Untold lives blog

In late 1944, as Allied forces gradually re-took territory from German control in Europe, increasing numbers of prisoners of war were liberated.  These POWs needed to be organised and assessed before either being sent back to service or returned home.  The India Office Records holds several files on this process for Indian POWs, which gives an insight into the challenges of such a complex task.

Leaflet to all British Commonwealth Ex-Prisoners of War -  IOR/L/WS/1/709 

By the late summer of 1944, it was estimated that around 12,000 Indian POWs, together with Indian seamen and civilian internees would come into Allied hands.  Lieutenant General Molesworth, at the India Office in London, was anxious that sufficient funds be provided for rehabilitation and recreation for the POWs at the camps before their onward transit to India.  In a memo to his colleagues he stated: 'I think you will agree that these men may be kept for some time in this country and after their experiences we should do all we can to make their stay a happy one and restore their morale before they embark for India'.

Map showing location of Reception Camps in UK -  IOR/L/WS/1/709 

By November, the Prisoner of War Organisation was in full operation, with camps at the following locations:
• Near Thetford, Norfolk: Headquarters at Shadwell Court; Reception Centre at Southwood; and camps at Snareshill and Riddlesmere.
• Near Brandon, Norfolk: Rest camp at Lower Didlington, and Indian hospitals at Weeting Hall and Upper Didlington.
• Near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: a rest camp at Fornham.
• Near Much Hadham, Herts: a rest camp at Wynches
• London: a leave camp at Dean Lodge, Roehampton.

Layout of Indian Reception Camps -  IOR/L/WS/1/709

The files do not contain lists of names of the Indian POWs who passed through the camps, but they contain copies of a ‘War Diary or Intelligence Summary’ which gives fascinating details on how they spent their time. 

War Diary for August 1945 - IOR/L/WS/1/705

Entertainments were arranged, such as regular screenings of films (both Indian and English) in the Public Cinema Hall in Thetford, and lectures at the India Forces Club.  Volunteers helped at local farms picking potatoes and peas, and there were visits to local fairs and industries, such as a visit to the Vauxhall motor works at Luton and to the Suffolk Cattle Show at Ipswich.  Some camps held classes in arts and crafts, with lessons on carpentry, leatherwork and knitting.  One camp was treated to a variety show of Russian dancers, a conjurer and jugglers.  Sport was always popular, with a Regimental tournament held in August 1945, with football, volleyball, basketball, tug of war, Kabaddi, wrestling, long and high jumps and races.  On 16 June 1945 the rest camp at Didlington received a visit from the King and Queen who enjoyed a parade of 4,000 POWs.

Queen Mary's gift of ping-pong, cards, darts and other games to Indian POWs at Thetford - British Newspaper Archive Lynn Advertiser 3 July 1945 

Leave parties were organised to London for sight-seeing.  One group visited Tottenham Hotspur Football Ground to watch a match, and there was a visit to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. A group of Sikh officers and men attended a celebration in honour of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji at a Sikh temple in London, and a small party of Indian officers and VCOs attended the opening of the Islamic Cultural Centre by the Egyptian Ambassador at Regent’s Park on 21 November 1944.

Visit of General Sir A G O Mayne to Fornham  Park April 1945 - British Newspaper Archive Bury Free Press 27 April 1945

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
War diaries: Indian POW reception headquarters, Part 1, 1944-1945, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/1/704.

War diaries: Indian POW reception headquarters, Part 2, 1944-1945, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/1/705.

Indian POWs' reception headquarters: personnel and administration, Part 1, 1944-1947, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/1/709.

Indian POWs' reception headquarters: personnel and administration, Part 2, 1944-1947, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/1/710.

Prisoners of War: India POW Reception HQ - liaison letters, 1944, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/1/1396.

Weekly returns of patients accommodated in Reception Stations, 1945, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/2/27.

