepoys back. About a hundred and fifty returned, most of whom remained loyal till the end of the siege. Later, on 2 July, when Lawrence was mortally wounded, Gubbins, who in the normal course would have succeeded as Chief Commissioner, was irritated to find that Banks had been appointed in his place.

On 28 June, Gubbins, who continued in charge of intelligence, learnt the fate of the Cawnpore garrison from two native messengers who had witnessed the massacre at Satichura Ghat. The defenders at Lucknow quickly realised that there could be no hope of negotiation and that if necessary they must die sword in hand. An officer who was a guest at Gubbins’ house took him aside one evening and said that he had decided to shoot his own wife if the enemy broke in. The officer suggested if one of them were killed before the other, the survivor should perform this last act of mercy for their wives. Gubbins refused saying that he could not bring himself to do it.

On 20 July, Gubbins, like all other able bodied men, found himself in the thick of the fighting when the enemy launched a general assault. His post was also heavily attacked on the following day when the mutineers occupied houses on its south side in great strength and made their way into a low range of buildings, separated from Gubbins’ compound by a low wall running alongside a lane. Gubbins, who was ‘a sportsman and excellent shot’, seized two double barrelled rifles and went to a loophole on the roof of an outhouse from which he could enfilade the mutineers in the lane except when they took cover under a portico alongside Grant’s Bastion. The mutineers tried to dig their way through the wall into Grant’s position with picks and shovels and at one point Gubbins and a Private of the 32nd had to hurriedly build a barricade. Resuming his place on the outhouse roof and re-sighting his rifle on the killing zone of the lane, he suddenly heard a man fall heavily behind him and looked round looked round to see Major Banks shot dead through the temple. Gubbins, aided by a native orderly to load his rifle, was kept at his post for several more hours until a mortar was finally brought up and the enemy were at last ejected from their lodgement by shell fire. The trials of the day however had not come to an end. Just as Gubbins was sitting down to dinner a bullet entered his house by one of the south windows and severely wounded, Dr Brydon, the ‘sole’ survivor of the retreat from Cabul in 1842.

On the evening of the 22nd, Gubbins was feeling unwell and went to bed early. His slumber was interrupted shortly after midnight by the arrival of a native messenger called Ungud. Ungud was one of the native pensioners who had taken up Lawrence’s offer of returning to the colours, and who had been sent out of the Residency on the night of 29 June to observe the movements of Nana Sahib, who was expected to join the investing forces. Gubbins could scarcely believe Ungud’s news that Havelock with only a small force and twelve guns had beaten Nana Sahib in three engagements. Ungud was taken to Brigadier Inglis’s headquarters with a note from Gubbins asking whether he wished to write a letter to Havelock at Cawnpore. For some reason Inglis told Ungud that he did not propose to write himself and sent him back to Gubbins, who took on the task of writing a despatch for the Governor-General himself. When he had finished, Lieutenant Birch appeared with a message that the Brigadier could not sleep and that he would write after all if the messenger had not already started. Gubbins undertook to detain Ungud until the letter was brought over, but a sudden heavy downpour offered Ungud an opportunity to slip through the rebel lines. Ungud proposed to leave at once. Gubbins tried to keep him back, but Ungud insisted he must leave directly and he was allowed out with the despatch that had already been prepared. When Gubbins sent across to Inglis to tell him what had happened, his messenger met Birch carrying the Brigadier’s letter. Although Gubbins acted to the best of his judgement, Inglis was furious and felt that his authority had been undermined. Relations between the two men further deteriorated when Gubbins assumed Banks’s office denied him three weeks earlier. Next day, 23 July, Inglis instructed his adjutant general, Captain T. F. Wilson (Ritchie 2-59), to write:

‘I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No. 1 of this date, in which you report that you have assumed charge of the office of Chief Commissioner for the affairs of Oudh and in reply to state that Sir Henry Lawrence superseded you in the post by Major Banks, and he also expressed his opinion to Lord Canning and to more than one living member of this garrison that you should on no account be permitted to hold the office of Chief Commissioner. Under the above circumstances, the Brigadier, with the entire concurrence of Major Anderson [Chief Engineer], thinks it his duty to inform you and to publish in this day’s orders, for general information, that the office of Chief Commissioner is for the present vacant, and that Martial Law, and the highest Military Authority will be paramount in Oudh, until a successor to Sir Henry Lawrence shall be duly appointed by the Governor General in Council.
The Brigadier therefore requests that you will for the future abstain from sending any message to the relieving force, or performing any act whatever connected with the public service without previously communicating what you propose to do for his information.
As your messenger was despatched without waiting for the Brigadier’s letter to the officer commanding the Relieving Force he requests you will furnish him with a copy of your communication.’

