388 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



them up, and before they had gone many yards down the 

 passage (P P P) which ran along out of our square at the 

 back of the mosque, Hodson turned into the first doorway 

 he came to on his right (the only doorway on that side of 

 the passage), which opened into the foot of a narrow short 

 staircase (marked H on the plan) leading up into the 

 mosque above. Immediately one or two shots were fired, 

 and Hodson staggered back. Dougherty never stopped, 

 but ran in to the door and pinned the man who shot 

 Hodson with his bayonet before he had time to re- 

 load.^ There was only one other sepoy in the doorway, 

 and he was bayoneted too ; and when they were both 

 hauled out into the roadway I noticed the stair, up which 



■' Colonel Malleson, at p. 271 of his fourth volume, thus records Hodson's 

 death: "i/e had joined the storming -party, had entered the breach with 

 Robert Napier, and had been separated from him in the meUe. He was 

 not wounded during the storm ; but after the breach had been gained, 

 he rushed forward to seeJc for sepoys who might be concealed in the dark 

 rooms and recesses of the palace." I must here draw attention to the 

 facts, which I can personally vouch for and have recorded in the text, 

 which traverse all the statements put by me in italics in the above 

 quotation. Major Hodson did not join our storming-party, and could not 

 have found any position in it if he had ; he was in no melee, but walked 

 in quietly arm-in-arm with his fi'iend, Brigadier Napier, over the left 

 breach, and therefore " rushed " nowhere. 



As Colonel Malleson has recorded in his History his own opinion that 

 the execution by Hodson himself of the " princes of the House of Taimur " 

 was "needless slaughter," I here venture to assei't that he would not have 

 found two men amongst the magnificent heroes of the Delhi besieging 

 force, not three among Sir Colin Campbell's relief and siege of Lucknow 

 force in 1857 and 1858, who would have agreed with him. 



As to the unsupported assertion by the author of ' The Life of Lord 

 Lawrence,' Professor Bosworth Smith, that Hodson was "killed in the act 

 of looting in a house in Lucknow," Mr Smith never answered either my 

 challenge, published in the ' St James's Gazette ' and dated May 23, 1883, 

 nor the challenges of other eyewitnesses of Hodson's death which appeared 

 in other London newspapers, including the ' Daily News,' about the same 

 time, denying the base accusation — challenges which certainly called for the 

 production of the evidence upon which such a charge could be based by 

 Mr Smith ; or, failing that, for an ample apology for having ventured to 

 make such a charge. Mr Smith ought not only to have admitted that he 

 had been misinformed, but to have apologised for propagating such a 

 slander. He did neither. 



