Researching the East India Company's London warehouse labourers is a challenge because many of the documents about them were destroyed by the India Office in the mid-19th century.  So it is always exciting to discover fresh sources of information about them.  Recently I came across the King's Freemen collection at The London Archives.  This consists of military discharge papers lodged with the Chamberlain of the Corporation of London by servicemen and their families in order to obtain certificates of entitlement to exercise a trade in the City, without being admitted to the freedom.  There are papers for East India Company warehouse labourers who served in the Royal East India Volunteers in the period before 1814.

I have found 25 discharge certificates for Company warehouse labourers in the King's Freemen collection.  Almost all are copies, but the document submitted for Willliam Jordan is the original certificate issued at East India Buildings, Cutler Street, on 5 May 1814, signed by Robert Markland Barnard, Captain and Adjutant of the Third Regiment of the REIV, and bearing the Company’s seal in red wax. 

As well as giving an outline of the man’s service, many of the certificates give interesting and useful personal details.

John Morgan of the Third Regiment was born in the parish of St Leonard Shoreditch in Middlesex and in December 1814 he was living at 1 George Street in Bethnal Green.  He was about 33 years of age, 5 feet 9 ¾ inches in height, with a sallow complexion, grey eyes, and light brown hair, and his skin was pitted by smallpox.

Robert Dynan served as a Private in the 5th Company of the First Regiment of the REIV.  He was born in London and was living in August 1814 at Field Lane in Holborn.  Aged about 44, he was 5 feet 5 ½ inches tall, and had a light complexion, grey eyes, and brown hair.

Dynan had joined the Company warehouses as a labourer in July 1803.  Having worked in the Private Trade warehouse, he transferred to the Crutched Friars tea warehouse in December 1834.  He was made redundant in March 1835 because the Company’s commercial operations were being wound up, and he was awarded a weekly pension of 11 shillings.

Field Lane, Holborn, from Illustrated London News 23 January 1847. Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

The information about Dynan’s residence in the discharge certificate makes it possible to identify him in other records which show his life outside the warehouses.  Dynan lived for decades in Field Lane which was described by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist as’ a narrow and dismal alley’, ‘the emporium of petty larceny’.

Description of Field Lane from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - Illustrated London News 23 January 1847, Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

Whilst he was employed as a warehouse labourer, Dynan also kept a shoemaker’s shop in Field Lane. He was sued for debt in 1811 and imprisoned in Newgate. In 1827 William Sage was convicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a pair of shoes worth 5s from Dynan’s shop.

Dynan’s wife Margaret had a clothes shop in Field Lane. In 1829 she was tried at the Old Bailey for knowingly receiving stolen goods, a pair of trousers worth 19s.  Margaret was acquitted but William Scasebrook, aged 18, was found guilty of theft and transported for seven years.

Margaret and Robert were still living in Field Lane when they died in 1837 and 1842, aged 68 and 80 respectively. Both were buried at the church of St Andrew Holborn.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
The London Archives COL/CHD/FR/11/04 King's Freemen 1780s-1820s
Colours of the Royal East India Volunteers
Black labourers in London
IOR/L/AG/30/4-5 Registers of East India Company warehouse labourers
Margaret Makepeace, The East India Company's London Workers: Management of the Warehouse Labourers, 1800-1858 (2010)
British Newspaper Archive
Old Bailey Online

On 31 May 1916, the India Office Library purchased seven items at auction from Hodgson & Co.  Lot 29 cost £1 10 shillings, with 9d postage.  The correspondence about the purchase is significant because it establishes that the items once belonged to the collection of Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice and President in Council in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).  This provenance information had not previously been recorded in our catalogues and the link between the items had been obscured.

Notice of auction at Hodgson & Co - Westminster Gazette 27 May 1916 British Newspaper Archive

Lot 29 included copies of letters relating to Baptist Missionary Henry Beddy.  Born in Dublin, he enlisted in the East India Company’s Bengal Army at 19, arriving in India in 1811 to serve in the Bengal Artillery.  Beddy married three times.  His first wife Mary Anne died in childbirth in 1816, and his second wife (also Mary Anne) died in 1822.  On 16 January 1823 he married Margaret MacDonough, and they had at least 11 children.

List of correspondence relating to Henry Beddy -Mss Eur C92

Henry Beddy was baptised into the Baptist faith about 1827, and having left the Bengal Army was appointed as a Baptist Missionary to Patna in 1831.  Margaret’s younger sister Ellen (Eleanor) MacDonough lived with the Beddys from childhood and was closely involved in missionary work, running the Orphan Refuge.

Ellen became involved with government servant George Hutteman.  Henry Beddy tried to put an end to the relationship, but on 20 November 1847 Ellen eloped with George, married, and moved to Calcutta.  Beddy found it impossible to understand Ellen’s actions and wrote a number of letters to her, besmirching her character.  On 1 December 1847 he wrote ‘Not a member of my family shall ever speak to you with my permission... I shall impress on the children’s mind that their Aunt Ellen MacDonough is to them dead’.  Beddy was later to admit: ‘I had written language capable of being used to my discredit’.

The Huttemans attended the Lall Bazar Baptist Church in Calcutta.  The Minister James Thomas wrote to Beddy about his sister-in-law.  Beddy’s reply accused Ellen of falsehood and deception and stated that George was an ‘unbeliever’.  His hostile attitude led to an investigation into his conduct towards Ellen. 

