Untold lives blog

In 1814 the East India ship Arniston was chartered as a British Government transport.  The ship sailed from Portsmouth in June and made for Ceylon, via Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Colombo in January 1815.

The old lighthouse, flagstaff, and gun battery at Colombo from John Ferguson, Ceylon in 1893 (London, 1893) British Library shelfmark: Digital Store 010057.e.2

The Arniston sailed on its return voyage from Ceylon on 4 April 1815 in a convoy with two Royal Navy ships and six East Indiamen.  Squally weather and heavy seas drove the ship away from the convoy.  All the sails were blown away or bent.  On 30 May 1815 the ship heeled and broke apart near Cape Lagullas or Aguilhas at the southern tip of Africa.

Only six of the crew managed to reach the shore and survive: Charles Stewart Scott, Philip Shea, William Drummond, William Fish, Thomas Mansfield, and John Lewis .  They tried to walk to safety but feared they were lost, so returned to the wreck and subsisted mainly on a cask of oatmeal which had come ashore.  On 14 June they were discovered by a farmer’s son who was out shooting.  The men stayed with the farmer for a week and then set off for Cape Town, arriving there on 26 June to tell their tragic tale.

Report of the wreck of the Arniston, naming the survivors and dead - Mirror of the Times 28 October 1815 British Newspaper Archive

About 345 men, women, and children drowned.  There were British Army invalids, and about 100 seamen from British warships in India.  The named fatalities included Lord Molesworth, Lt Col in the 2nd Ceylon Regiment, and his wife Frances; Lt Gilbert Brice, Royal Navy Agent for Transports; and Anna Twisleton, 12-year-old daughter of the Archdeacon of Colombo.

In September 1815 reports of the wreck began to appear in British newspapers.  Death notices were placed by the families of some of the victims, including one for seventeen-year-old Samuel Nugent Legh Richmond., eldest son of Reverend Legh Richmond of Turvey in Bedfordshire.  His father had planned for Nugent, as he was known, to follow him into the priesthood, and was very disappointed when the young man decided that he wanted to go to sea.  Nugent was found a place in a merchant vessel sailing to Ceylon – the Arniston.  In June 1814 Reverend Richmond said goodbye to his son at Portsmouth, giving him a Bible.

The family received letters from Nugent written on the outward voyage, expressing his regret for his past conduct and his hope that one day he would be a consolation to his parents.  Then his father saw reports of the loss of the Arniston. Nugent was not listed amongst the survivors and his family was plunged into mourning.

But in the winter, a letter from Nugent arrived.  He had not embarked for the return voyage of the Arniston and seemed unaware of what had happened to the ship.  He was then third officer of the brig Kandian.

Nugent stayed in Asia, working in different merchant ships.  In 1824 he was shipwrecked, losing his private investment in the voyage and nearly all his personal belongings except for a small trunk containing his Bible, a copy of Annals of the Poor, two suits of clothes, and his watch.  A subscription of 100 guineas was raised by Reverend Thomas Thomason to help him.

Having postponed marrying his fiancée in Calcutta until he had made money on another voyage, Nugent returned to discover that she had died in his absence.  Nugent then decided to go to his family in England, but died of fever on the way.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Asiatic Journal 2 (1816) pp.32-34 - wreck of the Arniston
Thomas Shuttleworth Grimshawe, A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond (5th edition, 1829) 
Thomas Fry, Domestic portraiture… (London, 1835)

A recently catalogued collection of India Office Private Papers is now available to researchers in the British Library’s Asian & African Studies reading room.  This comprises the papers of Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner, British Army and Burma Frontier Service; and his wife Penelope Tanner, writer, photographer and illustrator.

Army identity card for Ralph Tanner Mss Eur F747/3/1

During the Second World War, Ralph Tanner was part of the Commando unit Layforce that saw desperate fighting in Crete in 1941, and served with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry during the retreat from Burma in 1942.  His health seriously damaged by this, he spent long periods in hospital in India, before returning to England to recover.  While in England he met his wife Penelope Dell, and they were married in May 1944.  He returned to Burma a year later as part of the British Military Government, before transferring to civil employ as the Assistant Resident at Namhsan.  In May 1948, he travelled to Tanzania on Colonial Service, soon to be joined by Penelope.  They spent the next seventeen years living and working in Africa, before returning to the UK in 1965.  The collection contains Ralph’s letters to his parents describing his experiences in Crete and Burma 1941-43, and letters to his wife Penelope while settling into his new job in Burma in 1945-46.

