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Northern Indian Army

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by snezzyannamaywong (U13816190) on Sunday, 14th November 2010

  Can anyone explain the chain of events, as to how my G.Father who served in the
  above - as far as I am aware from at least 1900 - 1912 when he retired.
  Being born 1877 in Wiltshire/Berkshire would he have joined an English Reg and then transfered to the above Army. Your help as always would be greatly
  appreciated. Snezzy

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by crusader2 (U14330993) on Sunday, 14th November 2010

  Snezzy - on ancestry are the service records and campaign medals for a lot of pre ww1 soldiers. On FMP are the chelsea pensioner records.
  
  If you can give his name, one of us will take a look through the assorted online records and let you know what we unearth.
  
  On the whole, soldiers were recruited in England and posted overseas, but certainly thee was a decent ex-pat population in many parts of the empire and there will be some local recruiting.

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 14th November 2010

  snezzyannamaywong
  
  What's to explain?.. The last decades of the Nineteenth Century were difficult ones in the British Isles, especially in rural areas where agriculture was in a Great Depression, and there was a flight from the land, as the high levels of employment in the 1850-70 period collapsed.
  
  It was an age, I used to tell my pupils, when the men with "get up and go" got up and went- for male emigration caused a gender imbalance, with the result rather like after the IWW that marriage and family life was statistically difficult for many young women. I often wonder whether this had an impact on the marriage of DH Lawrence''s middle class mother to his coal-mining father.
  
  But for those who did not want to emigrate, working abroad amidst the great wealth of Asian countries offered a life-chance. This had been going on for centuries with English merchant adventurers and such, but the creation of the British Raj in 1858 and subsequent changes needed to recruit the staff needed to run it made it much easier.
  
  The Indian Civil Service became THE way ahead for many of the best brains from Oxford and Cambridge- the kind of boys whose parents had just about managed to get them thus far, but then it was up to them. The Indian Army, both British and that of the native states under the terms of the subsidiary alliances, had various needs for British officers, since right up until the end of the First World War, and in fact until the establishment of Dehra Dun- the Indian Sandhurst- (c1930) no Indian could be an officer.
  
  Among those needs was a need for teachers who could teach basic English skills and culture to the Indian "sepoys" who were very often recruited from the most deprived and "backward" communities. And- though as yet I know no details- my great grandfather worked as such a teacher, having probably learned enough elementary education as a pupil teacher in an elementary school. It seems, however, that the position allowed him to take a wife with him, or find one within the British community, since my paternal grandfather was born in India.
  
  At another social level, a friend from Uni allowed me to read an unpublished memoir from one of her father's school friends who attended a Boarding School in Kent that was subsidised as a school training young men to take up the "White Man's Burden" either as missionaries or in military or Civil Service. In this case the young man went to Sabdhurst and initially joined the British Army, then asking to transfer into the Indian Army.. One reason for doing so was for the same reason that Winston Churchill did- to be where the action was. For as I have said on various threads on the last couple of days we tend to forget that Britain's real worry during the sixty years before 1914 was the expansion of Russia, and the Khybber Pass region-as Kipling has described- was the place where a Cold War "great game" was being played out. ("Kim")
  
  But there was also the fascination of the Orient that comes through the popular literature of the time- like the Sherlock Holmes stories and "The Secret Garden".. Virginia Woolf owed her freedom to write,she explained in "A Room of One's Own" because a Great Aunt's horse had stumbled in a pothole out in India,killing the lady, who left VW Β£400 a year. Enough to live on.
  
  Cass

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 14th November 2010

  Snezzy
  
  Further to my last- my maternal grandfather, a horseman on farms in the Cotswolds, was recruited during the IWW to be a horseman on the Western Front.. Just another required skill... And last week I was looking at Dun's "The War the Infantry Knew" that drew heavily upon contributions from a Welsh Regiment. After the Armstice its hundreds of miners were demobbed as a priority- again specialist workers, and in this case badly needed to get the economy working once again [DH Lawrence yet again]
  
  But another thing that was happening once Britain formally took over India and part of the British Empire, was a great emphasis on building up a railway system.. From the 1850's Thomas Brassey had started the process of building British railways all around the World. These usually took skilled British workers and employed local unskilled Labour. Camping out in wide open spaces in many parts of the world the Brits taught the locals the British passtime of football.. Too much running around for Indian conditions- not even suitable for fast bowling in cricket!
  
