The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-04-06 00:00:00

CAWNPORE.-THE SCENE OF MASSACRE.

We copy the following graphic description of
Cawnpore and the neighbourhood from the Times,
furnished by the special correspondent of that

CAWNPOBE, Feb. 12.
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any evidence that we were on the road to a great city,
though I could see many traces of the existence of •
large camp. It was with melancholy interest that I
gazed with straining eyes at each site, known hitherto
only by name, as one after another they were pointed out
by my companion. They were all masses of ruins. " See
that long white building all riddled with cannon shot,
and battered on every side, with the little broken para-
pet of earth before it ; that is Wheeler's intrenchment."
Strange as it may appear, from the distance at which we
were the whole range of these ill•fated buildings looked
exactly like the barracks, or what we called the White
Buildings "of Sebastopol after the siege. The spot was
ill-chosen for defence—a long quadrangular block of
houses on a level plant, without cover, and open to fire
from numerous houses itti around it Had the magaiine
been selected the position would have been more defen-
sible and the enemy would have been deprived of the
guns which they used with such fatal effect. But Sir
Hugh Wheeler, like most old Indians, despised the
enemy who appeared before him, or at all events he dis-
dained abandoning the station as if from fear of any-
thing they could do, and prepared to defend a position
which he scarcely thought they would assail. We all
know the sad result, which was brought home to us with
renewed force when we filled the road from the house to
the river with an imaginary procession of men, women,
and children marching down to the boats, already cover-
ed by the ambushed guns of their cowardly and feroci-
ous enemy. Our road lay through a fiat, baked, burnt-up
country studded with trees. On our left lay the white-
washed bnildings which Wheeler occupied. Before us,
on the right as well as upon the left, we saw after a few
minutes' drive a scene of tremendous desolation—house
after house roofless, doorlesa, windowless, shattered and
rent in all directions, the porticoes and verandahs lying
in fragments before them in what once were their peculiar
gardens—long ranges of barracks, storehouses, large
bungalows broken up piecemeal, and covering the site
with heaps of broken brick, earth, and dirty rubbish—
church pierced by shot, and open to every sun ray, the
huge rafters alone standing—Government and military
offices mere mounds of disintegrated masonry—and the
unsightly mud walls of native residences—the stumps of
trees, the withered branches of which were lying in
every enclosure. Again I was reminded of the lost
mistress of the Euxine, and, failing to find a parallel
there for all this destruction, endeavoured to recall the
descriptions by ancient writers of cities devastated by
barbaric conquerors.
Cawnpore, however, was only an extensive collection
of detached bungalows and offices spread over an im-
mense space of ground, and here and there concentrated
into piles of barracks, magazines, and offices. The
utter ugliness of brick when deprived of its greatcoat of
stucco, and the greater ugliness of mud walla in decay
are there pitilessly exposed by the hand of the marauder
and by the cannon shot. But for the sad interest at-
tached to these hideous mounds, which forcibly remind
one of the unhoarded spaces in London where improve-
ment commissioners are at work, labelled "Rubbish
may be shot here," Cawnpore would be a moat vulgar,
common-place, aggregate of uninhabitable edifices. We
drive on a little further and on our right, amid many
broken bungalows, there is visible an enclosure with
broken walls and shattered gate posts, in the centre of
which is a heap of brick, mud, and white plaster about
two or three feet high, scattered over 15 or 20 square
yards of ground. Close to this heap there are some
leafless trees, and on the topmost hr inch of one of these,
just over the centre of the mound, with its foul plumage
lighted up by the rays of the rising sun, sits a horrid
vulture. A few yards beyond this mass of the ruins of
what had once been a house there rose a ramp or slop-
ing mound of earth from the level of the ground to the
edge of a circular brick well, the top of which was
covered in, and close by the well stood a monumental
cross. It was scarcely necessary for my companion to
say, "Therein the house and just beyond it tithe well."
We passed on by the blackened wall of an absurdly fine
masonic lodge, and by the ruins of a very spacious
building called the Assembly-rooms, just opposite the
scene of the butchery; by a house close to it,
in which the Nana lived after the oocupation of the
place by the Sepoys ; and then through the remains of
mud houses and bungalows till we reached the ruins of
the Cawnpore hotel. Everything around us was dilapi-
dated— not a pane of glass in the broken window, the
doors and ceilings broken, and here and there the holes
made by cannon shot; but we were glad to find that
some of the rooms were unoccupied, and that such
things as breakfast and dinner were not unknown. The
scene from the hotel—you must dismiss from your mind
all associations connected with the use of the word in
Europe, so far as the outward aspect of the place is
concerned—was curious. Ruins—ruins, nothing but
ruins, amid which troops of vultures were gorging
themselves, mingled with buzzards, kites, "adjutants,'
and carrion crows; a few tents pitched inside the com-
pound by travellers, en route, vast processions of carts
drawn by oxen, and files of elephants and camels passing
along the dusty plains which were swept continually by
blasts that whirled before them clouds of fine earth,
brickdust, and the powdered surface of the compounds.
The first thing that struck me was the enormous num-
ber of natives in our service and the prodigious number
of animals in attendance on such a small fragment of
our force. There were, indeed, no less than 55,000 or
60,000 camp followers, servants, bullock drivers, ele-
phant keepers, grass-cutters, syces, and camel-men at-
tached to this force; and as yet what I have seen gives
me not the faintest idea of the impediments, animate
and inanimate, of an Indian army. Before breakfast
we walked over to inspect the sight of the horrid
butchery which has rendered the SepOy mutiny infamous
for ever. The house in which it took place is now in
ruins; it was pulled down to clear the ground for the
guns of the tete de peat across the Ganges, and the very
outline of the walls is scarcely traceable. It was origi-
nally built for and used as a zenana, an enclosed resi-
dence, with a court-yard in the centre, in which the
stump of a tree was still standing ; and off this open
space were the rooms in which the inessacre took place.
The plaster of the walls was still lying about in patches,
but I could not detect any trace of blood. Bits of cloth
and of women's dresses were still visible amid the rub-
bish ; but there were none of the more painful tokens
of the dreadful tragedy which had been enacted where
we stood. There is reason to believe that the writing
on the plaster, the purport of which you know, did not
exist when Hevelock's force entered the place. I have
spoken with officers who examined the walls, and every
scratch in the sides of the rooms, and they declare that
the appeal to vengeance which is attributed to one of
the wretched victims was not to be seen immediately
after we returned to Cawnpore, and that it had been
traced on the wall by some person who visited the place
subsequently. I shall hereafter mention a circumstanee
which favours that Supposition. As there was nothing
left of the house but a heap of broken bricks and
plaster, and some few stumpsof brickpillars, we walked
a few paces further to the well in rear of the house, into
which the bodies of the slaughtered women and children
were thrown by the murderers. It is now bricked over,
and there only remains a small circular ridge of brick
marking the wall of the well, which was not more than
9or 10 feet across. Beneath rest the mangled remains
of our poor countrywomen and their little ones, and
standing there we could well realise the strength of that
indignation which steels the hearts of our soldiers
, against the enemy. Within a few feet of "the well,"
surrounded by a small wooden paling, there stands a
stone cross on a fiat slab, on two courses of masonry, the
' inscription on which tells its story :

