CORPORAL A. CASE, 3RD AND 4TH TROOPS, BOMBAY HORSE ARTILLERY. Indian Mutiny Medal 1857-58,

CORPORAL A. CASE, 3RD AND 4TH TROOPS, BOMBAY HORSE ARTILLERY. Indian Mutiny Medal 1857-58, no clasp (officially impressed: No. 2839 CORPORAL A. CASE, BOMBAY ARTY.). Minor repair to the eye one of the suspender’s ribbon roller bar retaining arms (does not detract), otherwise Extremely Fine.

Medal accompanied by brief biographical and service details, along with extracts from the 1841, 1851, 1901 and 1911 census returns

Arthur Case was born in Baginton, Coventry, Warwickshire circa 1833.He is recorded in the 1841 census as an 8 year old boy resident in Baginton with his 46 year old mother, Mary Case, a dressmaker, two brothers and a sister, and in the 1851 census as a 17 year old servant (footman) resident in the house of the 70 year old Sir Charles Aldis, Baronet, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Arthur Case attested for service with the East India Company’s Bombay Presidency in London on 11/8/1852. At the time of enlistment he stated that he was a “servant” and was born in Coventry, enlisting initially for a term of 12 years. Case arrived in India in 1852 and was posted for service initially as 2839 Gunner, 3rd Troop, Horse Brigade, Bombay Artillery. Case married Janet Amelia Potter at Poona, Bombay, 7/4/1858, during the closing stages of the Indian Mutiny (the Mutiny had begun when Indian troops mutinied in in March 1854 at Barrackpore, and the final phase of the operations, the Central India campaign, ended in June 1858, the end of hostilities formally declared as having ended on 8/7/1859). Arthur Case is recorded in the marriage register as then being a Corporal serving with the 4th Troop H. Ay. (Horse Artillery) and Janet Potter as a spinster, the couple recorded as then being resident in Poona.

Arthur Case is recorded in the 1901 census as a 70 year old General Merchant resident in West Ham, London, with his 59 year old wife Janet, a daughter, son and grandson, and in the 1911 census as a 78 year old widower, Commission Agent and “Indian pensioner (mutiny)”, living in West Ham with his 40 year old daughter and a grandson.

The Sir Charles Aldis (1776-1863) that Arthur Case is recorded as having been a servant to in the census of 1851 was a prominent surgeon of the day and, to say the least, something of a “character”. He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons who founded a private hospital called the Glandular Institution for the Cure of Cancer. He was knighted in 1821 in dubious circumstances. His entry in the Knights of England (1906) states that his knighthood was “surreptitiously obtained” and questions whether it should have been listed. Contemporary accounts suggest that he obtained his knighthood by attending a Royal levee uninvited, presented himself as attending for a knighthood and was dubbed by the king before the deception was realised. Although the title was never revoked, it was unsurprisingly regarded with suspicion by many of his contemporaries and the College of Surgeons as a result struck his name off its roll of members.