Indian prisoners of war - reception camps, 1944, shelfmark: IOR/L/WS/2/43

In late 1837, an eager fifteen-year-old named Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl ibn Yūsuf al-Najjār al-Dayrānī travelled from his home in a mountainside town outside Beirut in order to study medicine in Cairo.'Principal square in Grand Cairo, with Murad Bey's palace' by Luigi Mayer, from Thomas Milton, Views in Egypt, Palestine, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire (London,1840) British Library shelfmark 762.h.2.(1), Images Online

His journey took place against the backdrop of rapid modernisation in the Middle East, with local rulers increasingly bringing in technical, military, administrative and scientific practices and expertise from Europe.  In medicine, Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849), the Ottoman governor of Egypt, imported from 1825 European doctors, particularly French, to administer to the health of Muhammad Ali’s growing army, develop medical institutions along Western lines, and train locals in Western medicine.

Dr Antoine Bertélémy Clot (1793-1868) or ‘Clot Bey’, as he was nicknamed, accompanied Muhammad Ali’s occupation of Greater Syria (1832-40).  Clot Bey was instrumental in the selection of Ibrāhīm as one of the five first Lebanese students to embark on a Western medical education at the school in Cairo that he had founded in 1827.

Ibrāhīm was a product of European expansionism in the Middle East: his grandfather was reportedly a Corsican carpenter who had arrived in the Levant with Napoleon’s invading forces in 1799.  Unusually, we know about his personal experiences thanks to his memoir Miṣbāḥ al-Sārī wa-Nuzhat al-Qārīʾ (Lamp for the Traveller and Diversion for the Reader), which he self-published 20 years later.

Title page, Miṣbāḥ al-Sārī wa-Nuzhat al-Qārīʾ, printed Beirut, 1272 hijrī (1855-56) 

Without detailing his education, Ibrāhīm mentions his yearning for medical knowledge from a young age, which could not be satisfied locally.  Clearly, the extraordinary wealth of medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical learning previously compiled by Arabic-speaking physicians was not what he had in mind.

The memoir discusses Ibrāhīm’s arrival in Cairo, the medical school at Qasr al-ʿAynī, and the content of the four-year medical course.  Beginning with chemistry, general anatomy, and pharmacology, the 500 students – mostly from rural Egypt and destined for careers with the army – progressed to minor surgery, botany, pathology, pharmacology, major surgery and specialist anatomy.  Students accompanied their teachers on hospital ward rounds and observed autopsies, which Ibrāhīm confesses that he loathed.  This emphasis on human dissection was one major difference between a traditional Arabic medical training and the education Ibrahim was receiving; to alleviate Muslim concerns, the school claimed that the cadavers used were those of Jews and Christians.

'Panorama of Constantinople' from A Series of Eight Views, forming a Panorama of the City of Constantinople and its Environs, taken from the Town of Galata (1813) British Library shelfmark Maps K.Top.113.75.f  Images Online

After graduating in 1842, Ibrāhīm travelled to Constantinople (Istanbul).  Having cured – he claims – a patient whom his host’s personal physician could not, he was introduced to the chief doctor of Istanbul and enrolled at the Royal Medical School.  For four years, he attended lectures, saw patients, and learnt Turkish and French in order to access modern textbooks.  This culminated in a gruelling public examination presided over by the young Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecit I (r. 1839-61).

Portrait of Sultan Abdülmecit I by David Wilkie (1785-1841), 1840. Image courtesy of Royal Collection Trust

After qualifying fully aged 22, Ibrāhīm spent three years travelling in Europe, before returning to Lebanon as chief medical officer at the Ottoman army barracks in Beirut.  Straddling the manuscript and print eras in the Levant, Ibrāhīm authored books, including one manuscript recently made available on the Qatar Digital Library (British Library Or. 12152).  This pharmaceutical inventory, apparently in his hand, expresses an intellectual position encompassing both traditional Arabic pharmacological and botanical knowledge, and use of Latin- and Greek-derived terminology and chemical compounds discovered by Western physicians.