  There was also, in that great age of British shipping, still the risk of getting "Shanghied"-- the illegal version of impressment, when people found themselves kidnapped aboard sailing vessels and given no other real option than working their passage.. Mind you some people just wanted to "hitch a ride" to get out of trouble --getting a girl pregant, or getting into debt, suffering "loss of character" that ruined any chance of getting a respectable job whereever you were known..You may have seen Dianna Rigg's "Who Do You Think You Are".. She was embarassed to see how her "working class" father and mother, with her father a skilled railway engineer, lived "the good life" with a nice house, servants and the friendship of the local royalty.
  
  So there were various ways and means by which people might end up in places like British India- which extended to the Persian Gulf and Burma. And there were attractions and reasons to stay for some people. The army was one very large employer and the Indian Army had an Anglo-Indian element, though like General Dyer (of the Amritsar Massacre) they often suffered in the same way that Spanish Americans suffered in Latin America during the years of the Spanish Empire-- Not quite the real thing..
  
  When Ben Kingsley was cast for the role of Gandhi, to some outrage in India, it was pointed out that he was in fact Anglo-Indian and knew the country from his childhood.
  
  Cass

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Pete- Weatherman (U14670985) on Sunday, 14th November 2010

  This site might be of some help as well.
  
  Families in British india Society.
  
  www.fibis.org

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by snezzyannamaywong (U13816190) on Monday, 15th November 2010

  Thank you Crusader for your offer. I have trawled around both these sites, but the only information I have found is that William Harry Wigmore Born 1877
  Died 1945 was made a Warrent Officer in March 1910 in India
  Ordanance Dept . Northern Army. I have replied to Cass's 2 post with the additional information I found yesterday - which explains the 'chain of events'
  to a degree of how he came to be in the Indian Army. However any info that you can find would be apppreciated. Snezzy

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by snezzyannamaywong (U13816190) on Monday, 15th November 2010

  Thank you Cass for your very informative explanation of how my G. Father could have joined the Indian Army. I have since posting my message found another Certificate which states he was a Sgt. in the 1st Wiltshire Regiment in 1901. I believe that this is one of the Regiments that was merge with (I believe) the Duke
  of Edinburgh Regiment (not 100% sure of this one) so he might have changed
  Regiments then? Whilst as I mentioned to Crusader I have not had much luck
  with either Ancestry or FMP , but that is probably down to me as much as any-thing. Thank you again Snezzy.

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• Message 8

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by snezzyannamaywong (U13816190) on Monday, 15th November 2010

  Thank you Pete, I did try this site some time ago, but once again with out much luck. Whilst he might have finished his service with the Indian Army he must have also served with the 1st Wiltshire Regiment and maybe with another as
  mentioned to Cass. It would appear that in 1910 he used Harry as apposed to his first name of William. Thank you for your suggestion, it would appear that I have possibly 3 Regiments and 2 names to try! Snezzy.
  

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• Message 9

  , in reply to message 8.

  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Monday, 15th November 2010

  snezzy
  
  Most British personnel in the Indian Army after the post-Mutiny re-organisation were officers. However, the technical arms did need some SNCOs. These men were recruited from serving British Army NCOs, often those nearing the end of their engagement and already serving in India.
  
  I would suggest this is how your relative moved from the British to the Indian Army.
  
  LW

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• Message 10

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by snezzyannamaywong (U13816190) on Tuesday, 16th November 2010

  'Bingo' LW, It looks as though as though you have answered my main query as to how Harry could have ended his Soldier career in the Indian Army as opposed to the Regiment he must have joined in England. I will now have to work backwards to try and find out at what age he joined as at 23 he would appear to be rather young to be a Sgt.
  My thanks Snezzy.

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