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Ha ha yes got my maths wrong there !!!. Maybe everyone called john Benson Wells was a bit of a vagabond. Maybe it was a relative or zoom really unlucky coincidence.

I checked on the Canadian Rolls and he is nowhere to be found......

A Walt...... LOL......

Mike

Is his birth year on Ancestry (which I don't have) ? The info which trooper922 gave us seems to be perfectly in character for someone making up a story like this one, so could the Canadian Regiment and Indian Frontier business just be added make-believe?

Had a look on ancestry and I can not find any other entries for a john Benson Wells apart from his service records. It may even be possible that it was not his real name. Considering he was shot 27 times there seems to be no death records for him either. Lol

Quite Frankly, I would suggest the whole thing is a series of pork pies, perhaps even exploited further by the press, but, I would certainly say this, you might well lie about your age to get into the Army, but, normally it was done by the under age, purely for financial reasons and not the other way around, certainly, the age stated in WO97 is likely to be the one thing that was actually true.
If this man was eighteen or, indeed, for that matter, perhaps, a little less, you would expect his teeth to be in better condition than someone older who had seen Foreign Service out in India several years beforehand and who was of a greater, perhaps a very considerable, greater, age.
Teeth were considered very important and were also a complete and utter giveaway when examined upon enlistment when it came to age, the Army really struggled to get recruits because of the lack of dental care.
As for any Victorian Magistrate being quite so stupid as to believe even half of what was reported as being factual really does beggar belief, just in itself, in my opinion.
Twenty seven "marks" caused by bullets?
All twenty seven, superficial, none serious, perhaps, just mere grazes?
One does therefore wonder if the court actually bothered to examine that particular obvious evidence that was suggested actually stood before it?

BereniceUK wrote: Is his birth year on Ancestry (which I don't have) ? The info which trooper922 gave us seems to be perfectly in character for someone making up a story like this one, so could the Canadian Regiment and Indian Frontier business just be added make-believe?