Untold lives blog

Sharing stories from the past, worldwide

14 posts from September 2015

15 September 2015

‘A Severe Master’ - the murder of William Cordeux

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.

  Persian woman wearing indoor costume
From Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin, Persia and the Persians (London, 1887), p.199 BL flickr  Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

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

13 September 2015

Chocolate soldiers

On International Chocolate Day we are delighted to reveal that there is a file in the India Office Records devoted entirely to the question of issuing a ration of cocoa or chocolate to soldiers on troopships.

  Cover of India Office Military Department file about chocolate rationsIOR/L/MIL/7/8970  Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

In June 1894 Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Secretary of State for War, wrote to Henry Fowler, Secretary of State for India, about a recommendation that soldiers acting as guards on troopships should, at the discretion of their commanding officer, receive a ration of cocoa or chocolate at 4am.  The cost per ration would be ¼d.  In the unlikely event that the ration was issued every day, the expense to Indian Funds for both outward and homeward voyages would not exceed £40 each season.

 

  Advertisement for Fry's chocolate
Advertisement from The Sphere 22 November 1909, p. XVIII Images Online Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

Campbell-Bannerman considered that the ration would benefit the health of the troops, with a large number of respiratory diseases having been reported on homeward voyages in recent years. The cocoa or chocolate would bridge the long interval between the evening and morning meals, which was especially hard for men on night duty.  The expense had been authorised for voyages to and from the colonies and Campbell-Bannerman hoped that Fowler would do the same for India.

The ration was indeed sanctioned. with the Admiralty agreeing to supply it and reclaim the costs.  We hope that the soldiers enjoyed their 4am snack as much as the happy chap in the advert below!

 

Advertisement for Cadbury's cocoaAdvertisement from The Illustrated London News 13 December 1902, p.893 Images Online Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/MIL/7/8970 Messing rates & rations on Indian troopships

  

10 September 2015

Foretold lives?

These images appear in a 1653 publication by Richard Sanders, Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie.

      Images of faces from Richard Sanders' Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie
Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

Metoposcopy was the science of reading character and foretelling a person’s future from the lines on the forehead. Like astrology, the practice was grounded in the belief that man, the earth, and the heavens were intricately connected, and that correspondences between the three lay waiting to be uncovered. According to this system of belief, the conjunction of the planets influenced men’s dispositions and fates, and a person’s appearance gave clues to character. In his book, Sanders maps the seven known planets onto seven lines. Facial marks take on meaning: ‘A wart in the line of Mars denotes a cruel and bloody person’.  Other, non-planetary lines show a plainer correspondence: a broken line for a wound from a sword; wavy lines for death by drowning.

Although new scientific discoveries gradually weakened the belief in correspondences, the idea that the face proclaimed the man remained a popular one. In 1697 the diarist John Evelyn wrote in praise of physiognomy, using as example one of the most famous faces of the century: ‘Let him that would Write and Read the History of the late Times, particularly that of the late Usurper Cromwell, but seriously contemplate the Falls, and Lines of his ambiguous and double Face…to read in it, without other comment, Characters of the greatest Dissimulation, Boldness, Cruelty, Ambition in every touch and stroak’.

Sanders’s Physiognomie also includes chapters on plants, parts of the body, and bodily marks. Below is the key to a discussion on moles. Readers with facial moles -- black, red, or honey-coloured – might wish to consult the book to find out more. 

Face showing key to discussion on molesPublic Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

Antonia Moon
Lead Curator, Post-1858 India Office Records

Further reading:
Evelyn, John, Numismata: A Discourse of Medals…to which is added A Digression concerning Physiognomy (London, 1697)
Sanders or Saunders, Richard, Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie (London, 1653)

 

08 September 2015

Reading, writing, arithmetic – and leapfrog

On International Literacy Day we bring you the story of missionary Joseph Mullens teaching soldiers and sailors to read and write during the voyage of the clipper Malabar to Calcutta in 1860.

 

Books on a tablePublic Domain Creative Commons Licence

Image taken from Dexter and Garlick, Object Lessons in Geography for Standards I. II. & III (London,1899) BL flickr 

 

Joseph Mullens was a Congregationalist minister who served with the London Missionary Society in India. In 1845 he married Hannah Catherine Lacroix the daughter of a Swiss missionary. Hannah was fluent in Bengali and undertook educational work with local women.  They went in 1858 to England on furlough, returning to India in 1860.