Description of an air raid Mss Eur F747/1/9 f.25

The collection also has letters from Penelope to Ralph.  These date from before they were married up to just before Penelope left England to join him in Burma in late 1946.  These very personal letters document their developing relationship, family politics, their wedding, the health of themselves and their young son, and planning their future together.  When the series of letters began in late 1943, the Second World War was still raging, with regular air raids on London.  In one letter written in January 1944, she described a close call: ‘The second air raid we had was very noisy too, and most unlike me I went downstairs, and as I got to the bottom a piece of shrapnel came hurtling down the lift shaft, hit one of the supports and ricocheted against the wall about 3 inches above my head, and shot down into the basement’.

Design for table by Penelope Tanner Mss Eur F747/1/18 f.62

One fascinating aspect of Penelope’s letters is the light they shine on the amount of work required of her to organise moving herself and her baby son out to Burma to begin a new life with her husband.  From packing all their possessions, arranging shipping, dealing with travel agents, obtaining the correct travel documents, to even thinking about what furniture they would need in their new bungalow in Burma.  Being a skilled illustrator, Penelope sent Ralph sketches of furniture she thought they might need with precise measurements and instructions on having them made by Burmese craftsmen.

Oryx Antelope - photograph by Penelope Tanner Mss Eur F747/2/5

A very creative person, Penelope Tanner was a writer, photographer and illustrator.  The collection includes several unpublished manuscripts written by her.  They range from short stories, articles, a crime novel, a series of stories on cave dwellers in Kenya, and a memoir of her life in Burma with her husband and son.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Papers of Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner (1921-2017), Burma Frontier Service 1939-1946; and his wife Penelope Tanner (nee Dell) (1918-1985), collection reference Mss Eur F741, available to view in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, and the catalogue is searchable on Explore Archives and Manuscripts.

Other Tanner papers held at the British Library:
• Mss Eur Photo Eur 411: Copies of letters from Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner, 1945-46.
• Mss Eur C522: Paper on `Religion and Economics: Kodaung Hill Tracts, Burma, 1945-8 and Sukumaland, Tanganyika 1951-5' by Dr Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner, 1990.
• C63/197 (formerly Mss Eur R195): Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner interviewed by David M. Blake, 7th August 1990.

Burma 1942: memories of a retreat: the diary of Ralph Tanner, KOYLI by R.E.S. Tanner and D.A. Tanner (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2019), BL reference YKL.2020.a.10619.

It’s May the Fourth – Star Wars Day.  So it’s appropriate to feature Mark Hamill of the East India Company on the blog.

Mark Hamill petitioned the Company for a position as a clerk in the Pay Office at East India House in January 1761.  He was appointed on 4 February on an augmented annual salary of £40 because of his age (25) and his experience in business.  Hamill had to give security of £500 to guarantee his honesty and good behaviour.  The money was put up by his father Mark Hamill senior, a draper, and William Connop, a surgeon, both of Mile End in East London.

'Entrance from Mile End or Whitechapel Turnpike' by Heinrich Joseph Schütz, – Views of London No.5 published I June 1 1798 at Ackermann's Gallery British Library Maps K.Top.22.6.e. BL flickr

On 16 December 1759 Mark Hamill junior married Ann Parsons in Hackney.  The couple had three sons – Hans Mark, born September 1760; Hugh Nicholas born April 1762, died July 1762; and Mark Hans born August 1763.

Unfortunately Mark Hamill had a very short career with the East India Company.  He died in May 1764 and was buried at St Dunstan Stepney.  Mark’s will was made on 7 April 1764 when he was ‘weak and infirm of Body’.  His wife Ann is not mentioned in the will although she was still alive.  He left his property to be divided equally between his sons Hans Mark and Mark Hans when they reached the age of 21.  The furniture and household goods in the apartments he occupied were owned by his father and should be retained by him.  He named his father as the executor of the will and only guardian of his children, with the request to ensure that the boys were properly educated and brought up.  Sadly Mark Hans died in July 1764, shortly before his first birthday, meaning that Hans was now the sole (or solo?) heir.

