The Times
London, England
31 May, 1926

MRS. GILLILAND.

    The small surviving band of English men and women who were exposed to peril in the Indian Mutiny has been thinned by the death of Mrs. Mary [Clure] Cecilia Gilliland at Broadlands Home for Ladies, Newport, I.W.*  As recently as March 27 last we recorded that Mrs. Gilliland had celebrated her 100th birthday. She was 11 years old when Queen Victoria came to the Throne, and to the last had a vivid recollection of the festivities at her Majesty’s Coronation and marriage. She had often spoken to Daniel O’Connell, for he was a friend of the uncle, Mr. John Walsh, Q.C., by whom she was brought up.
    She was married twice, her second husband being Mr. J.C. Gilliland, of the Indian Civil Service. He was stationed at Sialkot, in the Punjab, where the Indian troops remained faithful for the first two months of the Mutiny and were allowed to retain their arms. Hearing of a British reverse at Jhelum, they flung off control on July 9, 1857, and after a day of murder, pillage, incendiarism, and wanton destruction made off to Delhi. Mr. and Mrs. Gilliland escaped assassination, but with other British women she was held up at a window by mutineers to see our men blown from guns. Later she was able to assist in caring for European refugees. Subsequently her husband, returning from leave in England, was drowned when the P. and O. liner Carnatic was lost in the Red Sea. Mrs. Gilliland, returning to Ireland, found her property destroyed by moonlighters.

* Newport, Isle of Wight.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2011