Brigadier-General Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence (28 June 1806 – 4 July 1857) was a Bengal Army officer, surveyor and colonial administrator. He is known for leading a group of British officials in the Punjab known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men", founding the Lawrence Military Asylums and for dying at the siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Background Lawrence was born in June 1806 into an Ulster-Scots family at Matara in Ceylon. Both his parents were from Ulster, the northern province of Ireland. His mother Letitia was the daughter of the Rev. George Knox from County Donegal, while his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander William Lawrence, was born the son of a mill owner from Coleraine, County Londonderry, entered the service of the British Army and achieved distinction at the 1799 Siege of Seringapatnam.James Wills, The Irish Nation: Its History and Its Biography, Volume 4, A. Fullarton, 1876, p. 96. The Lawrences had seven sons, the first died in infancy and the fifth at the age of eighteen. The remaining five all achieved distinction in India; of them Sir George Lawrence and Lord Lawrence would achieve particular fame.

In 1812, Lawrence, along with his elder brothers Alexander and George, was sent to Foyle College in Derry, a city in Ulster, where their uncle Rev. James Knox was headmaster. In 1818 he rejoined his parents in Bristol where they had since settled, and completed his schooling there.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 4. In August 1820 he again followed his elder brothers by entering the East India Company Military Seminary in Addiscombe, Surrey. (His father, having felt slighted by the lack of recognition afforded to him for his service in the British Army, encouraged his sons to instead enter the service of the East India Company in India.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 11.) Whilst at the seminary, he was saved from drowning by a fellow cadet Robert Guthrie MacGregor. On another occasion, he developed sympathy for a lady in poverty, and begged old clothes from his family which he then carried to her through the streets of London. That same lady would be remembered in his will some thirty-five years later.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 6. Contemporaries in his class at Addiscombe included Sir Frederick Abbott.

Early career

On passing out from Addiscombe in 1822 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery, arriving in India the following year. He was based at the Calcutta suburb of Dum Dum, where Henry Havelock was also stationed about the same time. He soon saw action in the First Anglo-Burmese War, and at the age of 18 Lawrence commanded a battery forming part of the Chittagong column which General Joseph Wanton Morrison led over the jungle-covered hills of Arakan. He served for two years in Burma, until the expedition was decimated by fever, and Lawrence nearly perished of the illness.John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, 1899, W. H. Allen, p. 392. He returned to Dum Dum, before being sent first to Penang and then Canton to convalesce. As these changes in climate failed to affect his health for the better, he was invalided back to England. During his furlough in England, he resided with his family in Bristol, where he would first meet his future wife Honoria Marshall, until the opportunity arose in the autumn of 1828 to assist in the trigonometrical survey in Ireland.Buckland, Charles Edward, Dictionary of Indian Biography, 1906, London : S. Sonnenschein, p. 246.

Lawrence set sail for India on 2 September 1829 with his brother John, who had recently completed his studies at the East India Company College.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 22. The brothers parted company in Calcutta, and Lawrence rejoined his regiment in Karnal on the Sikh frontier, where his elder brother George was now stationed. In 1831 he was transferred to the horse artillery in Cawnpore and the following year he passed examinations in Hindustani and Persian with the aim of earning a civil service posting.John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, 1899, W. H. Allen, p. 393.

Revenue Survey of India

In 1833 he was appointed an assistant to the Revenue Survey of India by Lord William Bentinck based at Gorakhpur. He was tasked with mapping out and marking the boundaries of villages and fields in certain large districts, classifying them in accordance with the quality of soil and extent of holdings and to investigate and record the rights of claimants.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 40. He soon perceived the urgent need for more canals, and more and better roads, urging that "the farmer, the soldier, the policeman, the traveller, the merchant, all want more roads. Cut roads in every direction." During his time with the Survey, Lawrence was known for his zeal, discouragement of cheating and at times harsh treatment of bribe taking. In 1837, the secretary to the Board of Revenue remarked to the Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces:Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 43.

Lawrence went on to successfully accomplish this guarantee, and earned the nickname "Gunpowder" from James Thomason for his "explosive force which shattered all obstacles". In 1835 his father died, and as such his military pension also ceased, leaving his mother Letitia penniless. Lawrence, along with his brothers, took on the responsibility of remitting allowances for their mother. In July 1837, his sweetheart Honoria Marshall arrived in Hooghly and they married at the Mission Church in Calcutta on 21 August. Honoria accompanied Lawrence to Gorakpur where she became an enthusiastic assistant in his work.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, pp. 48–50. By the close of 1837, Lawrence had completed his work in Gorakpur and set out for Allahabad the next district on his list. He continued with the survey until August 1838 when he was ordered to stand ready to rejoin his troop amid talk of war with Afghanistan.