Greyabbey, County Down, from Picturesque views of the Antiquities of Ireland Drawn on stone by J. D. Harding, from the sketches of Robert O'Callaghan Newenham (London, 1830) British Library Digital Store 10390.k.2 BL flckr 

Mark Hamill senior died in 1771.  His will left instructions for his burial in the parish church of Greyabbey near Belfast – the Hamills were an Irish family.  The bulk of his estate was left in trust for the support, maintenance, education, clothing, bringing up, and placing out of his grandson Hans Mark.  The trustees appointed were his brother Hans Hamill of Ballyatwood in County Down, grocer Abraham Brecknock and linen draper Felix Smith, both of St Botolph Aldgate London.  Hans Mark was to inherit in his own right at the age of 25.

In 1775 Hans Mark was apprenticed to linen draper James Wadham of High Street Southwark.  He was living in Chichester and serving as an ensign in the Sussex Militia when he married Jane Shoubridge at Horsham on 23 January 1779.  As both bride and groom were aged nineteen, they had to have parental consent.  Hans Mark’s mother Ann is recorded on the marriage licence as giving her consent and is described as a widow of Stoke Newington, Middlesex.

Jane died just four years later and was buried at St Mary Horsham in April 1783.  In 1785 Hans Mark married Frances, daughter of Thomas Bateson, a wine merchant of Orangefield in Ireland.  They lived at the Hamill family home of Ballyatwood, where Hans Mark died in 1796.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

With thanks to Lesley Shapland for pointing out Mark Hamill in the India Office Records.

Further reading:
IOR/B/76 pp.321.325 East India Company Court of Directors’ Minutes January-February 1761.
IOR/L/AG/9/4/13 Pay accounts for Mark Hamill 1761-1764.
The National Archives for the Prerogative Court of Canterbuty wills for Mark Hamill junior proved 15 May 1764, and Mark Hamill senior proved 26 August 1771.
Calendar of Sussex marriage licences recorded in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Chichester for the Archdeaconry of Chichester, January 1775 to December 1800, compiled by Edwin H. W. Dunkin and edited by D. Macleod, Sussex Record Society ; Vol. XXXV (1929).

‘Many and varied are the difficulties which beset a woman, when she first exchanges her European home and its surroundings for the vicissitudes of life in the tropics.’  These are the opening words of Tropical trials – A Handbook for Women in the Tropics.  ‘This sudden and complete upset of old-world life, and the disturbance of long existing associations, produces, in many women, a state of mental chaos, that utterly incapacitates them for making due and proper preparations for the contemplated journey.'

Major S Leigh Hunt, Madras Army, and Alexander S Kenny, Tropical trials – A handbook for women in the tropics (London, 1883)

The book was published in 1883 by Major Shelley Leigh Hunt of the Madras Army and Alexander S Kenny, demonstrator of anatomy at King’s College London, as a companion work to their On Duty Under a Tropical Sun which had been intended for the use of men. The authors had received several requests from women to write a book for them with guidance about health, clothing, travelling and the management of children in the tropics – India, Burma, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Melanesia.

They claim that the ‘physical resources of women in withstanding the hardships and discomforts imposed upon them’ by tropical life are limited compared to men.  But a woman of sound sense can maintain her body and mind in a healthy state by anticipating the difficulties, and be victorious in her struggle with tropical trials.

Clothing and outfit
Grey or dust-coloured dress is recommended for travelling on land or railway.  A pith solar topee is not becoming but essential to avoid danger from the sun.  A silk gossamer veil worn with the topee cuts out glare and dust.

A variety of equipment is suggested – trunks; travelling baths; mosquito curtains; punkahs; goggles; lounge chairs for shipboard use; guide books and maps; toilet requisites; sheet music; books and stationery; saddlery; lamps; candlesticks; cutlery; china and glass; tea trays; household linen; insect powder; sewing machine; piano; refrigerator; mincing machine; coffee mill; knife-cleaning machine; scales and weights; crumb brush and tray; tool chest; chess and backgammon sets; garden seeds; bats, nets and balls for lawn tennis.