Page from Kitāb anīs al-jalīs fī kull ḥadīth nafīs, by Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl al-Najjār, ca 1845-64 (f. 8v)

Title page from Kitāb anīs al-jalīs fī kull ḥadīth nafīs, by Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl al-Najjār, ca 1845-64 (f. 1r). The author is described as ‘One of the doctors of the Royal [Medical] School in Asitane [Istanbul], and the foremost doctor to the Sultanic [Ottoman] armies in Beirut’.

Embodying the modernising efforts of 19th-century Ottoman rule, Ibrāhīm al-Dayrani was one of the first doctors to be trained in the Western medical methods and concepts that have become universal.  He died in 1864, aged just 42.

Jenny Norton-Wright
Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

In the autumn of 1860 the staff of the India Office moved from East India House in Leadenhall Street in the City of London to temporary accommodation in Victoria Street whilst new premises in Whitehall were being purpose-built.  The India Office was the department of state which had taken over from the East India Company in 1858.  East India House was sold in June 1861 and demolished soon afterwards.

The new Foreign and India Offices – the St James’s Park front – Illustrated London News 6 October 1866 Image © Illustrated London News Group via British Newspaper Archive

In the second half of 1867, the move from Victoria Street to Whitehall gradually took place.  Decisions were made about the arrangements for maintaining and staffing the new India Office building, which was described by the Homeward Mail as ‘a grand new palace of administration’.

The contract for cleaning the windows, skylights and bookcases was awarded in February 1868 to Alfred Henry of Vauxhall Bridge Road who submitted a tender for £250 per annum.  This was considered a very low rate given the vast quantity of glass to be cleaned.  Henry had previously been employed for plumber’s work at Victoria Street and he had given satisfaction.

Architect and surveyor Matthew Digby Wyatt, wrote a memorandum stating that the numbers sanctioned in 1861 for male indoor and outdoor messengers, and for female servants were not sufficient in Whitehall.  Nineteen additional men were needed to service the messengers’ boxes situated at fixed points throughout the building, using bells and speaking tubes to communicate.  The ‘great extent’ of the new premises meant that nine extra housemaids would be required to keep clean the rooms, passages, staircases, and furniture.  Wyatt also recommended the appointment of an assistant to the housekeeper.  Eight women and the housekeeper should live in the India Office.

The duties of the female servants were:
• Cleaning and dusting thoroughly each room every day.
• Keeping all the linen in order.
• Scrubbing every set of stairs once a week.
• Lighting all fires.
• Keeping the stoves, fenders, coal scuttles and fire irons clean.
• Scrubbing all the uncarpeted wood flooring once a week, and wiping over the Kamptulicon floor covering with a wet cloth and drying it immediately.
This list was expected to occupy the women fully, but Wyatt said that there was plenty of ‘easy’ dusting and cleaning if they had spare time.

Plan of first floor of India Office showing the position of rooms and the messenger stations with which they communicated IOR/L/AG/9/8/3

A list of all the rooms in the new India Office was drawn up in December 1867 with accompanying plans – offices, book rooms, strong rooms, kitchens, luncheon room, refreshment room, stores, closets, washing closets, bedrooms, lumber rooms, coal cellars.   These showed who occupied each room and the messenger post with which the room communicated.  Staff spoke through metal speaking tubes fitted with bone whistles and mouthpieces.

Plan of third floor of India Office showing the position of rooms and the messenger stations with which they communicated IOR/L/AG/9/8/3

The female servants’ bedrooms were on the third floor.  Mrs Sally Moore, the housekeeper who supervised them, had rooms in the basement near the women’s kitchen and workroom.

