On May 10th…

May 10, 1857: Sepoy Mutiny began at Meerut [SIGN]

Illustration from History of the Indian mutiny : giving detailed account of the Sepoy insurrection in India, by Charles Ball (1859)

Well, I was never in luck’s way long. Suddenly, without a note of warning, the great mutiny broke upon us. One month India lay as still and peaceful, to all appearance, as Surrey or Kent; the next there were two hundred thousand black devils let loose, and the country was a perfect hell. Of course you know all about it, gentlemen – a deal more than I do, very like, since reading is not in my line. I only know what I saw with my own eyes. Our plantation was at a place called Muttra, near the border of the North-west Provinces. Night after night the whole sky was alight with the burning bungalows and day after day we had small companies of Europeans passing through our estate with their wives and children, on their way to Agra, where were the nearest troops.

Date information provided by the volume A Day-by-Day Chronology of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, according to Zeisler and Christ, compiled and edited by William S Dorn.