Introduction

Abstract

For Thomas Henry Kavanagh, an Irishman from Mullingar, County Westmeath, the greatest achievements of his life took place amidst the violence and upheaval of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Kavanagh was one of the hundreds of European men, women and children who crowded into the residency at Lucknow in the summer of 1857 as British control over northern India faltered. The garrison of more than two thousand British and Indian troops and non-combatants was besieged for months in an episode that held the British public spellbound. For those trapped in the residency, their situation represented hardship, suffering and the specter of a repeat of the massacre of a British garrison that had taken place earlier in the summer in the northern Indian city of Cawnpore. For Kavanagh, however, the siege of Lucknow represented opportunity.