Brigadier-General John Jacob CB (11 January 1812 – 6 December 1858) was an officer of the British East India Company who served in colonial India for the major portion of his career. He is known for the cavalry regiment called 36th Jacob's Horse and for founding the town of Jacobabad.
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He was born at Woolavington, in the county of Somerset, England, where his father the Reverend Stephen Long Jacob was incumbent. His mother was Susanna, daughter of the Reverend James Bond of Ashford, Kent, England. He was schooled by his father until he obtained his cadetship to Addiscombe Military Academy. He was commissioned into the Bombay Artillery (Bombay Army) on his 16th birthday, and subsequently sailed for India in January 1828, never to set foot in England again.
After seven years employed with his regiment, he was then employed as subordinate to the collector of Gujerat. In 1838 he was ordered to Sind with the Bombay column, to join the army of the Indus at the outbreak of the First Anglo-Afghan War.
He first saw active service in the summer of 1839 as a subaltern of artillery, the force led by Sir John Keane, sent to invade the Upper Sindh. He was given command of the Sind Horse by Sir James Outram in 1841; in 1842 he was additionally placed in political charge of the whole of the Cutchee frontier. He saw his first major action as Brevet Captain at the Battle of Meanee, with the British force sent to conquer Sindh. He was awarded a CB.
He set about to recruit a second regiment of Sind Horse, which Napier announced in a letter dated 28 November 1846 would be called Jacob's Horse. As Irregular Cavalry, each regiment had only three European officers, a system that Jacob argued should be extended to all Indian cavalry regiments. Both regiments were absorbed into the Indian Army in 1860 and ultimately became the 35th Sind Horse and the 36th Jacob's Horse. They saw active service in Northern and Central India, Persia and Afghanistan, and during World War I in France. They were amalgamated in 1921 and became known as the 14th Prince of Wales's Own Scinde Horse.
In 1847 Jacob was placed in political charge of the frontier and established his headquarters at Khangurh, where a flourishing town known as Jacobabad developed.
He wrote many pamphlets which were critical of the Indian Army as it then was, and got him into much trouble with the Government in London. He was a scientist and inventor, developing an exploding bullet, or shell, that fired combustibles up to 6 miles. He believed this would revolutionize the art of war. Two good riflemen could, in his opinion, annihilate the best battery of field artillery in 10 minutes. Further experiments made it possible to fire shells up to a range of 14 miles. More importantly, he designed a four grooved rifle and had various experimental guns manufactured in London by leading gunsmiths, and at his expense.
In April 1855 he was gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1856, due to Sir Bartle Frere's poor health, he taking leave in England, Jacob was pronounced Acting Commissioner in Sind.
At the outbreak of the Anglo-Persian War, Jacob was put in charges of the cavalry and departed for Persia. He was raised to the rank of Brigadier-General, and appointed A.D.C. to Queen Victoria. When he arrived at Bushire, General Stalker having suddenly died, Jacob was put in charge of 3000 men. Peace favourable to the British Government having been negotiated, Jacob was left in charge of conducting the evacuation of Bushire.
A month after the end of hostilities with the Persians, the Indian rebellion of 1857 had broken out, Jacob's Horse remained loyal throughout. He was anxious to return to India, as he had been selected for the command of the Central Indian Army. Delayed in Bushire by the insistence of the British minister there, Lord Elphinstone was unable to await his arrival. The command was given to Sir Hugh Rose instead. Jacob returned to Jacobabad where he raised two regiments of infantry. He died of ill health at Jacobabad on 6 December 1858. He was buried in the town where his grave has been well-maintained by the locals for whom he retains a cult status, according to BBC correspondent Mark Tully locals believe he has saintlike status.[1]
Jacob was the great-great uncle of Alaric Jacob, journalist and writer who wrote of him in his biographical novel Scenes from a Bourgeois Life. Alaric Jacob contrasted his great-great uncle's selfless devotion to duty and democratic principles with the opportunistic capitalism of his contemporaries in England, and used him as model to support his own conversion to an idealistic form of Marxism. Alaric Jacob reports having found the original portrait on which the print illustrated above was based and caused it to be passed to Field Marshal Jacob. Unfortunately it was destroyed in The Blitz.