Mrs. Bradshaw thus describes what she saw: “In the boat where I was to have gone were the school-mistress and twenty-two missies. General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water near a boat. I was standing close by. He said, ‘Carry me a little further near the boat.’ But a trooper said, ‘No; get out here.’ As the General got out of the palkee, head foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it--alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others were cut down with swords and knives. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it, we did, and tell you only what we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The school-girls were burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet, when she said, ‘My father was always kind to sepoys.’ He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with his club, and she fell into the water.”
After a time the women and children who had not been shot, stabbed, or burnt were collected and brought to shore, some of them being rudely handled by the sowars, who tore from ear or finger such jewels as caught their fancy.
About 120 sat or lay on the shore or on logs of timber, full of misery, fear, and despair. There they waited in the blinding sun on the Ganges shore all that morning. Then they were herded back along the narrow lane by which they had come with hope in their bosoms, while the sepoys who guarded them grinned with fiendish delight, and showed gleefully all their spoils. Past the bazaar and the chapel and the racquet-court and the entrenchments they limped along, until they were paraded before the pavilion of the Maharajah, who looked them well over, and ordered them to be confined in the Savada House. Two good-sized rooms, which had been used by native soldiers for a month, were given them to live in, and a guard was placed over them.
One witness says: “I saw that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had blood on them. Some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had their dresses badly torn, but all had clothes. I saw one or two children without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of twelve or thirteen years of age. Some of the ladies were barefoot and lame. Two I saw were wounded in the leg.”