sending for the physician, commanded him to be gone, resolving to retain him no longer in his service.  The physician obeyed; and putting his poor maimed wife in a palankeen, he set forward upon the road with all his family.  But he had not gone above three or four days’ journey from the city, when the governor, finding himself worse than he was wont to be, sent to recall him; which the physician perceiving, stabbed his wife, his four children, and thirteen female slaves, and returned again to the Governor, who said not a word to him, but entertained him again in his service.’  This occurred within Tavernier’s own knowledge and about the time he visited Allahabad; and is related as by no means a very extraordinary circumstance.[27]

Notes: 

1.  January, 1836.

2.  The tomb of Safdar Jang, or Mansur Ali Khan, described ante, chapter 68 [4].  The bridges over the Jumna are now, of course, maintained by Government and the railway companies.

3.  The main highways approaching Delhi are now excellent metalled roads.

4.  By the term ‘the largest military station in the empire’, the author means Meerut.  At present the largest military station in Northern India is, I believe, Rawal Pindi, and the combined cantonments of Secunderabad and Bolarum in the Nizam’s dominions constitute the largest military station in the empire.

5.  Comprising parts of the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar districts of the North-Western Provinces, now the Agra Province in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.  The Begam’s history will be discussed in chapter 75, post.

6.  The members of the reformed police force, constituted under Act V of 1861, generally on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary, have no reason to complain of insecurity of tenure.  It is now very difficult to obtain sanction to the dismissal of a corrupt or inefficient officer, unless he has been judicially convicted of a statutory offence.

7.  Ordinarily there is for each district, or administrative unit, a separate Sessions and District Judge, who tries both civil and criminal cases of the more serious kind.  Occasionally two or three districts have only one judge between them, who is then usually in arrear with his work.  Sessions for the trial of grave criminal cases are held monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly, according to circumstances.  In some districts, and for some classes of cases, the jury system has been introduced, but, as a rule, in Northern India the responsibility rests with the judge alone, who receives some slight aid from assessors.  Capital sentences passed by a Sessions Judge must be confirmed by two Judges of a High Court, or equivalent tribunal.