01Bithoor next door
After 1818 the last Peshwa, Bajirao II, was sent to live at Bithoor, a few miles up the Ganga from Kanpur, on a British pension. His adopted son Nana Saheb grew up there with Tatya Tope and the young Manikarnika, later the Rani of Jhansi. When Bajirao died in 1851 the Company refused to pass the pension on to Nana. Six years later the sepoys at Kanpur rose, and Nana took their lead.
02The summer of 1857
From 6 June General Wheeler’s garrison, with many women and children, was besieged in a weak earthwork entrenchment. On 25 June it accepted Nana’s offer of safe passage by river to Allahabad. At Satichaura Ghat on 27 June firing broke out as the boats were boarding, and most of the men were killed. The surviving women and children were held in a house called the Bibighar, and on 15 July, as Havelock’s column drew near, they were killed. Havelock entered Kanpur on 17 July, and the reprisals that followed fell on the city and the villages round it. In November Tatya Tope came back with the Gwalior Contingent and drove Windham into his works, until Colin Campbell beat him on 6 December.
The life of this place
- 1778The Company moves a brigade to Kanpur and the cantonment grows.
- 1818Bajirao II is settled at Bithoor nearby.
- June 1857Wheeler’s entrenchment is besieged from 6 June and surrenders on 25 June; the Satichaura Ghat killings follow on 27 June.
- 15–17 July 1857The Bibighar killings, then Havelock retakes the town.
- 6 December 1857Colin Campbell defeats Tatya Tope and the Gwalior Contingent at Kanpur.
