Untold lives blog

‘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.

On 17 January 1879, the India Office received a letter from a man named John Carr, who claimed to have been born in Madras, but was destitute in London and asked for help in returning to India.  The India Office regularly received such requests for help, but this case turned out to be a little more mysterious.

Letter from John Carr IOR/L/PJ/2/58, File 7/564

In his letter, Carr claimed that around the middle of July 1878, he left Madras on the ship Gainsborough bound from Pondicherry to Guadeloupe.  During the voyage he fell ill and on arrival at Guadeloupe was immediately sent to hospital.  Once recovered, he discovered that the ship had left him behind.  He was able, ‘through the kindness of the Council and other Gentlemen’ to secure a passage to London on the ship J C Watson of Plymouth, but once there was unable to get a passage on to India.  In his plea for help he wrote: ‘I am now at the end of my resources, I have walked the streets all day without food very often in search of any employment, and I have had also sometimes to walk them at night, not having the means to pay for a bed however poor or humble.  My position is truly desperate, for I can only see a prospect of starvation before me, or of succumbing to the bitter climate, to which I am wholly un-used’.  Carr asked for help in securing a passage to Madras, and even offered to work for it.

India Office Minute Paper on the case of John Carr IOR/L/PJ/2/58, File 7/564

The official at the India Office thought that there was little official aid that could be offered.  He noted that the Sailors' Home on Well Street, which Carr had given as his address, was ‘in some sort under control of the Board of Trade’.  He worried ‘it may be hoped he will not be allowed to starve’. 

Letter from the Board of Trade about John Carr IOR/L/PJ/2/58, File 7/564

Enquiries were made but the results were unexpected.  The Board of Trade claimed to know nothing of Carr’s story, and the ship J C Watson could not be traced.  The only record found of a John Carr in Madras was a Sgt Major in the 16th Madras Native Infantry, who had drowned in India on 26 October 1867.

Note on the enquiries made about John Carr IOR/L/PJ/2/58, File 7/564

Enquiries were also made at the Sailors' Home, where a search was made of books, letters and names at the Home, as well as at a neighbouring branch asylum, but no trace could be found of Carr.  The India Office official took a dim view of the affair, and noted: ‘He does not say he is in the Home, but he has given a false address, and may be in league with someone to get his letters there, and it has been ascertained that numbers of swindlers and thieves swarm about the Homes’.  Given this lack of verifiable facts, Sir Louis Mallet, Under Secretary of State, advised that the letter should not be answered.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Public Home Correspondence: case of an individual stating himself to be of Indian birth, to have gone from Madras to Guadeloupe in an emigrant ship, whence he came to London and is now destitute and solicits a passage to India, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/2/58, File 7/564.

History of the Sailors' Home 

We end our series of posts about Chaund Bebee and her children by looking at the life of her daughter Eliza Cordelia.  Eliza was baptised at Calcutta on 23 January 1803, the ‘Natural Daughter of C Rothman Esq’, and the register gives her date of birth as 20 April 1802.

Baptism of Eliza Cordelia Rothman at Calcutta 23 January 1803 IOR/N/1/6 f.180

Charles Rothman was a businessman in Calcutta who moved into government service.  He appears to have been close to John Shore, father of Chaund Bebee’s other children – there is a letter written by Rothman in February 1788 passing on a message from Shore who was ill.

Letter from Charles Rothman to George Nesbitt Thompson stating that John Shore is still much indisposed, February 1788 - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur D1083/35

Rothman accompanied Governor General Wellesley to Madras in 1798, and was rewarded for his ‘incessant assiduity regularity and integrity’ by being appointed keeper of the Company’s stationery at Calcutta in 1801.  He died on 23 September 1805 aged 48.  His will left everything to his second wife Sarah Anne, and after her death for the benefit of their children.  Eliza is not mentioned.

Eliza Cordelia Rothman married James Urquhart Sherriff at Calcutta on 6 November 1815.  James was an assistant in the Mint and then a house builder.  He died in 1832 at the age of 35, leaving Eliza with eight children: Eliza, Henrietta Rothman, James Charles, Margaret Euphemia, Robert William, Hannah Sophia, David, and George Hill.  Eliza was the main beneficiary of her mother’s will in 1836 and she did not re-marry.