At the time of the 1871 census, Sally Moore and eighteen others were living at the India Office.  As well as female domestic servants, there were four resident male employees with their wives and families: Head Office Keeper William Badrick, Office Keeper Joseph John Hope, Office Porter Henry Vincent, and Private Secretary Horace George Walpole.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/AG/9/8/3 Papers on the administration of the India Office.
IOR/L/L/2/1461-1463 Papers for the India Office temporary accommodation in Victoria Street 1860-1866 – the premises became the Westminster Palace Hotel.
IOR/L/SUR Surveyor’s Department papers
Victorian office moves
British Newspaper Archive e.g. Homeward Mail from India, China, and the East 5 September 1867.

Kentucky born Sarah Hosmon devoted nearly her entire adult life to missionary and medical work in Arabia.  In 1909 Dr Hosmon arrived in Bahrain, and in 1913, under the auspices of the Dutch Reformed Church of America’s Arabian Mission, she opened a clinic for women and children in Muscat.  For the next 28 years she treated, medicated and evangelized under often arduous conditions, unperturbed by having a wooden leg as the result of a childhood accident.

Sarah Longworth Hosmon (1883-1964) who graduated from the University of Illinois College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1909. Source of image: How superpower rivalry and fears of a pandemic brought the first doctor to the UAE in 1939 | The National (thenationalnews.com)

Dr Hosmon was accepted by the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1939, and by 1941 she had set up a clinic at the Omani seaport of Saham. The clinic was extremely isolated, with medical supplies often having to be dropped by air plane.

In January 1944 Hosmon approached the British authorities , who virtually controlled the region, for permission to set up a medical practice in Kalba, then an independent emirate on the Gulf of Oman coast.

Sarah Hosmon writing on 7 January 1944 from Kalba to Captain Patrick Tandy, Political Officer for the Trucial Coast, stating that she intended to accept the offer to set up a medical practice in Kalba and to move there after April, subject to Tandy’s permission: IOR/R/15/2/853, f 88r.  'File 36/1 (1 A/7) American Mission in Bahrain' [‎88r] (175/262) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

The British inquired into Hosman’s credentials and received a glowing testimonial from Dr Paul Harrison of the American Mission Hospital, Bahrain.

Letter from Dr Paul W. Harrison (1883-1962) to Major Tom Hickenbotham, Political Agent in Bahrain, January 1944, describing Hosmon’s medical abilities, character, religious opinions and relationship with Arab rulers she had worked under.  'File 36/1 (1 A/7) American Mission in Bahrain' [‎90r] (179/262) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

Following confirmation that the Regent of Kalba [Shaikh Khālid Bin Aḥmad al-Qāsimi] was happy for Hosmon to move her practice there, the British authorities decided they had no objection once the War had ended and if Hosmon guaranteed that her co-workers would ‘not become destitute and a charge upon the Government of India’s revenues’.

Letter from Major Tom Hickenbotham, Political Agent Bahrain, to Major Patrick Tandy, Political Officer, Trucial Coast, 26 March 1944.  'File 36/1 (1 A/7) American Mission in Bahrain' [‎96r] (191/262) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

In fact Hosmon remained in Saham for another six years.  The British authorities did not like the ‘nebulous’ nature of the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions and were reluctant to have too many American missionaries in the Gulf, whose backgrounds they could not check and whose movements they could not control.  Privately, they disliked Hosmon’s strong-headedness and considered she had used ‘underhand’ methods to obtain travel permits for herself and an American nurse.

Memorandum, dated 16 December 1945, by Geoffrey Prior, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, setting forth British hostility towards Hosmon - 'File 6/1 Foreign Interests: American Mission at Muscat' [‎5r] (9/52) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

British obstructionism was not the sole cause of delay.  The terms offered by the ruling authorities in Kalba appear to have been unacceptable to Hosmon, and she wanted to be able to share freely the Gospel with her patients.

