CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

1895 New Year Honours

appointments by Queen Victoria

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ23020477 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1895 New Year Honours were appointments by Queen Victoria to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by members of the British Empire. They were published on 1 January 1895.

The recipients of honours are displayed here as they were styled before their new honour, and arranged by honour, with classes (Knight, Knight Grand Cross, etc.) and then divisions (Military, Civil, etc.) as appropriate.

Order of the Star of India

Knights Grand Commander (GCSI)

His Highness Shahu Chatrapati Maharaj, Raja of Kolhapur

Knights Commander (KCSI)

James Westland, Esq, CSI, Member of the Council of the Governor-General of India.

Frederick William Richards Fryer, Esq, CSI, Officiating Financial Commissioner, Punjab.

His Highness Maharao Kesri Singh of Sirohi

Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert, Esq, CSI, CIE

Companions (CSI)

Charles Cecil Stevens, Esq, Indian Civil Service.

Major-General Alexander Robert Badcock, CB, Indian Staff Corps, Commissary-General-in-Chief, India.

Donald Mackenzie Smeaton, Esq, Financial Commissioner, Burma.

Stephen Jacob, Esq, Indian Civil Service.

Colonel William Francis Prideaux, Indian Staff Corps.

Editorial summary

“1895 New Year Honours” enters the record as appointments by Queen Victoria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Year, Honours and appointments can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1895—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Year, Honours and appointments.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“1895 New Year Honours” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Year, Honours and appointments provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23020477. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1895.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1895 New Year Honours”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1895 New Year Honours primary sources, 1895 New Year Honours archive and Year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1895 New Year Honours”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1895 New Year Honours” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.