23 OCTOBER 1909, Page 13

[To THE EDITOR OF THY "SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—In answer to "Pro Patriii.'s " appeal in the Spectator of October 16th, may I point out that Lieutenant Willoughby was not killed in the explosion of the magazine at Delhi on May 11th, 1857, but escaped from the ruins, only to be murdered a few days later while making his way to Meerut!' He belonged, moreover, to the Bengal Artillery, not to the Royal Engineers.

As instances of the kind of heroism of which "Pro Patrii" is in search, I would suggest the names of Conductor Scully, who actually fired the Delhi magazine under Willoughby-'s orders and was killed in the explosion; Lieutenant Salkeld, Bengal Engineers, and Sergeants Carmichael and Burgess, of the Bengal Sappers, who were killed or mortally wounded in

blowing up the Kashmir Gate on September 14th, 1857; Lieutenant Fitzgerald, 75th Foot, killed while leading a portion of the first column of assault up the Kashmir bastion breach on the same date ; Robert Tucker, Judge of Fattehpur, who refused to quit the station when all the other Europeans left it, and "was murdered on the roof of the cutcherry after he had himself slain some fourteen of his assailants" (" History of the Indian Mutiny," by T. R. E. Holmes).—