Note by James Thomas introducing the collection of documents about Henry Beddy and Ellen MacDonough -Mss Eur C92

Thomas gathered together copies of correspondence from the various protagonists and witnesses, so they could be presented to a Baptist Committee in London.  Beddy’s own letters admitted ‘an intimacy, friendship and affection sprang up between us that led to great familiarity, and it is now lamentably true that this familiarity was looked upon by some persons as improper’, whilst Reverend Nathaniel Brice was of the opinion that ‘there are facts connected with the affair which would make your ears tingle...’.

Extract of letter from Henry Beddy to James Thomas, 13 March 1848 --Mss Eur C92

Removed from Patna, Beddy and his family moved to Simla, where he became Pastor at the First Baptist Church.  He died there on 3 June 1857.

Ellen and George had three daughters, and after his death in 1866, she married Reverend John Lawrence of Monghyr.  She died in Christchurch, Hampshire, in 1879.

The India Office appreciated that the contents of the volume were problematic.  In a letter dated 26 January 1936 the Librarian H N Randle wrote that he hesitated to include the letters as part of the forthcoming catalogue of manuscripts as ‘there may be relatives alive, even after 90 years and it seems best to let these personalities rest in obscurity for another hundred years’.

Provenance research is more than acquiring a greater understanding of our collections and their history. It uncovers fascinating human stories along the way.

Lesley Shapland
Archivist & Provenance Researcher
India Office Records

Further reading:
Mss Eur C92: Volume compiled by Rev J Thomas, Calcutta, containing copies of correspondence relating to charges of misconduct against Rev Henry Beddy, missionary at Patna for the London Baptist Missionary Society
IOR/L/R/7/20, R961/16: India Office Record Department Annual Files, 1916
Mss Eur F303/23, p.137: India Office Library, Day Book, 14 Jul 1916
IOR/L/R/9/26, L36/37: Library Committee Papers & References, 1937
Missionary Herald, May 1832 
Full text of 'The story of the Lall Bazar Baptist Church Calcutta : being the history of Carey's church from 24th April 1800 to the present day'
India Office Library Catalogue of Manuscripts in European Languages. Vol. II, Pt. II: Minor Collections and Miscellaneous Manuscripts. By G. R. Kaye and E. H. Johnston. Section I, Nos. 1–538 (London: HMSO, 1937)

In November 1885, after the deposition of King Thibaw at the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War, British forces moved into the palace at Mandalay, where they found ‘a small royal white elephant’ in the menagerie, with another regular elephant kept as its companion.

Minute paper regarding the discovery of the white elephant in the palace at Mandalay - IOR/L/PJ/6/192, File 27

In the era of the Konbaung dynasty, to which Thibaw belonged, the possession of a white elephant was required in order to assume the title of Hsinbyushin or Hysinbyumyashin - Lord of the White Elephants - and legitimise one’s position as ruler.  Owning a white elephant signified royalty and status but most importantly, wealth, since housing and keeping these creatures was an expensive endeavour - as the British would soon find out.  Indeed, in English the term ‘white elephant’ now means something that is a financial burden, with little to no benefit.

Note by Sir Ashley Eden of the India Office making reference to white elephants as ‘an emblem of royalty’ and recommending that the animal should not be sent out of Burma - IOR/L/PJ/6/192, File 27

In a series of letters between the Chief Commissioner of British Burma and the Foreign Department in Simla (Shimla), the question of what to do with these two young elephants - and the financial and political concerns involved - was posited back and forth, with three eventual solutions being proposed:

• The white elephant could be presented to the King of Siam as a gift
• It could be transported to the Royal Zoological Society in London
• It could be kept in the Phayre Gardens at Rangoon (now Yangon).

In these letters, the Secretary for Upper Burma to the Chief Commissioner, Herbert Thirkell White, referred to the ‘uselessness’ of the two elephants, and the ‘inconvenient arrangement’ of paying 140 Burmese rupees a month for their care.  On 14 April 1886 the animals were handed over to the Transport Department, despite not being old enough to serve as beasts of burden.

In the interest of avoiding a political incident, the decision was made not to gift the animals to the King of Siam.  As a letter to the Chief Commissioner explained, presenting a Burmese royal white elephant to the King ‘would be regarded as a humiliation in the eyes of the Siamese’.

A series of letters between Burma, India and Siam discussing the white elephant - IOR/L/PJ/6/192, File 27

Despite concerns about the white elephant being acquired by ‘pretenders to the throne’ should it be sold within Burma, there was a similar political risk involved in removing the animal from the country.  The Secretary of State for India, Viscount Cross, wrote in a letter to the Governor General of India: ‘... it has been suggested to me that the removal of the animal to this country may produce an unfavourable effect upon the minds of some portion of the natives of Burma, and that it might on that account be more advisable to keep it in the Phayre Gardens at Rangoon’.

Copy of a letter from Viscount Cross, Secretary of State for India, to the Governor General of India, 3 February 1887 - IOR/L/PJ/6/192, File 27

Copy of a letter from the Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Burma to the Foreign Department in Simla dated 25 May 1887, reporting the decision to transport the white elephant to the Phayre Gardens in Rangoon IOR/L/PJ/6/206, File 1208

Although we have found no record of what happened to its companion, the white elephant’s story has a happy ending, and it was eventually moved to the Phayre Gardens.  In 1901, the Gardens were commissioned as a memorial to Queen Victoria and reopened in 1906 as the Victoria Memorial Park and Zoological Gardens, where the white elephant was touted as the central attraction.

Ely Nott
Library, Information and Archives Services Apprentice

Further reading:
IOR/L/PJ/6/192, File 27 Disposal of a white elephant found in the palace at Mandalay, 14 December 1886-3 February 1887.
IOR/L/PJ/6/206, File 1208 The white elephant found in the palace at Mandalay to be lodged in the Phayre Gardens at Rangoon, 17 June 1887.