and had just reached Khurkhouda, a village near Delhi. Hodson thereupon took out a body of his sowars, attacked the village, and shot Bisharat Ali and several of his relatives. General Crawford Chamberlain states that this was Hodson’s way of wiping out the debt. Again, after the fall of Delhi, Hodson obtained from General Wilson permission to ride out with fifty horsemen to Humayun’s tomb, 6 m. out of Delhi, and bring in Bahadur Shah, the last of the Moguls. This he did with safety in the face of a large and threatening crowd, and thus dealt the mutineers a heavy blow. On the following day with 100 horsemen he went out to the same tomb and obtained the unconditional surrender of the three princes, who had been left behind on the previous occasion. A crowd of 6000 persons gathered, and Hodson with marvellous coolness ordered them to disarm, which they proceeded to do. He sent the princes on with an escort of ten men, while with the remaining ninety he collected the arms of the crowd. On galloping after the princes he found the crowd once more pressing on the escort and threatening an attack; and fearing that he would be unable to bring his prisoners into Delhi he shot them with his own hand. This is the most bitterly criticized action in his career, but no one but the man on the spot can judge how it is necessary to handle a crowd; and in addition one of the princes, Abu Bukt, heir-apparent to the throne, had made himself notorious for cutting off the arms and legs of English children and pouring the blood into their mothers’ mouths. Considering the circumstances of the moment, Hodson’s act at the worst was one of irregular justice. A more unpleasant side to the question is that he gave the king a safe conduct, which was afterwards seen by Sir Donald Stewart, before he left the palace, and presumably for a bribe; and he took an armlet and rings from the bodies of the princes. He was freely accused of looting at the time, and though this charge, like that of peculation, is matter for controversy, it is very strongly supported. General Pelham Burn said that he saw loot in Hodson’s boxes when he accompanied him from Fatehgarh to take part in the siege of Lucknow, and Sir Henry Daly said that he found “loads of loot” in Hodson’s boxes after his death, and also a file of documents relating to the Guides case, which had been stolen from him and of which Hodson denied all knowledge. On the other hand the Rev. G. Hodson states in his book that he obtained the inventory of his brother’s possessions made by the Committee of Adjustment and it contained no articles of loot, and Sir Charles Gough, president of the committee, confirmed this evidence. This statement is totally incompatible with Sir Henry Daly’s and is only one of many contradictions in the case. Sir Henry Norman stated that to his personal knowledge Hodson remitted several thousand pounds to Calcutta which could only have been obtained by looting. On the other hand, again, Hodson died a poor man, his effects were sold for £170, his widow was dependent on charity for her passage home, was given apartments by the queen at Hampton Court, and left only £400 at her death.
Hodson was killed on the 11th of March 1858 in the attack on the Begum Kotee at Lucknow. He had just arrived on the spot and met a man going to fetch powder to blow in a door; instead Hodson, with his usual recklessness, rushed into the doorway and was shot. On the whole, it can hardly be doubted that he was somewhat unscrupulous in his private character, but he was a splendid soldier, and rendered inestimable services to the empire.
The controversy relating to Hodson’s moral character is very complicated and unpleasant. Upon Hodson’s side see Rev. G. Hodson, Hodson of Hodson’s Horse (1883), and L. J. Trotter, A Leader of Light Horse (1901); against him, R. Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, appendix to the 6th edition of 1885; T. R. E. Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny, appendix N to the 5th edition of 1898, and Four Famous Soldiers by the same author, 1889; and General Sir Crawford Chamberlain, Remarks on Captain Trotter’s Biography of Major W. S. R. Hodson (1901).
HODY, HUMPHREY (1659–1707), English divine, was born at Odcombe in Somersetshire in 1659. In 1676 he entered
Wadham College, Oxford, of which he became fellow in 1685. In 1684 he published Contra historiam Aristeae de LXX. interpretibus
dissertatio, in which he showed that the so-called letter
of Aristeas, containing an account of the production of the
Septuagint, was the late forgery of a Hellenist Jew originally
circulated to lend authority to that version. The dissertation
was generally regarded as conclusive, although Isaac Vossius
published an angry and scurrilous reply to it in the appendix
to his edition of Pomponius Mela. In 1689 Hody wrote the
Prolegomena to the Greek chronicle of John Malalas, published
at Oxford in 1691. The following year he became chaplain
to Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, and for his support
of the ruling party in a controversy with Henry Dodwell regarding
the non-juring bishops he was appointed chaplain to Archbishop
Tillotson, an office which he continued to hold under Tenison.
In 1698 he was appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford, and in 1704 was made archdeacon of Oxford. In 1701 he published A History of English Councils and Convocations, and in 1703 in four volumes De Bibliorum textis originalibus, in which he included a revision of his work on the Septuagint, and published a reply to Vossius. He died on the 20th of January 1707.
A work, De Graecis Illustribus, which he left in manuscript, was published in 1742 by Samuel Jebb, who prefixed to it a Latin life of the author.
HOE, RICHARD MARCH (1812–1886), American inventor,
was born in New York City on the 12th of September 1812. He
was the son of Robert Hoe (1784–1833), an English-born American
mechanic, who with his brothers-in-law, Peter and Matthew
Smith, established in New York City a manufactory of printing
presses, and used steam to run his machinery. Richard entered
his father’s manufactory at the age of fifteen and became head of
the firm (Robert Hoe & Company) on his father’s death. He had
considerable inventive genius and set himself to secure greater
speed for printing presses. He discarded the old flat-bed model
and placed the type on a revolving cylinder, a model later
developed into the well-known Hoe rotary or “lightning”
press, patented in 1846, and further improved under the name
of the Hoe web perfecting press (see Printing). He died in
Florence, Italy, on the 7th of June 1886.
See A Short History of the Printing Press (New York, 1902) by his nephew Robert Hoe (1839–1909), who was responsible for further improvements in printing, and was an indefatigable worker in support of the New York Metropolitan Museum.
HOE (through Fr. houe from O.H.G. houwâ, mod. Ger. Haue; the root is seen in “hew,” to cut, cleave; the word must be distinguished from “hoe,” promontory, tongue of land, seen in place names, e.g. Morthoe, Luton Hoo, the Hoe at Plymouth, &c.; this is the same as Northern English “heugh” and is connected with “hang”), an agricultural and gardening implement used for extirpating weeds, for stirring the surface-soil in order to break the capillary channels and so prevent the evaporation of moisture, for singling out turnips and other root-crops and similar purposes. Among common forms of hoe are the ordinary
garden-hoe (numbered 1 in fig. 1), which consists of a flat blade set transversely in a long wooden handle; the Dutch or thrust-hoe (2), which has the blade set into the handle after the fashion of a spade; and the swan-neck hoe (3), the best manual hoe for agricultural purposes, which has a long curved neck to attach the blade to the handle; the soil falls back over this, blocking is thus avoided and a longer stroke obtained. Several types of horse-drawn hoe capable of working one or more rows at a time are used among root and grain crops. The illustrations show two forms of the implement, the blades of which differ in shape from those of the garden-hoe. Fig. 2 is in ordinary use for hoeing between two lines of beans or turnips or other “roots.” Fig. 3
