We continue the story of Jabez Tepper, cousin of JMW Turner...

Jabez Tepper is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, in a grave that contains several other Turner relatives.

Gravestone for Jabez Tepper at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Photograph by author.

In January 1872, letters of administration for Tepper’s estate were granted to his cousin, William Coham Turner, as it was thought that he had died intestate.  This grant was revoked in July 1872, following the discovery of a will dated January 1835 which named his mother and her heirs as beneficiaries.  Tepper’s brother, Samuel, a house painter and carpenter, now the sole heir, was located in Alabama USA.  He returned to England in May 1872 and stayed with William Coham Turner in St John’s Wood, London.  The will was granted probate in August 1872.  In the documents Tepper is described as a bachelor.

Arrival of Samuel Tepper in England from Alabama - Leeds Times 11 May 1872 British Newspaper Archive

Samuel Tepper met with Victoria Boyer, Jabez Tepper’s elder married daughter.  Because they were illegitimate, neither Victoria nor Catherina had any claim on the estate, but Samuel Tepper wanted to do the right thing and gave a substantial sum to each of the sisters.

Shortly after Jabez Tepper’s death, Mary Pennell went to his offices in Bedford Row, with a friend, and arranged for the removal of furniture, a large chest of silver plate and other valuables, including a diamond snuff box, which had been a gift to JMW Turner from King Louis-Phillipe of France.  She also visited and removed items from the farm in Sussex where she had lived with Tepper.  She was later apprehended and taken to court, charged with theft.  Mary claimed that she had a right to the property as she had lived as Tepper’s wife for sixteen years but could produce no proof of marriage.  She denied the existence of any will, although there were rumours that copies had been destroyed.  At the preliminary hearing it was judged that there was insufficient evidence for a successful prosecution and the case was dismissed.

Samuel Tepper returned to his home in Camden, Alabama, in October 1873, with a substantial sum of money and several Turner paintings and engraving plates.  He disposed of many others before he left, not wishing to pay the duty for importing them.  He suffered from ill health and probably depression and, in 1887, took his own life.

Gold snuff-box with floral and foliate ornament.  On the lid is the monogram LP with crown above for Louis Philippe, all in diamonds set in silver. © The Trustees of the British Museum 

After Samuel Tepper’s return from America, it appears that Mary Pennell had to return items that she had taken, including the Louis-Phillipe snuff box. The box was donated to the British Museum in 1944 by Maria Helena Turner, the great-grand-daughter of J.M.W. Turner's uncle, John Turner.

In 1877, the surviving beneficiaries of JMW Turner’s will brought a case against the estate of Jabez Tepper.  Tepper had bought their shares in Turner’s engravings for what he claimed was a fair price of £500 for each beneficiary.  This had netted him £2,500. When the engravings were auctioned after Tepper’s death, they fetched £35,000.  The family’s lawyers produced evidence that the engravings had been valued at £5,000 for legacy duty, so Tepper had been well aware of their real value.  The court found in the plaintiffs’ favour and ordered that the sale to Tepper be set aside.  An appeal by the Tepper estate failed.

Report of court ruling - Brief 15 December 1877 British Newspaper Archive

There is a certain irony in the coincidence that Jabez Tepper, having thwarted Turner’s plans for his inheritance, was similarly thwarted in his own. In both cases, large portions of the estate went to people they were never intended for.

CC-BY
David Meaden
Independent Researcher

Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive for reports on the court cases involving the Turner estate, the prosecution of Mary Pennell, and Samuel Tepper’s visit to England.

 

Turner’s restored house in Twickenham is open to visitors.

When JMW Turner died in 1851, his chief executor was solicitor Henry Harpur, a cousin on his mother’s side of the family.  The will, however, was contested by another cousin, Jabez Tepper, also a solicitor, representing Turner’s father’s relations.

Letter from Jabez Tepper published in The Times 24 December 1851

Tepper’s successful challenge meant that that ‘Turner’s Gift’, the proposed alms houses for ‘the maintenance and support of poor and decayed Male Artists being born in England’, was never established. Tepper invoked the Mortmain Law, under which the transfer of land in Twickenham to a trust had to be at least a year before Turner’s death.  This had not happened.