Brushing off the rebuke from the pen of Captain Wilson, Gubbins declared afterwards that indeed there was no need for the exercise of civil authority as there were no Government officers in the outlying stations, and, as the Brigadier had pointed out, the garrison was under martial law. At 11 p.m. on the 25th, Ungud returned with a message from Lieutenant-Colonel Bannatyne Fraser Tytler, the D.A.Q.M.G. with Havelock’s force, announcing that they had ‘ample force to destroy all who oppose us’ and that they would meet in ‘five or six days’. A postscript added, ‘We have smashed the Nana ... and destroyed his palace at Bithur’. The news raised the spirits of the whole garrison, a number of whom sat around Ungud in an animated circle at Gubbins’s house, asking qusestion after question. Ungud left again on the 27th with a dangerously bulky packet containing plans of the approaches and the dispositions of the enemy. He also carried a letter from Inglis to Havelock which closed with a request to inform the Governor-General that no recognised successor had been appointed to succeed Banks. Every evening watch was kept for signal rockets announcing Havelock’s approach, but none were seen. Salutes fired in honour of the King of Oudh raised and dashed the hopes of the garrison on one occasion, and August arrived without any positive sign of relief. The military authorities began to believe that Gubbins’s despatch of 22 July had given Havelock the impression that the garrison was not immediately imperiled and that as a result the relief force was taking its time. Gubbins responded that he had given a faithful account of the siege and suggested that Havelock had either encountered the enemy in great force or been delayed at the broken bridge at Bani between Lucknow and Cawnpore. On 2 August, Inglis wrote to Gubbins:

‘Not having received any intelligence of our reinforcements, and no distant firing being heard, I naturally feel anxious of its whereabouts. In your letter to the Officer Commanding to which you have received an answer did you give him a probable estimate of the Force likely to oppose him en route to this place and did you mention the strong position of the Bani Bridge? I am aware you kept no copy of your letter but perhaps you can remember the two questions above mentioned.’

Unfortunately Gubbins was unable to answer the Brigadier’s queries, and a letter was therefore despatched to Havelock asking him what information he had been given. The letter also stated there were enough provisions for twenty days but owing to the severe loss of life the garrison could no longer man all its guns. On 10 August, the enemy sprang two mines, the first opposite Johannes house and the second outside Sago’s Post, the enemy also advanced in strength with scaling ladders against Innes’, Anderson’s and Gubbins’ posts, but were repulsed on all sides with heavy loss. On this occasion Gubbins ‘was surprised to find how hard it was to hit a fleeing target with a single rifle bullet from a loophole,’ he found, ‘a smooth-bore musket, loaded with eight or ten pistol balls, far more destructive at close quarters’.

Five days later, the faithful Ungud reappeared, having been detained for some days by the enemy, bearing a message for Gubbins from Fraser Tytler dated ‘Mangalwar, August 4th’. The letter contained the worrying lines: ‘We hope to reach you in four days at furthest. You must aid us in every way, even to cutting your way out, if we can’t cut our way in. We are only a small Force’. This indicated that Havelock had no idea of the desperate situation in the Lucknow entrenchment. As soon as Gubbins had shown the letter to Inglis, he suggested that they should confer in drawing up a despatch explaining their dire predicament as clearly as possible. Inglis agreed and next day even brought a draft to Gubbins’ house. The Brigadier made no bones about his position in his letter; he stated he was encumbered with women, children, sick and wounded; that enemy mines had weakened the defences; that part of the Residency had been brought down by concentrated artillery fire; that the loyal native troops were losing confidence; and that unless he received encouraging news he would be forced to put the garrison on half rations. Gubbins thought the letter unnecessarily pessimistic and expressed a fear that Havelock’s force might be annihilated trying to get through before it was properly reinforced by troops known to be making their way up country. Inglis insisted his letter painted a truthful picture of the situation and said that it had been drawn up with the concurrence of his staff. That night Ungud took Inglis’s letter out unaltered.

On 1 September, Inglis wrote again to Havelock in equally grim vein, adding that he had ‘prohibited the civil authorities from corresponding’ with his camp. There is little doubt that this order was issued with Gubbins specifically in mind. Next day, Gubbins, who was still embittered about his supersession, received written confirmation of the prohibition from Captain Wilson at Inglis’s headquarters:

‘I am directed by Brigadier Inglis Commanding to acknowledge your letter No. 6 of this date to his address in which you express your regret that General Havelock and the Government of India should be deprived of your opinion regarding our position and also lament that your proposed despatch to General Havelock was not suffered to be forwarded to that officer.
1. In reply I am instructed to state that the Brigadier’s letter of the 16th Ultimo was shown to several officers of experience in this garrison whose unanimous opinion was that the Brigadier had underrated rather than overstated the gravity of our position. You are aware that your despatch was calculated to convey to General Havelock that there was no necessity whatever for his immediate advance.
2. Under the above circumstances the Brigadier is of the opinion that both the General and the Government of India will agree that he was right in refusing to allow a despatch so calculated to mislead to be forwarded to that officer who has however been informed that you have been prohibited from corresponding with his camp.
I have the honour etc.’