Travel
The book moves on to hints for travelling by sea, rail and road. Advice is given about shipboard life, and going ashore: ‘No lady should ever attempt to land at any port of call without the protection of a male escort’.

Diet
In temperate climates, ‘injudicious indulgence’ results in temporary indisposition but in hot climates could be disastrous, perhaps resulting in permanent damage to health.  Plain wholesome food is necessary to keep a woman in good health, not tasty ‘kickshaws’ calculated to create an abnormal craving for highly seasoned and harmful snacks.  Women should abstain from alcohol except in cases of sickness and under medical advice.

There are hints on domestic economy - servants, houses in the tropics, stables, dogs, and gardens.

Maintenance of health and the treatment of simple maladies
This section is 200 pages long.  One treatment which caught my eye was belladonna linament for sweaty feet.

Management and rearing of children
‘Children of European parentage are difficult to rear in the tropics’ – their constitutions are unduly taxed by a climate which pushes forward their growth whilst making heavy demands on their physical resources.  In the way that forced vegetables lack flavour, these ‘hot-house nurselings’ generally lack the vigour and stamina possessed by children reared in more favourable conditions.  Parents therefore send their children to Europe if circumstances permit.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Major S Leigh Hunt, Madras Army, and Alexander S Kenny, Tropical trials – A handbook for women in the tropics (London, 1883), British Library shelfmark 7581.bb.10.

Following on from Walker’s Manly Exercises, we bring you, by the same author, Exercises for Ladies; calculated to preserve and improve beauty, and to prevent and correct personal defects, inseparable from constrained or careless habits: founded on physiological principles.  This book was first published in 1836.

Donald Walker claimed that few young women were exempt from some degree of deformity which always increased with age.  These deformities were caused by the women performing nearly every act of their lives in a one-sided manner.  Prevention required an equal and similar use of the other side of the body.

Bad positions leading to a crooked spine

The book was divided into several sections.

Physiological Principles – the structure of the body, the vertebral column, the chest.

Functions of the body connected with exercise – locomotion, nutritive, thinking.  The effects of excessive exercise – exhaustion of the cerebral and spinal nervous system, and premature ageing of appearance.

Debility caused by constraint – whalebone stays causing debility and wrong positions.: ‘The little girl, in the attempt to render her thin and genteel, speedily becomes hump-backed’.  If boys are straight in figure without the aid of whalebone stays, why shouldn’t girls be the same?

Wrong and right positions in writing

Wrong positions which resulted from debility and from the employment of muscles unfavourably situated – standing, sitting, writing, drawing, guitar-playing, harp-playing, riding, lying in bed, all the acts of common life.

Guitar-playing – wrong and right positions

Playing the harp – wrong and right positions

Standing – if standing for a long time, the tendency to balance on one leg throws out the hip and distorts the spine.
Sitting – by always sitting on the same side of the window or fire, persons lean to one side, and this has the effect of raising one shoulder.

Injuries done by wrong positions to locomotive organs and functions, vital organs and functions, mental organs and functions.Utility of exercises to locomotive, nutritive, and thinking systems.

Exercises – active (the body is moved and agitated by its own powers); passive (the body is moved without any effort of its own); mixed.

Position of figure – standing (‘females, in particular, find the standing position very fatiguing’ because of the size of their pelvis), walking, dancing.

Exercises for the arms (rod, dumb-bells, Indian sceptre, clubs). Walker describes Indian sceptre exercises practised in the Army with clubs.

Indian sceptre exercises

Exercises for the limbs (balance step, walking at different speeds, running and leaping).

Walking – the quick pace

Running and leaping – ‘Owing to the excessive shocks which both of these exercises communicate, neither of them are congenial to women’.  So Walker moved quickly on to exercises for the feet.

Dancing – Ladies were to dance in a very different manner from gentlemen – ‘lithesome and graceful motions’.  Every lady was to desist from dancing as soon as she felt any difficulty breathing –‘oppression and overheating render the most beautiful dancer an object of ridicule or of pity’.

Gesture.

Deportment – how to curtsey.

The curtsey

Games – ‘Le Diable Boiteux’ (which exercised shoulders), 'La Grace' (catching hoops on sticks), skipping rope, shuttlecock and battledore, bow and arrow.