Extract from the will of Joseph Mallord William Turner, 10 June 1831 – The National Archives, document reference PROB 1/96

In 1856, the relatives represented by Tepper inherited a substantial part of Turner’s estate.  In January 1858 Tepper offered to buy the other relations’ shares of Turner’s engravings for £500 each.  All but one accepted his offer.

Jabez Tepper was born in South Molton in Devon in August 1815, one of seven children born to James Tepper, a wool stapler, and Mary Turner Tepper, JMW Turner’s cousin.  Jabez left Devon to join the legal profession, becoming an indentured clerk in London in 1835.

Like his cousin Turner, Tepper lived an unconventional private life, never marrying but fathering two daughters, Victoria Helen and Catherina Mary Jane, probably born in 1840 and 1841, although no records of their births have yet been traced.  In the 1841 census Tepper was described as a law student living in Gravesend, with wife Jane and seven-month-old daughter Helen.  Family historians have identified the woman who was the mother of Tepper’s daughters as Jane Cook, born in London in October 1817.  According to some family trees, she died in 1842, but the only death record I can find for a Jane Tepper in London that year is for a two-year old child.

There is, however, a Jane Tepper, also known as Cook, a shoebinder, who died aged 47 on 21 February 1865 in the London parish of St Giles.  This Jane lived in poverty; could they be one and the same and if so, when did she and Tepper separate?

About 1855, widow Mary Pennell moved in with Tepper,  She is also referred to as his wife, although they never married.  Born Mary Smith in Walworth in 1824, she married gardener Edward Pennell in 1846.  Their daughter, Mary Jane, died as a baby in 1848 and Edward Pennell died the following year.

After Mary moved in with Tepper, his two daughters lived with them for some time but there is some suggestion that Pennell treated them unkindly and they were found lodgings.  In the 1861 census, Tepper is living at 24 Notting Hill Square with Mary, whilst his daughters are boarding with the Taylor family in St Pancras.

In 1864, Tepper was granted freedom of the City.  He was an active freemason, and in 1871 he was Worshipful Master of the Metropolitan Grand Steward’s Lodge.

The Freemason, 25 March 1871 - Museum of Freemasony Masonic Periodicals Online

For some time between 1868 and 1871, Tepper lived at Turner’s former studio and gallery in Queen Anne Street.  The 1871 census shows Tepper living on a farm at Hellingly, Sussex, with Mary.

Death notice for Jabez Tepper - Morning Advertiser 14 December 1871 British Newspaper Archive 

Jabez Tepper died at his London home on 10 December 1871.  His actions would be challenged in the law courts in the years following his death.

To be continued…

CC-BY
David Meaden
Independent Researcher

Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive for Jabez Tepper’s career and reports on the court cases involving the Turner estate.

 

Turner’s restored house in Twickenham is open to visitors.

 

One of the distinctive features of Oman is that the majority of its population are adherents to the Ibadhi sect of Islam - neither Sunni nor Shi’a - which established itself in the early Islamic period on the periphery of Islamic empire and survives today in Oman and in North Africa on the island of Jerba, the Nafusa mountain range and the Mzab region. 

British India Office Records written in the 1920s and 1930s shed light on the life of one Ibadhi scholar and statesman', ‘Sulaiman al Baruni al Nafusi’,who traversed from Italian-occupied Tripoli to become an adviser in Muscat and Oman.

Cover of India Office file on Sulaiman al-Baruni and his relatives - British Library IOR/R/15/6/449

Al-Baruni was a notable author and had been a member of the last Ottoman parliament.  In November 1922 he wrote to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, Taimur bin Faisal, that he was attending the peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland and after that hoped to travel to Oman.

Translation of letter from Sulaiman al-Baruni to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, November 1922 - British Library IOR/R/15/6/449 f.4

In December al-Baruni again wrote, saying that his options were becoming more and more constrained by French, Italian and British hostility to him.  British officials noted with suspicion that he ‘seems to claim three nationalities, Turkish, French and Italian’.

