New Colours for the Inniskillings

On 24 May 1837, the Battalion paraded at 1200 hours when the Colonel of the Regiment’s sister-in-law, Catherine Bell*, presented new Colours. Her husband, John Bell, later General Sir John Bell GCB, was Secretary to the Cape of Good Hope government. General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole had been appointed Colonel of the 27th Inniskilling Regiment on 16 December 1826, and had been Governor of Cape Colony before he returned to England in 1833.

*
Lady Catherine Bell, born Catherine Harris, was a daughter of the diplomat James Harris, later the Earl of Malmesbury. She was born in St Petersburg and her godmother was Catherine II, Empress of Russia, remembered as ‘Catherine the Great’.