Geary’s Exercise Stays

Walker recommended exercise stays invented by Mrs Nicholas Geary of 61 St James’s Street.  He said that these stays were absolutely essential for all exercises of the arms, especially the Indian exercises for which they were constructed.  Their pressure on every part of the chest was slight as the very elastic shoulder straps were longer and fixed lower than usual, and they also played freely in the lateral direction under a transverse band at the back.

Advertisement for Mrs Nicholas Geary’s stays from Morning Herald (London) 3 October 1836 British Newspaper Archive

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Donald Walker, Exercises for Ladies 

The fourth child of Chaund Bebee and John Shore was their son George born on 1 July 1785. He was baptised in Calcutta on 11 May 1788.

George was living in Bengal in 1825.  By 1835 his residence was 4 Carlton Chambers, Regent Street, where his brother Francis had lived.  He later lived off Edgware Road at Cambridge Terrace and Sussex Gardens, and lastly at Pembridge Place, Bayswater.

George’s business interests intertwined with his brothers John and Francis.  He was an East India Company stockholder and active in the Marine Society, and it appears that he travelled between India and England.  For example, in March 1832 George was a passenger in the Charles Grant sailing to Calcutta.

George Shore named as a passenger for Calcutta in the Charles Grant, British Newspaper Archive Bombay Gazette 20 June 1832

He must have kept in touch with his mother Chaund Bebee as her will made in 1836 commented on his financial situation.  She left George a ring which had belonged to his father, asking him to wear it as testimony of her love. George’s half-sister Eliza Cordelia Sherriff was to show him the ring in their mother’s belongings.

Bequest of ring to George Shore from his mother Chaund Bebee, British Library IOR/L/AG/34/27/114.

George and his brother John are mentioned in the journal of Margaret Emily Shore, the granddaughter of their uncle Reverend Thomas William Shore.  In November 1838 Margaret Emily was staying in Wimpole Street London on her way to Madeira for health reasons (she died there in July 1839).  She reported that her brother Richard had received kind and warm invitations from Charles Lord Teignmouth, John Shore, George Shore and many others, so that he would have plenty of homes during his holidays from Haileybury College.

George Shore died aged 73 on 26 November 1858 at his home in Bayswater.  His will, written in 1851, asked that he should be buried at Highgate Cemetery.  He made bequests to his servants, past and present, and was especially generous to Martha Garskin who had been in his service since 1835.  Martha was to receive the choice of one of his gold watches, a clock, one of his Bibles, one of his prayer books, all his household linen and wearing apparel, together with £50 for her ‘present expenses’ and an annuity to enable her to end her days in comfort.

Bequests were also made to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and for an annual Christmas distribution to the poor of the parish where George died.  One executor, John Patch, barrister, was given George’s volumes of prints or caricatures by Hogarth and Gillray and the other, Jonathan Duncan Dow, was to have six dozen of the best wines from George’s cellar.

His brother John’s family were named in the will.  Jessie Hildyard, George’s great-niece and godchild, was to receive £200 as a memento.  Niece Elizabeth Shore at Pinhoe was left £65.  Nephew John Shore was given ‘nil’.  This explicit exclusion is perhaps explained by the allegations of drunkenness and offensive behaviour found in the divorce petition lodged by John’s wife Anna Maria shortly before his death in 1861.

The residue of George’s estate was left to his half-brother Charles John Shore, Lord Teignmouth, in whose hands it would be ‘well appropriated and expended, those calling themselves my relatives or connections being well off and provided as to worldly affairs’.

Our next story in this series will look at the life of George’s half-sister Eliza Cordelia, Chaund Bebee’s daughter with Charles Rothman.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Baptism of George Shore at Calcutta 11 May 1788 IOR/N/1/4 f.52.
Westminster Rate Books via Findmypast.
Journal of Emily Shore (London, 1898) British Library shelfmark 10856.de.14.

