Chapter XVII: Appendix: A

THE HISTORY OF THE MURDER OF MAJOR NEILL AT AUGUR IN 1887

I will relate an incident of an unusual kind, told to me by a man whom I met in Jhansi, which has reference to the executions ordered by General Neill at Cawnpore in July and August, 1857. But before I do so I may mention that in Cawnpore, Jhansi, and Lucknow I found the natives very unwilling to enter into conversation or to give any information about the events of that year. In this statement I don't include the natives of the class who acted as guides, etc., or those who were in the service of Government at the time. _They_ were ready enough to talk; but as a rule I knew as much myself as they could tell me. Those whom I found suspicious of my motives and unwilling to talk, were men who must have been on the side of the rebels against us. I looked out for such, and met many who had evidently served as soldiers, and who admitted that they had been in the army before 1857; but when I tried to get them to speak about the Mutiny, as a rule they pretended to have been so young that they had forgotten all about it,--generally a palpable falsehood, judging from their personal appearance,--or they professed to have been absent in their villages and to know nothing about the events happening in the great centres of the rebellion. The impression left on my mind was that they were either afraid or ashamed to talk about the Mutiny.

In the second chapter of these reminiscences it may be remembered I asked if any reader could let me know whether Major A. H. S. Neill, commanding the Second Regiment Central India Horse, who was shot on parade by Sowar Mazar Ali at Augur, Central India, on the 14th March, 1887, was a son of General Neill of Cawnpore fame. The information has not been forthcoming[53]; and for want of it I cannot corroborate the following statement in a very strange story.

In 1892 I passed two days at Jhansi, having been obliged to wait because the gentleman whom I had gone to see on business was absent from the station; and I went all over the city to try and pick up information regarding the Mutiny. I eventually came across a man who, by his military salute, I could see had served in the army, and I entered into conversation with him.

At first he pretended that his connection with the army had merely been that of an armourer-_mistree_[54] of several European regiments; and he told me that he had served in the armourer's shop of the Ninety-Third when they were in Jhansi twenty-four years ago, in 1868 and 1869. After I had informed him that the Ninety-Third was my regiment, he appeared to be less reticent; and at length he admitted that he had been an armourer in the service of Scindia before the Mutiny, and that he was in Cawnpore when the Mutiny broke out, and also when the city was retaken by Generals Havelock and Neill.

After a long conversation he appeared to be convinced that I had no evil intentions, but was merely anxious to collect reliable evidence regarding events which, even now, are but slightly known. Amongst other matters he told me that the (late) Maharaja Scindia was not by any means so loyal as the Government believed him to be; that he himself (my informant) had formed one of a deputation that was sent to Cawnpore from Gwalior to the Nana Sahib before the outbreak; and that although keeping in the background, the Maharaja Scindia incited his army to rebellion and to murder their officers, and himself fled as a pretended fugitive to Agra to devise means to betray the fort of Agra, should the Gwalior army, as he anticipated would be the case, prove victorious over the British. He also told me that the farce played by Scindia about 1874, viz. the giving up a spurious Nana Sahib, was a prearranged affair between Scindia and the _fakeer_ who represented the Nana. But, as I expressed my doubts about the truth of all this, my friend came down to more recent times, and asked me if I remembered about the murder of Major Neill at Augur in Central India in 1887, thirty years after the Mutiny? I told him that I very well remembered reading of the case in the newspapers of the time. He then asked me if I knew why Major Neill was murdered? I replied that the published accounts of the murder and trial were so brief that I had formed the conclusion that something was concealed from the public, and that I myself was of opinion that a woman must have been the cause of the murder,--that Major Neill possibly had been found in some intrigue with one of Mazar Ali's womenkind. To which he replied that I was quite wrong. He then told me that Major Neill was a son of General Neill of Cawnpore fame, and that Sowar Mazar Ali, who shot him, was a son of Suffur Ali, _duffadar_ of the Second Regiment Light Cavalry, who was unjustly accused of having murdered Sir Hugh Wheeler at the Suttee Chowrah _ghat_, and was hanged for the murder by order of General Neill, after having been flogged by sweepers and made to lick clean a portion of the blood-stained floor of the slaughter-house.

After the recapture of Cawnpore, Suffur Ali was arrested in the city, and accused of having cut off General Wheeler's head as he alighted from his palkee at the Suttee Chowrah _ghat_ on the 27th of June, 1857. This he stoutly denied, pleading that he was a loyal servant of the Company who had been compelled to join in the Mutiny against his will. General Neill, however, would not believe him, so he was taken to the slaughter-house and flogged by Major Bruce's sweeper-police till he cleaned up his spot of blood from the floor of the house where the women and children were murdered. When about to be hanged Suffur Ali adjured every Mahommedan in the crowd to have a message sent to Rohtuck, to his infant son, by name Mazar Ali, to inform him that his father had been unjustly denied and flogged by sweepers by order of General Neill before being hanged, and that his dying message to him was that he prayed God and the Prophet to spare him and strengthen his arm to avenge the death of his father on General Neill or any of his descendants.

My informant went on to tell me that Mazar Ali had served under Major Neill for years, and had been treated by him with special kindness before he came to know that the Major was the son of the man who had ordered his father's execution; that while he was lying ill in hospital a _fakeer_ one day arrived in the station from some remote quarter of India, and told him of his father's dying imprecation, and that Major Neill being the son of General Neill, it was the decree of fate that Mazar Ali should shoot Major Neill on parade the following day; which he did, without any apparent motive whatever.