Ferozepore In October 1838, in the run up to the First Anglo-Afghan War, Lawrence departed Allahabad to join Alexander Burnes's Horse Artillery, part of an 'Army of the Indus.'John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, 1899, W. H. Allen, p. 402. At the time he received an offer of a hundred rupees a month from a Calcutta paper to act as a correspondent during the war, agreeing on the condition of anonymity, that he would not supply any information that was not above board, and that the money would be divided between the Calcutta Orphan Asylum and the Benevolent Institution.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 63. When the army was ordered to stand fast, he instead became assistant to Sir George Russell Clerk, adding to his political experience in the management of the district of Ferozepore. At Ferozepore, Lawrence was collector, magistrate, civil and military engineer, universal provider and paymaster to troops that passed through the district. He was called upon to settle a boundary dispute on the British side of the Sutlej, and so impressed where neighbouring chiefs of his sagacity and fairness a number of barons across the border and in the Cis-Sutlej states sought his assistance to settle their own boundary disputes.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 65. In June 1839 Maharaja Ranjit Singh died and talk of war with the Sikh Empire began. Lawrence, spent much of the period acquainting himself with knowledge of the history and culture of the Sikh Empire, and penned a romance of the Punjab to aid those who cared to learn more about the region.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 66.

Peshawar

When news of disaster came from Kabul in November 1841 he was at first tasked with pushing up supports for the relief of Sir Robert Sale and the garrison of Jalalabad. He was to prepare the way for a relief force through the four hundred miles between Ferozepur and the Khyber. He requested the assistance of guns from the Sikh authorities, who agreed on the condition of the willingness of the gunners themselves, who at first proved unwilling. He relocated to Peshawar where he was responsible for getting the Sikh allies in hand, and helping to prepare the army of Sir George Pollock. He had hoped to accompany Pollock in the Kabul Expedition in 1842, however his fellow agent Frederick Mackeson was preferred. Instead he was allowed to remain with his old corps until the Khyber Pass was won.John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, 1899, W. H. Allen, p. 404. At the conclusion of the war, he returned to Ferozepur where the Governor General of India met the armies of Pollock, Sale and Nott.

In January 1843, Lawrence left Ferozepur when he was appointed superintendent of Dehradun. It soon emerged that military officers were barred from this post, and so he was instead transferred to Ambala as the assistant to the envoy at Lahore. Soon after taking charge, he was instructed to lead a military expedition in Khytul and was thereafter ordered to administer the region. Despite his short time in Khytul, Lawrence introduced a number of reforms including reduced taxes, the abolition of forced labour, a prompt system of justice and punishing bribery and corruption. In addition where required he remitted the land tax owed by a cultivator until he could improve his condition, and made the cultivator undertake public works such as digging wells in lieu of payment.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, pp. 85–86. Lawrence soon became somewhat disappointed by his lack of recognition for his contribution in the war and constant moving between jobs. Later that year however he was elevated to the rank of Major and appointed to the well-salaried and prestigious post of the Resident of Nepal.

Resident at Nepal Lawrence arrived in Kathmandu in November 1843, leaving his wife behind as European women were not allowed to enter the Kingdom at that present time.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, p. 89. Shortly after arriving, as a gesture of goodwill, Honoria was granted a rare exception to join her husband. During his time in Nepal, under instruction not to interfere in the internal administration of the Kingdom, Lawrence devoted much of his time to literary pursuits, ably assisted by his wife.John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, 1899, W. H. Allen, p. 408. He wrote a defence of Sir William Macnaghten which included passages foreshadowing the later mutiny of 1857, in which he lamented the blind self-confidence of British policy in India, the unpreparedness for disaffection, a lack of supplies, and the weakness of British garrisons. He also became a contributor to the Calcutta Review edited by Sir John Kaye. In an article titled the Military Defence of our Indian Empire, he insisted on the need for the Government to be ready for war at all times, a view which was challenged by his editor. It was whilst in Kathmandu that Lawrence and his wife first proposed the idea of homes in the cooler hills for the children of serving British officers.Gibbon, Frederick P., The Lawrences of the Punjab, London, J.M. Dent & co., 1908, pp. 100–104.

Punjab