Lieutenant J C Haughton, 31st Bengal Native Infantry, 1842

Coloured lithograph after Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, 1842 (c).

John Colpoys Haughton (1817-1887) served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy before being invalided from the service in 1835. Two years later he joined the Bengal Army. During the 1st Afghan War (1839-1842) he was Adjutant of the 4th Gurkhas of Sha Shuja's force, winning great fame during the defence of Charikar, a town near Kabul, which was besieged by a huge Afghan force in November 1841. Haughton lost a hand during the siege and after returning to the Afghan capital was taken hostage by Akbar Khan on 29 December 1841. Haughton was eventually released in September 1842 when Major-General Sir George Pollock's Army of Retribution arrived in Kabul. He later undertook regimental duties in the Andaman Islands and Assam, where he joined both the Khasi-Jaintia expedition of 1863 and the Garo expedition of 1872-1873. From 1865 until 1873 he also served as Commissioner of Cooch-Behar. Appointed a Companion of the Star of India (CSI) in 1866, Haughton returned to Britain in 1873. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1882.

From 'Portraits of the Kabul Prisoners', a set of pre-publication coloured lithographs later published by John Murray in 1843.

The artist's original drawings were made during his captivity in Afghanistan after the Retreat from Kabul during the 1st Afghan War (1838-1842).