I expressed my doubts about the truth of all this, when my informant told me he could give me a copy of a circular, printed in Oordoo and English, given to the descendants of Suffur Ali, directing them, as a message from the other world, to avenge the death and defilement of their father. The man eventually brought the leaflet to me in the _dak_ bungalow in Jhansi. The circular is in both Oordoo and English, and printed in clean, clear type; but so far as I can read it, the English translation, which is printed on the leaflet beneath the Oordoo, and a copy of which I reproduce below, does not strike me as a literal translation of the Oordoo. The latter seems to me to be couched in language calculated to prove a much stronger incitement to murder than the English version would imply. However, the following is the English version _verbatim_, as it appears on the leaflet, word for word and point for point, italics and all.

_The imprecation, vociferated by_ SUFFUR ALI,
_Duffadar 2nd Regiment Light Cavalry, who was executed at
the Slaughter-house, on the 25th July, 1857, for killing_
SIR HUGH WHEELER, _at the Suttechoura Ghat_.

Oh Mahomed Prophet! be pleased to receive into Paradise the
soul of your humble servant, whose body Major Bruce's Mehtur
police are now defiling by lashes, forced to lick a space of
the blood-stained floor of the Slaughter-house, and
hereafter to be hanged, by the order of General Neill. And,
oh Prophet! in due time inspire my infant son Mazar Ali of
Rohtuck, that he may revenge this desecration on the General
and his descendants.

_Take notice!_--Mazar Ali, Sowar, 2nd Regiment, Central
India Horse, who under divine mission, shot Major A. H. S.
Neill, Commanding the Corps, at Augur, Central India, on the
14th March 1887, was sentenced to death by Sir Lepel
Griffin, Governor-General's Agent.

The Oordoo in the circular is printed in the Persian character without the vowel-points, and as I have not read much Oordoo since I passed my Hindoostanee examination thirty-three years ago, I have had some difficulty in translating the leaflet, especially as it is without the vowel-points. The man who gave it to me asked if I knew anything about the family of General Neill, and I replied that I did not, which was the truth. When I asked why he wanted to know, he said that if any more of his sons were still in India, their lives would soon be taken by the descendants of men who were defiled and hanged at Cawnpore under the brigade-order of General Neill, dated Cawnpore, 25th of July, 1857. This is the order to which I have alluded in the second chapter of my reminiscences, and which remained in force till the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell at Cawnpore in the following November. As I had never seen a copy of it, having only heard of it, I asked my informant how he knew about it. He told me that thousands of copies, in English, Oordoo, and Hindee, were in circulation in the bazaars of Upper India. I told my friend that I should very much like to see a copy, and he promised to bring me one. Shortly after he left me in the _dak_ bungalow, undertaking to return with a copy of the order, as also numerous proclamations from the English Government, and the counter-proclamations on the part of the leaders of the rebellion. I thought that here I had struck a rich historical mine; but my friend did not turn up again! I sat up waiting for him till long after midnight, and as he did not return I went into the city again the following day to the place where I had met him; but all the people around pretended to know nothing whatever about the man, and I saw no more of him. However, I was glad to have got the leaflet _re_ the assassination of Major Neill, because several gentlemen have remarked, since I commenced my reminiscences, that I mention so many incidents not generally known, that many are inclined to believe that I am inventing history rather than relating facts. But that is not so; and, besides what I have related, I could give hundreds of most interesting incidents that are not generally known nor ever will be known.[55]

Now, in my humble opinion, is the time that a history of the real facts and causes of the Mutiny should be written, if a competent man could devote the time to do so, and to visit the centres of the rebellion and get those who took part in the great uprising against the rule of the Feringhee to come forward, with full confidence of safety, and relate all they know about the affair. Thousands of facts would come to light which would be of immense historical importance, as also of great political value to Government, facts that in a few years will become lost to the world, or be remembered only as traditions of 1857. But the man who is to undertake the work must be one with a thorough knowledge of the native character and languages, a man of broad views, and, above all, one who would, to a certain extent, sympathise with the natives, and inspire them with confidence and enlist their assistance. As a rule, the Englishman, the Government official, the _Sahib Bahadoor_, although respected, is at the same time too much feared, and the truth would be more or less concealed from him. I formed this opinion when I heard of the circumstances which are supposed to have led to the assassination of Major Neill. If true, we have here secret incitement to murder handed down for generations, and our Government, with its extensive police and its Thuggee Department, knowing nothing about it![56]

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Major Neill _was_ a son of Brigadier-General Neill commanding at Cawnpore during the first relief of Lucknow. General Neill went to the front as colonel commanding the First Madras Fusiliers.

[54] Workman; in this case a blacksmith.

[55] "Some of the incidents related by Mr. Forbes-Mitchell, and now for the first time brought to light in his most interesting series of Reminiscences, are of so sensational an order that we are not surprised that many persons to whom the narrator is a stranger should regard them with a certain incredulity. We may take this opportunity therefore of stating that, so far as it is possible at this date to corroborate incidents that occurred thirty-five years ago, Mr. Forbes-Mitchell has afforded us ample proof of the accuracy of his memory and the general correctness of his facts. In the case under notice, we have been shown the leaflet in which Mazar Ali's cold-blooded murder of his commanding officer is vindicated, and of which the English translation above given is an exact reproduction. The leaflet bears no evidence whatever to disclose its origin, but we see no reason to doubt that, as Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's informant declared, it was widely circulated in the bazaars of Upper India shortly after Mazar Ali paid the penalty of his crime with his own life."--ED. _Calcutta Statesman._

[56] The _vendetta_ is such a well-known institution among the Pathans, that no further explanation of Major Neill's murder by the son of a man who was executed by the Major's father's orders is necessary.