Middlesex Duke of Cambridge’s Hussars, Yeomanry Cavalry


Lieutenant Walter Herbert Ingram BA


Walter Herbert Ingram was born in December 1855, the son of Herbert Ingram the founder of the Illustrated London News. He graduated from Cambridge with a BA. He served in the 1879 Zulu War as a captain of John Dunn’s scouts. He was in the Sudan campaign and fought at Abu Klea and Abu Kru. He was on the steamer that went up the Nile from Metemneh to rescue Sir Charles Wilson. Whilst in Egypt, in 1886, he purchased a Mummy with it’s richly painted casing and had it shipped back to England. This was supposed to have a curse on it, and his death on 6 April 1888 seemed to confirm the curse. He was knocked to the ground during an elephant hunt and trampled to death by his intended victim. This was near Berbera, Somalia. On 27 April 1887, a year before his death, he married Ethelinda Favoretta Hemming. 

The painting, copied from an engraving in the ILN of April 1888, is from P W Reynolds’s note books intended as an illustration of the stable jacket worn by officers of the regiment. It is green with black velvet collar and gold lace. He wears a gold lace pouch-belt with silver fittings. There are no rank badges on his gold shoulder cords so the image was probably from a photo taken when he was a second lieutenant. 


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by Stephen Luscombe