Thus, Gubbins was pushed out of the picture for good. On 16 September, Ungud, who, having initially refused payment but who by now earned £1,000 and was promised five hundred more if he made another return journey, was sent out again with a message for Havelock. He returned on the 22nd with a letter from Sir James Outram, who had reinforced Havelock on 5 September, warning the garrison the rebels intended to launch a desperate assault on the Residency just as the relief force approached the city.

By the time Outram arrived with Havelock’s first Relief Force on 25 September, Gubbins’ house had been considerably knocked about, especially by twenty-one pound shots which had passed right through the walls of the upper north rooms forcing the ladies staying there to move out to the house of his colleague Ommanney, the Judicial Commissioner, and into the Brigade Mess. The layout of Outram’s extended position, however, meant that Gubbins’ house was less exposed to incoming artillery fire after 25 September, and our hero took advantage of this to bring over some officers who were failing to recuperate in the less healthy conditions of the hospital.

The general scarcity of food after the arrival of the first Relief Force did not affect those fortunate enough to be staying with Gubbins. There all still enjoyed tinned salmon and tinned carrots at dinner, in addition to tinned rice puddings. Indeed Gubbins’ well-stocked cellar allowed him to bolster the ailing Havelock with the occasional ‘excellent bottle of sherry’, and provide each of his male ‘guests’ with of a glass of sherry, two of champagne and two of claret every evening; while Mrs Gubbins after three months of siege still enjoyed the luxury of drinking tea three times a day, served by her English maid, Chivers, with not only sugar but also with milk supplied by her hisband’s surviving goats. In noting some of the ‘fabulous prices’ realised for Lawrence’s comestible effects at an auction in August, Julia Inglis commented, ‘sugar, had there been any, would have commanded any price’. Ironically when the non-combatant survivors of the Lucknow garrison were eventually received in Calcutta following the second Relief by Sir Colin Campbell, Mrs Gubbins, according to Lady Canning, was ‘the only person who [looked] much shaken and nervous’.

The miserable plight of some of the children, infants and nursing mothers, caused not a few to grumble about the Financial Commissioner. ‘Mr Gubbins is not at all liked in the garrison’, wrote Surgeon Gilbert Hadow. ‘He was not popular in Lucknow, even before the siege ... Though I was latterly consistently in his house, attending Adair and L’Estrange, and was almost starving, at least ravenous for food, I never even had a chupatti offered to me - and in their compound was a swimming bath that I bathed in at first but very soon I was given to understand that they would rather I gave up my daily bathe there as I was not one of their garrison.’ L. E. R. Rees also resented what seemed to be parsimony on Gubbins’ part, especially when compared to the generosity of his friend the French merchant, Deprat, who despite having been robbed at the start of the siege of his champagne and brandy by soldiers of the 32nd (‘but not his claret and sauternes which they did not fancy’), gave away hermetically sealed provisions, cigars and wine to anyone who wanted them. However, Hadow was candid enough to admit, ‘I think it unfair to cry Gubbins down because he did not supply us all with luxuries of which he certainly had plenty for his own garrison ... they would have not gone far if given out ... He very wisely laid in supplies for the siege and fortunate indeed were those whom he received into his house.’

Gubbins survived the siege and finally left the Residency entrenchment with the fighting men on the night of 22 - 23 November, but was taken ill at Cawnpore soon after and was invalided home, where he began work on his inconsistent book, The Mutinies in Oude. As a result of their feud, Inglis chose to omit Gubbins’ name from his despatch, even ‘though he had played an important part in the defence, more important, certainly, than several civilians who were mentioned’. Despite this, Gubbins was not prevented from writing about the Brigadier in generous terms. He sailed again to India in 1858 and was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court at Agra, but was forced to resign on grounds of ill-health just four years later. He returned to England suffering from severe mental depression and hanged himself at Somerset House, Leamington, on 6 May 1863.

Refs: Hodson Index (NAM); Memorials of Old Haileybury College (Danvers); Mutinies in Oudh (Gubbins); Ordeal at Lucknow (Joyce); The Great Mutiny (Hibbert); Modern English Biography (Boase).