Frostbitten, sunburnt, and witnesses to a horrific massacre
Last updated 13:38, Thursday, 03 April 2008
A report in the Carlisle Journal in November 1930 described the funeral of Sergeant John Wilson aged 89, thought to be the last survivor of the 34th Regiment of Foot.
He had died in one of the two Border Regiment Cottage Homes at Etterby, and the Journal recounted some of his career: “He was in a draft on the way to the Crimea when the war ended and later served in the 3rd Border Regiment.”
At the opening of the Cottage Homes in 1905, the Journal gave something of the earlier history. “Although the 34th, which merged with the Border Regiment in 1881, is the Cumberland regiment, it has never been stationed in Carlisle since the early part of the 18th century.”
The newspaper said: “Much of its service in the 18th and 19th centuries was passed abroad, the War Office in its wisdom never saw fit to quarter it in the county with which it was nominally associated.”
However, this was not strictly true because the Journal in March 1836 gave the death of “John Bolton, private in the 34th Regiment stationed in the city, aged 24 years.”
Conformation came in May in a further report; “Major-General Sir H Bouverie inspected the depot of the 34th Regiment now stationed in our castle.”
The regimental depot recruited soldiers in this country and sent them abroad to keep the regiment at strength.
Some men had already left Carlisle because the Journal noted that, on April 29 1836, “a detachment under Lieutenant James left the castle for Bowness for Liverpool from whence to Cork and thence to join the regiment at Halifax, North America”.
A month later the newspaper stated that the 34th at the castle were to embark for Dublin and would be replaced by the 52nd.
Fortunately the newspaper followed the progress of the Cumberland regiment, stating in July: “Lieutenant James and detachment arrived in Newfoundland on the troop ship Sovereign, having left Cork on June 8 and arrived in the unusually short period of 14 days.”
The decision to post the regiment to Canada had come in 1829. The Cumberland Pacquet reported in September: “The last division of the 34th left for Cork for Halifax.”
The harsh conditions there were indicated by a letter sent by one of the soldiers writing from North Barracks, Halifax, Nova Scotia, quoted in the Journal. “One man, a native of Caldewgate, when on sentry duty in Halifax, was so frost-bitten in toes and fingers that he... lost the whole ten of them”.
“The sentries had to be relieved every half hour, for it was physically impossible to remain the usual two hours, or if they did, they would have been turned into pillars of ice.”
In August 1840 the Journal reported: “The 34th are to come home from Canada”, and some had already arrived because William Railton of Aspatria recalled in 1885: “I joined the depot of the 34th at Dover Castle in 1840.”
One Carlisle man, Joseph Carruthers, who died at Greystone Road in 1916, aged 86, “was born at Nova Scotia in April 1830 when his father (of Carlisle) was stationed at Halifax”, said the Journal.
Joseph himself joined the army in 1848 and “transferred to the band of the 34th and served in Gibraltar, Barbados and Trinidad.” He went on to see active service in the Crimea and India.
A much earlier deployment was recalled when John Rook died aged 89 in 1872, “the oldest of the Carlisle pensioners, as old as any in England.”
The Carlisle Express obituary continued: “He enlisted on New Year’s Day 1798 aged only 15 in the ‘Cumberland Heroes,’ the 34th of that day and served 25 years, 23 of them abroad chiefly in the East Indies.”
It was to India that the regiment returned when the Mutiny broke out. The men had not long been home from the Crimea and were at Edinburgh when the Journal reported in July 1857: “The 34th were ordered to India.”
They arrived by train at 8.30pm in Carlisle en route for London and spent an hour on the station.
It was 1am when they reached Preston and “there could not be fewer than 700 people in attendance at the station”, said the Preston Chronicle, large numbers of the soldiers having enlisted in that town.
“When the train stopped,” said the newspaper, “a scene of the most painful and melancholy nature ensued which almost baffles description.”
The bugle sounded their departure and “as the train moved away, no doubt the reflection occurred to many, how uncertain was the future of the gallant fellows thus on their way to a foreign shore,” said the Chronicle.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert reviewed the 34th and other troops at Portsmouth in August before they embarked for India.
As a young cadet, Colonel Lewin was attached to the 34th at Cawnpore in September and saw the women and children who had been massacred. Years afterwards he wrote: “The shock remains with me, a never-to-be-forgotten horror.”
