Campaign Groups and Pairs 170
The important Indian campaign pair awarded to Colonel Willoughby Wallace Hooper, 7th (later 4th) Madras Light Cavalry, one of India’s most important early amateur photographers who left a legacy of images of international importance; his harrowing images of the Madras famines are considered some of his finest works, whilst as Provost Marshal, during the Third Burma Campaign, this gallant officer carried his camera under fire at the battle of Minhla, making him one of the first ever recorded war photo-journalists
Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (Cornet W. W. Hooper, 7th Madras Cavalry.) officially impressed naming; India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Burma 1885-7 (Ltt. Coll. W. W. Hooper 4th Madras Cavy.) officially re-engraved naming, nearly extremely fine (2)
£900-£1,200
Willoughby Wallace Hooper was born on 4 February 1837, at St John's Grove, North Brixton, London, son of William Thomas Hooper, Secretary to the East India Company College, Haileybury. Educated at Ramsgate under Thomas Whitehead, he was accepted for employment as a Writer in the Secretary's Department of East India House in November 1853, a position he held until being commissioned Cornet into the 7th Regiment Madras Light Cavalry, arriving in India via the overland route on 20 April 1858; Lieutenant, 21 December 1859; Captain, 27 December 1872; Major, 1 January 1883; Lieutenant-Colonel, 20 April 1884; Colonel, 20 Aprilo 1896.
During the Mutiny Hooper served with the 2nd squadron, 7th Light Cavalry from November 1858 to April 1859, at Kamptee in the Deccan under Colonels Roberts and Orr. On 28 February 1859, they marched miles without a halt in pursuit of the enemy and defeated them the same day, taking several prisoners.
From 1 October 1861, he was doing duty with the 4th Regiment Madras Light Cavalry, at the disposal of the Commissioner of Nagpore, for the purpose of taking “Photographic Likenesses” illustrative of the different races in that Province. A letter written by Hooper to the Chief Commissioner's Office, Central Provinces, dated 3 November 1863, states that he has submitted 20 plates of a series of photographs of the tribes of the Nagpore Province but explained that he had the greatest difficulty in procuring the photographs as the inhabitants had never seen a European before. He travelled through the jungles of the province getting images of the Bringewars, Dunwhars, Bhoomias and Gonds. Each photograph annotated as to location, diet, culture, religion and disposition. From Hooper's efforts and the collaboration of 12 other photographers from around India came the publication of ‘The People of India’ in 8 volumes, containing 470 albumen photo prints compiled and assembled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye, a record of national importance to India.
The article ‘A Craze about Photography’, by John Falconer, Curator of Photographs, India Office Collection at the British Library, is unsure how Hooper became interested in photography but, by 1860, while serving with the 4th Madras Light Cavalry at Secunderabad, he was active. Later, Hooper took an interest in the life of the British in India so, between his military duties, he turned his camera to Anglo-Indian domestic and cantonment life before collaborating with Veterinary Surgeon George Western of the Madras Army to the pursuit of big game hunting and the Shikar. In 1872 Hooper and Western produced the successful series of a twelve 9 x 7 inch photomontages entitled ‘Tiger Shooting’.
However, alongside his tranquil domestic, life Hooper's photography began to express an increasingly more morbid strain in which there became a desire to capture humanity at moments of extreme suffering. His harrowing and haunting series of photographs of the Madras famines of 1876-78 are among Hooper's best known images. All were ‘posed’ and the emaciated subjects and macabre postures can still shock today.
It was said of Hooper that he was a steadfast Christian of undisputed courage who had the reputation of being a good officer although perhaps inflexible and over-zealous for the moral welfare of the troops in his attempts to stamp out vice. In 1886 his desire to photograph the Burmese at the moment of death is attributed not to any inhumanity but a passion to secure for posterity that indelible record of human expression at the supreme moment. When back in Madras it is related that on one occasion a sepoy went on the rampage running amok and shooting at his fellow officers and comrades. Hooper gathered up his photographic apparatus and brought it to bear on the sepoy, who was in the act of taking aim at Hooper, when the homicidal sepoy was shot dead by another sepoy. Hooper seemed unconcerned as he had obtained his negative.
Hooper departed Madras aboard the Tenasserim on 1 November 1885 for Rangoon, to take up the position of Provost Marshal of the Burma Expeditionary Force, arriving Rangoon on 8 November. On the 15th November he joined the main body of the force and sailed on the Thambyadine towards Mandalay. Grattan Geary describes at the battle of Minhla how ‘this gallant officer carried his camera under fire so that it might be available for the record of any exceptional incident’. Once the military objective was achieved Hooper set about curbing the looting and drunkenness that broke out both by the local inhabitants and soldiery. Dacoits proliferated the countryside and Hooper joined a force of the Hampshire Regiment led by Colonel Baker to apprehend a renegade pretender. In his stockade they found the body of a European who had been brutally murdered and decapitated. During their march back they were fired upon from the dense jungle resulting in 2 Hampshire's killed and eight or ten wounded including Lieutenant Lloyd.
The Times, January 21st 1886 – Special correspondent in Burma Edward Kyran Moylan: ‘The Rev'd Mr Colbeck, the representative in Mandalay of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, has addressed a public protest to the Chief Commissioner against a recent attempt by the Provost Marshal to procure testimony against other persons from a Burmese while he was covered by the presented rifles of a firing party. Mr Colbeck who has been a long resident in Burma, declares that such proceedings cannot fail to bring shame and discredit upon our name, nation and religion.
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