King Thibaw handed Burma's crown jewels to a British colonel in 1885, and the Nga Mauk ruby was never seen again

Thibaw became king of Burma in 1878 on the death of his father, Mindon. Early in 1879 he had a number of members of the royal family put to death; later accounts put the dead at 80 to 100^†. In October 1885 Britain sent an ultimatum after Burma fined a British teak firm, the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. British troops took Mandalay in November. Myanmar's government journal Perspective says Colonel Sladen persuaded the king to entrust him with the crown jewels and the Nga Mauk ruby, an 80-carat stone found in the reign of King Pindale (1648 to 1661). When Thibaw asked for the ruby, he was told Sladen had gone to England, then that Sladen had died and there was no record of any ruby handed to the government. General Prendergast's forces looted the palace. The Lion Throne went to the Indian Museum in Kolkata and came home only in March 1948. The other regalia were shown at the South Kensington Museum and returned in 1964^†. Thibaw was exiled to Ratnagiri in western India and died there in 1916. His family left for Burma in 1919. His eldest daughter, Phaya Gyi, went back to Ratnagiri with Tutu, her daughter by the palace gatekeeper Gopal Sawant. Sawant spent her British pension, and mother and daughter made paper flowers to live. Tutu had eleven children; in 2017 one grandson was an auto mechanic in Ratnagiri. In December 2012 Thein Sein became the first Myanmar leader to visit Thibaw's tomb.