Owing to his espousal of nationalist ideas antipathetical to British dominance, in 1923 the Government of India described him as a ‘prominent figure in the turmoil of politics in North Africa’ - an ‘undesirable intriguer’ and ‘a person whom His Highness the Sultan of Muscat would do well to refuse admittance to his country’; however al-Baruni gained entry anyway on a pilgrim’s ship from Jeddah in 1924.

After the First World War al-Baruni had spent time in the Hijaz with the Sherif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, and in 1924 he visited his ‘old acquaintance’, Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali, recently installed by Britain as King Faisal I of the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq.  The British noted he was held in high esteem as of ‘religious consequence’ by both the Sultan of Muscat on the coast and the Imam of Oman in the mountainous interior.  In accordance with their strategic interests at the time, Britain had mediated a de facto separation of Muscat and Oman by the ‘Treaty of Sib’ in 1920.  From 1924-1932 al-Baruni served as Financial Adviser to the Imam of Oman in Nizwa. Sa’id bin Taimur, who became Sultan of Muscat in 1932, appointed him in 1938 as Advisor for Internal Affairs and Inspector of Walis.  The British surmised that it was part of Sa’id bin Taimur’s strategy to reunify Muscat and Oman.

Comment on appointment of al-Baruni as advisor for Internal Affairs and Inspector of Walis IOR/R/15/6, f 123

From September 1939 to April 1940 the British intercepted his correspondence with other members of Tripolitania diaspora as the circle of exiles contemplated the future and how they might be free of Italian colonial rule in Tripoli.  This included support of Muhammed Idris Al-Sanussi who was to become the first king of Libya when it gained independence in 1951.

Sulaiman al-Buruni died on his way to Mumbai with Sa’id bin Taimur in May 1940.  Today, on the island of Jerba, Ibadhi texts are still being collected, conserved and digitised for posterity by his descendants and the wider Ibadhi community, so his legacy lives on.

Francis Owtram
Gulf History Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/449 '15/3 Vol I XV - B/1 VISITORS SUSPECTS & UNDESIRABLES SULEMAN AL BARUNI AL NAFUSI & HIS RELATIVES Jan 1923 - June 1940.'
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/450 'FILE NO. 15/3 SULEIMAN AL BARUNI AND HIS RELATIVES'
British Library, IOR/L/PS/12/2990 Coll 20/30 'Muscat: Employment of one Suleman al Baruni al Nufusi'
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/264, 'File 8/67 MUSCAT STATE AFFAIRS: MUSCAT – OMAN TREATY.'

Al Muatasim Said Saif Al Maawali, ‘The Omani Experience of Multi-religious Coexistence and Dialogue: A Historical Approach to the Omani Principles and its Luminous Examples’, Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 11, no. 1 (2021). 59-78.
Adam Gaiser, Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origins and Elaboration of the Ibadhi Imamate Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Valerie J. Hofmann, The Essentials of Ibadhi Islam (Syracuse University Press, 2012)
Abdulrahman al-Salimi: From the First Renaissance to the Second: The Historical and Legal Basis for the Sultanate, in Allen James Fromherz and Abdulrahmen al-Salimi, (eds), Sultan Qaboos and Modern Oman, 1970-2020 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

 

When Edward Godfrey was born in Nettleton, Wiltshire, on 4 September 1820 it could perhaps be foreseen that he would go on to be a priest, following in the footsteps of his father the Reverend Daniel Race Godfrey.  But it is unlikely he could have predicted that he would become known as the last surviving Chaplain of the East India Company.

Edward attended Clare College, Cambridge achieving his M.A. in 1846.  He had already been serving as Curate of Chard in Somerset since 1844, and in 1847 was appointed to as Curate to St Peter’s in Plymouth.

