Orders, Decorations and Medals Including five Special Collections

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 3 clasps, Defence of Lucknow, Lucknow, Central India (H. C. Willocks) clasps mounted in reverse order, nearly extremely fine and a unique 3-clasp medal to a civilian £900-1200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from the Collection of Gordon Everson.

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Henry Davis (or Dundas) Willock was born on Christmas Day 1830, at Oujoun, Persia, one of four sons of Sir Henry Willock, of the Madras cavalry and later a Director and Chairman of the East India Company. Willock was educated at Kensington and at the East India College, Haileybury. He was appointed to the civil service and arrived in India in 1852, being posted to the North-West Provinces. He was Joint Magistrate of Allahabad on the outbreak of the Mutiny and commanded a company of volunteers, under General James G. S. Neill, at the storming and capture of Kydgunj. As civil officer he volunteered with Major Renaud’s force for the relief of the Cawnpore garrison, which fell before its arrival, and served with the force subsequently commanded by Havelock. He was in the actions of Fatehpur, Pandu Nudi, Maharajpur, and Cawnpore, being one of the first persons to enter the Beebeegarh in which the British women and children had been slaughtered by order of the Nana Sahib.

Willock accompanied Havelock on his two unsuccessful advances to Lucknow; was with Outram and Havelock in their subsequent relief of the residency, and served as a member of the garrison until the final relief by Sir Colin Campbell in November 1857. A letter from Willock to his parents, published in The Times in February 1858, gives considerable detail of his experiences in the fighting to get into the city and of his part in its defence. Returning to Cawnpore, then besieged by the Gwalior contingent, he was appointed civil officer of Maxwell’s movable column watching the banks of the Jumna in the Cawnpore and Etawah districts. He was at the capture of Kalpi by Sir Hugh Rose’s Central India Field Force in May 1858, and at many minor engagements. In June he was appointed civil officer with the field force watching the southern borders of Oudh, being present at the capture of the Tirhol and Dehaen forts.

General Sir Mowbray Thomson, the last survivor of the Cawnpore entrenchment, wrote that Willock’s “feats of arms were patent to all the force, who asserted that he had mistaken his profession and ought without doubt to have been a soldier.” He thus participated in the suppression of the Mutiny from first to last, and he was the only civilian to receive the medal with the three clasps for Relief of Lucknow, Lucknow, and Central India. Queen Victoria sent him a letter of thanks.

He subsequently served at Shahjehanpur, Bareilly, and Bulundshahar as Magistrate and Collector, and as Judge of Benares, and finally, from 1876 to his retirement in April 1884, as Judge of Azimgarh. He was for some years a Major in the Ghazipore Volunteer Rifles, raised by Colonel J. H. Rivett-Carnac, C.I.E. After his retirement Willock lived at Brighton and subsequently in London. He died on 26 April 1903 at Tunbridge Wells, and was buried at Little Bookham, Surrey. (Ref Dictionary of National Biography. See also Dictionary of Indian Biography and Who Was Who in British India) Willock’s entitlement to the medal and three clasps is confirmed in L/MIL/5/86 and L/MIL/5/77, the latter showing his middle initial incorrectly as ‘C’.
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