The Mullens family set sail in the recently launched Malabar in September 1860: Joseph; Hannah; children Alice, Lucy, Kenneth, and baby Kate; Hannah’s sister Laura Overbeck Lacroix; and ayah Areka, ‘a jewell of a servant’  Many family members came to see them off at Gravesend including their ‘darling boy’ eight-year-old Eliot who was to be educated at a school in London. 

Joseph kept a fascinating journal of the voyage, detailing his fellow travellers and describing a typical day on board ship for both crew and passengers.  There were anxious moments when little Kenneth fell off a ladder onto his head and when bad weather struck the ship.  The family were kept busy throughout with religious and educational activities; Joseph commented at the start of the journey: ‘I find that my hands can easily be filled with useful employment’.  Joseph held religious services for passengers and for the troops being transported to India.  Bengali and Hindustani lessons were arranged. Laura Lacroix led separate classes for the young ladies on board in English and French dictation. 

Mullens sought permission to offer classes in reading, writing, arithmetic, and Bible instruction for the soldiers.  To his delight, sailors were also allowed the opportunity to learn.  On Saturday 15 September the soldiers’ class met for the first time: ‘22 were present.  Stirred up by good example, 14 of the crew have asked for lessons in reading & writing, & have the full sanction of the Capt. and chief officer to avail themselves as much as possible of all the instruction we can give’.  However Mullens was later to be disappointed in the numbers attending the classes, with a number of men having to be absent each day because of their onboard duties.

Although young Alice commented: ‘Don’t you think we have all gone knowledge mad?’, there were opportunities for less cerebral pastimes.  There were lively celebrations for ‘Crossing the Line’, and Mullens witnessed soldiers entertaining themselves with sessions of leapfrog followed by ‘a most funny game, pulling each other’s ears’.

The Malabar reached Calcutta in December 1860 after a rapid voyage of 96 days.  Sadly Hannah and Kate both died in 1861.  From 1865 Joseph travelled the world publicising and raising funds for the London Missionary Society: India, China, the United States, Canada, Madagascar, and finally central Africa where he fell ill and died in July 1879.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
MSS Eur A214 – journal of Joseph Mullens of voyage to Calcutta September- December 1860. [The author was identified as the Reverend Dawson when the journal was purchased by the British Library in 1992 because of an inscription inside the volume – the catalogue will now be corrected.]

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – Mullens, Joseph (1820-1879), missionary by Katherine Prior

Find the writings of Joseph and Hannah Mullens in Explore the British Library

 

03 September 2015

The Peter Rabbit Hotel

As the school summer holidays draw to a close, we bring you a story about a hotel where all the guests were children.

The Peter Rabbit Hotel in St Anne’s-on Sea Lancashire placed newspaper advertisements in 1951 describing itself as a small first-class hotel for children only.  The daily rates were 1½ guineas for babies and 1 guinea for children over 2 years.  Fees increased at Christmas to 2½ and 2 guineas respectively. Permanent residence cost £260 per annum.  An article headlined ‘Storybook hotel has seesaw in the lounge’ appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 14 May 1951.  The author was a young Keith Waterhouse, who started his career as a junior reporter in Leeds.

  Newspaper article about Peter Rabbit Hotel - photo of several children in large pram

British Newspaper Archive  - Yorkshire Evening Post 14 May 1951. Image © Johnston Press plc. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board. 

The hotel was the brainchild of Mary Hamilton, a nurse, and Mary Wilkinson, a teacher, who had found it difficult to find care for their children during working hours. Their daughters became the first residents at the Peter Rabbit Hotel.

Waterhouse noted that there were highchairs in the dining room, orange juice instead of gin and tonic, a nine-seater pram rather than a hotel bus, and a matron in place of a maître d’hotel. Children could stay for an hour or for a year, with a maximum of fifteen guests at a time. Girls between two weeks and twelve years were accepted, but the upper age limit for boys was seven years, ‘boys being more of a handful for the staff of two nurserymaids and two domestics’.

