Single Campaign Medals


Although it was not safe for him go to Kotah yet, James was able to access many local contacts, especially among those who had left the city to seek safety elsewhere, and they provided him with a reasonably clear picture of what had occurred on October 15. The family focused on two questions: Had the Maharao been the guiding hand behind the murders? and, Who had led the assault on the Residency and carried out the murders?


The 1st Brigade of the Bombay Army captured Kotah by storm on 30 March 1858. Lieutenant Charles William Burton was present, and the attack was led by British troops of the 83rd Foot, veterans of the attack on Nimbhaira and the Siege of Neemuch. Immediately afterwards, an official Commission of Inquiry was convened to investigate the Maharao. Its report to Government on 17 April 1858 found unanimously that the Maharoa was not complicit in the murders, but held him responsible for the Burtons’ return to Kotah at a dangerous time, for being indifferent as to their fate and for failing to intervene or send help when the Residency was under attack. It also recommended that a price be put on the heads of the actual murderers. The most prominent were Lala Jai Dayal, who had worked at the Residency as a senior local assistant (vakeel) before Major Burton had dismissed him for “being addicted to liquor and other debaucheries”, Mehrab Khan, a risaldar of the Royal Bodyguard who organised and led the mutiny of the Bodyguard and the Kotah State Army, and Salabat Khan, who was decorated by Jai Dayal for gallantry shown when attacking the Burtons.


In the aftermath of the capture of Kotah, the Maharao regained his authority, and those rebel leaders who fell into his hands were blown from cannon. Many had escaped and fled to Gwalior, then Lucknow and eventually to the forests of southern Nepal. “The ringleaders were eventually tracked down, mainly through the efforts of James Edmond Burton, who became a police assistant at Lucknow, and who used his native contacts in Kotah as informants.” (The Great Uprising, Untold Stories p 93 refers). The men were captured, brought to the former Residency Compound in Kotah and executed on a gallows erected in the garden. The final hanging in front of the Residency, that of Salabat Khan, took place on 28 October 1861.


In the mid-1870s James Edmond Burton, District Superintendent of Police, Bankipore, Lucknow, Oude, travelled to England. On 18 November 1875 James (who was now 41) married Harriet Hammond at Kennington, London. Three months later he died of pneumonia on 25 February 1876. Harriet was pregnant, and when her child was born, she named him James Edmund Burton. Sadly, the child died at the age of three.


Footnote: The renamed medal to James E. Burton, Volunteer Cavalry – an Enigma?


The medal contemporarily but unofficially engraved to ‘James E. Burton, Volunteer Cavalry’ was almost certainly intended and used for wear, logically by the person who had taken the trouble to have a name engraved in contemporary serif capitals. The value of the medal has always been too low to be attractive to a fraudster who renames medals to cheat collectors. Burton is of course a common name and Volunteer Cavalry is a relatively generic nomenclature. As the two medals were separated for many years, it is not possible to be absolutely certain that the renamed medal belonged to, and was worn by, James Edmond Burton of Kotah and Lucknow. However, the story behind the issue of his official medal (named to Mr James Burton) makes it highly likely, perhaps conclusive, that it was James who commissioned and wore the renamed medal. All three of the surviving Burton brothers were officially awarded Mutiny medals, but the back-story behind those awards is highly suggestive.


The most straightforward one concerns the medal to Charles William Burton. Major-General Lawrence C.B. was requested to submit a list of European Officers “serving under my orders in Rajpootana whom I considered entitled to the decoration. In this Roll the name of Lieutenant Charles Burton, Assistant Superintendent at Neemuch, duly appeared.” This Roll was submitted on 27 September 1858, and Charles William duly received his medal.


Major-General Lawrence continued: “Messrs. James and Cecil Burton were not in the Service, and being in no way under this Agency, or the Neemuch Commissionership, their names were not included in my Recommendation Roll.” A separate Roll, dated 17 September 1859 (copy with lot) was submitted by Captain Simpson, commander of the fort at Neemuch during the siege, listing Volunteers J. E. Burton and C. M. Burton.


By the early 1860s, most Indian Mutiny Medals had already been manufactured, named and distributed. James made an enquiry about his and Cecil’s awards in 1861/62, to which the Military Secretary in London replied on 8 May 1862 that they had been sent out to India on 21 November 1861 “and which the Bombay Government will be desired to return without delay”. When no medals appeared, James sent a follow-up letter on 13 June 1863. Cecil wrote to Government on 11 July 1863, requesting that the medals for himself, James and Charles be sent to him. The Bombay Government responded “that application for medals of Messrs James and Cecil Burton was made to the Home Government in October 1859 and was repeated in June 1863.” James wrote again about the medals on 13 November 1863. Finally, on 7 April 1864, the Bombay Presidency received a letter from Calcutta “intimating that the two India Mutiny Medals for Messrs James and Cecil Burton have been forwarded.” A resolution that the medals be sent to the Adjutant-General for transmission to the Messrs. Burton appears to close the correspondence in the India Office records.


It is unclear from the files whether the lengthy muddle and delay in providing James’s medal was caused by the negligence of Government in London, Calcutta or Bombay. Perhaps the first application by the Bombay government in 1859 was lost; perhaps the Military Secretary’s department simply assumed that the medal had been sent out to India as part of a batch that were despatched in November 1861, when in fact no medal named to James yet existed; or perhaps the medal disappeared while in transit in late 1861 without the authorities noticing that it had vanished, and a new one had to be prepared after the application from Bombay was repeated in 1863. As the naming on James’s official medal was not as per the Roll, i.e. Volunteer J. E. Burton, it may well have been copied off some later order or piece of correspondence.


Be that as it may, it is highly probable that, at some point prior to 1864, James grew frustrated and embarrassed at not yet being in possession of his official medal, and decided to pay for an unofficial ‘interim’ decoration, one that was identical in its outward appearance and which he could proudly wear on suitable occasions.


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