Service
Cornet in the 11th Hussars: 10th of November 1848.
Lieutenant: 14th of June 1850.
1851 Census
Pockthorpe Cavalry Barracks, Norwich.
James Miller, Officer, unmarried, 22, Lieutenant, Leith, Scotland.
Captain: 30th of September 1853.
Captain James Miller, in Hart's New Army List, 1854.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Sent to command the Depot Troop at the Consolidated Cavalry Depot at Newbridge, Ireland, when the regiment embarked for the Crimea, but joined it in July of 1855 in charge of a draft.
He returned to England, "On sick leave", on the 20th of September 1855.
Letter from:
"Horse Guards,
1st January 1856;
Sir, — I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 31st ultimo and to acquaint you that when your papers have been received by the Military Secretary leave of absence will be granted to you until the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief's decision is known.
I have, &c. &c.,
W.F. Forster, AAG
[To:] Captain Miller, 11th Hussars, 135, Piccadilly, London."
Memo sent to Captain Miller, 11th Hussars on the 6th of February 1856:
"You are forthwith ordered to rejoin your regiment in the East and to report on your embarkation to this Department.
Pressing."
"Horse Guards,
9th February 1856,
Sir, — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the present date and to state in reply that your original period of leave was extended from the 3rd to the 31st of December last under the express supposition that you would find your own passage back to the Crimea upon the expiration of your leave.
You sent in your papers to resign your commission and having been given permission to withdraw those papers you yet remain absent to this date.
You will not be allowed passage at public expense and must obey the orders of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief conveyed through the Military Secretary on the 6th inst. and embark immediately for the Crimea.
I have,&c. &c.,
W. A. Forster, DAG.
[To:] Captain Foster, 11th Hussars, 135, Piccadilly, London."
Major: 22nd of June 1858.
Hart's New Army List, 1859.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Lieutenant-Colonel in the 11th Hussars: 8th of March 1859.
Retired, by the sale of his commission, on the 14th of June 1859.
Campaign service
Captain Miller served the Eastern campaign from the 30th of July 1855, including the Siege and fall of Sebastopol.
Life after service
Deputy-Lieutenant of Middlesex and a J.P. for Middlesex and Oxford.
He married, on the 20th of March 1862, Sarah Dora, the daughter of Thomas Moore Evans, Esq., of Birmingham, and Warsaw in the Empire of Russia.
Births registered
Alexander Evans Miller, March Quarter 1863, St George's Hanover Square
Alfred Douglas Miller, September Quarter 1864, Sevenoaks.
Thomas B Miller, December Quarter 1866, Kensington.
Ethel Maud Miller, September Quarter 1867, Reading.
Andrew Cornwall Miller, March Quarter 1869, Kensington.
1871 Census
20 Hyde Park South, Kensington.
James Miller, 40, Lieut. Col. Retired, born Scotland.
Sarah D. Miller, 32, born Prussia, British Subject.
Alexander E Miller, 7, born London.
Alfred D Miller, 6, born Cowden, Kent.
Ethel M.M. Miller, 5, born Cowden, Kent.
Thomas B Miller, 4, born Kensington.
Andrew C Miller, 2, born Kensington.
11 servants are also shown.
1881 Census
Shotover House, Headington.
James Miller, 52, Col Officer, retired Cavalry, born Scotland.
Andrew C, 11, scholar, born Kensington.
Thomas B, 14, scholar, born Marylebone.
A visitor and 13 servants are shown.
1891 Census
Grand Hotel, St Peter and St Paul, Bath.
James Miller, 62, Lieut-Col Retd Magistrate, born Leith.
Cornwall Miller, 22, born Kensington.
Deaths registered
James Miller, aged 80, March Quarter 1909 [actual 8th March], Headington.
Alexander D Miller [son], aged 46, March Quarter 1909 [actual 27th March], Headington.
Death & burial
Died at Shotover House, Shotover, near Oxford, on the 8th of March 1909 and was buried at Forest Hill with Shotover.
In his will he left his estate of £237,533 (in the United Kingdom) to his widow, Sarah Dorothy [sic], and two of his sons, Alfred Douglas and James William.
Extract from the "Oxford Times" for Saturday the 13th of March 1909:
"Death of Lieutenant-Colonel Miller — We regret to announce the passing away early on Monday morning last of Lieut. Colonel James Miller, of Shotover House, in his 81st year.
He had enjoyed fairly good health until about a month ago when symptoms of heart failure first became manifest, and he gradually became weaker until unconsciousness set in and he died as stated.
He was born in 1829, and was the eldest son of the late Mr. Alexander Miller, of Ashford House, Middlesex. He has a family of four sons and one daughter, one of the sons being in South Africa and another holds the important post of Colonel of the Scots Greys.
[His son, Lieutenant-Colonel A.D. Miller, D.S.O. J.P., retired from the command of the 2nd Dragoons in August of 1911, after 27 years' service.]
