3rd Bombay (European) Regiment

Chronology

• 1853 raised as 3rd Bombay (European) Regiment
• 1858 taken into the British Army as 3rd Bombay Infantry Regiment
• 1861 renamed 109th Regiment of Foot (Bombay Infantry)
• 1881 merged with the 100th Regiment of Foot (Prince of Wales's Royal Canadian) to form The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians).
• 1922 disbanded on Irish independence

Service in British India

• 1857 Indian Mutiny
• 1859 Karachi
• 1864 Aden
• 1866 India
• 1907 Dalhousie

Jager (Jaeger) Corps

In 1860 the 109th Regiment of Foot in India was joined by more than 500 men of the Jager (Jaeger) Corps who had volunteered from the Cape Colony (part of South Africa under British Occupation until 1910) for service in India on the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny. The Jager Corps had its origin in the German Legion sent to the Crimea, which was then resettled in South Africa

At least for a time, the Jager Corps remained as a separate entity within the 109th Regiment.

For more details, see Jager Corps

Some of the men from the Jager Corps ended up with the 33rd Regiment of Foot in the Abyssinian Campaign of 1867-8. The 33rd Foot was in India when the expedition to Abyssinia was organised, and had been there since 1857, so it seems very likely these men had transferred from the 109th Regiment, possibly to take part in the campaign.

There are India Office Records at the British Library

• British Army in India: Nominal and Casualty Rolls of Jager Corps Volunteers IOR/L/MIL/15/31-36 1860-1866. Includes troops serving with the 109th Regiment of Foot.
• Discharge papers, Jager Corps IOR/L/MIL/12/283. 1859-1861. The soldiers’ names are listed and the regiment is given as 3rd ER (JC)

External Links

• 109th Regiment of Foot - Wikipedia
• Durham Light Infantry - Wikipedia
• Leinster Regiment - Wikipedia
• Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) Regimental Association
  • History of the 109th Regiment of Foot, 2nd Battalion the Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment, previously 3rd Bombay European Regiment (4 pages)
  • The 3rd Bombay European Regiment becomes part of the British Army Over 600 men of the 3rd Europeans declined the various inducements to join the British Army and were sent back to England in a sailing ship that took 5 months to make the journey. Reduced to a skeleton force the Regiment looked for reinforcements and at this point members of the Jäger Corps joined the Regiment
  • 1863-1881
• 3rd Bombay (European) Regiment Mutiny Memorials, Jhansi - Indian-cemeteries.org. Images of memorials with 71 names of those who fell in the 1857 uprising.

Historical books online

• Officers in HM’s 109th Regiment, page 774 from The Bombay Miscellany Volume 4, May to October 1862 Google Books
• The author joins the 109th Regiment c 1863 Page 250 Oriental campaigns and European furloughs:the autobiography of a veteran of the Indian Mutiny by Colonel E. Maude. 1908 Archive.org. His account includes some information about the Jager Corps.