Intelligence Summary of the Political Agency in Bahrain, February 1945, indicating that the terms offered by the ruling authorities in Kalba may not have been acceptable to Hosmon - Ext 1488/44 'Dr Hosmon: American Medical Missionary' [‎5r] (9/28) | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

Hosmon finally made the move in 1951, by which time Kalba had been reincorporated as an enclave of the Sheikhdom of Sharjah.  The clinic opened in 1952 and became known as the Dr Sarah Hosmon Hospital (closing in 1994).  The hospital was the only one in Sharjah, primarily for women and children but later also expanded to men, and its services were in heavy demand and frequently over-stretched.  Evangelism was an integral feature of treatment, with Bible readings for patients.

Map indicating the position of Kalba on the so-called Trucial Coast, 1935. 

Journalist John Sack described an encounter with Hosmon in the late 1950s, perhaps revealing the physical toll her work had taken: ‘I was met by Dr Sarah L Hosmon, the director, a slight woman of seventy or eighty whose face is taut, severe, and American Gothic, and who, after inviting me in for tea in her living room, said that she’s been on the Arabian peninsula since 1911, in Sharja since 1952….’.

Hosmon worked tirelessly in Sharjah until a few years before her death in 1964, bringing medical relief, saving lives, and contributing to the introduction of new medicines and empirical techniques to Arabia.  Towards the end, her time was spent advising nursing staff and midwives and preaching the Word of God to patients.

Amanda Engineer
Content Specialist, Archivist
British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further Reading:
Saving Sinners, even Moslems: the Arabian mission 1889-1973 and its intellectual roots by Jerzy Zdanowski (2018)
Global View of Christian Missions from Pentecost to the present by J Herbert Kane (1971)
The Sultanate of Oman: A Twentieth Century History by Miriam Joyce (1995)
The Arabian Peninsula by Richard H Sanger (1954)
One Way The Only Way, A Christian Library website, blogpost on Sarah Longworth Hosmon by Tyson Paul
‘Missionary-Statesmen of the Bible Presbyterian Church’ by Keith Coleman, Western Reformed Seminary Journal 11/1 (Feb 2004) 15-19
Report from PRACTICALLY NOWHERE by John Sack (1959)

In 1802, Mary Symonds wrote to her sister Hester James from Madras (now Chennai), 'I hope now we are settled that I shall be able to send something for the curious by every opportunity'.

Mary Symonds, Coast Near Madras, The South Asia Collection, Norwich, Madras and Environs Album PIC106.78

Mary had accompanied her sister, the talented ornithologist and painter Elizabeth Gwillim, and Elizabeth's husband Henry Gwillim, a judge in the new Supreme Court of Madras.   The materials the sisters sent home provide a uniquely detailed picture of their work and lives between 1801 and 1808.  In the British Library, four thick volumes contain the sisters' 77 long letters; at McGill University, 164 zoological and botanical paintings represent their scientific work; at the South Asia Collection in Norwich, 78 landscapes and portraits depict their surroundings.

Elizabeth Gwillim at her writing desk, sketch in a letter to Hester James, 7 February 1802 Mss.Eur.C.240/1, ff. 33r-38v, f. 36v.

Elizabeth Gwillim was the first to record the avian life of Madras in detail.  Decades before John James Audubon, she painted birds from life and to scale, even the large birds of prey and waterbirds which dominate her collection.  Mary's descriptions and paintings document Elizabeth's artistic process and reveal the crucial role of the Indian bird-catchers who secured the living birds.  Elizabeth's paintings pay unusual attention to the placement of the bird's features and reveal a taxonomical rather than purely artistic interest.  A similar attention to detail is evident in the watercolours of fish, most by Mary Symonds.  The fish paintings reveal a collaborative process of information gathering and several are inscribed with the fishes’ local names.