On 12 November 1856 Eliza died at Entally on the outskirts of Calcutta and was buried the following day at Chowringhee.  Her age in the burial register is given as 57 years, 5 months and 20 days, which does not tally with the date given in her baptism record.

Shortly before her death, on 28 October 1856, Eliza made a will which made bequests to her surviving children and their heirs, and to friends, servants, and charities.  Of her four sons, Robert William was still alive, but James Charles, David and George Hill had all died without issue.  Only two of her daughters were living.  Eliza was married to Josiah Rowe, surveyor to the conservancy commissioners of Calcutta, and had children.  Henrietta Rothman was the widow of Charles Ware Brietzcke, second judge of the Calcutta Court of Small Causes, and she had children by her first husband William Ridsdale.  Hannah Sophia had died unmarried without issue.  Margaret Euphemia had been married to John Willie, master mariner, but both were dead.

Newspaper report of the loss of the Hope - The Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser 27 December 1848

In 1848, Eliza’s family had been struck by tragedy.  On 14 October John Willie’s ship Hope was lost in a terrible storm when on a voyage from Calcutta to Penang.  John and his wife Margaret died with their three small children William Robinson, Eliza Rix, and John Burnie.  Also on board were Margaret’s brother-in-law William Risdale and her sister Hannah Sophia Sherriff.  They also drowned.  The ship Framjee Cowasjee had tried to help the people they could see on the stricken ship but only succeeded in rescuing five of the crew.  The Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser wrote: ‘By this sad wreck 7 members of one family have perished, and a widowed lady has been bereaved of 2 daughters, 2 sons-in-law, and 3 grandchildren’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, India Office Records

Further reading:
IOR/N/1/4 f.171 Baptism of George, natural son of Charles Rothman, at Calcutta 3 January 1794 (born 31 October 1792). George appears to have died aged 21 in Calcutta in September 1813 [IOR/N/1/9 p.330].
IOR/N/1/4 f.202 Burial of Henrietta Rothman, wife of Charles, at Calcutta 6 December 1796.
IOR/N/2/2 f.352 Marriage of Charles Rothman to Sarah Anne Woodhouse at Fort St George, Madras, 31 August 1799.
IOR/F/4/128/2373 Salary paid to Charles Rothman in consideration of his previous services.
IOR/N/1/6 f.180 Baptism of Eliza Cordelia Rothman at Calcutta 23 January 1803
IOR/L/AG/34/29/17 no.77 Will of Charles Rothman.
IOR/N/1/9 f.269 Marriage of Eliza Cordelia Rothman to James Urquhart at Calcutta 6 November 1815.
IOR/N/1/34 p.363 Burial of James Urquhart Sherriff at Calcutta 8 November 1832.
IOR/N/1/90 f.517 Burial of Eliza Cordelia Sherriff 12 November 1856
IOR/L/AG/34/29/94 Will of Eliza Cordelia Sherriff 1856
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 
The children of Chaund Bebee and John Shore – (3) George Shore 

On 31 December 1713 Thomas Woolley, Secretary to the East India Company, wrote to agent Richard Knight at Deal in Kent where ships were preparing to sail to Asia.  A number of Company directors had ordered Woolley to inform Knight that the supercargoes (merchants) of the ship Hester had several fiddlers with them and intended to take them on the voyage to China.  The directors were very concerned as they had already heard of a revel-rout at Deal caused by the presence of the fiddlers.

‘The fun got fast and furious’ from Gordon Staples, Exiles of Fortune. A tale of a far north land (London, 1890) British Library Digital Store 012632.g.29 BL flickr 

Knight was to inform the directors of what he knew about the matter or what he could discover.  He was also to tell the supercargoes that they were not to attempt to take fiddlers or any other musicians on the voyage.  Charles Kesar, captain of the Hester, was not to receive on board for the voyage anyone but the ship’s company and others authorised in writing by the Company.  When Knight mustered all the men, he was to check whether any were musicians.  Woolley supposed that the directors would not object to the captain carrying a trumpeter or two and perhaps just one fiddler.