Marriage announcement for the Reverend Edward Godfrey to Miss Emily Clare Payne, London Evening Standard 7 December 1844 British Newspaper Archive

That same year he applied for an appointment with the East India Company, and he was formally appointed as an Assistant Chaplain to Bengal on 29 March 1848.  He left England with his wife Emily Clare, daughter of Captain René Payne of the Bombay Army, whom he had married in 1844. They sailed for India aboard the Wellesley on 10 June 1848.  The couple already had two children, whom they appear not to have taken to India with them.  Their first child, Vaughan was born in 1846, and on the 1851 census is living in Bath with his paternal grandfather Daniel Race Godfrey.  Daughter Julia was born in 1847, and in 1851 was living in Cheltenham with her maternal grandmother Eliza Julia Payne.

Baptism of  second son Francis Edward Godfrey born at Meerut, Bengal 16 May 1849 (their first child born in India) - British Library IOR/N/1/75 f.193

The couple would have six more children, all born in India between 1849 and 1871 as Edward held appointments across Bengal over the next 25 years serving in places such as Meerut, Subathoo, Ferozepore, Saugor and Landour.  He was promoted to Chaplain in 1869.

Godfrey was a keen amateur photographer.  His photographs of tribes of Central India were displayed at the London International Exhibition in 1862.  He also contributed photographs to The People of India, an eight-volume publication compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye between 1868 and 1875.

Edward retired from service in India on 20 October 1873, and on returning to England was appointed Curate of Stainsby, Lincolnshire in 1875.  However, this was not the end of his travels as in 1878 he was appointed Chaplain at Coblenz in Germany, transferring to Dusseldorf in 1880, and then to Milan in 1889.  He returned to England in 1891 serving at St Peter’s Hospital in Covent Garden before being appointed as Vicar of Great Tey in Essex where he remained until 1916.

St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex where Edward Godfrey served as Vicar from 1891 onwards. Wikipedia - attribution Robert Edwards, St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex CC BY-SA 2.0 

Edward Godfrey died in Bedfordshire on 24 February 1918 at the age of 97.  He had followed his calling for over 72 years and at the time of his passing had been the very last living Chaplain appointed under the East India Company.  His wife Emily Clare passed away five years later aged 95.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading
The Chaplains of the East India Company, S.J. McNally, 1976 – British Library OIR 253.0954.
John Falconer, A Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Photographers in South and South-East Asia.
London Evening Standard, 7 December 1844 – announcement of the marriage of Reverend Edward Godfrey to Emily Clare Payne British Newspaper Archive.
British Library IOR/N/1/75 f.193 - Bengal Baptisms – baptism of Francis Edward Godfrey, 2nd son of Edward & Mary Clare Godfrey.

St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex

 

In February 1772 Robert Kitson was appointed by the East India Company as a writer for Bombay.  He sailed to India in the Devonshire.  Kitson started his career in Bombay working in the Secretary’s office.  In October 1775, he was appointed Coroner for the southern half of the island of Bombay at a salary of Rs30 a month plus a fee of Rs4 for each inquest.  He held this post until March 1783, in tandem with his duties as Assistant to the Select or Secret Department.

There were about 40 inquests each year.  If Kitson needed to travel for an inquest, he hired a bullock hackney, or occasionally a palanquin.  The India Office Records holds Kitson’s incomplete list of inquests he conducted, with papers about some of the verdicts.  The cases include both Indians and Europeans and are a useful supplement to the Christian church burial records for those years.  There are 23 inquests for enslaved people: fourteen boys, seven girls, and two not described.

The most common cause of death in cases investigated by Robert Kitson was drowning -in water tanks, in wells and in the sea.  Others were natural causes, murder, suicide, and accidents.

Here are a few examples from Kitson’s coroner records.

Report of inquest held on Ally 19 December 1776 - IOR/H/732

On the early evening of 18 December 1776, a man called Ally was sitting near the dock head pier in his boat from Rajapore.  He was accidentally hit in the chest by a musket shot from James Logan who was on sentry duty. Logan was aiming at another boat, but no reason is given for this.

