Execution of George Flaxman

Private George Flaxman (-10 January 1887) of the Leicestershire Regiment was hanged at Lucknow maidan on 10 January 1887. He had been convicted by court-martial of the murder of Lance Sergeant William Carmody of the same regiment on or around 9 September 1886. The event may have inspired Rudyard Kipling's poem "Danny Deever", which describes similar events.

Murder of Carmody Private George Flaxman served in the 2nd battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, deployed to British India. He was a man of reasonably good conduct, being rated in band C of the regiment's good conduct register (indeed he continued to receive a good conduct bonus until the month of his execution). Troops assembled at the maidan at 8.15 am. Flaxman's battalion formed up on the face of the square opposite the scaffold, the 17th Lancers were on the face to their right and detachments of the Bengal Native Cavalry, Bengal Native Infantry and Royal Horse Artillery on the face to their left. The parade was commanded by General Sir Charles Gough.

Flaxman, who was handcuffed, was brought to the maidan in a covered carriage, accompanied by a Church of England minister and an escort of 12 men with fixed bayonets.

Flaxman's execution was one of eight British Army regimental hangings during Kipling's years in India. The case would likely have been widely discussed in his social circle. Flaxman's execution shares many similarities with Kipling's poem, including the playing of the Dead March. A few differences include that Kipling describes men fainting in the ranks and Deever having his uniform buttons and stripes cut off (as a private, Flaxman wore no rank insignia and there is no record of his buttons being cut off). In Kipling's poem Deever is convicted for shooting a sleeping comrade. Kipling had, in January 1884, witnessed the trial of William Day, a private convicted for shooting a sleeping soldier he had earlier quarrelled with. Kipling is thought to have been inspired by a third Indian military murder, an incident in which three drunk Manchester Regiment soldiers shot dead an Indian in Multan on 26 September 1884. His The Story of Tommy was published pseudonymously in the Civil and Military Gazette three days later and recounted the story of a drunk British soldier who shoots a sleeping punkah wallah and is hanged for his crime.