Untold lives blog

In the 19th century, the East India Company made increasing efforts to bring the trade in enslaved people in the Gulf to an end.  The majority of the people imported into the Gulf came from the East Coast of Africa and Zanzibar, but some also came from India.  These were usually women and children who had been kidnapped from their homes to be sold in the Gulf.  It was one of the responsibilities of British Agents in the Gulf to discover and rescue these children.

This was not always easy.  The local rulers could be uncooperative, and the merchants and traders would disguise the origins of the children to avoid detection.  The Native Agent at Muscat complained that his efforts to emancipate children had turned the population against him.  Even after they had tracked down the children, the Agents faced further difficulties in freeing them; the British Government stipulated that they must avoid force, but also directed that no money should be handed over, to avoid stimulating the market.  The Native Agent would look after the children at the British Government’s expense until he was able to place them on a ship to Bombay [Mumbai].  The Senior Magistrate of Police at Bombay was responsible for reuniting children with their parents or finding an alternative situation for them.

The Muscat Consulate and Agency, c. 1870 (Photo 355/1/43)

Mahomed Unwur [Muhammed Anwar] lived with his brother, Mirza Abdulla [‘Abd Allah], in Butcher Street, Bombay, when he was twelve.  One morning his brother sent him to the bazaar where he met a man who enticed him on board a ship with sweets.  Two weeks later, he arrived at Muscat and lived there for six or seven months with the man who had kidnapped him.  He was offered for sale privately at different houses during this time, until one day, when he was gathering dates at the Customs House, he was taken to the house of the Native Agent.  He finally returned to Bombay in November 1843, where he was reunited with his brother and returned to live with him.  This happy ending was sadly fairly unusual for kidnapped children.  On the same ship returning to India as Mahomed Unwur was another child, a girl.

‘A street in Bombay’, chromolithograph by William Simpson, from India Ancient and Modern, 1867. BL Online Gallery 

Eleven-year-old Auzeemah [‘Azimah] knew that she had been born in a village near Moradabad.  She was kidnapped and lived in Moradabad for three or four years.  A man then took her to Muscat and tried to exchange her for a boy, but while at Muscat she was discovered and taken to live with the Native Agent until she could be sent home.  Unfortunately, she remembered so little about her parents or her village that, despite lengthy enquiries by the Government of Agra, her parents were not found.   Auzeemah was instead placed with a family in Bombay who would bring her up.

Anne Courtney
Gulf History Cataloguer

Further reading:
The stories of Mahomed and Auzeemah can be found in IOR/F/4/2034/98123.

From its earliest days, the East India Company’s ships called at the South Atlantic island of St Helena on homeward voyages from Asia.  They gathered supplies of fresh water, citrus fruits, meat and fish. Company ships also used St Helena as a place of rendezvous.  It was safer to complete the final stage of the voyage with other vessels, especially in times of war.

Friar Rock on the island of St Helena - an immense pile of rocks rising perpendicularly eight hundred feet above the level of the sea.  Image from St. Helena: a physical, historical, and topographical description of the island ... The botanical plates from original drawings by Mrs. J. C. Melliss (London, 1875) British Library Digital Store 10096.gg.15 BL flickr

In 1658 the Company decided to fortify St Helena and establish a colony.  The first group of English settlers arrived in May 1659.  Slaves were brought from West Africa to work on the plantations.

On 4 September 1672 a set of laws was issued: ‘Laws and Constitutions Ecclesiasticall Civill and Millitary made by the Councell to be observed by all the inhabitants of the Island St Hellena’.

IOR/E/3/33 ff.153v-154 Laws to be observed by the inhabitants of St Helena 4 September 1672

The Laws were:

1 God was to be worshipped and served diligently.  The guard at Fort St John was to attend morning and evening prayers at the toll of the bell, and all inhabitants were to attend church on Sunday unless prevented by necessity.

2 Sunday was to be kept holy and all were to refrain from cursing, swearing and excessive drinking.

3 To prevent idleness, every family was to have a plantation.  They must not encroach on their neighbours’ lands or privileges.

4 Everyone was to look after their plantations, keep the ground well-fenced, ring their hogs, and improve the stock of cattle for the promotion of trade.

5 Inhabitants should endeavour to live in love and unity.  Anyone bickering, brawling, or slandering neighbours would be severely punished.

6 No-one was to take revenge over a quarrel, instead going with witnesses to the Council for redress.

7 Every man was to live honestly and maintain himself and his family by careful labour and industry.  The Council would punish anyone stealing from a neighbour.

