Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The poignant Indian Mutiny Medal to Assistant-Surgeon William Wotherspoon Ireland, who was originally gazetted as killed before Delhi but miraculously survived horrific facial and head injuries to live a distinguished life as a doctor, academic and author while stoically suffering acute pain; he was author of “The History of the Siege of Delhi” together with other important works, while experiences with his own damaged brain made him one of Scotland's foremost alienists and an authority on idiocy, imbecility and lunacy

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Delhi (Asst. Surgn. W. W. Ireland.) suspension claw a little loose, otherwise nearly extremely fine £1,200-£1,500

William Wotherspoon Ireland was born in Edinburgh on 27 October 1832, son of Thomas Ireland, a publisher. Through his father's grandmother he was a lineal descendent of John Knox the great reformer. His mother was Mary, daughter of William Wotherspoon, writer to the Signet (W.S.) and first manager and secretary of the Scottish Widows' Life Assurance Company. He was educated at Edinburgh High School and afterwards graduated from Edinburgh University and Paris as M.D. Edin.1855. He was appointed an Assistant-Surgeon on 4 August 1856, and resigned his position on 1 August 1861.

He was afterwards Superintendent of the Scottish National Institution for imbecile children, Larbert 1869-79, and subsequently Superintendent of Asylums at Stirling, Prestonpans and Polton, successively. A Member of the Psychiatric Society of St. Petersburg, New York Medico-Legal Society and Societa Freniatrica Italiana, he died at Musselburgh on 7 May 1909.

He served during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, including the actions at Najafgarh and Badli-ki-Sarai, and was dangerously wounded, 25 August 1857, at Najafgarh (London Gazette 4 December 1857); a later gazette states that he was ‘shot through the head and reportedly killed 26 August 1857 (Supplement London Gazette 16 January 1858); he is listed as killed in the East India Register and Army lists for January 1858. He received the medal with clasp Delhi, with three years’ leave counted as service. The Lancet of 7 November 1857 states: ‘A ball had entered the left eye and passed below the brain coming out the near the right ear. He had a second wound a ball having entered the shoulder and lodged close to his spine.’

Ireland was a man of striking individuality with a wide knowledge of literature and history. He was well acquainted with French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norse and the Hindustani languages. He was the author of History of the Siege of Delhi (1861) 1st edition, published anonymously; Randolph Methyl (a novel) (1863); What food to Eat (1865); Studies of a wandering Observer (1867); Idiocy and Imbecility (1877); enlarged and republished as The Mental Affections of Children, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity (1898); Blot on the Brain, Studies in History and Psychology (1885) which sketches the hallucinations of Mohammed, Luther and Joan of Arc; Through the Ivory Gate (1898), his subjects being Emanual Swedenberg, William Blake, Louis of Bavaria, Louis Riel and others; Golden Bullets (1890), a story of the days of Akbar and Elizabeth; The Life of Sir Harry Vane the Younger (1905); several articles in Hack Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine; he contributed literary and psychological studies of Torquato Tasso, August Comte and Friedrich Neitzsche.

Contained in the British Library Collection (IOR/L/MIL/7/3790) is a petition from William W. Ireland asking for further compensation for his injuries sustained at Najafgarh. His letter to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India in Council, fully twelve years after his injuries, makes sobering reading and adds greater detail to the bland statement of facts stated above. [The letter has abbreviations and alterations for fluency where possible]

I became Assistant Surgeon in the service of the Honourable East Indies Company 2nd January 1857. On the outbreak of the Mutiny at Delhi I was doing duty at Umballa with the 3rd Brigade of Horse Artillery and was sent out with the first detachment that took the field (17 May 1857). I did duty as the only Assistant Surgeon to two troops of Horse Artillery and was thus more than usually exposed, being unavoidably under fire thirteen times. [It was during one such incident that he treated the wounds of Lieutenant (now Lord) Roberts.]

At the Battle of Najafgarh under General Nicholson, on the 25th August 1857 when in charge of the 2nd Troop 3rd Brigade Horse Artillery, I was wounded by two balls from the bursting of one of the enemy's shells. One bullet entered the shoulder and lodged near the spine, the other entered by the left eye, which it destroyed, driving through the bones that support the base of the brain and exiting a little behind the right ear. I lost a very great deal of blood on the field. The wound in the shoulder prevented me lying on my back or left side. From the shock to the nerve of sight I was totally blind for a month and from injury to the articulation of the jaw could not open my mouth or chew food for several months.

