Hampden Clement Blamire Moody

Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody (20 January 1821 – 27 February 1869) was the Commander of the Royal Engineers in China throughout the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion.

In 1869, he was assassinated by an Irish revolutionary whilst he was serving as Commanding Royal Engineer and as a senior freemason at Belfast. His subsequent funeral was one of the largest to have been held at Belfast.

He was a son of Colonel Thomas Moody, Kt., Commander of the Royal Engineers in the West Indies, and a brother of Major-General Richard Clement Moody, the founder of British Columbia.

Personal life Hampden Clement Blamire Moody was born on 20 January 1821, of Colonel Thomas Moody, ADC, CRE WI, Kt., and of Martha Clement (1784–1868) who was the daughter of the landowner Richard Clement (1754 – 1829) and the aunt of the Belgravia cricketers Reynold Clement and Richard Clement.

He was named after his maternal uncle Hampden Clement (1808 - 1880) who was the joint owner of the estates Black Bess (197 slaves) and Clement Castle (231 slaves) (formerly Sober Castle, latterly Ellis Castle) in Saint Peter, Barbados. His mother Martha Clement descended from the Hampden family.

His paternal grandmother was Barbara Blamire of Cumberland who was a cousin of the MP William Blamire and of the poet Susanna Blamire. His first cousin was the high church clergyman, theologian, classical scholar, and freemason, Clement Moody, Vicar of Newcastle.

Siblings Hampden Clement Blamire Moody's siblings included Major Thomas Moody (1809–1839); and Major-General Richard Clement Moody (1813–1887) (who was the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands, and the founder of British Columbia); and the sugar-manufacture expert Shute Barrington Moody through whom his nephew was Commander Thomas Barrington Moody (b. 1848) of the Royal Navy.

Issue Hampden Clement Blamire Moody married Louise Harriet Thomson, who was the daughter of Samuel Thomson, at Belfast, in 1860. They had two daughters, Nea Sophia Louise (b. 14 October 1862), who married O'Donnell Grimshaw, and Harriet Maud Maria (b. 12 February 1867), and one son.

Their son Captain Hampden Lewis Clement (b. 28 February 1865, Hong Kong, d. 19 December 1924), and resided at The Red House, Brockenhurst, Southampton, in South Africa and in the Orange Free State and Orange River Colony, including at Biddulphsberg and Wittebergen, and in the Cape Colony, during 1900, before his retirement from the military on 28 August 1907. He was a member of the Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall. and commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1837. land-marine force, whose officers were drawn from the upper middle-class and landed gentry of British society,

Moody was promoted to Lieutenant in 1839. of which he was a member, and for which, between 1844 and 1846, he performed confidential service behind the United States border. Moody during 1846 was promoted to captain and began two years of special service in Hudson Bay Territory, for which he received 'favorable notice' of the Secretary of State and of the Commander-in-Chief.

Moody was an accomplished artist whose typical paintings depict Canadian landscapes, and are in The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Public Archives of Canada, and Provincial Archives of Manitoba.

Kaffir War Moody fought in the Kaffir War of 1851 to 1853, Moody was Commander of the 9th Field Company Royal Engineers during 1852 and was Senior Royal Engineer on the 1852 Waterkloof and Transkei expeditions with Sir George Cathcart. and, from April and May 1862, during the Taiping Rebellion, near Shanghai. and to Colonel in November 1864. when he died on 27 February 1869, at his residence 1 Lower Crescent, from a kidney infection that he had contracted from his assault by an Irish revolutionary. His funeral in Belfast was attended by 240 soldiers of the 54th Regiment and their brass band, and the Royal Engineers and their band, and a troop of the 12th Lancers, and the band of the Antrim Rifles, of which he had served as Past Master and as Senior Warden.

He was buried at Malone Cemetery, Belfast, His diverse collection of Chinese ornaments was sold in Belfast during March 1869.

His widow was living at 41 West Cromwell Road, South Kensington, in 1903, and died during December 1908, when she left an estate of £15,449 (over £1.2 million in 21st-century money).

Paternal Ancestry