The next day Woolley wrote to supercargoes Philip Middleton, James Naish and Richard Hollond.  The directors had not thought Woolley’s letter to Knight sufficient and ordered him to tell the supercargoes that the Company was very concerned about their management and expected them, especially Naish, to clear themselves of the report if in any way untrue.  From what the directors had heard, the beginnings of their management were a very ‘ill specimen’ of what was expected and it would take an extraordinary future performance to erase them. The supercargoes’ friends would be concerned that they had placed their favours on men who would not use their best endeavours to deserve them but, on the contrary, seemed careless about this.  Woolley said he was sorry to hear the report and hoped their future deportment would show that, if they had no thoughts of their own reputation, they would at least do nothing unworthy of the good intentions of the gentlemen who recommended them to the Company.  He ended by repeating that the directors positively forbade them carrying those fiddlers or any other musicians in the Hester.

On 3 January 1714 Middleton, Naish and Hollond replied to the directors protesting their innocence.  They said that they were ‘much Surprized to hear of Entertaining Fidlers and the Revel Rout occation’d thereby’ as they had not heard the sound of an instrument since leaving London.  However they were glad to know the Company’s ‘Pleasure in this perticular’ and would hold this in as great a regard as any other command.  The reports were groundless and the supercargoes aimed to obey every order and behave in a way conformable to the directors’ ‘good liking’.  It seemed that Naish especially was expected to clear himself, so he declared that he had not, nor intended, to entertain any fiddler or other musician to go on the voyage.

IOR/E/1/6/ f.249 Richard Hollond’s letter to the East India Company apologising for exceeding his private trade allowance, November 1715

Middleton, Naish and Hollond found themselves again in trouble with the Company on their return from the voyage to China in 1715.  All three men had exceeded their allowances for private trade and wrote asking for forgiveness.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/1/200 pp.75-78 Letters from Thomas Woolley about musicians at Deal, December 1713 and January 1714.
IOR/E/1/5 ff. 1-4v Letter to Company from Middleton, Naish and Hollond 3 January 1714.
IOR/E/1/6 – letters from Middleton, Naish and Hollond about their private trade allowances, 1715.

Richard Greenbury was an artist and decorator of furniture in early 17th century London.  In the 1620s, he received two important painting commissions from the East India Company.  Both documented incidents of treachery and suffering.

The first commission showed an odious moment of horror on the Indonesian island of Ambon.  In this faraway place, the East India Company was exporting spices alongside a larger, more established Dutch trading station.  In 1623, the Dutch tortured to death ten Englishmen at Ambon, claiming that they were going to invade the Dutch fort.  News of this event sparked a diplomatic incident in Europe.  In London, the East India Company published a pamphlet telling its side of the story, titled A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruell and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna.

Frontispiece of the East India Company’s pamphlet, A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruell and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna.  The illustration on the left might have been the basis for Richard Greenbury’s painting. (British Library, T39923)

Richard Greenbury’s painting of the event, titled 'The Atrocities at Amboyna', was so graphic that the Company had to ask him to repaint part of it.  Crowds flocked to the painter’s studio to see it before it was finished.  One woman, purportedly a widow of one of the massacred Englishmen, fainted when she saw it.  It stirred such outrage that London’s Dutch citizens had to appeal to the Privy Council of King Charles I for protection from the furious public.  In February 1625 the completed painting went on display inside the East India Company’s headquarters, but only two weeks later, it was removed by order of the king and never seen again.  It was most likely destroyed by order of the Privy Council.  Reluctant to pay for a vanished painting, the East India Company eventually gave Greenbury less than half the amount of money he expected to receive.

Portrait of Naq’d Ali Beg by Richard Greenbury (British Library, Foster 23)

The Company then gave Greenbury another commission.  This time, it wanted a pair of portraits of Naq’d Ali Beg, a trade ambassador from the court of Shah Abbas of Persia.  Unfortunately, this exotic young man’s stay in London was fraught with scandals, and he was ordered by King Charles I to return to the court of Shah Abbas.  Unable to bear the embassy’s failure, Naq’d Ali Beg committed suicide during the journey back to Persia in 1627.  Even though the East India Company contributed to the Persian ambassador’s disgrace, Greenbury’s portrait was displayed inside its headquarters in London.  Today, that same painting is part of the British Library’s permanent collections.

The disastrous subject matter of Greenbury’s paintings highlights the instability and sloppy diplomacy that the East India Company somehow survived in the 17th century.  One hundred years later, a new, relatively stable United East India Company emerged.  By the late 18th century it was a systemic part of Britain’s economy and a prolific corporate patron of British art.

