Hello, I am hoping there is someone out there who understands the British cavalry, old documents/writing, and their deployments during the 1800s better than I do.
I am researching a relative of mine via Ancestry. His census records state his occupation as a cavalry corporal in the British military during the 1880s and 1890s. They show him living Aldershot in the 1880s, having a child born in Bangalore, India, in the early 1890s, and then living in Canterbury a few years later. Via Fold3, I found a court martial record that shows he was demoted from sergeant to corporal for apparently being drunk off base. The record, under regiment, has 19 and then a word I cannot make out (screenshot here: https://ibb.co/kQDZLfG ). Via wiki, i found that there was only one cavalry formation with such a number: the 19th Hussars/19th (Queen Alexandra's Own Royal) Hussars (although there was an infantry formation: 19th Regiment of Foot/POW's Own/Green Howards).
I found Col. John Biddulph's The 19th and Their Times (1899), and his description of the regiment for this period matches the timeline I have in place for my relative. Biddulph states the regiment was based in Aldershot in the 1880s, deployed to India in 1891 and moved to Bangalore. However, he states the the regiment stayed there through to the time of his writing. This matches up with the census records showing my relative's movements, with the exception of being back in Canterbury.
So I have several questions. 1) have I interpreted the above linked document correctly, is the funky spelling or abbreviation suppose to be or represent hussars? 2) If that was the case, how could he still be a member (along with another chap listed above him) and be in the UK while the regiment was in India (one presumes they didn't send people back home for minor infractions, otherwise everyone would be doing it)?
The British Army of the 19th century was set up to police and defend an empire, and its structure reflected the problem of combining the need to station units overseas for years at a time with the requirement to make service in that army sufficiently attractive to secure the necessary steady stream of recruits, and to train those men when they had joined the service.
Regiments were therefore typically divided into two battalions, one of which would serve at home and act as a locus for training and recruitment, while the other was stationed overseas. When the overseas battalion had completed its posting, it would be rotated home, and the home battalion would become available for an overseas posting. From the time of the Cardwell reforms of the 1870s, regiments also often added a third battalion made up of volunteer militiamen who could form a reserve. This always served at home.
The system worked pretty well, though it could come under some strain if the overseas battalion was involved in combat or stationed somewhere where disease left major holes in its ranks – when those contingencies occurred, men from the home battalion would be drafted out to fill the gaps in the ranks, leaving the home battalion under strength for some time.
To address the second part of your query, the word you cannot read does appear to be "Hussars", written with both a long and a short "s".