Mary Symonds, Birdcatchers, The South Asia Collection, Norwich, Madras and Environs Album, PIC 106.66

Elizabeth Gwillim, Black Stork Ciconia nigra (Linnaeus 1758) McGill University Library, CA RBD Gwillim-1-010

Mary Symonds, Thalassoma lunare (Moon wrasse, labelled Julis lunaris), McGill University Library, CA RBD Gwillim-2-5

In 1805, Elizabeth wrote 'without some little knowledge of Botany it is impossible to read the Hindoo languages'.  Like her contemporary, William Jones, Elizabeth regarded linguistic and botanical studies as intertwined.  Elizabeth studied Telugu, translating a local temple legend.  She was part of the circle of missionary and medical botanists who linked Madras and the Danish settlement of Tranquebar and she sent plants and seeds back to a nursery garden in Brompton where several grew and were depicted in Curtis' Botanical Magazine.  One of her most detailed botanical images, of the Magnolia coco, remains in the Linnean Society herbarium. 

'Gwillimia Indica' (Magnolia coco) by Elizabeth Gwillim, Linnean Society Herbarium (LINN-HS 981.10. Magnolia indet. (Herb Smith)), by permission of the Linnean Society of London

Apart from their scientific pursuits, the sisters' letters and paintings provide a wealth of details about food, clothing, and the lives of Madras' inhabitants, from Governor Edward Clive to Elizabeth's maidservant, whose biography she relates in detail.

Mary Symonds, A Lady’s Maid, A Pariah Woman, The South Asia Collection, Norwich, Madras and Environs Album, PIC106.75

The early 19th century was a turning point in the East India Company's regime in India.  The Company was completing its conquest of Mysore, the Carnatic, and the Thanjavur Maratha kingdom.  However, the tenuous nature of British rule was dramatically highlighted by the uprising at Vellore in July 1807, in which Indian soldiers killed their British commanders and took over the fort, raising the flag of Mysore before the uprising was brutally repressed.  Elizabeth and Mary collected first-hand accounts of the event, for which they blamed Company policy.  By the time of Elizabeth's death in 1807, the Gwillim household had been drawn into conflict with the Company regime in Madras, which Henry Gwillim denounced as 'despotic'.  This prompted Henry's recall to Britain, where he and Mary made new lives.  The story of their time in Madras has remained largely untold until now.

Anna Winterbottom
McGill University

To learn more:

• See the exhibition 'A Different Idea of India: Two Sisters Painting Southern India, 1801-1808', opening on 15 June at the South Asia Collection.  
• Visit the Gwillim Project website for transcriptions, case studies, webinars, and more.
• Read the original letters in the British Library manuscript India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C240/1-4.
• Read more about Elizabeth's botanical work on Kew's blog.
• Look out for the forthcoming book, Anna Winterbottom, Victoria Dickenson, Ben Cartwright, and Lauren Williams eds., Women, Environment and Networks of Empire: Elizabeth Gwillim and Mary Symonds in Madras (McGill Queen's University Press, 2023).

In 1830, a new system for providing workers for British and French colonies was introduced following the abolition of slavery in Britain.  Known as the indentured labour system, workers could be recruited for a specified time, during which the employer was obliged to provide wages, medical facilities and other amenities.  The system provided an opportunity for large numbers of Indians to work and send wages back home to their families.  However it was criticised for being too similar to slavery, with little scope for protecting those who signed up from abuses.

Statement by the Indian workers IOR/L/PJ/2/151

The vulnerable situation in which Indian workers could find themselves was demonstrated by the case of five indentured workers from India who were picked up at sea on 30 March 1878 by the schooner G W Pousland about 80 miles west of Martinique.  The master of the ship took the men to George Stevens, British Consul at the Danish West Indies colony of Saint Thomas.  The five men were named Sahib Boo (27 years), Rupen (20 years), Samhiin (22 years), Narainne (23 years) and Monishanee (26 years), all originally from Madras.  They stated that they were under a five year contract to work on the estate of Monsieur Du Nay of Le Diamant in Martinique.  They had served seven years there, but having been badly treated and detained beyond the period of their contract, they took a boat and left.  After three days at sea their food and water had run short, it had been on the sixth day that they had been rescued.

