BRITISH LIBRARY DATA -JOHN SUMMERS

[Peter]

My brother Geoff and I have visted the British Library independently several times to obtain information about John Summers who joined the EIC artillery in 1804. I found it a great pleasure to handle the (huge) Bombay Artillery Muster Roll of 1805 (L/Mil/12/137 – kindly brought up from the depths because they couldn’t locate the fiche). Here were detailed his name (John Summers aged 20), arrival date, ship, birthplace and so on.

Geoff found L/Mil/9/37f27 Description Book which I would say must have been created in 1804 prior to John sailing to Bombay. It gives: date of attestation as 8 Jun 1804 and ‘when paid’ as 13 Dec 1804. By the beginning of February 1805 he was on the ship Bombay Castle. (There is a great story here; see ‘The Wreck of the Abergavenny’ by Althea Hayter but I don’t want to deviate)!

My question: Geoff recorded from that book: ‘From Whom received’ as MGHc. How can I find the meaning of this? MG could be Major General as he also saw elsewhere ‘Received from Major General Whitstoke’. Now neither Whitstoke or Hc is in the Wikipedia list of Generals (which seems to include the EIC since Brigadier General Whitlock of the Madras Army is listed). For Hc I searched all the Hs and the only one that came near was Hickie. However, the Hickie I found was one hundred years later!

So I wonder if anyone has looked at this period and to the recruitment of men into the EIC army and can identify MGHc?

Thanks,

Peter

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