Report of inquest held on Francis 3 September 1777 - IOR/H/732

An inquest was held on 3 September 1777 on ‘Coffree Slave’ Francis who drowned in a well on Old Woman’s Island near the house of his master Captain Charles William Boye, an East India Company military officer.  Boye’s will, made in 1784, shows that there were many enslaved people in his household.  Some he ‘freed’ on his death, urging them to live with members of his family, others he ’gave’ to his children.

Report of inquest held on Mungal 26 September 1782 - IOR/H/732

Mungal was found dead on 25 September 1782 at the Bantun Dancing Girls’ House near the Portuguese Church.  He died from two head wounds sustained when trying to escape out of a window at the house on 23 September.

Nattoo, horse-keeper to John Morris, died in March 1783 inn a stable near Bunder from an accidental kick from a horse in his left side.

In August 1782 Toulsie, washerwoman to Colonel Bailey of the Bengal Army, died from a snake bite.

Kitson conducted inquests on a number of murders.  In May 1778 Antonio, servant to Charles Duff, was killed by a blow to the belly from Francis de Rozara, a sailor on the ship Nancy. Sergeant John Forsyth was murdered by Patrick Atkins on the ramparts between the church and bazaar gates in April 1779.

There were suicides.  Maubet Caun, a sepoy in the Marine Battalion, shot himself with a musket in the Esplanade near the powder house in November 1779.  Soldier Isaac Reid killed himself in the town jail in March 1783.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/H/732 Papers of Robert Kitson, Bombay Civil Service

 

On 18 January 1879, C. Crowther Smith, Clerk at the St Mary Street Workhouse in Southampton, wrote to the India Office regarding a blind orphan youth named Edward Murphy. 

Letter about Edward Murphy from C. Crowther Smith at the Southampton Workhouse 8 January 1879, IOR/L/PJ/2/216, File 2542

Aged 19, Murphy had been sent to the Workhouse by the Superintendent of Police as he was destitute.  It appeared that he had been deported from India by the Madras Government and there was no evidence of his legal settlement in the UK.  Smith wished to know from the India Office of any course which could be adopted to prevent Murphy remaining a permanent charge to the parochial rates at Southampton.  The Workhouse Board thought it unfair that the burden of maintaining such cases should be thrown on the ratepayers of the port at which the vessel containing such destitute persons should happen to arrive.

Deportation request by the Madras Government Workhouse IOR/L/PJ/2/225, File 180

The India Office made enquiries.  On 2 April 1878, Major Balmer, President of the Committee for the Management of the Government Workhouse at Madras, had written to the Madras Government requesting approval for the deportation of seven men under the provision of the Indian Vagrancy Act. A short summary for each man was given, and Edward Murphy’s entry reads: ‘Register No.713, Edward Murphy, of Ireland, age 19, came out some 17 or 18 years ago with his mother to Rangoon; educated there til 17; was then employed on the Prome Railway, where he lost his eyesight.  The Doctor has recommended his deportation to England. Admitted 8th March 1878’.

India Office memorandum about Edward Murphy - IOR/L/PJ/2/225, File 180

A memorandum records that Murphy’s parents were Irish, and his father Michael was a Drummer in the 50th Regiment of Native Infantry.  His father died in England, and his mother took Murphy to Rangoon to join an uncle who was a non-commissioned officer in the Telegraph Department.  His mother died shortly after arriving and his uncle placed him in a school there.  The uncle died in 1868, but the Orphan Society in Rangoon supported Murphy enabling him to complete his education.  At 17, he joined the Prome Railway as a Fireman, but after a year left with sore eyes and was admitted to the Rangoon Hospital, and later transferred to the Madras Eye Infirmary.  He could distinguish light from darkness but little else.  He had no one to support him and didn’t know what county or parish he was from.  Murphy was deported to England on the P&O steamer Cathay, leaving Madras on 2 December 1878.