paper:

"In memory of the women and children of Her Majesty's i
82nd Regiment, who were slaughtered near this spot on the
16th of July, A.D. 1857. The memorial was erected by 90 men
of the rme Regiment, who were passing through Cawnpore,
November 21st, 1857."
This inscription is engraved on the upright part of
the Blab, which is in the form of a Maltese cross within
a circle of stone. In the quadrants of this circle are in-
scribed, in red letters and in the old English character,
"I believe in the resurrection of the dead." The con.
ception and execution of this memorial were most
creditable. In the ranks of a marching regiment were
found 20 men who, with good feeling and excellent taste,
have, impromptu, raised a memorial of the Cawnpore
massacre, the sight of which inset touch one more
deeply than any elaborate and costly effort. We re-
traced our steps through the ruins, and after breakfast
proceeded to the camp of the Commander-in-Chief,
which is placed far outside the city, near to the Idle de
pont. The approach to it is marked by trains of oxen
and baggage animals, hackeries and bullock carts,
doolies or litters for the wounded. Certainly the Com-
mander-in-Chief does not net an example to his officers
by any extravagance in baggage. lie lives in a small
subaltern's tent, and his chief of the staff is equally
moderate. I believe his Excellency's personnel is con-
tained in a couple of small portmanteaus, and during
this short campaign he has slept on the ground among
his men on more than one occasion without cover of any
sort. He is apparently in excellent health, although his
labours are arduous and incessant, as he and his chief of
the staff manage all the details connected with the die-
position of his force, and to a great extent dispense with
the usual services of Adjutant-General and Quarter-
master-General. At present all the artillery, except a
couple of guns, are beyond the Ganges. Some small
delay was caused by the breaking of the bridge of boats,
but the greater part of the infantry are beyond the
river, and are on the march to or are stationed between
Cawnpore. Bunnee, on the road to Lucknow, and the
Alumbsgh. Meantime time enemy are becoining more
and more uneasy, and, as we are closing upon them, the
dissensions in Lucknow are augmented. A night or two
before my arrival a body of two hundred horse crossed
the Ganges upon our left, and managed to get past our
position, and have escaped, as it is supposed, to Calpee,
where the remnants of the Gwalior Contingent are
strongly posted on the right bank of the river Jumna.
At first it was reported that Nana Sahib was with them,
but more accurate information leads me to believe that
the Nana is still on the left bank of the Ganges, and
that it was his nephew who got over. However, there
is reason to think that the Nana is umuceuvring with a
body of two thousand men, a large portion of whom are
cavalry, to get over the Ganges either to join the Calpee
enemy or to fall upon the convoys which are constantly
;Noising between Agra and Cawnpore along the Trunk
Road. If these Sepoys at Calpee stand firm, they are
likely to feel the action of the Bombay column under
Sir Hugh Rose, which has already passed Saugor, and is
clearing the country up to the Jumna very rapidly.
That there is inconvenience in leaving these fellows
behind us in very evident, but it cannot be helped, and
at present they are watched in front by a portion of the
88th Regiment. A convoy on the road towards Agra
has been recalled, and Walpole's brigade will be sent in
that direction to-morrow, so that if the enemy attempt
to cross they will be soon and effectually disposed of.
They have reason to dread our means of attack ; seine
must appear to them almost miraculous. A short time
ago• body of Sepoys crossed the Ganges just below the
junction with its waters of the Grand Canal. The river
was low, and they forded it without difficulty, but,
finding that there was a ainall force waiting to receive
them, they retired precipitately after • brief encounter,
and prepared to ref ord the river. As they were contend-
ing with its shallow waters, the officer in charge of the
canal suddenly turned down the sluice gates, and in •
few moments the immense body of water which had
been diverted from its channel returned to its bed with
, fury, and swept away two hundred of the mutineers in
, its course. Ere this mail closes I hope to give you some
intelligenoe of the operations of Walpole s column, as
