Auction Catalogue

2 March 2005

Starting at 11:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 30

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2 March 2005

Hammer Price:
£1,200

The Scinde campaign medal for the battle of Hyderabad to Lieutenant W. E. Wilkinson, 21st Bombay Native Infantry, who was wounded at Dubba

Hyderabad 1843 (Lieutt. W. E. Wilkinson, 21st Regt. N.I.) engraved naming, fitted with original silver clip and bar suspension, light edge bruising, otherwise good very fine £1000-1200

William Eastfield Wilkinson was the son of the Rev Marmaduke Wilkinson, rector of Redgrave, Suffolk, and his third wife Sarah Shelley. He was baptised at Redgrave on 17 April 1819, and was educated at Bury Grammar School and at Addiscombe, 1835-37. He arrived at Bombay on 21 January 1838, and was posted to the 21st Bombay Native Infantry. Promoted Lieutenant on 23 April 1840, he became Adjutant in September 1842, and the following year took part with his regiment in Sir Charles Napier’s Scinde Campaign. At the Battle of Hyderabad, on 24 March 1843, in which his regiment was employed in the 2nd Brigade under Major Alexander Woodburn (see Lot 31), he fortuitously chose to wear a Horse Artillery helmet, and took part in the infantry assault against 26,000 Baluchis positioned in two nullahs near the village of Dubba, where thanks to his unorthodox headgear, he was only slightly wounded.

‘Captn. Stevens reports that Lt. Wilkinson came to the front to support him as he was leading the 21st Regt. over the centre ridge in the canal which formed the Enemy’s position, & seeing a man, who has since been ascertained to be Meer Goolam Alli Talpooree, coming at him, sword in hand, [Wilkinson] stepped in between and cut him down in doing which he received a wound on the head which cut through his pugree and displaced the metal peak of a horse Artillery helmet & must have killed him but for this defence and he also got wounded in the sword arm’ (
Calcutta Gazette 27May 1843 & London Gazette 4 August 1843).

A note on his Statement of Service for 1844, records ‘Not[ed] for special brevet promotion, or the honor of the Bath for services in Scinde, the Duke of Wellington recommended him to Court’s protection.’ Wilkinson was appointed Adjutant of the Left Wing of the 21st in February 1847, and the following April was made Brigade Major at Rajcote. In March 1848, he was in some unspecified way involved ‘in the misconduct of the 21 N.I. at the Hoolee festival in March 48,’ causing the Government to ‘consider the censure pressed upon him by the C-in-C to be most fully deserved & have caused it to be intimated to him that until by his future good conduct he has retrieved his character he will not be permitted any mark of the favourable notice of Government’. Lieutenant Wilkinson died at Tamiah on 25 June 1851, aged 32 years, and left a widow, Mary Alicia.

Refs: Hodson Index (NAM); IOL L/MIL/12/71.