The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The Burma Wars C.B. group of three to Major-General R. G. Woodthorpe, Royal Engineers

(a) The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (Military) C.B., Companion’s breast badge, 18 carat gold and enamels, hallmarked London 1887, complete with swivel-ring suspension and gold ribbon buckle

(b) India General Service 1854-94, 3 clasps, Looshai, Burma 1885-87, Burma 1887-89 (Lieut. R. G. Woodthorpe, Rl. Engrs.) clasps sometime soldered together to facilitate mounting but last two now detached from the first and loose on ribbon

(c) Afghanistan 1878-80, 2 clasps, Peiwar Kotal, Kabul (Bt. Major R. G. Woodthorpe, R.E.) light contact marks, otherwise good very fine (3) £2000-2500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

View
Collection

Robert Gossett Woodthorpe, the second son of Captain John Woodthorpe, R.N., was born on 23 September 1844 and educated privately and at the R.M.A., Woolwich. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers, he began the usual course of instruction at Chatham in 1865 and proceeded to India in 1869, where he joined the Survey Department in 1871. In late 1871-72 he served in the Looshai Expedition, and in 1872-73 served in the Garo Hills Expedition. Following the attack on the survey party under Lieutenant Holcombe by Nagas in January 1875, he was employed on the punitive expedition under Colonel Nuttall.

On the outbreak of hostilities with Afghanistan in 1878, he was appointed Senior Survey Officer with the Kurram Valley Field Force, and served in that post throughout the first campaign, carrying out ‘a route survey from the Shutargardan Pass, accompanying the expedition into the Khost Valley, and mapping the district, and being present at the skirmish of the 28th Nov., 1878, the assault and capture of Peiwar Kotal (during which his pistol stock was smashed by an Afghan bullet), and the action of Matun’.

Following a huff of indignation from the Duke of Cambridge at Horse Guards at press reports written by serving officers acting as ‘special coresspondents’, Roberts was obliged to send the following memorandum to Colonel Allen Johnson, Military Secretary at the India Office: ‘On Mr Macpherson receiving his dismissal from my camp, I gave him to understand that, in the interests of The Standard newspaper, I would appoint some officer in this force to carry on the duties of correspondent until such time as an accredited successor should arrive. My selection fell upon Captain Pretyman, my Aide-de-Camp.’ Roberts goes on to give his reasons for appointing Pretyman, and then writes, ‘Within 24 hours of my making the offer to Captain Pretyman, Mr Macpherson, on leaving the Camp, signified to me his wish that another officer, viz., Captain Woodthorpe, R.E., should take up the duties of correspondent. I immediately sent for that officer, and asked him to act: an arrangement which was more acceptable, for obvious reasons both to myself and to my Aide-de-Camp. Captain Woodthorpe then sent telegrams and letters to The Standard, until relieved of his duty very shortly afterwards by order of his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief. With regard to the military correspondents of other London papers, neither of the officers representing the Times and Daily Telegraph belonged to the Head Quarter Staff of the Kuram column.’

On the annexation of the Kurram Valley, and Amir Yakub Khan’s arrival in Roberts’ camp in May 1879, Woodthorpe had a nasty shock. Roberts, in writing to Sir Alfred Lyall at Simla with regard to possible punitive action in consequence of anti-social behaviour by local tribesmen, remarked on one particular trouble spot ‘up the Kuram river’, and commented, ‘the Mongols who live there and the Ahmed Khel Jajis inhabiting the country between Suiya and Ali Khel have been the leaders in several attacks on our followers - only last Saturday they fired on our woodcutters, and on Woodthorpe while surveying a hill above Alikhel. The whole thing would only last 2 or 3 days and would avoid our being troubled afterwards’.

In the second campaign of the Afghan War, Woodthorpe continued as Superintendent of Surveying with the Kuram Force and rejoined Roberts at Kabul on 4 November 1879. He took part in the operations around the city in December and joined the Field Engineers’ Department in order to assist in the preparations for the defence of the Sherpur Cantonment, for which service he received a mention in Roberts’ despatch:

‘Captain T. Holditch, R.E., Major R. G. Woodthorpe, R.E. and Captain E. Martin, all of the survey Department, having expressed a wish that their services might be utilized, I placed them at the disposal of Colonel Perkins, C.B., commanding the Royal Engineers, who testifies to the great assistance they afforded him’.

Woodthorpe afterwards accompanied Roberts into the Logar Valley, and Major-General Sir J. Ross’s Ghazni Field Force which defeated the Afghans at the action of Shekabad. For services in the Afghan War, Woodthorpe was mentioned three times in despatches, and several times in reports, and received the Brevets of Major and Lieutenant-Colonel.

In 1884-85 he accompanied the Akah Expedition and received another mention in despatches. He went with the mission to Chitral and the Pamirs under General Lockhart, for which he received the thanks of the Government of India and the Secretary of State. He was awarded a C.B. for services in Burma 1886-87, and afterwards served in Intelligence at Simla, 1889-92. For the next three years he was in charge of the Boundary Surveys between Burma and Siam. Colonel Woodthorpe, who read various papers before the Royal Geographical Society, the Anthropological Society and the Society of Arts died at Calcutta on 26 May 1898.

Refs: Who Was Who; Roberts In India, The Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts, 1876-1893; The Second Afghan War (Hanna); The Afghan Campaign of 1878-1880 (Shadbolt).