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

The Indian Mutiny medal to Lieutenant C. H. Mecham for services as Adjutant of the 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry, an original defender at Lucknow who survived the explosion of the only mine set off during the siege, and served afterwards with Hodson's Horse, a talented amateur artist responsible for Sketches and Incidents of the Siege of Lucknow

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Defence of Lucknow (Lieut. C. H. Meeham, 7th Oudh Irreg. Inf.) note spelling of surname, suspension claw slack, some edge bruising, otherwise 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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Clifford Henry Mecham, the son of Captain George Mecham of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, was born at Loughborough, Leicestershire, on 24 November 1831, and entered the Madras Army on 20 January 1849. Arriving in India later the same year he was directed to do duty with the 52nd Madras N.I. at Vellore, before joining the 27th Madras N.I. at Trichinopoly. At the end of 1851 he accompanied his regiment to Mangalore, and, in 1854, to Mercara in Coorg. In February 1856, he was appointed Adjutant of the 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry at Lucknow and between July and November of that year he officiated as second in command. On Sunday 3 May 1857, the Sowars of that corps refused to bite their cartridges and threatened to murder their officers. Sir Henry Lawrence, accompanied by as many European troops as he could muster, marched out to the Moosa Bagh to meet the disaffected men, who, on catching sight of a port fire lit by a British gunner, ‘broke ranks in terror’. A few men returned to the lines next morning, but the regiment effectively ceased to exist.

During the defence of the Residency, at between 5 and 6 a.m. on 18 August 1857, Lieutenant Mecham was on lookout with Captain Adolphe Orr and two sentries at the top of a house next to Sikh Square. One of the sentries spotted a rebel. Mecham fired at him, but missed. Then one of the sentries called out, “Mine, sir”. What followed is best described in Mecham’s own words: ‘It was here that Captain Orr and myself, with ten Christian drummers who formed part of the garrison, were blown into the air by the explosion of a mine. I can assure my readers that an involuntary ascent of some twenty or thirty feet in the form of a spread eagle is by no means an agreeable sensation; and I was very thankful when I kissed mother earth again, albeit I should have certainly considered it rather too warm a maternal embrace on any other occasion. My brother officer had an equally providential escape, but the poor drummers, who had been sleeping a few yards off, were not so fortunate. One of them was blown outside our defences, and was immediately decapitated by the enemy; and, with but one exception, all the others were buried under the ruins, where they lie to this day.’


The explosion tore a thirty foot hole in the outer wall of the second enclosure that comprised Sikh Square. A general call to arms was sounded to prevent the enemy swarming through, and after a long struggle the gap was eventually closed in the afternoon with heavy shutters, brought down from the Residency, and hastily constructed into a temporary barricade under a storm of fire. Mecham was twice thanked by Brigadier Inglis for his services during the defence of the Residency (Calcutta Gazette 9 & 23 December 1857).

With the arrival of the first Relief Force in September, Mecham was attached to the 1st Madras Fusiliers, and took part in the attempt to capture the Garden Battery, opposite the Cawnpore Battery of the British position. Some men of the 32nd Foot, four other officers and Mecham accompanied the Madras Fusiliers, under Major Stephenson. They came under very heavy fire so that it was impossible to hold the two enemy batteries they had seized. Mecham was with the party which had secured the second battery. Their position was so exposed that Stephenson ordered a retreat back to the main body, and during this retreat Mecham was one of four people who helped a badly wounded Fusilier sergeant go back with them. The captured guns could not be destroyed, so they were spiked, and then Stephenson ordered a general retirement.

When the second Relief Force arrived at Lucknow in November, it was accompanied by Lieutenant Jones-Parry, who recorded: ‘Curiously enough, the first man of the garrison I met was my old schoolfellow and chum, Mecham. He was an excellent specimen of the condition of the defenders, for he looked more like a greyhound than a man; he was as thin as a lath, and his eyes looked sunken into his head. No wonder, for in the first few months he had gone through untold dangers and miraculous escapes. He had only escaped being murdered by his own regiment by a narrow squeak; then he had weathered that awful battle of Chinhut, and finally, had been blown clean out of his own lines into neutral ground by the explosion of a mine that the enemy had succeeded in firing. All the others had been countermined and destroyed by the indefatigable exertions of Fulton, McLeod Innes, and others. Poor Mecham, his troubles were not yet over. We were glad to meet, and subsequently he got posted to do duty with us until his services were required elsewhere.’