The deceased was formerly Lieutenant-Colonel of the 11th Hussars, was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy-Lieutenant for Middlesex. He entertained Liberal views until Mr. Gladstone brought in the first Home Rule measure in 1886 and he then became a strong Unionist, although he did not take a very active part in political subjects.
The late Lieut. Colonel was very highly respected, especially in the neighbourhood of his home, and the employees on his farm and others will greatly miss a man of a most generous and charitable disposition.
The Funeral — On Thursday morning a strong wind drove the snow-flakes of a snow-storm simultaneously through the chill March air, but at mid-day the elements were very calm and peaceful as a simple but impressive cortege crossed the valley which divides Shotover from Forest Hill, bearing in its midst the body of the veteran soldier, at rest after a long life of ceaseless activity.
The plain oak coffin, which was enveloped in the Union Jack, was carried by eight of the oldest employees on the estate and was followed, in addition to the mourners, by Colonel Briscoe, Lieutenant the Right Hon. Robert Bruce and Sergeant-Majors Cooper, Ralph, Mitchell and Mason, of the Colonel's old regiment, the 11th Hussars — "the best in the service" — as he so often affectionately described it.
The funeral service was conducted in the substantially-built church of St. Nicholas at Forest Hill, on the south wall of which there is a handsomely emblazoned memorial tablet to Lieutenant Thomas Brook Miller, the Colonel's son, who fell gallantly whilst doing his duty in South Africa in 1900.
Here had congregated a large number of mourners, gentry, tenants and villagers from Shotover, Forest Hill and Wheatley, all to pay their last respects to an ideal country gentleman who had won the hearts of all by his courteous bearing and kindly and generous manner.
The service was conducted by the Vicar (the Revd. A.E. Negus) the hymn "Peace, perfect peace" being sung, the choir chanting the "Nunc Dimittis" as the congregation left the church and proceeded to the quiet churchyard where the coffin was lowered into a grave lined with fir branches and ivy. [Then follows a list of family mourners and friends.]
The coffin, of plain oak with brass fittings, bore the inscription: "Lieut.-Colonel James Miller. Born 14th January 1819 — Died 8th March 1909."
His family group of gravestones is in the extension part of the church-yard of St. Nicholas at Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, being some 150 yards from the church itself.
The plot is completely enclosed by a marble kerb and iron chains and appears to be (1985) regularly maintained.
Three of the stones are together:
First: "Lieutenant-Colonel James Miller of Shotover. Born 14th January 1829 — Died 8th of March 1909."
Second: "Alexander Evans Miller. Born 5th of January 1863 -Died 27th of March 1909."
Third: "Sarah Dorothy Miller. Born 13th of June 1837 — Died 10th of August 1911."
To the right-hand side there is a separate stone, which reads:
"Sacred to the memory of "James Cornwall Miller, late Captain, Bengal Staff Corps — Died 6th of June 1914. 'A Veteran of the Indian Mutiny.'"
There are three memorials in the church itself to members of the Miller family:
First: "In loving memory of Thomas Brook Miller. Killed in action with the Imperial Yeomanry, 31st of May 1900, aged 34. Buried at Lyndley, in the Orange River Colony. 'He died as he had lived, obedient to what he considered to be his duty.'
Second: "In affectionate remembrance of Lieut-Colonel James Miller, J.P. D.L. of Shotover, late 11th Prince Albert's Hussars, with which regiment he served during the Crimean campaign of 1854. Died 8th of March 1909, aged 80 years." Also to Alexander Evans Miller, son of the above, Born 1863 -Died 1909."
The third has the coat of arms at the top and is:
"To the memory of Brigadier Alfred D. Miller, D.S.O. C.B. D.L. J.P., of Shotover. Commanded the Scots Greys, 1907-1911. Born March 1st MDCCCLXIV — Died December 4th MCMXXXIII.
Also his wife, Ella Geraldine, daughter of John Fletcher of Saltoun, Born January 7th MDCCCXXIX — Died April 27th MMCCCXXV."
Further information
Deaths registered
Sarah D Miller [wife], aged 74, September Quarter 1911, Headington.
Alfred D Miller [son], aged 69, December Quarter 1933, Ploughley.
His son, Andrew Cornwall Miller, married Mrs. Ethel Brabazon Grimwood, R.R.C., at the Registry Office, St. George's, Hanover Square, London, on the 30th of May 1895.
He was described as a bachelor, aged 25, the owner of a paper mill at Carshalton, Surrey, and she as a widow aged 27.
Marriages registered
Andrew Cornwall Miller [son] married Ethel Brabazon Grimwood [her 2nd marriage], June Quarter 1895, St George's Hanover Square.
Ethel Brabazon Moore [1st marriage] married Frank St Clair Grimwood, September Quarter 1887, Kensington.