Consul Steven's letter to the Foreign Office 3 April 1878 IOR/L/PJ/2/151

Consul Stevens asked Captain Boxer of the British corvette HMS Tourmaline, which happened to be at St Thomas, to return them for further investigation to Martinique, which he would pass on his way to Barbados.  The men expressed their 'great unwillingness' to return to Martinique, and after consulting with the French authorities it became clear that although no official claim would be made for the men, if they were landed in Martinique they would be liable for the theft of the canoe and for violation of contract.  In summarising these events, an India Office official noted that the treatment of the men by their employer 'whether shown in the withholding of return passage, as has been alleged, and as has been so often a grievance in the French colonies, - or whether of any other kind, - must have been very bad to induce them to trust their lives in a canoe in the open sea, where they might not have been picked up'.

India Office Minute Paper May 1878 IOR/L/PJ/3/1055

Captain Boxer decided not to land the men at Martinique but to take them on to Barbados where further advice could be sought.   Denied permission by the Governor in Chief of the Windward Islands to land the men at Barbados, he carried on to the Island of Antigua, where the Colonial Government gave permission for the men to be landed and new employment found for them.  It was arranged for them to be offered a new contract for three years by Mr G W Bennett, a landed proprietor of the island.  Under the contract they were to be paid one shilling per day, with a house and a plot of land to be allowed each man.  The five men agreed to this, and Captain Boxer reported on 25 April 1878 that they had been landed on Antigua and placed in charge of Mr Bennett.

Captain Boxer's letter 25 April 1878 IOR/L/PJ/2/151

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Five indentured Indian labourers picked up at sea, 1878, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/2/151, File 19/110.

Draft Despatch to India, Public No.66, 27 June 1878, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/3/1055, pages 218-231.

Ship’s log for H.M.S. Tourmaline, The National Archives, reference: ADM 53/1130.

Indians Overseas: A guide to source materials in the India Office Records for the study of Indian emigration 1830-1950.

‘Becoming Coolies’, Re-thinking the Origins of the Indian Ocean Labour Diaspora, 1772-1920. 

The National Archives guide to Indian Indentured Labourers.

Among the private papers collections donated to the British Library, the Garrod Family Papers present a very special archive ranging from 1867 to 1990.  They include correspondence, files, maps, printed papers and photographs of William Francis Garrod (1893-1964) and Isobel Agnes Garrod (formerly Carruthers) (1898-1976) relating to their family life in India, Garrod's career in the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment 1930-1946, and his service in World Wars One and Two.

A great number of letters were exchanged when William and Isobel got engaged, then married and had four children.  Among lockets of hair, newspaper cuttings and postcards, one can see them overcoming the challenges of family life, household and financial issues while keeping close family ties despite the distance between them.

Children in costumes as the cast of a play - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

As William spent long periods of time away from home so the children grew up observing their mother write to their father and became interested in writing to him as well.  They took up this habit at a very young age, before even being actually able to write.

Scribbles and love from Andrew - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

The children report frequent visits to the cinema, social and academic updates from school, sickness and all the social events their father is missing such as Christmas and birthdays.

Letter from Martin hoping that his father will be back on his birthday because he had not been for his fifth and sixth birthdays - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Drawing of  Daddy, Sammy the cat ,and Jimmy the dog - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Drawing of ‘Sister Steller’ from school - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

They do not often mention the war besides hoping their father is well and can come home soon.

Letter from Janet - ‘we are quite alright and I hope you are well and will soon come back to us’ - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Letter from Martin hoping his father is happy at the war - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

However, they do show in drawings how they imagine it to be.

Drawing of war ship attacked by planes - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Drawing of planes attacking Nazi ship. Pilots parachute and sailors take to lifeboats. - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

They also depict their image they have of their father’s role in it and the dangers he faces being away from home.

Letter from Martin with drawing of Daddy killing Hitler India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Luckily, those drawings are also often accompanied by captions sometimes composed by the children themselves, sometimes by thoughtful Isobel to make sure the drawings would be understood on the other end.