8 Anyone found guilty of murder, burglary, buggery or any other capital crime would be shipped to England for trial and sentencing.

9 If debts were not settled on time, the Council would seize goods or cattle as payment.

10 Inhabitants were encouraged to build outside the Fort for the convenience of trade, and had permission to go on board English or friends’ ships.

11 Seamen were not to stay on the island without permission.  Anyone harbouring a sailor would be fined £5.  The sailor would be housed with the black slaves and work on the Company’s plantations until he could be returned to England,

12 Everyone capable of bearing arms was to respond to all alarms, with a 20s fine or a week’s imprisonment for each default.

13 The watch was to be observed continually and strictly when shipping approached.  Each instance of neglect would be punished by a fine of 5s or another penalty decided by the Council.

14 Everyone was to go to Fort St John four times a year to be trained in martial discipline for the safety and defence of the island.

15 Anyone raising a mutiny or causing a disturbance of orderly government would be put in irons and sent home to the Company.

16 Anyone hearing of a plot, conspiracy or mutiny was liable to the same punishment as the perpetrators if they failed to alert the Council.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/3/33 ff.153v-154 Laws to be observed by inhabitants of St Helena 4 September 1672
William Foster, ‘The Acquisition of St. Helena’, The English Historical Review July 1919, Vol. 34, No. 135, pp. 281-289.
St Helena settlers in 1667

Given the fact that for most of history women were excluded from higher education institutions and most forms of professional employment, there is a marked presence of women working in areas of social reform in the archives.  Being excluded from areas of official policy making meant that women used their own intuition to seek changes in areas such as public health, access to education, prison conditions, civil liberties and women’s rights.  They did this through such means as philanthropy, campaigning and protest.

The Modern Manuscript collections holds significant collections from figures such as, health reformer Florence Nightingale, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and the papers of prominent suffrage campaigners but, as well as these, we hold papers across collections of less well-known reformers.  We have taking the opportunity to examine some of these figures below.

Caroline Norton (née Sheridan) 1808 – 1877 - Law Reformer

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton née Sheridan, later Lady Stirling Maxwell by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company c.1863 NPG x26597 © National Portrait Gallery, London 

The social reformer Caroline Norton, ironically still primarily known by her married name, ran an extensive campaign for the reform of divorce law after separation from her husband left her without her own earnings, denied access to her children and a divorce.  She campaigned for changes to current laws and submitted a detailed account of her marriage to Parliament to consider when debating.  s a result of her campaigning Parliament passed the Custody of Infants Act 1839, The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Women’s Property Act 1870.  These acts gave women some (but not substantial) access to their children post-divorce and access to legal representation.  There is a volume concerning her separation in the Sheridan Papers at Add MS 42767, as well as various letters from her to William Gladstone in the Gladstone Papers.

Mary Carpenter, 1807 – 1877, Education reformer and Abolitionist

Mary Carpenter from The Illustrated London News 7 July 1877 British Newspaper Archive

Mary Carpenter worked in Bristol setting up ragged schools and reformatories to help bring education to impoverished and imprisoned youngsters.  She lobbied for several educational acts and was an accomplished public speaker on education.  In 1846 she attended a lecture by Frederick Douglass and became committed to the anti-slavery movement directed at the continuing slavery in the United States.  She also travelled to India where she worked with philosopher and reformer, Keschab Chandra Sen, to improve women’s education in India.  Papers relating to this endeavour can be found at Add MS 74237 PP, and some items of her correspondence can be found in the Margaret Elliot Papers at Add MS 73485.

Gertrude Tuckwell, 1861-1951, Trade Unionist and Women’s Rights Reformer

Gertrude Mary Tuckwell by Bassano Ltd, 20 January 1930  NPG x124853 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Gertrude Tuckwell was a committed trade unionist and advocate for women’s rights.  She was president of the Women’s Trade Union League and the National Federation of Women Workers, where she worked to improve women’s safety and prospects in employment.  She was one of the first women in the country to qualify as a magistrate.  Her correspondence with her Aunt, Lady Emilia Dilke, who was also a trade unionist, is available at Add MS 49610 – 49612.  There are also items of her correspondence in the papers of trade unionist and politician, John Elliot Burns (Add MS 46297 – Add MS 46298).

Jessica Gregory
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further Reading:
Women, Peace and Welfare: A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880 – 1920, by Ann Oakley. (Bristol: Policy Press, 2019).

Researching Suffragettes in the Modern Manuscripts collection.

