Frederick was born to Walter Robert and Elizabeth Charlotte Stevenson’s in Darjeeling in 1884, with his twin sister, Mary. He went to school in Dublin, where he boarded with the Cooney family in Harcourt Street. Frederick then went on to study medicine in Trinity College, qualifying in 1907. Later, he acquired more qualifications and specialisations from various institutions.
After Trinity, Frederick joined the Indian Medical Service. Basically a military service, IMS officers served in civilian hospitals as well. Officers worked with the Indian Army Field Ambulance – a front line medical unit treating wounded soldiers. Commissioned in 1908, Frederick started out as Officiating Staff Surgeon to the 4th Cavalry. Originally a native army raised by the Nawab of Awadh, the 4th underwent many incarnations before amalgamating with Gardner’s Horse (2nd Lancers).
By 1912 Frederick was a Captain, attached to the 9th Bhopal Infantry. Another native regiment, raised by the Nawab of Bhopal in 1818, it used the Mahi Maratib or fish as its insignia. The symbol of authority, honour and dignity was bestowed on Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) by the Mughal Empire.
In 1916, Frederick briefly served with the Bedford Regiment which was in India on policing duites during peacetime. Most of his professional life was spent in and around the North West Frontier Province on the India-Afghan border.
Frederick came back to Ireland to marry Augusta Elizabeth Wheeler in Milltown, Dublin, in 1919. (I was excited to see the name Wheeler and tried hard to find a connection between this family and the General Wheeler of Indian Mutiny fame . . . without success.) Affectionately known as Gussie, Frederick’s bride was born in Bandon, Cork, to banker John Thomas and Charlotte Augusta Wheeler. Gussie’s maternal uncle, Surgeon Major William Robert Kerans, had been in the Indian Medical Service in Punjab where six of his eight children were born.
The newlyweds sailed back to India where Frederick was Civil Surgeon in Dera Ismail Khan. Located in the Khyber Pakhtunwala district (Pakistan) the city stands on the banks of the River Indus. Its ancient ruins testify to the city’s assault over centuries by conquerors of many faiths – Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. It was part of Punjab until annexed by the British and led to the creation of the North West Frontier Province.
In 1921, Frederick was Civil Surgeon in the Hazara district of the NWF. Stationed in the headquarters, Abbottabad (named after its founder, Major James Abbot), he joined the Hazara Freemasons Lodge. (After Indian Independence, Hazara Lodge relocated to London; in 2013, it was deisgnated Hazara (Cigar) Lodge for cigar-smoking members.) In 1922, Gussie gave birth to Richard Joseph in Abbotabad. The young family sailed to England on the City of Nagpur when the baby was a year old. They spent a couple of years in London where Frederick acquired a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Doctor in Public Health (DPH).
Returning to India, Frederick was appointed Agency Surgeon in Gilgit. The agency, referred to as the Gilgit Agency, was set up by the Raj to protect the Kashmir area from Russian invasion. It was on the Silk Road along which Buddhism spread from India to much of Asia.
During this posting, Gussie may have brought out her only sibling, Charlotte Sarah Evelyn, to India ‘for the season’. In the short period when the Indian weather was more clement, balls, parties, shoots, picnics and more gave single English women the opportunity to find a husband (preferably before they lost their English rose complexions to the scorching Indian sun). Wilfred George Holmes Wells was an officer in the Gurkha Rifles and a amember of the Hazara Freemasons Lodge in Abbotabad the same time as Frederick. The young Captain may have been introduced to Charlotte Wheeler. She married Wilfred Wells in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1926 and bore two sons in India, both dying in infancy.
In 1931, Gussie went home for her next confinement and gave birth to Frederick Brian in Dublin. Her older son was nine years old and she may have remained in Ireland for the education of her children. Frederick, now a Leiutenant Colonel, was back in the Hazara district as Civil Surgeon and Superintendemt for Abbottabad Jail.
From the NWF, Frederick travelled east to Nepal where he was Legation Surgeon. In 1816, Nepal was allowed to retain its independence providing it ceded half its territory to British India. The diplomatic mission (legation) was opened in Kathmandu for the recruitment of Gurkha soldiers into the army of the Raj. In 1923, the Treaty of Peace and Friendship recognised Nepal’s sovereignty.
In 1933, Frederick was among a party of high-ranking British guests (men and women) invited to the tiger-ring shooting camp of Maharaja Juddha Shumsher Jung Bahadur in the wild Chitawan area of Nepal. Each guest was given the opportunity to bag a tiger. Rhinos, leopards, bears, deer, wild buffalo and crocodiles were also fair game on the Mahrajah’s shikar expeditions.
When Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Stevenson retired, he chose to settle in Woking, Surrey, where he died in March 1962. Gussie spent her last years in a nursing home in Woking where she died in 1977.
Frederick’solder son, RICHARD JOSEPH was born in Abbotabad in 1922. He joined the Hampshire Regiment and may have been a National Serviceman whose soldiers spent most of their two-year-period in the jungles of Malaya fighting the Malaya Chinese terrorists. At the end of the Malaya Emmergency, Richard married Woon Mei Woo in Kuala Lumpur in 1960. They had three daughters and lived in Uxbridge, Middlesex. Richard died in Haywards Heath, Sussex, in 1988. Woon died in 2023 at the age of 91.
Second son, FREDERICK BRIAN, was born in Dublin in 1931. I could not find much on him, except that he married Margaret Ailsa Treanor in 1969 in New South Wales, Australia. They had one son. Margaret died in Woking in 1977 and Frederick in 2020.
