Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (Lieut. W, H, Davis H.Ms. 27th. Regt.) light contact marks, very fine £500-£700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from a Mutiny Collection.

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Provenance: Jack Wadey Collection, 1968.

William Henry Davis was commissioned Ensign by Purchase in the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot on 9 July 1852, and was promoted Lieutenant on 26 May 1854. He acted as a volunteer and accompanied the expedition into Eusofzai country in 1857 under Lieutenant-Colonel Vaughn, and was his Orderly Officer at the attack on and destruction of Nheringa.

Davis served with the 27th Foot on the Northwest Frontier during the Great Sepoy Mutiny, and distinguished himself at the defence of Nowshera:
‘Two companies of the Fifty-fifth Native Infantry were ordered back to Nowshera, to provide the guards and duties at this station, which was thus left in the hands of the detachment of the Fifty-fifth Native Infantry and the Tenth Irregular Native Cavalry. The former, reinforced by a number of their comrades who had deserted from Hote Murdan, began to scour the station in a mutinous and defiant manner. “Against them”, says the chaplain of Nowshera (the Reverend J. Cave Brown), “were some thirty men of the 27th, most of them weak and sickly, left behind because too ill to be moved with the regiment, with above three hundred ladies, women and children to be protected. However under Lieutenant Davis of the 27th, resistance soon was planned. Selecting the barracks nearest the regimental magazine, so that both buildings might be defended at the same time, Lieutenant Davis threw out his handful of men in line, to present as good an appearance as possible, the scarlet coat of the English soldier always filling Jack Sepoy with godly awe, and looking good for sixty rounds of ball cartridge. On came the Sepoys, shouting and yelling, armed and well supplied with ammunition, expecting to find the poor sickly soldiers in their cots and the helpless women and children an easy prey - when lo! A line of armed Europeans, looking defiant, confronted them. The mutineers dropped a few long shots at random from a very safe distance, and then, though numbering ten to one, thinking discretion the better part of valour, sidled off”.’ (The History of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers refers).

Davis was promoted Captain on 6 September 1861, and Major on 31 October 1871.