Obituaries Australia

The death has been announced of Major-General Sussex Charles Milford, eldest son of the late Mr. Justice Milford. He was born in London in 1826, educated at Bristol College, Clifton, and Bruton, and arrived in Sydney from England in the barque Hamlet on January 1, 1843, with his father, who brought from Lord Stanley dispatches granting the new political constitution to the colony. Young Milford returned to England in 1847, and shortly after received a commission as ensign in the Honorable East India Company's service, and on arriving in India was appointed to the sixth Bombay Native Infantry. He was all through the Indian Mutiny and the Abyssinian War, and for two years was the officer in command of the garrison at the Island of Perim, in the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb at the southern entrance of the Red Sea. He exchanged from the sixth Regiment into the Bombay Staff Corps, where he obtained the rank of colonel under the immediate command of Lord Napier of Magdala. He retired from active service about 15 years since, and about four years ago visited Sydney for the fourth time, where he met with a severe accident by falling from a train, from which he never thoroughly recovered. On January 20 last, while residing at Paddington, London, he attended the funeral of a late brother officer, General W. W. Taylor, in very cold and inclement weather. He experienced a severe chill, and contracted influenza, from the effects of which he succumbed on April 1 last. In early life he was very fond of the study of geology, and was a friend and great admirer of the late Rev. W. B. Clarke. He was an excellent linguist, and had acquired a colloquial knowledge of most of the dialects spoken in Bombay. He was of a most kind and genial character, and his pleasant manners made him much liked in society. With his death is severed one of the not too numerous links of the chain which connects the past times of the colony with the present. He leaves two sons—Herman Milford, an officer in the Civil Service, Samuel, in Queensland—and one daughter, Mrs. Meecham, of Melbourne. Mrs. Callaghan, of Randwick, widow of the late Judge Callaghan, is a sister of the deceased.