I shall not enlarge upon the many distressing and alarming symptoms inevitable following a wound nearly eight inches long, almost entirely through bone and traversed by the most important and sensitive nerves in the body. I was confined to bed for eighteen months and after two years in the hills had to return to Europe on sick leave. Pieces of dead bone have, over the years, come away from the wound renewing the worst symptoms keeping me in the most intolerable misery both bodily and mental, and bringing my life on several occasions into the most imminent danger.

Finding my health little improved by residence in Europe I resigned the Service in August 1861 and applied for a pension, stating at the same time the unique character of my wounds and the long and severe illness which I had already suffered. My statements were fully born out by Sir James Ranald Martin but nothing was allowed other than a pension of £73 per annum together with £70 for the loss of an eye. It was not stated in the letter I received that the claim had been treated as a special one, but if it was, I derived no benefit whatever from the two General Orders dated Calcutta 23rd November 1860 and February 21st 1861 whereby I was entitled to count as service three years sick leave, a provision perfectly just and reasonable, as this time was utterly lost to me, being spent under great suffering and utter helplessness the necessary and in separable result of injuries received in the direct discharge of my duty to the Government. Had I been allowed to avail myself of the General Orders above quoted my service would have been counted as four years and three months.

An Assistant Surgeon in the British Army would under precisely the same circumstances and service as myself would have been entitled to £109 per annum without any special claim....

…...I have done my best to increase my income in a variety of ways but have entirely failed owing to ill health and the impossibility in competing with stronger men. Had I succeeded in any degree I should not again have appeared as a petitioner to the Government. I went to Madeira in the hope that an easy consulting practice in a mild climate might not be too much for me, but I was compelled to return with considerable pecuniary loss owing to want of appetite and great relaxation of strength. I dictated the History of the Delhi campaign from notes written during the Siege and composed some other publications most of which I was unable to even read the proofs due to the weakness of my eye. [His wife, Margaret, wrote down all his dictations and read to him quotes from Greathead for his Delhi work.] I did not derive any profit from those efforts and my state of health rendered it impossible for me to devote myself to the more lucrative departments of the literary art.

There is no doubt that I am in a condition which renders hard work impossible and even any regular employment dangerous. I am still very weak, subject to continual headaches and attacks of facial Neuralgia and unable to walk any distance without resting. The injuries under which I still suffer are:
Weakness of sight in remaining eye.; Almost total loss of sense of smell; Diminution of hearing and buzzing in my right ear; Loss of right palate bone; Paralysis of muscles of the face from injury to right facial nerve; Neuralgic pains in face and head and weakness of articulation of lower jaw making mastication difficult on the right side.

Subjoined is medical testimony to the effect that the permanent lesions and disabilities under which I have now laboured for twelve years are equivalent to the loss of two limbs. I have learned by experience that the cold infamy of poverty is not to be consoled by the respect supposed to follow honourable misfortune and am therefore compelled to solicit from the Government a reconsideration of my case.... Signed W.W.I.

There follows a series of detailed chronological Surgeon's reports from the initial battlefield prognoses until his return to Europe. Some are written in medical language but the most succinct is the last from Thomas Longmore, Deputy Inspector General Professor of Military Surgery in the Army Medical School, Netly, who states that the ‘bullet entered at the left orbit, passed deeply behind the face and between it and the cranium and made its exit behind the right ear. All medical reports advise that his injuries are equivalent to the loss of two limbs.’

The collection also contains a letter from the Under Secretary of State, India Office dated 26 August 1869, to the India Office Registry Office, which refers to the Duke of Argyll who wishes to acquaint the board that under the practice of this department an officer in receipt of a pension for the loss of an eye or limb would also be allowed an addition pension for injuries which should be reported by a medical board who consider the permanent effects either fully or are nearly equal to a loss of a limb.

Since Ireland never ever wrote again to the authorities it must be assumed that his petition was successful.

Sold with a extensive file of research including a disc of the History of the Siege of Delhi.