CORDELIA ELLEN THOMAS

The artist; thence by descent
Private collection, Tasmania

Pat Rycroft, Look back and laugh, the author, Hobart, 1998, p. 56 - 58, (illus. p. 57)

Work is in fair condition. Numerous wrinkles from previous rolling and folding visible. Some tears and losses previously repaired and consolidated. This work was not viewed out of its frame.
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The Siege of Lucknow is one of the most celebrated actions of the First War of Indian Independence of 1857-58 (also known as the Indian Mutiny). Beginning as sporadic incidents of unrest amongst the sepoys of the East India Company's Bengal Army, the rebellion began in earnest with a successful uprising at Meerut and the occupation of Delhi in May 1857.  When news of the mutiny reached the new Chief Commissioner of Oudh, Sir Henry Lawrence, he moved quickly to fortify the Residency at the state capital of Lucknow against possible attack. That attack began on 4 July.

With a garrison of only about 1,700 troops (1,000 Britons and 700 Indians), Lawrence (and after Lawrence's death in combat, Col Sir John Inglis) successfully defended both an area of 25 hectares around the Residency and a substantial non-combatant population (over 1,200, half of them European women and children) for 87 days. On 25 September a relief force under Maj-Gen. Sir James Outram managed to break through the rebel lines, but it sustained heavy casualties, and the planned evacuation was aborted. The British garrison was nevertheless significantly strengthened, and held out for a further 61 days, until the Second Relief, under Sir Colin Campbell, on 16 November. The Residency was then abandoned, with both the army and civilians withdrawing to Cawnpore.

The Siege of Lucknow entered British folklore as a symbol of imperial courage and tenacity, and has been widely represented in fiction (from J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur to George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman in the Great Game) and in art (in Romantic reconstructions by Victorian painters such as Thomas Jones Barker and Frederick Goodall). Less common are eyewitness accounts such as those of Mrs Julia Inglis and L.E Ruutz Rees; rarer still first-hand images such as the present work.

The watercolour was painted by Cordelia Thomas, the young wife of Lieut Lancelot Thomas of the Madras Artillery, and shows an interior of the Residency. It was evidently painted before the siege, at which time the building became a refuge for army wives and children; Cordelia wrote to her mother on 16 June: 'I wish you could take a peep at me here, I think it would remind you of the Crimea! So many crowded into one room!' Although clearly the work of an amateur, it is a competent drawing, and remarkable for its wealth of detail with regard to Anglo-Indian colonial furniture and furnishings.

Seated on the floor in the left foreground is Cordelia's infant daughter Caroline. Caroline was successfully evacuated in November and moved to Australia (according to family history under the care of a Mrs Maggott, the alcoholic wife of a British bandmaster), where she spent her childhood. She returned to India as a young woman, and in 1876 married Richard Lamb, a tea planter in the Wynaad district. Cordelia herself had died during the siege, of smallpox, aged 22.

In addition to her mother's watercolour of the Residency, Caroline's Indian souvenirs also include an album of letters, photographs and sketches, both from the time of the siege and from her later Indian sojourn.