CC-BY
Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia

Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further reading:
East India Company. A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruell and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna. London: Nathaniel Newberry, 1624.
Howes, Jennifer. 'Chaos to Confidence'. Chapter one in Howes, J. The Art of a Corporation: The East India Company as Patron and Collector, 1600-1860. New Delhi: Routledge, April 2023. 

In 1869, newspapers in India and Britain reported that the Viceroy of India had approved a proposal to construct special carriages for Hindu and Muslim ‘Lady Travellers’ on the East India Railway.  This was considered the best means of preventing ‘insults’ to Indian women travelling by train.

East India Railway train  from Illustrated London News 19 September 1863 Image © Illustrated London News Group. British Newspaper Archive - image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

The carriages, reserved for ‘respectable native women’, were to be of a first-class standard but with lower fares than other first-class accommodation.  It was recommended that there should be a European female guard and a European female ticket collector in attendance.  The guard would ensure that the women were comfortable, and any male relatives would be provided for in an adjoining carriage.  The Dacca Prakash suggested that there should also be carriages where females could ride with relatives if they objected to being separated.

Article entitled 'Hindoo Lady Travellers' from Leicester Guardian 27 October 1869

In 1910 the Committee of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce raised concerns about female carriages on the railways.  Committee Secretary Sita Nath Roy wrote to the President of the Railway Board expressing alarm at ‘the repeated robberies and outrages’ perpetrated in the carriages reserved for women travellers.  He referred to the recent robbery at Tinpahar when a Bengali woman was cut with a knife, her jewellery stolen, and three of her children thrown out of the train window.  Roy said that women in the secluded compartments found themselves ‘absolutely helpless in the hands of ruffians and desperadoes’, and did not know how to use the alarm bell when they or their property came under attack.

Article on women travelling on the railways in India from Englishman’s Overland Mail 4 August 1910

Unless remedial steps were taken, the Committee believed that there might be a considerable falling-off in passenger traffic on the railways.  The Committee therefore suggested some ‘protective measures’:
• Female carriages of all classes to be put together where possible and a trusted police officer with two or three constables place at the front and rear.
• Intermediate and third-class carriages should not be partitioned into compartments.
• Two female guards should be posted to protect women passengers on night trains.
• Windows should be protected with strong iron bars.
• Female carriages should have side lights.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive (also available via Findmypast) e.g. Friend of India and Statesman 10 June 1869; Leicester Guardian 27 October 1869; Englishman’s Overland Mail 4 August 1910.

The East India Company ship Martha under Captain Thomas Raynes (or Raines) set sail from England in April 1700, destined for Bombay.  It zig-zagged across the globe on the prevailing winds, via the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, and Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints’ Bay) on the Brazilian coast, before heading towards Southern Africa, across to Sumatra, and then onwards to India.  By January 1701, the ship had reached the Malabar coast, sailing to Bombay via Cochin, Karwar and Goa.  After reaching Bombay, the Martha made a journey to the port of Gombroon (Bander Abbas), before heading back to Bombay and then on to Surat.

Title page of Samuel Goodman's journal  - IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI 

India Office Records and Private Papers holds the journal of this latter part of the Martha’s voyage, written by mate Samuel Goodman.  It is a daily account of the voyage, mostly detailing navigational information, and wind, weather and sea conditions- if you were on a sailing ship in the early 18th century, this is what you would expect to be occupying the mind of the ship’s senior crew.   The text is interspersed with an occasional sketch of the coastline as seen from the ship.

Page from Goodman's journal showing sketches of the coastline around the Cape -  IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI, f.38v

But on the morning of Sunday (‘Soonday’) 27 October 1700, having not long left the Cape of Good Hope, heading towards India, Goodman observed something that must have been so out of the ordinary that he choose to record it in detail.  He came across a group of peculiar birds - black and white creatures with fins and no visible legs, with a yellow streak on their heads.  He even made a sketch of one of the birds, and captioned it the ‘Sea Duck’.

