Ross Mangles

He carried a stricken man six miles through hostile country.

Ross Lowis Mangles was born at Calcutta on 14 April 1833. Educated at Bath and Haileybury, he joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1853 and became assistant magistrate at Patna. During the Indian rebellion he volunteered to accompany the force sent to relieve Arrah.

The relief column was ambushed during the night of 29-30 July 1857. Although wounded himself, Mangles helped care for casualties. When Private Richard Taylor could no longer move, he dressed the soldier’s wounds and carried him for some six miles through swampy ground to safety. His conduct brought the Victoria Cross following the extension of eligibility to civilians acting with military forces. Queen Victoria presented it at Windsor on 4 January 1860.

Mangles returned to administrative service in India, holding revenue, judicial and government appointments in Bengal, Mysore and Coorg. He married Henrietta Moore-Molyneux in 1860 and also became a lieutenant in the Surrey Rifle Volunteers. Retiring from India in 1883, he settled at Pirbright, Surrey. He died there on 28 February 1905 and was buried at Brookwood.

Victoria Cross citation

Mr. Mangles volunteered and served with the Force, consisting of detachments of Her Majesty’s 10th and 37th Regiments, and some Native Troops, despatched to the relief of Arrah, in July, 1857, under the Command of Captain Dunbar, of the 10th Regiment. The Force fell into an Ambuscade on the night of the 29th of July, 1857, and, during the retreat on the next morning, Mr. Mangles, with signal gallantry and generous self-devotion, and notwithstanding that he had himself been previously wounded, carried for several miles, out of action, a wounded soldier of Her Majesty’s 37th Regiment, after binding up his wounds under a murderous fire, which killed or wounded almost the whole detachment; and he bore him in safety to the boats.