The will of Chaund Bebee or Bebee Shore

The children of Chaund Bebee and John Shore – (1) John Shore

The children of Chaund Bebee and John Shore – (2) Francis and Martha Shore

When sixteen-year-old Thomas John Crawford joined the Second Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers in August 1906 he was escaping a turbulent home life.  His parents Clara (née Jones) and Alfred were married on 8 July 1888 in Chester, and daughter Annie arrived later that year.  Thomas was born in Chester in 1890, younger brother William in Liverpool in 1894.  By this point, the marriage was at breaking point, and Alfred deserted his wife and children, leaving Clara to apply for poor relief.

Report of Alfred Crawford's court case, British Newspaper Archive Chester Chronicle 13 August 1898

In 1897, after dodging the law, Alfred appeared at Chester Petty Sessions and was sentenced to two months in jail.  The Justices were outraged at ‘one of the worst cases ever brought before them’ - Crawford earned a decent salary of around £2 per week as a compositor while his wife was claiming poor relief.  However the prison sentence was not enough to persuade Crawford to support his family, and he was sentenced to three months’ hard labour in August 1898.  By 1901 he had moved to Wales, and spent the period from 1911 to his death in 1925 as a ‘single’ man living in a boarding house in Warrington.  Clara moved on with her life, ‘marrying’ Samuel Griffiths in 1901 and starting another family.  As an abandoned wife she must have felt morally, if not legally, justified in marrying again.

Photograph of Quetta cantonment early 1890s - British Library IOR/L/MIL/7/6553

Thomas Crawford headed overseas, arriving in Shwebo, Burma, in early 1908.  On 31 December 1910, he left Rangoon for Karachi, en route for Quetta, Balochistan.  The Royal Welch took part in the series of events connected with the visit of George V and Queen Mary in that year, including the Coronation Durbar.  The Regimental Records of the Royal Welch state: ‘The Battalion is doing well and is very efficient… Men are clean, healthy and cheerful. There is a tremendous esprit de corps… I consider the Battalion has improved much during its stay in Quetta’.  Thomas’s service record shows a charge against him for neglect of duty, insubordination, and being absent from parade in November 1911, so perhaps Quetta did not improve him personally!  Despite this blemish, he is described as ‘Honest, sober and thoroughly reliable’.

Defaulter sheet from the service record of Thomas John Crawford, UK British Army World War I Service Records 1914-1920, The National Archives WO 363

Thomas returned from India in March 1913, transferring to the Army Reserve.  He married his cousin Elsie Maud Jones in July 1914, but Thomas, like many of the Royal Welch reservists, re-enlisted in early August 1914.  He was immediately sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, serving there for two periods during 1914 and mid-1915, before being shot in the thigh and returning home to recuperate.

October 1915 saw Thomas leave for the Mesopotamia campaign, and by February 1916 he was in Basra.  A report describes the conditions: ‘The whole theatre of operations is as flat as a billiard table. It is impossible to locate one’s position except by compass bearing and pacing.  This induces in the individual a sense of isolation and an impotent feeling of being lost.  The mirage also distorts and confuses all objects…Man in these surroundings feels like an ant on a skating rink… Under the effect of rain or flood the country is turned into a bog of particularly tenacious mud’.  Thomas went missing in action on 9 April 1916 - his body could not be found.  His death was formally certified at Basra on 28 August 1917.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further reading:
Reports of Alfred Crawford’s desertion of his wife and family can be found in the Chester Chronicle, 25 December 1897, 18 June 1898 and 13 August 1898, available at the British Newspaper Archive, also via www.findmypast.co.uk.
Regimental Records of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, late the 23rd Foot. Compiled by A. D. L. Cary ... & Stouppe McCance, 4 vols. (London: Royal United Service Institution, 1921-29) - quote from p.326.
IOR/L/MIL/7/6553: Defensive works in Quetta: plans and photographs 1888-1891.
New Horizons Volume 2 Number 1 2008 Cadet Gregory E. Lippiatt ‘No More Quetta Manners: The Social Evolution of the Royal Welch Fusiliers on the Western Front’.
IOR/l/MIL/15/72/1: Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917, Part I Report (Calcutta; Government of India Press, 1925) - quote from p.66.
1911 Census records the 300 men of the Second Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers at the Roberts Barracks, Quetta.  Available via www.findmypast.co.uk and www.ancestry.co.uk. 

