The Indian Mutiny medal to Allan Octavian Hume, C.B., Indian Civil Service, Magistrate and Collector, who had an outstanding record of ‘military’ service in Agra during the mutiny, and who was a founding member and longtime General Secretary of the Indian National Congress

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (A. O. Hume, Civil Service) nearly extremely fine £1200-1500

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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Allan Octavian Hume, a son of the surgeon and enlightened politician Joseph Hume, M.P., was born in 1829, and was educated at Haileybury, where he excelled, and at London University. He was admitted to the Bengal Civil Service in 1849 and by his ‘activity and acuteness’ obtained prior to the Mutiny ‘the first great prize of the service - the charge of a district - in an unusually short space of time’, having ‘been selected for what was deemed a post of special difficulty, as magistrate and collector of Etawa’, situated some seventy-five miles south east of Agra and about a hundred miles north west of Cawnpore.

On learning of events at Meerut and Delhi, Hume organised police patrols to watch the roads and prevent mutineers from infecting his district. On 16 May one of his patrols brought in seven Sowars of the 3rd Light Cavalry from Meerut, but omitted to relieve them of their arms. At Etawah the Sowars levelled their carbines at the quarter-guard of the 9th N.I., and drawing their swords attacked the European officers. In the mêlée that ensued five of the troopers were killed and of the other two who escaped one was captured shortly afterwards. ‘This was the first retributive blow that fell upon the mutineers of the Third Cavalry. They were all Mohamedans (Pathans) of Futtehpore.’

Events deteriorated rapidly until the troops at the Station were in open revolt. Hume was briefly able to restore order in his district, though he suspended the collection revenue, shrewdly considering that having lost five lakhs by the plunder of his treasuries, it was wiser to leave owed monies ‘in the hands of a thousand landholders than in a treasury guarded by sepoys too likely to mutiny’. Miscreants, however, were brought promptly to justice and at his hands received as impartial a trial as the circumstances allowed. He hanged only seven convicted murderers, and these ‘by methods which caused the least suffering’. By contrast, it was the proud boast of a colleague in another district that he hanged a hundred mutineers in three days - Hume was determined to uphold the law and steadfastly refused to be intimidated by those who venomously attacked him for his ‘excess of leniency’. Ultimately, however, he was forced to abandon Etawah in June following the mutiny of the Gwalior Contingent, and take refuge with other Europeans from stations in the North West Provinces at Agra. In early July 1857 he served as a volunteer gunner ‘with the right half-battery’ when the officers and able bodied men of that garrison sallied forth to Sucheta to do battle with mutineers from Neemuch, but were roundly beaten and driven back to Agra under a harassing fire.

Hume returned to Etawah in December 1857 and re-organised the police, but was unable to re-establish the authority of the Government nor the collection of revenue until the end of 1858 when he succeeded in raising the large sum of twelve lakhs. For the greater part of 1858 his service was ‘little but a record of fighting; and certainly no officer of his cloth saw more purely military service.’ In March 1858 he was joined by a column under Colonel Riddell of unspecified strength.

The successful operations of Sir Hugh Rose’s Central India Field Force, in May and June 1858, then had an adverse effect on Hume’s efforts to clear his district, as large bodies of retreating rebels began to pass through Etawah in an attempt to escape into still disturbed Oudh. On 2 July Hume was forced through broken health to hand over his district temporarily to Mr G. E. Lance who, after a series of brisk actions against the followers of Rup Singh, was able to report on Hume’s return that order in some measure had been restored. However Hume’s ‘greatest trial was yet to come’, when in early December, Firuz Shah, ‘a prince of the royal family of Delhi’, ‘whose hands were free from innocent blood, and who might have secured a pardon and a pension by simple surrender, preferred to cut his way through the British territories’ while the other rebel leaders fled north into Nepal.