, well as an account of the preparations for the attack on
Luelmow. There are reports of great dissensions in the

city, but no one doubts hat there will be a severe fight,
unless the Sepoys are driven out by our bombardment.
Mann Singh has sent in an Engbelly/omen and her
child, who ware in his possession, and is making over-
tures for posed, There is a good deal to be said in his
favour, and, althouoh he has probably been playing a
double game, and trying to be fast and loose with us, he
certainly in trying times protected our women and
children, and op to September the 24th last year ren-
dered us services. Sir Robert Garrett, who arrived
here on his way to Umballa, is not able to get on at
presentl as the road is not safe.

FEB. 13.
To-day I *MAI over the so-called intrencliments at
Cawnpore, which were held by Wheeler's garrison for
nearly three weeks. It trine melancholy sight—beyond
description sad and desolate, The position. if such it
can be called, consists of two lofty one-storied buildings,
intended, I believe, to be barracks, divided into many
rooms with outward doors opening into corridors. There
are two deep wells near these parallelograms, Whieli are
at the distance of 100 yards or so from each other, and
three detached outhouses on the flanks. These build-
inp are surrounded by the remains of a miserable trench
formed by casting up the earth
i dug from the soil out on
a slope toward, the enemy. There sno ditch whatever;
the trench could never have been six feet deep, and, se
the enemy were all round the station, these open trenches
were enfiladed upon all sides. The severity of the fire
was excessive. Every square yard of the walls is per-
forated by cannon shot, the roofs are knocked to pieces,
and in places have tumbled in en mese. No part of
Sebastopol—not even excepting the range of barracks
behind the Great Itedan—ht more battered and shaken
that the barracks at Cawnpore. In one small space I
counted 73 shot-holes, moat of which were through and
through the walls. The party walls were perforated and
battered in the same manner. It was • wonder how any
one could live inside for an hour. At one angle of the
room was written in pencil, "Below this mark young
Wheeler was killed by a cannon ball, which took off his
head. His blood and brains are spattered on the wall
below," Scraps of music books and fragments of
women's dresses still lie among the tiles, bricks, and
filth with which the floors are covered. In another
room the following inscription was written on the wall;
it is on the larger building in the corridor, between the
fourth and fifth doors, facing to the south, on the side
opposite the doors
"Countrymen and women, remember the 15th of July, 1857!
Your wives and families are here, misery! and at the clisi;losid
of savages, who have ravished both young and old. Oh . my
child! my child ! Countrymen, revenge r
This man evident imposition, and is the work of the same
or of a similar hand, in all probability, which penned the
inscription on the walls of the house where the slaughter
took place after Havelock's victory. It need not be said
that no atrocities or massacres had taken place at Cawn-
pore at the time and up to the date of Wheeler's evacu-
ation, and the dates prove the falsehood of the inscrip-
tion, which is intended to convey the impression that it
was written by one of the women who were in the place.
I am, therefore, inclined to think that the inscription on
the walls of the house where the subsequent slaughter
occurred was an imposition also, inasmuch as it was not
seen by any of those who first examined every inch of
the walls, and it is scarcely possible that any woman in
such a scene of massacre could have calmly traced with
• firm hand the words, which for the first time were
visible upon the walls long after Havelock's advance.
A good deal of doggrel writing of various kinds is to be
seen, not only on the walls of Wheeler's iutrenched
buildings, but on those of the bungalows on the line of
march.
Just as I turned out of the building sad enough, the
crash of a military band broke out close at hand, and,
turning towards the road I saw amidst • cloud of dust
the gleam of our bayonets, and then long Men of camels
and elephants; my old friends of the 23rd and of the
Rifles were marching towards the tete-dmpont, and I
could not help thinking how different the scene all
around might have been had those two regiments been
in that place but eight mouths before—what horrors
averted, what bloodshed prevented, what suffering
spared.