The National Indian Association - founded in Bristol in 1871 by Mary Carpenter.

Tucked away in the manuscript collections of the British Library is a Report on the Cuban Slave Trade written in 1787 by Philip Allwood, a British merchant. This document looks at the possibilities for trading slaves in Cuba, a new market then seen as having great potential as British Abolition loomed on the horizon.

Plan of city and harbour of Havana 1739

Philip Allwood started his mercantile career with the Boston merchants Fitch, Poole & Co of Boston and Jamaica, a firm engaged in general provisioning and the inter-island colonial slave trade. He moved to Jamaica where he became a partner with Henry Ludlow in Ludlow & Allwood. They were 'prize agents' and therefore had much to do with shipping, some of it engaged in the contraband trade to Spanish America and other parts of the West Indies. Allwood was closely linked to Eliphalet Fitch who was a major figure in Jamaica and associate of the slave factor and plantation owner Thomas Hibbert. 

Kingston: Harbour Street and King's Street – from James Hakewill's A Picturesque Tour in the Island of Jamaica (1825)

Allwood's connections with Spanish America would no doubt have included some involvement in the Jamaica/Mexico/Cadiz bullion trade possibly through Fitch and the Gordons who shipped specie from the island of Jamaica under contract with the London merchant bankers, Barings and Hope & Co of Amsterdam. Gordon & Murphy of Jamaica were major players in the mercantile world and much has been written about them. But it was Allwood's partnership with Baker & Dawson, major Liverpool slave traders who won the contract to supply Cuba with slaves, which should interest historians wanting to explore these networks more closely.

Ken Cozens and Derek Morris
Independent scholars

Further reading:
Philip Allwood, 'Report on the Spanish Slave Trade', November 1787, Add MS 34427, f.168. 
Adrian Pearce, British Trade with Spanish America, 1763–1808 (2007)
J. H. Parry, ‘Eliphalet Fitch: A Yankee trader in Jamaica during the War of Independence’, History, New Series, 40, no. 138/139 (1955): 84–98.

How did a black African slave come to be chosen as the leader of an Arab Gulf sheikhdom in 1937?

When Sheikh Said, Ruler of Kalba died on 30 April 1937, the leading citizens (or ‘notables’) of this small Trucial State elected his 12-year-old son Sheikh Hamad as his successor. This meant that a regent was needed to rule over Kalba until Hamad came of age. The choice of the notables was Barut bin Yakut, an African, and a man whose official status was that of slave.

Slavery had been largely abolished in the British Empire in 1833, but the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, most of which later became an informal part of the British Empire, retained the custom. Indeed, slavery in some Gulf states was not formally abolished until the 1960s.

Oilfields map of the Middle East [detail], showing Kalba: IOR/R/15/1/700, f 248.

There was a long history of the enslavement of East African people by Gulf slave traders, and Barut would have been part of this trade. However, Gulf slavery at this period is not to be compared with the worst historical excesses of slave ownership, and the system also presented talented people with opportunities for personal advancement.

It seems that Barut had lived in Kalba since the end of the nineteenth century. The sheikhdom, on the Gulf of Oman, became independent from Sharjah in 1903. By then Barut had risen to be the head slave of Sheikh Said, and acted as governor of the state during the Sheikh’s absence.

In the uncertainty that followed Sheik Said’s death in 1937, Barut initially fled Kalba, fearful of who might take over power. But following the election of the young Sheikh Hamad, the inability of the notables of Kalba to agree on a suitable choice for regent from amongst their own number led them – unanimously – to choose Barut, on the grounds that he was ‘capable, experienced and well acquainted with the affairs of the state’.

Letter dated 1 July 1937 from the notables of Kalba to the Political Agent, Bahrain informing him of their choice of Barut as regent for the boy Sheikh Hamad bin Said: IOR/15/2/2016, f 148.

The notables’ choice left the British authorities in the Gulf with a dilemma. Although there were precedents for slaves acting as heads of tribes in the region, any decision to formally recognise Barut as regent would be embarrassing given his legal status. The British also feared that the rulers of the other Trucial States (the modern United Arab Emirates) would be reluctant to accept a slave as de facto ruler.

Letter dated 13 August 1937 from the Secretary of the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf to the Political Agent, Bahrain, reporting the Political Resident’s view that official British recognition of a slave would appear ‘somewhat queer’ in the eyes of the Trucial Sheikhs IOR/R/15/2/2016, f 179.

