A Lady’s Escape from Gwalior

and

Life in the Fort of Agra

During the Mutinies of 1857

By R. M. Coopland

Widow of the Rev. George William Coopland, M.A., late fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to the Hon. East India Company.

1859

I saw the youth become at once a man, the greybeard

Turn young again, the child grow to a lusty youth –

Yes, and that sex, the weak, as men most call it,

Show itself brave and strong, and of a ready mind.

GOETHE.

Dedication

To the Reverend Henry Philpott, D.D., Master of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, Canon of Norwich Cathedral, and Chaplain to his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, etc. etc.

My Dear Dr. Philpott,

Accept my sincere thanks for your kind permission to dedicate this volume to you. In doing this, I desire to express my grateful sense of your many acts of real friendship towards my husband, and also of the kind remembrance you have of him: the more valued as when alive he held no one in higher respect and regard than yourself.

The book pretends to no other merit than that of being a plain, unexaggerated account of the sad events which came immediately under my own eye, and are only a sample of what happened wherever the mutiny prevailed in India.

Your kind interest in my husband induces me to hope, that the history of his fate will not be a matter of indifference to you.

I beg to remain, dear Dr. Philpott,

Yours most faithfully and respectfully,

R. M. Coopland.

Thorp Arch Vicarage,

December 20, 1858.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 – Calcutta

Chapter 2 – The Mofussil

Chapter 3 – Gwalior

Chapter 4 – The Mutinies

Chapter 5 – The Escape

Chapter 6 – The Fort

Chapter 7 – The Fort

Chapter 8 – The Exodus

Chapter 9 – The Journey Homeward

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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