Height: 14cm (5.5in)
Silver. George III silver mug of barrel form with reeded banding and engraved with the crossed lances cypher badge of 9th Queen’s Own Lancers, and inscribed ‘Presented By / Lieutenant Charles Agnew / to the Serjeants Mess // On leaving the Regiment / April 25th 1865’. Hallmarked London 1792.
Charles Agnew was returning from India to the Cavalry Depot, Canterbury in 1873 when he was murdered, according to one account, by an Italian at the Cafe d’Italia at Port Suez shortly after disembarking from the troopship Serapis. He was the son of James Agnew of Cairncastle, Antrim, Ireland and was commissioned into the 9th Lancers before transferring to the 16th Lancers in 1865. His mysterious death occured at the time of the Cardwell reforms that abolished the purchase and sale of army commisions. Moreover the question of compensation to his family for the value of his commission was raised in parliament and refuted by the great Army reformer and Secretary of State for War Edward Cardwell himself. A memorial tablet to Agnew in Canterbury Cathedral’s south aisle was raised ‘to his memory in token of their regard / by his brother officers of the / Sixteenth Queens Lancers.’ / …and records he ‘died by the hand of an assassin in Egypt / 22 March 1873.’ His life is the subject of ‘Avarice of Empire’ by CQ Turnstone - ‘the untold true story of an extraordinary life immortalised by the hand of an assassin’.