In the event, the British authorities put pressure on the notables of Kalba to choose someone else, and the decision led to the appointment as regent of Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed, the former ruler of Sharjah and a close relative of the young Sheikh.

Despite being appointed Regent of Kalba, Sheikh Khalid preferred to spend his time sorting out tribal differences elsewhere, and control over Kalba’s day-to-day affairs was again left to Barut.

Kalba’s independent existence came to an end in 1952, when the state came back under the direct administration of Sharjah.

Martin Woodward
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library: 'File B/17 Kalba - Affairs regarding.'. IOR/R/15/2/2016
Frauke Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates (London and New York: Longman, 1982)
Jim Krane, Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City (London: Atlantic Books, 2009)
Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates (London: Macmillan, 1978).

For a brief period from 1657 to 1666 the East India Company traded to the Guinea Coast of West Africa.  Cargoes of textiles and manufactured goods were sent from England to be exchanged for gold and ivory which were shipped to India to support Company commercial operations.

Detail from facsimile map 1729 by d’Anville  in  George Peacock, The Guinea or Gold Coast of Africa  (Exeter, 1880)

The main English base was Fort Cormantine, but the East India Company also took over factories (trading posts) at Cape Coast and Wyamba (Winneba), and established new ones at Anto, Tantamkweri, and Benin. The factories were exclusively male domains – the Company had no intention of maintaining a proper settlement. Men were sent out to be merchants, soldiers and workmen.  Some did return to England, but the mortality rate from disease was very high. Over 50 deaths are recorded in the India Office Records, approximately half of those named as Company employees in West Africa. Frequent requests were sent to London for more men to be sent to replace the dead and sick. Agent Lancelot Staveley was given permission to return home in 1658: ‘I find my strength & ability of body soe much decayed by my long stay here that itt is dangerous for me to remaine longer’.

Rivalry between European powers on the Guinea Coast was keen, with each nation striving to gain the friendship of influential Africans. The English negotiated with  John Cloice (or Claessen), for the right to occupy Cape Coast Castle after it was surrendered by the Dutch.  Cloice was a powerful African merchant who was de facto ruler of Fetu from 1656 until his death in 1662. Friendly relations with the Africans were vital for successful trading, but disputes did break out from time to time.  Company merchant Nicholas Herrick’s behaviour offended the King of Aguinea and the factory at Wyamba was looted as a result.

The East India Company directors gave clear instructions that their merchants were not to participate in the slave trade supplying African labour to West Indian plantations, saying that this had previously proved very much to the Company’s ‘prejudice’. However the directors ordered the shipment of black labourers from the Guinea Coast to serve the Company elsewhere.  A total of 35 men and women are recorded as sailing for St Helena, Pulo Run and Bantam, some taken from the complement of labourers kept at Fort Cormantine. In June 1661 the Company merchants wanted to send a pinnace to Arda to procure black labourers since Africans recruited locally tended to run away.  The directors responded by stating that Africans must be willing to serve the Company and were not to be coerced. Captain John Mallinson of the ship American was instructed to take to St Helena twenty of the Africans at Fort Cormantine who could speak English, but the Company merchants refused to send away any of their labourers: ‘they have all wives and children in the country and will never thrive after beinge transported, and the sending away of some will cause all the rest to run into the countrey’.

The East India Company was forced to withdraw from the Guinea trade when Charles II granted a charter to the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa.  Jean Barbot’s journal of his voyage to Guinea 1678-1679 and a plan of Cape Coast Castle made for the Royal African Company in 1740 are currently on display in the British Library’s fascinating exhibition West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song which is open until 16 February 2016.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Margaret Makepeace, ‘English Traders on the Guinea Coast, 1657-1668: An analysis of the East India Company Archive’, History in Africa 16 (Atlanta, 1989).
Margaret Makepeace, Trade on the Guinea Coast 1657-1666: the correspondence of the English East India Company (Madison Wisconsin, 1991).

On 20 April 1732 William Cordeux, the East India Company’s factor in Kerman, was brutally murdered. He was reported to have been strangled to death by his own servants, the rationale for which seems to have been his own harshness towards his men. Of the four men blamed for the act, two fled and the other two ended up being captured by the Persian authorities not long afterward. Nathaniel Whitwell, the Company servant sent from Bandar Abbas to take over at Kerman, discovered that the situation was not nearly so simple as it would first appear.