Ethel Brabazon Moore, the "Heroine of Manipur" [daughter-in-law]
Ethel Brabazon Moore: born October 4th 1867, Muttra [aka Mathura], West Bengal; died 11th August 1928, Portland Multnomah, Oregon.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography:
Grimwood [née Moore; other married name Miller], Ethel Brabazon [pseud. Ethel St Clair Grimwood] (1867-1928), the heroine of Manipur, was born in Mathura, West Bengal, in 1867, probably on 4 October, eldest of the daughters of Charles William Moore (1835/6-1898), a judge in the Bengal civil service, and his second wife, Margaret Emma Boisragon, née Gerrard. Her father (whose first wife had died on the voyage out to join him in India) had eloped with her mother, then the wife of Major-General Theodore Boisragon, and had been named as co-respondent in the Boisragons' divorce in 1864. Both sides of the family were well established in India: the Gerrards were an army family, while Charles Moore's father had been a director of the East India Company. In 1920 Ethel said that her mother tongue was Hindustani.
When James Miller's son Andrew married, his wife was the widow of Frank St. Clair Grimwood, the Political Officer at Imphal in Manipur, an ostensibly independent state on the North West Frontier of India in 1891.
The deposing of the then-ruler of Manipur, after a palace coup, was seen by the British as an act of rebellion and a small force was sent to oust the usurper. Parleys were attempted, but at one of these three senior army officers [some accounts also mention a Ghurka bugler] were seized and killed, along with Mr. Grimwood and J.W Quinton, Chief Commissioner of Assam.
[The events led to the First Anglo-Manipur War (March-April 1891) and the annexation of Manipur by the British (1891-1947).]
What troops were left were now under the command of two subalterns, and Mrs. Grimwood (although still ignorant of her husband's fate) was forced to withdraw with a sepoy escort — eventually, it would seem, taking over the command from the ineffectual officers until they reached safety in Assam.
[PB: According to the DNB her role may have been exaggerated:
"The junior officers involved in the retreat were cashiered from the service; national pride was restored by lionizing Ethel, who had not crumbled in the face of horror and personal danger, and was acclaimed as 'this brave lady, who had done so much at a time of imminent danger to uphold the British name in India' (The Times, 5 June 1891).
Unfavourable rumours continued to circulate, however, including it seems suggestions of sexual impropriety by both her and her late husband. In February 1894 she advertised a reward in the newspapers for information enabling her to take proceedings against the originators of 'certain false and slanderous reports' (The Graphic, 10 Feb 1894)."]
She was awarded the Royal Red Cross (R.R.C.) for "her devotion to the wounded" and was presented with the decoration by Queen Victoria at Windsor on the 2nd of July 1891. The Warrant for the R.R.C. requires it to be awarded to: "ladies, whether subjects or foreign persons, engaged in nursing duties or special services in providing for the nursing of the sick and wounded.".
In this connection comes a quotation from a writer on the subject some four years later: "Gently had she tended the wounded in the cellar of their ruined home, although slightly wounded herself."
She was also awarded a pension of £140 per annum — based on the fact that her late husband ranked as a Major — and a special grant of £200, "in consideration of the exceptional services rendered by her in the recent fighting in Manipur." A public subscription was also opened.
Again from the DNB:
On 30 May 1895 Ethel married Andrew Cornwall Miller (1869-1942), fourth son of Lieutenant-Colonel James Miller of Shotover, Oxford. Her second husband was at that time the owner of a paper mill in Carshalton, Surrey, but by 1899 he had apparently emigrated to the United States. Ethel remained in England, where in 1903 she became involved in an unsuccessful business venture with a court dressmaker, 'Madame Hugh Barry' of Bond Street. The subsequent litigation (at which her husband appeared as a witness) suggests that Ethel may have mortgaged away her pension.
She then emigrated to Clackamas, Oregon, with her husband, but the marriage broke down and Andrew Miller returned to England.
By 1920 she had changed her name to Evelyn and was living in Newport, Oregon, making a living as a music teacher. Her mental health deteriorated and she spent some time in a sanatorium in Albany; she died, insolvent, in Portland on 11 August 1928 from 'toxic psychosis'.
![Mrs Ethel Brabazon Miller, nee Moore, the widow of Frank St Clair Miller [daughter-in-law]. Click to enlarge.](http://chargeofthelightbrigade.com/allmen/allmenM/allmenM_11H/miller_j_11H/grimwood_mrs_stclair_345x563.jpg "Mrs Ethel Brabazon Miller, nee Moore, the widow of Frank St Clair Miller [daughter-in-law]")
Mrs Ethel Brabazon Miller, nee Moore, the widow of Frank St Clair Grimwood [daughter-in-law]
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hailed by the Press as the "Heroine of Manipur", she published an account of her experiences in, "My Three Years in Manipur and Escape from the Recent Mutiny" [available online fromhttp://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/grimwood/manipur/manipur.html (accessed 12.2.2013).
See also:
Wikipedia: Royal Red Cross (accessed 12.2.2013).
There is also an article in the Journal of the Orders and Medals Research Society, Grimwood, Mrs Ethel Brabazon 20(3) 137-40, which I have not yet viewed.
[PB, February 2013]