Severely outnumbered, Hume’s force clashed with Firuz Shah’s, consiting of 1,400 sabres and nearly 200 disciplined infantry of the 28th Bengal N.I., on 8 December in ‘a desperate action on the banks of the Jumna’. Outflanked, Hume quickly found himself in a critical position, but the discipline of his levies told, and forming a square they were able to hold their own for a full three hours, after which the enemy, disheartened by the resistance shown, drew off in good order. Firuz Shah afterwards out-marched a column from Cawnpore and escaped, but the daring attempt to arrest him did not go unnoticed. Governor-General Canning characterized it as ‘a daring exploit’ and extended his thanks to the principal officers involved. The family of Mr Doyle who fell in the action, received a Government pension, and ‘Mr Hume was deservedly made a C.B.’



Hume served ten years at Etawah, and was especially noted for his enthusiasm for education. During the latter part of the Mutiny he had the satisfaction to report 179 village schools had been kept open with nearly 4,000 scholars in attendance, and that ‘the little lads were everywhere humming away at their lessons’. He also took a keen interest in agricultural improvement and ‘started several juvenile reformatories under a scheme of his own devising which was later taken up by the Government’. He received his Companionship of the Bath in 1860, and in 1870 after three years as provincial commissioner of Customs, he became Secretary to the Government of India in the new department of Revenue, Commerce and Agriculture. He was chosen as much for his scientific training as ‘for his long and warm-hearted interest in improving the peasant’s life’. He remained in that appointment for nine years, an unusually long period, and spent two more years as a Member of the Board of Revenue, N.W.P. He retired in 1882 and settled at Simla where he then began to work for the political development of India and to quietly redress a new racial arrogance taking hold in certain British quarters.

It was Hume’s contention that the spirit of nationalism awakened in the small numbers of university educated Indians needed a form of expression. He wrote to all the graduates of Calcutta University asking for fifty volunteers to join and promote the mental, moral, social and political regeneration of India: ‘There are aliens, like myself, who love India and her children ... but the real work must be done by the people of the country themselves ... If fifty men cannot be found with sufficient power of self-sacrifice, sufficient love for and pride in their country, sufficient genuine and unselfish patriotism to take the initiative ... then there is no hope for India. Her sons must and will remain mere humble and helpless instruments in the hands of foreign rulers.’

The result of his letter was the first meeting of the Indian National Congress at Bombay in 1885. It was held in an atmosphere of friendly, if somewhat patronising, encouragement by both the Governor of Bombay and the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin. ‘Unswerving loyalty to the British Crown’ by the Indian delegates was a readily accepted precept, and they, then and in successive years, condemned violent outrages and worked for constitutional changes. The delegates of 1885 asked for a Royal Commission on the working of the administration, ‘prayed for a reduction of military expenditure’, and deprecated the annexation of Upper Burma. They moved to abolish the Council of India as an obstacle to reform and pressed for the development of provincial Councils on the lines later made law. However, from the outset Hume warned his proteges that any proposal for change would meet formidable obstacles, first in the provincial government, then in the Government of India, and, last and often fatally in the India Office. He well knew that the unstated attitude of British officialdom in regard to the educated and ambitious Indian was very much, ‘One day - but clearly not just yet ...’

Hume served twenty-three years as General Secretary of the Congress. His last session in charge was in December 1908, and proceedings that year began as usual with loyal homage to the King Emperor, and ended with a unique message of cordial greetings and congratulations to Hume, ‘the father and founder of the Congress’. Hume, who was also the author of several books on ornithology, married in 1853 Mary Anne Grindall. He finally retired to England and settled at The Chalet, Kingswood Road, Upper Norwood. He died in July 1912.

Refs: Who Was Who; Memorials of Old Haileybury College (Danvers); Fifty-Seven, Some Account of the Administration of Indian Districts During the Revolt of the Bengal Army (Keene); History of the Sepoy War in India (Kaye); A History of the Indian Mutiny (Malleson); The Great Mutiny (Hibbert); The Men Who Ruled India (Mason).