GRAND JURORS FINED—It may be recollected that
at the last Lincolnshire winter assizes 87 magistrates of
that county were fined £2O each for non-attendance at
the court as grand jurymep, their absence creating a
serious obstacle to the transaction of the judical business
required to be performed. The gentlemen fined sub-
sequently memorialized the Treasury for a remission of
the penalties, but the memorial has been returned with
an intimation, that the prayer cannot be entertained in
its collective form, although, it is added, individual
claims for exemption will receive attention.

REPRESENTATION OF GREENWICH.—Much excite-
ment prevails throughout the three towns which com-
prise the parliamentary borough of Greenwich, in conse-
quence of the anticipated resignation of his seat by
Mr. Townsend, who is again Before the Bankruptcy
Court. Several gentlemen are spoken of as willing to
place their services at the disposal of the electors, and
there will, in all probability, be considerable difficulty in
choosing between them. Mr. Montague Chambers,
Q.C., who represented the borough in the last parlia-
ment, is again in the field, and his supporters are prose-
cuting an active canvass on his behalf; but many ob-
ject to the learned gentleman on the ground that dur-
inr the time he was the representative for the borough
his professional engagements enabled him to give only
an accidental and occasional attendance in the house.
Some of the electors have been in communication with
Alderman Salotnons, who consented to stand at the last
election, but afterwards withdrew. It is thought that
the alderman will not present himself again until the
Jew question is in a fair way of settlement. Mr. Ser-
jeant Parry is also named in some quarters. At the
last election the numbers polled for the respective candi-
dates (all liberals) stood as follows :—General Sir
William Codrington, 2,957; Mr. Townsend, 2,771 ;
, Mr. Chambers, 2,044.
OUTRAGES BY AMERICAN SAILORS IN LIVERPOOL.
ONE MAN KILLED AND ANOTHER SHOT.—At the
Liverpool police court on Thursday, an American sailor,
named Michael Warey, was brought before Mr. Mans- '
field, charged with having murdered a Dutchman,
named William Schomegan, a shoemaker. The parties
met in a casino on Wednesday night, and had &quarrel
about their different countries, when the prisoner drew
his knife, and plunged it into the heart of the deceased,
killing him on the spot. He then ran at several other
persons, and wounded them, one in four places. The
prisoner was sent for trial on two charges—one for
murder, and the other for stabbing. His worship said
he would communicate with the Home Secretary, in
order to have the prisoner tried in London, as the next
assizes were several months off. Another American
seaman, named George Washington Dixon, was also
brought up charged with shooting a coloured man,
named Jeffrey Jackson, during, what he called a
"muse," in Banastre-street, on Wednesday night.
Jackson was wounded in the arm, chest, and thigh;
a surgeon extracted a ball weighing 50 grains from the
chest. Mr. Mansfield, in committing the prisoner for
trial, said that the frequency of outrages by foreign
seamen in Liverpool must be stopped. He should also
advise that this case be tried at the Central Crimina
Court in London.

