HC Deb 25 March 1907 vol 171 cc1474-5
SIR EDWIN CORNWALL (Bethnal Green, N.E.)

To ask the Secretary of State for India if his attention has been drawn to the case of Miss Alice Eleanor; Mill, who after the death of her father Major Mill, of the Bengal Artillery, in the Indian Mutiny at Fyzabad in 1857, was compelled to wander in the jungle with her mother and two young brothers, one of whom died from the exposure, without shelter for a long time; whether he is aware that the compassionate allowance granted to Mrs. Mill, in addition to a pension, was not continued to Miss Mill after the death of her mother in 1903, and that Miss Mill, whose mother and brother are now dead, receives a pension of only £40 a year; and whether he will make inquiries as to the advisability of continuing the compassionate allowance previously granted to her mother to Miss Mill, in view of the services of her father and the hardships and dangers incurred by Miss Mill after the death of her father.

(Answered by Mr. Secretary Motley.) Mrs. Mill was granted the pension admissible under the regulations to the widow of an officer killed in action. On her death in 1903 her daughter applied for a continuation of this pension; but, apart from the fact that the continuation of a widow's pension to her daughter would be altogether contrary to rule, the Secretary of State in Council decided that, in view of the amount of Miss Mills' income, the case was not one for the grant of a special compassionate allowance.