Daddy being saved from a snake by a squirrel  - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Isobel is also very careful in numbering the letters in case they get lost, delayed or get to William all at once. In some of the letters one can imagine how frustrating it must have been to not have control over that and to be aware there was an inevitable delay between sending a message and it reaching William.

Letter 53 from Isobel – ‘I wonder when I am going to hear from you again and where you are’- India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730.

Not only does the collection give a fascinating glimpse into the life of a British family living and working in India at the end of the British Raj, it also provides the very rare perspective of children.

Bianca Miranda Cardoso
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further reading:
Garrod Family Papers - Collection reference: India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F730. They are available to view in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, and the catalogue is searchable on Explore Archives and Manuscripts.

William Francis Garrod’s story from Bristol in 1893 to northern India has been explored in a previous Untold Lives blog post.
The Garrod papers also feature in anther Untold Lives blog post about the General Strike of 1926.

Helen Gloag’s story is a remarkable tale of adventure and changes in fortune, which saw her cross the world to embrace a wholly new life in royalty.

Born on 29 January 1750, in Perthshire, Scotland, Helen was the daughter of a blacksmith.  Growing up motherless, she bristled under her authoritarian father and small-town life.  At the age of 19 she decided, like many other Scots in this period to start a new life, setting sail with a group of friends for the New World.

However, she never reached her destination.  Instead, her ship was captured by Barbary pirates and redirected to Morocco, where Helen was sold into slavery.  We know few specifics of what happened next, other than that she was taken to Algiers and bought by a wealthy Moroccan merchant to be gifted to the then Sultan Sidi Muhammad ibn Abdullah (c.1710-1790).

What was it about Helen that allowed her to gain such favour and rise above others in the Sultan’s harem?

Historians of the period have argued her flame-red hair and pale skin had much to do with it.  But it must have been more than merely her appearance that enabled Helen to gain such favour and become the Sultan’s principal wife as these features are not just associated with Scottish peoples and the ports of Morocco had been for long over a century a meeting place of all nationalities and peoples.  Whatever it was in her personality that drew her to the attention of the Sultan was powerful in its influence and is credited as a reason for the change in the temperament of the Sultan in his attitude towards slaves and his adoption of a more moderate approach to the use of raids on European merchant ships and enslaving those onboard.

Stage of Dorset Garden Theatre set for ''The Empress of Morocco (1673), image courtesy of Yale University Library Digital Collections

Through letters Helen sent back to her brother that seem to have been circulated, and visits to the Moroccan court by English delegates, British society learnt of Helen’s story and her influence on the Sultan to be more tolerant of Europeans, Jews, and others.  Over the previous centuries, Britain had had increasing contact through piracy, trade, and embassies with Morocco in particular and through consistent dramatisations of their history, such as Elkanah Settle’s Empress of Morocco (1698) all the way back to the sixteenth century in The Battle of Alcazar (1594).

Life took a drastic turn for Helen once again following the death of the Sultan in 1790.  Although she was the principal wife, the son of another member of the harem seized power.  This put Helen and her two sons in grievous danger as the new Sultan sought to kill off any threats to his consolidation of power.  Her sons were killed before she managed to meet with a British convoy to bring her back to Britain, and it is suspected that she too was killed in the succession upheaval.

Helen’s story and life journey are one left in mystery but should be remembered for how it displays the global contact Europe had with the rest of the world, particularly Africa.

Saoirse Dervla Laaraichi
Doctoral Student at The Shakespeare Institute

Further reading:
Read the whole play The Empress of Morocco for free on Google Books.

Learn more about the world into which Helen stepped through the MEMOs (Medieval and Early Modern Orients) blog series.

See a depiction of a Barbary pirate; the likes of which captured Helen.

This blog post is part of a collaborative series with Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs). On the last Monday of every month, both Untold Lives and MEMOs' own blog will feature a post written by a member of the MEMOs team, showcasing their research in the British Library collections. Follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #BLMEMOS.