On the resumption of operations against Lucknow, Mecham transferred to Hodson’s Horse which formed part of the cavalry brigade under Brigadier-General Campbell, and made the muddled and abortive attempt to cut off retreating rebel forces after the final capture of the city. Following the death of Hodson, a man who loathed ‘red tape’, Henry Daly was appointed to succeed him. To his horror Daly discovered that Hodson had kept no English paperwork whatsoever and that the administrative machinery of the Hodson’s Horse was non-existent. Daly thereupon made Mecham second incommand and gave him the unenviable job of accounting for some 120,000 Rupees (£12,000) disbursed since the enrolment of men had begun nine months earlier.

Mecham next took part in the hot-weather campaign in Oudh under Hope Grant (Ritchie 1-110), and at about this time was photographed as the central figure of a well known group shot of Hodson’s officers by Felice Beato. Cardew illustrated it in his history of Hodson’s Horse with the caption ‘Hodson with some of his officers ... The English officer on Hodson’s left is probably McDowell; the Sikh seated in the foreground is Risaldar Man Singh [See Lot 70]’. Hodson’s biographer, Joynson Cork, claims it depicts Hodson (central figure) with Assistant Surgeon Anderson on his left. The National Army Museum, however, maintains that the central figure is Lieutenant Mecham flanked on his left by Assistant Surgeon Thomas Anderson, and this is further confirmed by other portrait photographs of Mecham taken by Beato and others at the same period.

On Sunday 13 June 1858, a considerable rebel force, reckoned at 15,000, was brought to bay eighteen miles from Lucknow at Nawabgunge. Of this affair, Daly wrote: ‘The ground between us and the enemy on the right, is well adapted for cavalry, for, although there was a ravine within a few yards of their front, it was not sufficient to stop a horse; as I deployed prior to making the charge, I detached Lieut. Mecham with Lieut. the Hon J. H. Fraser [See Lot 83] and one hundred sabres to cross the ravine (which was deep higher up), and to bear down on their left flank. Finding the enemy in greater strength than could be observed from the front, this officer judiciously delayed the movement till the advance on the left took place. I must regret to state that in gallantly making the charge over broken ground, Lieut. Mecham was severely wounded, his horse received a couple of bullets and two sword cuts.’ Mecham was subsequently mentioned in Hope Grant’s despatch (Calcutta Gazette 10 July 1858).

In August 1858, Mecham officiated as Adjutant of 2nd Hodson’s Horse, presumably until relieved by Fraser. He became officiating second-in-command of 3rd Hodson’s Horse on 12 October 1858, and second-in-command 2nd Hodson’s Horse in March 1859. The following month he commanded a detachment of 3rd Hodson’s Horse in a sharp skirmish at Gonda and, in May and June 1859, acted as the 3rd’s Commandant. He went home on furlough shortly afterwards. During his absence, his elder brother, Captain Richard Mecham, Bengal Artillery, was murdered while travelling from Bannu to Kohat. Richard Mecham, who was very ill at the time, was waylaid by a gang of Darwesh Khel Waziri tribesmen, pulled from his doolie, and hacked to pieces before he could discharge more than one round from his revolver. Following his return to India in March 1861, the younger Mecham visited the scene of the crime and set up a monument on the right bank of the Changos Nullah, a quarter of a mile south of the Kohat - Bannu road, near Latammar, with the following inscription:

‘Near this spot
Was murdered on the night of the
5th of November 1859 by Waziree robbers
RICHARD MECHAM
Captain Bengal Artillery
being cowardly deserted by his police escort
This tribute is erected by his brother
Clifford Mecham Madras Army
on visiting the spot November 1863’

The murder of Richard Mecham led to the Kabul Khel Waziri Expedition of 1859-60, in which Neville Chamberlain (See Lot 92) demonstrated the ability of disciplined troops to operate in mountainous and hostile territory. In February 1861, Clifford Mecham was admitted to the Madras Staff Corps. From April 1863 until September 1864 he served as Commandant of the 9th Bengal Cavalry (late 1st Hodson’s Horse) and marched with it from Cawnpore to Peshawar, before being posted to the 10th Bengal Cavalry (late 2nd Regiment of Hodson’s Horse) in July 1865. Here, his career was cut short by his death from hepatitis only two months later on 12 September 1865, in his 34th year, at Kalka at the foot of the hills between Ambala and Kausali.

Another medal is known named to Mecham as a Lieutenant in the Madras Infantry.

Refs: Soldiers of the Raj (De Rhé-Philipe); Hodson’s Horse (Cardew); A Diary recording the Daily Events During the Siege of the European Residency by a Staff Officer (Wilson); Memoirs of General Sir Henry Dermot Daly (Daly); Sketches and Incidents of the Siege of Lucknow (Mecham, London, 1858).