To complete the history of the Nowgong mutiny and to continue the series about women who left accounts of their escapes, we turn our attention to Mrs. Jane Mawe (née Meadows).
Dr. Thomas Mawe had an illustrious career as a military surgeon, serving for eight years with the 52nd BNI. He had traversed the length and breadth of India from Cawnpore to Punjab, saw action at Multan and at Guzerat in the Sutlej Campaign under Charles Napier. His wife gave birth to their second son, William, in the camp at Subzulkote during the Sutlej Campaign. We cannot imagine Jane Mawe was a feeble Victorian damsel on a pedestal, her father was Captain Arthur Meadows of the Bombay Establishment and like Harriet Tytler, she was a daughter of the army. As it is, she understood better than many the uncertainty of life in India and being married to an army surgeon, she would have led his life. Not every woman would go on campaign with her husband, but Jane Mawe did. Dr. Mawe transferred into the 12th BNI from the 52nd and they had settled into life in Nowgong.

It must have been a distressing time for Mrs. Mawe as five of her children were back home in Ireland. Unusually, the youngest of these was Catherine Mary, who would have been just a year old when she was sent off with her siblings in 1854 under the able care of Captain Campbell, who was leaving the 52nd Regiment and returning home. Although children were usually kept in India until the age of seven, it is more likely that Dr. Mawe would have no leave for some years to come, and the expense of sending his wife away to Ireland with the children at a later time would have been more than he probably could have borne. In our eyes, such a separation appears cruel, yet in a country where education was hard to come by, a military family was constantly on the move, and then there were the dangers of India itself. Knowing their children were safe in the bosom of their native land gave some comfort to heartsick parents.
At Nowgong in 1857, Mrs. Mawe was 6 months pregnant with her 8th child, and she still had her 2-year-old daughter Charlotte Mary with her. This is the little Lottie (or in Scot’s narrative, Lotty) who would have to endure so much. By the age of 37, Jane Mawe had seen something of life, and after 15 years of marriage, her 40-year-old husband was still the man she adored. We will begin her narrative at the very beginning – on the 10th of June, in Nowgong.