FATAL COLLISION IN THE IRISH CHANNEL—A col.
lision of an alarming description took place early on
Sunday morning week in the Irish Channel, near the
Mull of Galloway, by the running down of the brig
Albion, Captain Starkey, master, bound to Belfast, by
the Tubal Cain, screw steamer, from Westport to Liver-
pool. Captain Butler, eornmander of the steamer, made
the following report Thursday to Lloyd's, respecting the
unfortunate occurrence —'The Tubal Cainleft Westport
on the 25th ultimo: at 4.45 a.m. on Sunday, the 28th,
was off the Mull of Galloway, it bearing S. and by W.
about four miles distant; the wind was moderate, blow-
ing from the S. W., smooth water, but weather rather
foggy. The steamer was steering S. E. and by E.; she
had the usual Admiralty lights exhibited, and was going
at the rate of about 6i knots per hour. Suddenly the
look-out on the port fore gangway sang out, ' A sail, on
the port bow.' Immediately ordered the helm hard s-
port, which was done, and the engines stopped and re-
versed. Saw the vessel at the same time. She appeared
to be a schooner or • brigantine, on the port tack, and
she was coming up in the wind; and in order to do
this her helm must have been starboarded. She had no
light of any description exhibited. Almost instantly
the vessels came into collision, the port bow of the
steamer striking the vessel near the starboard fore rigg-
ing. Her crew, who seemed to be all on deck at the
time, immediately scrambled on board the steamer, all
succeeding, except one man, who it is supposed fell over-
board in the attempt, and met with a watery grave.
A boat was in a few seconds lowered from the steamer,
but nothing was to be discerned of the vessel—she had
disappeared, but whether in the fog, or had foundered,
they were unable to ascertain. The steamer remained
near the spot till day-light, by which time the fog had
cleared offend the weather was quite clear. The schooner
however, MO not to be seen, leaving no doubt but that
she had gone down."
ROYAL THEATRICAL FOND.—The 13th anniversary
festival of this institution was celebrated at the Free-
masons Tavern on Monday evening. Mr. Thackeray
presided, supported byMr. Can. Dickens and many other
friends and patrons of the fund. About 200 gentlemen
sat down to dinner, and a numerous company of ladies
also honoured the occasion by their presence. In pro-
posing the toast of the evening, " Prosperity to the
Royal General Theatrical Fund," the Chairman began
by referring to the earliest days of the Greek drama,
when Solon sharply rated Thespis for "the parcel of
lies and nonsense" which he acted on a wagon before the
Athenian populace, remarking that the man who would
tell such fibs on a stage would forge a bill of exchange.
There were demure and pompous Selene in our own times
who not only anathematized the drama, but denounced
all works of fiction on principle. But, because these
sages were so wise and virtuous, was that any reason
why there should be "no more cakes and ale?' In
spite of these squeamish people, and their prudery, all
the youth, all the life, and all the humour that WU
left in us cried out, "We must have our sport." When,
however, these Solons saw that the professors of the
Thespian art were thrifty, prudent, and charitable, they
would be constrained to raise their estimate of them.
The society in whose behalf they had met was but 13
years old, and yet it had saved £lO,OOO, having during
the same period expended many hundreds a year in re-
lieving the widow, the orphan, and the distressed. Over
and above the amount of actual good it had done it had
ever been a great consolation to the subscribers to know
that, should any reverses overtake them, there was
always a bank on which they could draw without shame.
As one of those who had owed many happy hours of
his life to the harmless pleasures of the theatre, be
could only hope that an institution so beneficial to those
who ministered to those pleasures would steadily increase
in usefulness and effieiency. Mr. Buckatene acknow-
ledged the toast in a humourous speech, which, in
imitation of the discourse of a learned divine, he divided
into the orthodox number of heads. Treating of the
statistical branch of his theme, he mentioned that since
the fund began to grant annuities it had dispensed its
bounty to 17 claimants, each of whom had received sums
varying from £3O to £9O per annum. They had nine
annuitants now on their list, five of whom were women.
Her Majesty, the munificent patroness of the institution
gave an anual subscription of £lOO. Mr. C. Dickens pro-
posed the "Health of the Chairman" in very eulogistic
terms, and at the same time took occasion to bear his
testimony to the prudence, the goodness, the self-denial
and the self-respect of the actors of England—a claim;
who had been too long depreciated, and whose virtues a
stupid and illiberal superstition had wholly denied.
The subscriptons collected in the room =exulted to
nearly £4OO. The musical arrangements of the evening
were under the direction of Mr. W. L. Phillips, and
gave the highest satisfaction.