Francis and Martha, the second and third children of Chaund Bebee and John Shore, were baptised together in Calcutta on 2 February 1785.  John Shore was at that time a senior merchant in the service of the East India Company.  Francis was born about 1781 and Martha in about 1783.

When Francis made his will in 1825, he said that he had lately resided in Bengal but now lived in Regent Street, Westminster.  The Westminster Rate Books show his address as 4 Carlton Chambers, Regent Street.  Carlton Chambers was purpose-built for letting out as sets of rooms. A resident porter looked after the building, and a female servant also lived on the premises to light fires and clean for tenants.

Carlton Chambers in Regent Street from Tallis's London Street Views. No. 17, Regent Street, Division IV (1838)

Francis’s business interests were closely linked to his brothers John and George.  He was an East India Company stockholder and active in the Marine Society.  In 1832 Francis was elected a member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

On 5 November 1834 Francis Shore died aged 53 at his home in Regent Street, after a short illness of 4½ hours.  He was buried at St Pancras Church.  A memorial tablet originally on the west wall of the church is now in the crypt. 

Francis’s will bequeathed his estate in trust to his brothers John and George and his sister Martha, and after their deaths to their lawful children.  A bequest was made to John’s ‘natural’ daughter Elizabeth Shore who was living at Guilford Street London with her father and his family. Elizabeth was left 20,000 sicca rupees, or the equivalent in British currency, to be paid out of her father’s share at his death before it was divided between his other children.  Although Francis identified Elizabeth as his niece, a clear distinction was made between her and John's legitimate offspring.

St Sidwell's Church Exeter from British Newspaper Archive Illustrated London News 22 February 1845 Image © Illustrated London News Group

Martha Shore also moved from Bengal to England. She married Peter Mann Osborne on 28 September 1813 at St Sidwell's Church Exeter, Devon.  Osborne was a Church of England priest who was curate for the parish of Heavitree just outside Exeter.  They started their married life in a ‘neat modern-built’ house at Salutary Mount.

Sale of house occupied by Reverend Osborne at Heavitree - British Newspaper Archive Exeter Flying Post  11 August 1814

The couple moved to the village of Pinhoe, where Martha died aged 50 on 8 September 1834 after a severe illness.  She was buried at Clyst Hydon.

The 1841 and 1851 censuses show Martha’s niece Elizabeth Shore living with Reverend Osborne at Pinhoe.  Osborne died in Pinhoe at a house called Petersfield aged 81 in June 1860.  In his will he made provision for Elizabeth to live at Petersfield and have use of its contents for the rest of her life.  After Elizabeth’s death, Osborne's estate was to pass to the eldest son of his brother Thomas Osborne, and to Letitia Hildyard (née Shore, Elizabeth’s half-sister), her husband Frederick Hildyard, and their children.

In 1861 Elizabeth Shore was living at Petersfield with three servants and was described in the census as a landed proprietor.  She died there on 20 May 1865 aged 62.  Her will describes Peter Mann Osborne as ‘my deceased friend’.  She bequeathed her property in investments to the children of Letitia Hildyard.

Sale of Petersfield - British Newspaper Archive Exeter Flying Post  20 September 1865

Petersfield and its contents were put up for sale soon after Elizabeth’s death under the terms of Peter Mann Osborne’s will.

Sale of Peter Mann Osborne’s furniture and household effects -British Newspaper Archive Exeter Flying Post 6 September 1865

The next post in this series will look at the life of George Shore, Chaund Bebee’s youngest son.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Baptism of Francis and Martha Shore at Calcutta 2 February 1785 IOR/N/1/4 f.11.
Death of Francis Shore – British Newspaper Archive English Chronicle 6 November 1834 and Satirist 9 November 1834.
Will and estate papers for Francis Shore - IOR/L/AG/34/29/57 pp.21-36; IOR/L/AG/34/27/108 p.574; IOR/L/AG/34/29/3; IOR/L/AG/34/27/109 p.262.
Death of Martha Shore - British Newspaper Archive Western Times 13 September 1834.
Death of Elizabeth Shore - British Newspaper Archive Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 26 May 1865.
Westminster Rate Books via Findmypast
Information about Carlton Chambers 
The will of Chaund Bebee or Bebee Shore 
The children of Chaund Bebee and John Shore – (1) John Shore