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

The rare ‘Hazara’ C.S.I. group to Colonel E. L. Ommanney, Bengal Staff Corps, Superintendent of the ex-King of Delhi and his family, later Chief Political Officer on the Hazara Expedition in 1888

(a) The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, C.S.I., Companion’s breast badge, gold, silver and enamels, with fine central cameo of Queen Victoria, the surrounding motto set with small diamonds, complete with gold top suspension bar

(b) Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Delhi (Lieut. E. L. Ommaney, 59th N.I.)

(c) India General Service 1854-94, 2 clasps, North West Frontier, Hazara 1888 (Captn. E. L. Ommaney, Bengal S.C.) note spelling of surname on both medals, original ‘court’ mounting by Spink & Son Ltd, Piccadilly, and contained in a contemporary Spink carrying case, extremely fine, a group of outstanding quality and rarity (3) £6000-7000

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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Edward Lacon Ommanney was born at Cherrapoonjee, Assam, on 24 August 1834. He was the eldest son of Major-General Edward Lacon Ommanney, R.E., and was educated at Bedford Grammar School, the Civil Engineering College, Putney, and Owens College, Manchester. He arrived in India in 1852 and served in the Opium Department of the Patna Agency. In 1855 he entered the Bengal Army and was commissioned into the 59th Native Infantry, which corps was disarmed at Amritsar on 9 July 1857, but stayed loyal. Ommanney was then attached to the forces of the Rajah of Jind who had offered the British the resources of his state.

The ‘Jheend Raja’s Contingent’ moved down from the Punjab and operated in the rear of the British position before Delhi from June onwards, garrisoning the post at Rhai. But, while the loyalty of the Rajah was beyond doubt and his troops deemed ‘first-rate men’, he was ‘not much of a soldier himself’, and never liked to be far from European troops. In early September the Contingent arrived on the Ridge, and the Rajah boldly requested that his men might be prominently employed when the assault on the city went in. John Nicholson attached them to the fifth reserve column.

Following the capture of Bahadur Shah II, the eighty-two year-old King of Delhi by William Hodson, the authorities chose to humiliate him by appointing an officer of low rank to look after him, and Ommanney was selected. The ex-king was something of a curiosity for Europeans visiting the city. Hodson’s widow was one who saw him in his small room lying on the grass ropes of his bamboo charpoy smoking a hookah. She was ‘almost ashamed’ to see ‘a man recently Lord of an imperial city almost unparalelled for riches and magnificence, confined in a low, close dirty room which the lowest slave would scarcely have occupied’. William Howard Russell of the Times was also moved to pity at the sight of this ‘dim-wandering-eyed, dreamy old man, with feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums’.

Besides the king, Ommanney was also reponsible for various members of the royal family who included Bahadur Shah’s son by a concubine, Jawan Bakht; and his favourite but now most unwilling young wife Zinat Mahal, who at this juncture considered her husband, ‘a troublesome, nasty, cross old fellow’. In early 1858, the ‘Ruler of the Universe’ was put on trial before a military court, accused of having abetted the mutineers in their crimes, of ‘not regarding his allegiance’ as a British subject, and of having allowed himself to be proclaimed ‘the reigning king and sovereign of India’. The outcome was never in doubt and the ex-king, who sat through the greater part of the trial with his eyes closed in a state of ever increasing lethargy, was found guilty on 29 March on all charges and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in exile in Burma. The king, however, was not informed as to his ultimate destination, and was only told that he was to go to Calcutta. In October an escort was detailed to accompany Ommanney’s charges who were to travel in three carriages, followed by five carts for the baggage and the twenty male and female servants permitted to accompany them.

‘The cortège left Delhi at an early hour on 7 October and moved slowly across northern India. Lieutenant Ommanney found the speed much to his liking, even though he had to rise at 1.30 a.m. in order to get the party organised for the road. This he found ‘rather hard’, especially as he did not manage to return to his tent for breakfast until 9 a.m. “But,” he assured the commissioner at Delhi, “I don’t care a straw for the amount of work and am very jolly. I am Honorary Member of the Lancers Mess, breakfast, dinner, and tiffin, good stags at dinner twice a week, a pack of Hounds accompany the column on the march, and we have a run when we succeed in getting a jackal, there is a Hook[ah] Club and in short it is as comfortable and perfectly managed as any.’ At Allahabad Ommanney’s party embarked on a ‘flat’ attached to a steamer travelling down to Calcutta, and there transferred to an ocean going steamer bound for Rangoon, which was reached on 9 November. Shortly afterwards Ommanney’s request to relinquish his charge of the prisoners was granted and he returned to the Punjab Commission to which he had been appointed an Assistant Commissioner on 9 June 1858.

In 1861 Ommanney was transferred to the Bengal Staff Corps, and spent almost all of his subsequent service in civil employ on the North West Frontier. Promoted Captain in 1867, Major in 1875, Lieutenant-Colonel in 1881, and full Colonel in 1885, he held appointments as personal assistant to the Commissioners of Peshawar and Derajat, and later successively became Commissioner of Mooltan, Derajat and Peshawar himself. Among other expeditions, he accompanied, in October 1868, Major-General Wilde’s expedition against the Bazotee Black Mountain Tribes as Deputy Commissioner of Hazara; and the Black Mountain Expedition of October - November 1888 brought about by the murders of Major Legh Battye, Captain Urmiston, and five Sepoys, who were killed while surveying in Akazai territory. For services as Chief Political Officer to the latter expedition he was decorated with the insignia of a Companion of the Order of the Star of India. Colonel Ommanney retired in 1893, returned to England, and died on 3 April 1914.

Refs: Who Was Who; Red Year (Edwardes).