The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection

The Indian Mutiny medal to Lieutenant John Graydon, acting Commandant 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry, who was mortally wounded in the defence of the Residency at Lucknow, where he was in command of Innes’ post

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Defence of Lucknow (Lieut. J. Graydon, 7th Oudh Irreg. Infy.) extremely fine
£3000-3500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection.

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John Graydon was born in the Parish of St Pancras, Middlesex, on 25 July 1825, son of Captain George Graydon, Royal Engineers. He joined the Military Seminary at Addiscombe in August 1842 and was appointed an Ensign on 7 June 1844. He arrived at Fort William, Calcutta, at the end of December 1844 and was directed to do duty with the 16th Bengal Native Infantry at Etawah. In February 1845 he was posted to the 44th N.I. and ordered to Ferozepore. He served in the Sutlej campaign of 1845-46 and was present at Ferozeshuhur, for which he received the medal.

Having been appointed Adjutant of the 2nd Oudh Local Infantry in April 1850, he was promoted to Lieutenant in the following November, and became second-in-command of the regiment in March 1856. Graydon was appointed acting Commandant of the 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry in November 1856. This regiment mutinied at Moosa Bagh in May 1857 whilst Graydon himself was away on sick leave in the hills. He consequently found himself counted amongst the defenders of the Residency at Lucknow, where he was initially attached to the Commissariat. However, Graydon was desperate for a more active role and eventually obtained command of one of the outlying defences known as Innes’ post. As Lady Inglis describes in The Siege of Lucknow, A Diary, Graydon ‘begged so hard to have command at an outpost that John [Inglis] did not like to refuse him, and there he met his death.’

For his part in command of Innes’ post during the siege, Graydon was mentioned in the despatches of both Brigadier Inglis and of the Governor General in Council (London Gazette 16 January 1858).

Graydon was wounded on 29 September 1857, in a sortie designed to destroy or capture as many enemy guns as possible and to destroy their emplacements, as related in A Season in Hell by Michael Edwards:

“The column consisted of 130 men commanded by Captain Shute, and included Lieutenant Edmondstone of the 32nd with a dozen of his men. Lieutenant Graydon of the Oudh Infantry acted as guide. Edmondstone and Graydon were at the front of the column, but Captain Shute ‘thought the rear was the best place and there he stuck’. Starting before daybreak, the party marched off in the direction of the iron bridge and got within a hundred yards of it without being seen by the mutineers. One of the men told Edmondstone he could see the guns, and the lieutenant cried: ‘Men, there are your guns. Take them!’ With the two lieutenants leading, the men of the 32nd ran cheering towards the guns. There was a burst of grapeshot and then the gunners fled. The guns were spiked, and the party then turned down a lane towards their next objective. Here, the enemy opened up with muskets from some of the houses, and Edmondstone proposed taking the lane at a run, so as to reach the site of the guns which were the party's main target. The men who had arrived in Lucknow with the relief force were reluctant. Edmondstone gathered his own dozen men of the 32nd around him. They were 'awfully disgusted' with the newcomers, muttering, ‘Did you ever see such a cowardly set?’ Edmondstone gave the word, and the 32nd ‘sprang forward directly’, the others bringing up the rear. Three guns and two mortars were taken, but not before the guns had fired grapeshot into the attackers. Preparations were then made to blow up the barrel of the twenty-four pounder, and the party retired into the houses surrounding the site to await the explosion. With the gun barrel burst and the other guns and mortars spiked, the force prepared to retire up the lane again. But although orders had been given to a subaltern to take possession of the houses at the entrance to the lane, so as to cover the party's retreat, he had failed to do so. A heavy enemy fire opened up from these houses. The party ‘doubled up the street, intending to charge the houses and scrag the sepoys’, but half way up Edmondstone was hit in the head by a bullet and fell half senseless to the ground, only to be trampled on by men of the 5th Fusillers. When he called out: ‘Lift me up for I think I can walk,’ they paid no attention. Aided by one of his own men, Edmondstone contrived to reach the head of the lane. There, Graydon, in spite of being wounded, managed to get a small group of men together and charged into the lower storeys of the house occupied by the enemy. But though both Graydon and Edmonstone begged the other men to follow, and take the upper storeys, ‘they had no appetite for that sort of work’. Even when their own officer ordered them to go, he ‘did not-offer to lead them so they would not stir’.

At this stage, Edmondstone could go on no longer and returned to the Residency to have his wound attended to. It was a bad
business, he thought, when you could not count on British soldiers to back you up. At least the twenty-four-pounder had been
destroyed and a few guns and mortars put out of action. But the casualties, ten dead and twenty wounded, in the end, had been too high for such meagre results.”

Edmondstone was later put forward for the Victoria Cross but was refused on the basis of the lapse in time between the incident and the recommendation.

Lieutenant Graydon was mortally wounded at Lucknow on 28 October 1857, as recalled in the diary entry of Martin Gubbins, the Financial Commissioner, in The Mutinies in Oudh, ‘We lost to-day an excellent officer, Captain Graydon, of the 44th N.I., in command of Innes’ post, who was struck by a musket-ball in superintending the new works beyond that post.’


Sold with additional research including Addiscombe Cadet papers and a copy of The Chronicle of Private Henry Metcalf in which Graydon is mentioned several times.