Each room was filled with toys and equipped with a toy telephone. The rooms were decorated and named after characters in Beatrix Potter books: Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and the Flopsy Bunnies. Waterhouse wondered if there was a Fierce Bad Rabbit room for wayward guests, but Mrs Hamilton assured him that she could manage without this. Pollyanna, the specially-built nine-seater pram, was used to transport children back and forth to the hotel’s private beach, and was photographed at Euston Station London full of young guests bound for St Anne’s.

In early 1952 newspapers show a change of name to the Teddy Bear Hotel – a rights issue perhaps?  Advertisements for the newly-branded hotel continued until 1953 and then seem to stop.  Can any of our readers tell us what happened to Mrs Hamilton, Mrs Wilkinson, and Pollyanna?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive – for example Yorkshire Evening Post 14 May 1951, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 13 April 1951 and 14 April 1953

  
Image of Peter Rabbit and a horse used for exhibtion publicity
Visit Animal Tales – a free British Library exhibition open until Sunday 1 November 2015

 

 

 

  

01 September 2015

Scaremonger or Patriot? Lionel Horton Smith and War with Germany

Debates about Britain’s decision to go to war in 1914 typically focus on the actions of its government. We hear less about pressure groups which encouraged preparation for war with Germany. The Imperial Maritime League was one of the noisiest.

Imperial Maritime League poster

Imperial Maritime League. "Wake up England !" Tab.11748.a. poster 180. Images Online  Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

The league was co-founded in 1908 by Lionel Graham Horton Smith and Harold Wyatt. Both were senior members of the Navy League, but they became disillusioned with its refusal to criticise the Admiralty and Liberal government.

The two men were obsessed with the possibility that Germany might overtake Britain as a naval power. But far from disliking Kaiser Wilhelm II, Wyatt and Horton Smith admired his militarism. Their criticisms were instead directed at British society, for being ignorant about its reliance on the Royal Navy and lacking the resolve to fight rival empires.

 Wyatt believed in the necessity of war for national survival, though he lacked direct experience of the armed forces. Horton Smith, a lawyer, had some experience in the army. He wrote prolifically on the classics and Scottish culture, and deposited a large cache of the league’s surviving documents with the British Library on 21 October 1933.

 

  Imperial Maritime League Pamphlet
Imperial Maritime League Pamphlet X.631/742  Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

Over a thousand members of the Navy League departed with Horton Smith and Wyatt to form the Imperial Maritime League, including famous names such as Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also received support from some right-wing newspapers.

The league made progress in fund raising and organising large-scale petitions and rallies. These demanded increased naval spending and opposed international agreements that curtailed the Royal Navy’s capacity to wage war. Rattled by its upstart rival, the Navy League overhauled its organisation and campaigning, and as a result expanded its membership and political influence. With its thunder stolen, the Imperial Maritime League struggled to appear credible. Journalists mocked its campaigns as irrelevant, extremist and hyperbolic.

Exhausted and demoralised, Wyatt and Horton Smith resigned as joint secretaries in 1913. Wyatt left completely. Horton Smith remained to help the new management. But he became embroiled in petty internal squabbles typical of small extremist organisations. In August 1914, just before war broke out, the league was reduced to promoting its cause to tourists in Devon.

Yet the war supplied a new role for the league and Horton Smith. He headed its ‘Villages and Rural Districts Enlightenment and Recruiting Campaign’, lecturing young men on the necessity of enlisting. And he published a stream of pamphlets justifying the conflict, all deposited at the British Library.

 

Imperial Maritime League Pamphlets

Imperial Maritime League Pamphlets X.631/742 Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

The Imperial Maritime League ceased in 1921, but it had unintentionally helped to revive the Navy League. The latter continues to the present day as the Sea Cadet Corps.

Horton Smith’s campaigning on behalf of the Imperial Maritime League corrects the popular misconception that war with Germany was unexpected in 1914. It also reminds us that sections of British society desired such a conflict, not only to stem the rise of Germany as a world power, but also to ‘improve’ British society.

 

Imperial Maritime League pamphlet

 Imperial Maritime League Pamphlets X.631/742  Public Domain Creative Commons Licence

 

Neil Fleming
Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Worcester

Further reading:
N.C. Fleming, ‘The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict and the Radical Right, c. 1907–1920’, War in History, 23, 3 (2016).

Discover the work of Lionel Graham Horton Smith through Explore the British Library