Before this, on 4 July, Henry Lawrence had been killed inside the Lucknow Residency by a rebel-fired shell exploding near him. As the fifty-one-year-old officer lay dying, he uttered words for his tombstone: ‘Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty.’ The shelling continued while a short prayer was said over a hurriedly-dug grave, and ‘a few spadefuls of earth speedily covered’ Lawrence’s remains.
