18 JANUARY
OFFICER RECOUNTS SAVAGERY OF HUNTING INDIAN MUTINEERS LIKE ‘VERMIN’
[ 18 January 1859 ]
Today in 1859, Major Pemberton Campbell wrote to his mother describing the British military campaign against the last pockets of resistance from Indian mutineers. ‘Our men were very savage,’ he recalled, ‘treating these poor wretches like vermin. Some carried ropes on purpose to hang them with, which they did with great delight.’1
REPRISALS IN IRELAND – CONVENT BURNED – RANDOM CIVILIANS MURDERED
[ 18 January 1921 ]
Following an ambush of auxiliary police on a country road in County Galway by the IRA, injuring six cadets, several lorry loads of British soldiers disembarked in the nearby village of Headford shortly after 10.30 pm on 18 January 1921.
“INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT.”
[ 18 January 1978 ]
Today in 1978, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that British forces in Northern Ireland used “inhuman and degrading treatment” against suspected IRA members.
FOOTNOTE
- Pemberton Papers 7/18/28, Francis Pemberton Campbell letter to his mother, 18 January 1859 quoted in Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997, Jonathan Cape London 2007, p. 134.
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