William Stephen Raikes Hodson - Accusations of Corruption

Accusations of Corruption

In 1855, two separate main charges were brought against Hodson. The first was that he had arbitrarily imprisoned a Yusufzai Pathan chief named Kader Khan, on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Colonel Mackeson. The man was acquitted, and Lord Dalhousie removed Hodson from his civil functions and remanded him to his regiment on account of his lack of judgment and gross negligence.

The second charge was more serious, amounting to an accusation of misappropriation of the funds of his regiment. He was tried by a court of inquiry, who found that his conduct to natives had been unjustifiable and oppressive, that he had used abusive language to his native officers and personal violence to his men, and that his system of accounts was calculated to screen peculation and fraud. However, a subsequent inquiry was carried out by Major Reynell Taylor: 'Taylor's investigation took two months, during which time he went through every item received or paid out by Hodson over the two years of his command'. By the end of his investigation into the record of Hodson's accounts Taylor found 'it to be an honest and correct record from beginning to end - It has been irregularly kept, but every transaction, from the least to the greatest, has been noted in it, and is traceable to the individual concerned'

During a tour through Kashmir with Sir Henry Lawrence he kept the purse and Sir Henry could never obtain an account from him; subsequently, Sir Henry's younger brother Sir George Lawrence accused him of embezzling the funds of the Lawrence Asylum at Kasauli; while Sir Neville Chamberlain in a published letter says of the third brother, Lord Lawrence, "I am bound to say that Lord Lawrence had no opinion of Hodson's integrity in money matters. He has often discussed Hodson's character in talking to me, and it was to him a regret that a man possessing so many fine gifts should have been wanting in a moral quality which made him untrustworthy." Finally, on one occasion Hodson spent £500 of the pay due to Lieutenant Godby, and under threat of exposure was obliged to borrow the money from a local banker named Bisharat Ali through one of his officers.