Entry from the Journal of the Martha for 27 October 1700 with a sketch of the 'Sea Duck' - IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI, f.43v

Goodman wrote: ‘I saw beetwene 15 and 16 fishes or fowells ass it may bee termed, the[y] Came close too the ships side, the[y] had A head and neck And A yallow bill like A Duck And Ass well formed Ass A land fowel Is, And A bodey ass bigg Ass A midling Duck two fins like A turtell, butt A fishes tayle Ass you may see by the figer the[y] lay a pretty while upon the surface of the Watter Soe thatt I had A full vew And Saw them oute of the watter as the[y] playd too and froo: and one particuler thing I Observed Ass the[y] Came Close to the side the would stare you in the face: the[y] had all of them too yallow strakes upon there heds, the back parte wass blacke And the belley all White butt had Noe Leggs: wee Could not distinguish them from A Blacke duck butt by the fishes tayle and There finns’.

Sketch of the 'Sea Duck' - IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI, f.43v

So what animal did Samuel Goodman see playing in the waters off the Cape?  His physical description of the birds, as well as the description of their behaviour, lead us to believe that Goodman’s ‘Sea Duck’ wasn’t a duck at all , but actually a penguin.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further Reading:
IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI: Journal of the Martha to Bombay, 20 Apr 1699 [1700] to 3 May 1702.
If you would like to delve further into the journal, it has been fully digitised and is available via the Qatar Digital Library . 
IOR/L/MAR/B/118A(1): The remainder of the Samuel Goodman’s journal of the Martha’s voyage, detailing the return voyage of the ship to England, 1702-1703, via Mauritius, Saint Helena, Ascension, Barbados, and Erith has also been digitised and is available via the Qatar Digital Library. 
Anthony Farrington, Catalogue of East India Company ships' journals and logs, 1600-1834 (London: British Library, 1999).
A copy of IOR/L/MAR/A/CXLVI, f.43v, showing the Sea Duck, with a transcription, can be found amongst the papers of Anthony Farrington Mss Eur F704/4/3/1 Visual material relating to ships (this collection will be available for consultation shortly).

Edwards’ Patent Preserved Potato was the 19th-century equivalent of Smash.  An advert from 1857 claimed that ‘This economical and pure Vegetable keeps good in all Climates, and is a preventative of Scurvy from the use of Salt Provisions’.  A dish of mashed potatoes could be cooked in a few minutes at a cost of less than ½d per 8oz ration.  The product also took up far fewer cubic feet than fresh potatoes.

Advertisement for Edwards’ Patent Preserved Potato, Nautical Magazine July 1857

Patent Preserved Potato had been used for many years by the Royal Navy, HM Emigration Commissioners, Greenwich Hospital, merchant shipping, and the East India Company.  In 1841 the East India Company put a small quantity of Edwards’ Patent Preserved Potato on board three ships, Seringapatam, Northumberland, and Reliance, as an experiment for feeding troops on the outward voyage to India.

Surgeon F Chapman who was in medical charge of the troops on the Seringapatam reported that the potato had been fed to the troops twice a week.  Chapman was enthusiastic about the potatoes, saying that he could ‘without hesitation speak of them in the most favourable terms, believing them to be highly nutritious and conducive to health and nearly if not quite as good as the fresh vegetable’.

The Medical Board at Fort William Calcutta also tested the dried potato. They thought the flavour ‘somewhat inferior’ to fresh potatoes but conceded that might have been caused by the sample coming from a cask which had been open for a long time, causing the contents to deteriorate.  On the whole, the Board considered the product would be a useful article of diet in situations where fresh potatoes could not be obtained.

Preserved Potato was fed to British troops in the Crimea.  The Times’ correspondent there said it was ‘too good to last’ and new supplies were awaited.

Professor of Chemistry, Dr Andrew Ure, provided an analysis of the nutritional value of the Preserved Potato – starch, ‘fibrine of demulcent antiscorbutic quality’, vegetable albumine, and lubricating gum.  It was nearly as nutritious as wheat flour and more nutritious than peas, beans, sago, or arrowroot.

Purchasers were warned to ensure that they procured the genuine article which had brass labels and red cases marked with the name of the sole manufacturers: F King & Son, late Edwards & Co.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/4/766 pp.125-127 Letter concerning the testing of Edwards’ Patent Preserved Potato on board ships, May 1841.
IOR/F/4/1987/87952 Report from the Medical Board on Edwards’ patent preserved potato, put on board the ship Seringapatam as an experiment for the use of the troops, 1841-1842.