Whitwell was first informed that Manna, Cordeux’s 'girl', was being pursued by the Persian authorities, who hoped to gain a portion of Cordeux’s wealth by seizing her. Manna seems to have started at as Cordeux’s slave, but was manumitted by him and stayed with her former master. After outflanking the Khan of Kerman in his plans to seize Manna, Whitwell was faced with two further problems.  Firstly, what was to be done with the two men already captured by the Persians?  Secondly, what to do with Manna? It transpired she had goaded Cordeux’s servants into killing him, no doubt helped by his own heavy-handedness.

 
From Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin, Persia and the Persians (London, 1887), p.199 BL flickr 

After sending for instructions, Whitwell was told in no uncertain terms that he should lobby for the execution of the murderers, which he believed would be possible with a well-placed and suitably large “gift” to the Khan. As for Manna, she was to be brought down from Kerman to Bandar Abbas and from there transported to Bombay to stand trial for her part in Cordeux’s death. It is interesting that the fates of the servants and Manna should be so different, presumably divided by sex, rather than culpability in the murder itself.

In the end, the servants captured by the Persians had the last laugh. Whitwell, having had to wait for instruction from his superiors in Bandar Abbas, had delayed the servants’ executions. The Khan, now demanding a bribe, was refused by the Agent in Bandar Abbas. The executions never seem to have taken place and it is unclear what happened to the murderers after this. Sadly, it is also not recorded what became of Manna, though it seems safe to say that she never saw any of Cordeux’s significant wealth after her trial in Bombay.

Peter Good
PhD candidate Essex University/British Library

Further reading:
IOR/G/29/5 Consultation books for the factories in Persia   
IOR/P/341/7a Correspondence received at Bombay

Plundered a ship of all its cargo, but want to look innocent? You could try what members of the Dashti tribe came up with when they seized a vessel laden with British goods that ran aground on the coast of Persia in 1826.

The vessel, an Arab merchant craft known as a buggalow, was bringing a cargo of linens, pepper, glass-ware and other goods from Bombay, and had almost reached her destination of Bushire in Persia, when she ran into a strong north-west wind. The captain, or nakhoda, began hugging the coast, when the buggalow struck a rock and started to take in water. Afraid that the vessel would sink, the nakhoda decided to run her aground at a place called Bordekhan in the territory of the Dashti tribe.

 The crew of 38 Arabs and eight Indian passengers proceeded to go ashore in a boat, but were immediately surrounded by a party of about 300 men, who stripped them of every article of clothing and left them ‘entirely naked’. They then threatened to behead the nakhoda on the spot, unless - and this is the ingenious part - he gave them ‘a paper to the effect that his vessel by the power of the Almighty had been wrecked off that coast, and that every article on board had been lost; that he had not sustained the slightest inconvenience from the hands of the inhabitants, and that neither he nor his men had been plundered of a single article of dress’.

Using a similar threat they compelled the ‘crany’ (the ship’s writer) to put the required statement in writing, obtained the signature of the nakhoda, and forced five of his crew to witness it. The Dashtis then told them that ‘they might go about their business’ (although how, exactly, they were supposed to go about their business stark naked on the Persian coast is not clear), and immediately commenced plundering the vessel.

Five black crew members were not so lucky. The Bordekhan people seized them and retained them as slaves.

However, the Dashtis’ cunning plan failed to work, as the nakhoda went straight to the East India Company Resident at Bushire and made a full statement of what had happened. A transcript of the statement is contained in the India Office Records letter book cited below.

Statement regarding the wreck and plunder of the bugla [buggalow] lately lost off Dashtee [Dashti], Bushire, 18 June 1826: IOR/R/15/1/36, f 89v

The Resident recruited the services of the British Envoy to the Court of Persia, Colonel John Macdonald, to make representations to the Persian authorities and demand the restoration of the vessel’s goods.

In reply, the Persian minister Zaki Khan was inclined to defend the actions of the Dashtis: within the preceding 22 years, over 20 vessels had been wrecked on the coast in question, in which cases it had been an ‘established custom’ for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to take possession of all the goods contained in the ship. Rather like Cornish wreckers, the minister clearly thought that the locals were entitled to a bit of plunder. However, to preserve good relations with the British he was prepared to order the return of the goods - in exchange for a full receipt, ‘in order to prevent any further discussion’.

Translation of a letter from His Excellency Zekee Khan [Zaki Khan] to Colonel Macdonald, Envoy to the Court of Persia [June 1826]: IOR/R/15/1/36, f 106r 

Martin Woodward
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further reading:
IOR/R/15/1/36  ‘Outward Letters Book No 42, 1st January 1826 to 31 July 1826’