CAWNPORE, a city and district of British India in the Allahabad division of the United Provinces. The city is situated on the south bank of the Ganges, 4o m. south-west of Lucknow, and formed from early times a frontier outpost of the people of Oudh and Bengal against their northern neighbours. Clive selected it, on account of its commanding position, as the canton ment for the brigade of troops lent him by the nawab of Oudh. In i8or, when the Ceded Provinces were acquired by the East India Company, it became the chief British frontier station, but by the time of the Mutiny the frontier had left it behind, and it was denuded of troops. It is now again a military station of some importance, and a very large railway centre. But its industrial development has been unique in northern India. Starting with a government harness factory, the manufacture of leather goods in every form has attained the position of a first-class industry. There are also large cotton-mills, a woollen manufactory with a world-wide reputation and a number of engineering and other minor industries. Extensive city improvements have been launched in order to keep pace with the sanitary requirements of the grow ing labour force. On the outskirts of the city is a fine agricul tural college and demonstration farm. The population of the city and cantonment in 1931 was 243,755.
The name of Cawnpore is indelibly connected with the blackest episode in the history of the Indian Mutiny—the massacre here in July 1857 of hundreds of women and children by the Nana Sahib. The entrenchment, where General Sir H. M. Wheeler with his small band of soldiers and the European and Eurasian residents were exposed for 21 days to the fire of the mutineers, is merely a bare field. About three-quarters of a mile away, on the banks of the river Ganges, is the Massacre Ghat. A grassy road between banks io to 12 ft. high leads down to the river, and it was among the trees on these banks that the murderers concealed themselves and shot down the little garrison as soon as they were embarked in the boats which were to take them to safety. On the Ghat itself, or temple steps down to the water, some 600 helpless people were slain, in spite of a promise of safe conduct from the Nana. The remaining 200 victims, who had escaped the bullets of the siege and survived the butchery of the river bank, were massacred afterwards and cast down the famous well of Cawnpore, which is now marked by a memorial and surrounded by gardens. The memorial is crowned by the figure of an angel in white marble, and on the wall of the well itself is the following inscription: Sacred to the perpetual Memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly Women and Children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the xvth day of July, MDCCCLVII.