Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Lieutenant-Colonel H. A. Mallock, Indian Telegraph Department, late Bengal Artillery, and the author of a ‘Report on the Indo-European Telegraph Dept. from 1863-1868 and a description through which the line passes’

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Central India (Lieut. H. Mallock. Bengal Artillery); India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Bhootan (Captn. H. Mallock. 25th. Bde. R.A.); Afghanistan 1878-80, no clasp (Lt. Col: H. A. Mallock. Ind: Tel: Dept.); Empress of India 1877, silver, unnamed as issued, contact marks, otherwise generally very fine and better (4) £1,200-£1,600

Henry Archibald Mallock was born on 9 April 1835, in Bloomsbury, London, the first child from the second marriage of James Sobey Mallock, a Solicitor of Bloomsbury Square, London, he being a stepbrother of Rawlin James Mallock, a Lieutenant in the 16th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, Honourable East India Company Forces. He was commissioned as an Ensign into the Honourable East India Company Forces on 9 December 1853, and was appointed as a 2nd Lieutenant to the Bengal Artillery. As such he was on service out in India on the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, being promoted to Lieutenant on 25 September 1857, and then formed part of the Central India campaign under Sir Hugh Rose against Jhansi, Calpee and Gwalior in the period from January to June 1858, being noted as having been present in action at Mundesore and the siege of Ratghur Fort.

With the transferral of the H.E.I.C. Forces to the Crown in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, Mallock was one of those who opted to remain in service, and as such he transferred across to the British Army as a Lieutenant with the Royal Artillery, being promoted to Second Captain on 1 September 1863, this being subsequently backdated in seniority to 24 June 1863. Mallock continued to see service out in India, and was then present during the Bhootan operations which lasted from December 1864 to February 1865, serving as a Captain with the 25th Brigade Royal Artillery. The Indian Government decided to take punitive action as a result of the treatment of the Honourable Ashley Eden, head of a mission into Bhootan, and perhaps more importantly because of continued raids from Bhootan into British territory. Four columns advanced into Bhootan under Brigadier General W. E. Mulcaster and were able to overcome the slight resistance they met at Dhalimcote, Bhumsong, and Charmoorchee. However, the Bhootanese then attacked various Anglo-Indian positions with serious result. A further expedition was dispatched under Brigadier General Sir H. Tombs, V.C., K.C.B., which captured Dewangiri on 2 April 1865, and another was mounted in 1866 after which the Bhootanese accepted defeat. Mallock then found himself seconded to the Bengal Staff Corps of the newly formed Indian Army on 24 March 1866, and was promoted to Captain on 24 June 1868.

Mallock was also something of an inventor, possibly inspired by his father-in-law, Sir William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, who was the Superintendent of the Electric Telegraph of India. With his home address given as Harley Street in London, Mallock was issued a patent for an invention of ‘improvements in electric conductors’. This was announced in the London Gazette for 21 July 1871. Mallock was promoted to Captain and Brevet Major in the Bengal Staff Corps on 11 October 1875, and was one of those officers in attendance on the occasion that Queen Victoria was proclaimed as Empress of India on 1 January 1877. Mallock, no doubt owing to his interest in electric conductors, then saw service during the Second Afghanistan War with the Indian Telegraph Department, having been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel on 9 December 1879. He was ultimately promoted to Colonel on 9 December 1883, and was placed on the Retired List on 9 April 1889. During this period he compiled his ‘Report on the Indo-European Telegraph Dept from 1863-1868 and a description through which the line passes’ (see also TNA FO/330 for related correspondence). Mallock would remain on the Indian Supernumerary List, but would retire to England, where he settled in Broadmayne, Dorset. He had married his first wife, Mary Jane O'Shaughnessy, on 16 October 1856 while in Bengal, with whom he had one daughter, Eleanor Emily Mallock, who later married into the Kellett family. His first wife having predeceased him, he then married Emma Louisa Arundell, and as of 1911 was living with her in retirement with four servants at Friarmayne House in Broadmayne, near Dorchester. Mallock died on 7 February 1923.

Sold with copied research including a modern reprint of the ‘Memoir of Surgeon-Major Sir W. O’Shaughnessy Brooke, Kt., M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.S., F.S.A., in connection with the early history of the Telegraph in India’, Simla 1889.