The India Office was scornful of the complaints from the Southampton Workhouse, and in an internal memo, William Macpherson, Secretary to the Judicial & Public Department, noted ‘…there would scarcely seem to be any ground for complaint, as that Parish is best able to maintain the burden by reason of the great advantage the locality must derive from the fleet of the P&O Company sailing to and from that Port, and from the rates they must receive in respect of the Docks there’.  On 15 February 1879, the India Office wrote to the Workhouse stating that they could not advise on Murphy’s case, and that there were no funds at the disposal of the Secretary of State which could be applied in his case.

It appears likely that the Edward Murphy who was admitted, blind, to East London's Homerton Workhouse in April 1879 is the same man.  Murphy spent the next twelve years moving in and out of the workhouse, infirmary, and ophthalmic hospital. We lose track of him after the 1891 census when he is a workhouse inmate.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Letter from the Clerk at the Workhouse, St Mary Street, Southampton, regarding Edward Murphy, 18 January 1879, Judicial Home Correspondence, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/2/216, File 2542.

Case of Edward Murphy, a vagrant sent from India to Southampton, 1878-1879, shelfmark: IOR/L/PJ/2/225, File 1807.

History of the Southampton Workhouse.

The registers of the Southampton Workhouse are held at Southampton Archives Office.

The National Archives - UK census returns for Homerton Workhouse.

London Metropolitan Archives - Poor Law Records.

 

As part of Local History and Community month, David Fitzpatrick discusses the compelling diary of a young Victorian bank clerk living in a quiet corner of Shropshire.

Talking With Past Hours: The Victorian Diary of William Fletcher of Bridgnorth comprises a personal diary for 1858-60, edited by archaeologist Jane Killick.  Since 1996, the original handwritten diary has resided in the University of Birmingham’s Special Collections, following its purchase from a dealer.  Its prior whereabouts remain unknown.

Front cover of Jane Killick, Talking With Past Hours: The Victorian Diary of William Fletcher of Bridgnorth. Copyright Moonrise Press.

William Fletcher was born on 20 October 1839 and was baptised in the Catholic Apostolic Church in Bridgnorth, where his father, also William, became a minister.  When eighteen-year-old William begins his diary in June 1858, he is a devout attendee at church and a well-respected clerk in Cooper’s and Purton’s Bank, located at the southern end of the high street (now the local HSBC branch).  He often works at a sister branch in nearby Much Wenlock and sometimes walks the eight miles there.

Oldbury Terrace, Bridgnorth, where William lodged from February 1858 to June 1859. Photograph by David Fitzpatrick, 2024.

William documents almost every aspect of his life in succinct yet candid entries, recording details of his correspondence, work, and social activities in Bridgnorth and beyond.  He appreciates a good sermon, smokes tobacco, and enjoys ‘some splendid ale’.  He takes an interest in local affairs and comments on the construction of the Severn Valley Railway, which would open in 1862.

View from Castle Hill, Bridgnorth. Photograph by David Fitzpatrick, 2017.

Central to the first year of the diary is what initially appears to be a budding romance with a young woman named Mary Anne Jones (often referred to as ‘my dear Marianne’), with whom William eventually breaks off correspondence in frustration, following an apparent lack of reciprocation.  His failed courtship touches on universal romantic themes, yet readers who have lived in Bridgnorth will find it especially evocative, given the familiar setting.  For instance, in one entry, William recounts how Mary Anne’s brother, also named William, relayed to him that Mary Anne and her sister Martha had heard that William ‘had been seen with some girls on the Castle Hill’, which he dismisses as ‘utterly false’.  It is easy to imagine young people making similar accusations and refutations almost every year since then, all centred on Castle Hill, with its fine views of the Severn Valley.

Report of William Fletcher’s sudden death –Shrewsbury Chronicle 7 August 1863 British Newspaper Archive

Also prominent throughout the diary is William’s struggle with tuberculosis (though not named as such), including consultations in Birmingham, and a trip to Bournemouth for ‘a change of air’.  As Killick’s supplementary notes inform us, William’s illness ultimately led to his premature death in Bridgnorth on 29 July 1863, aged just 23.  On 7 September 1863, Mary Anne married a man named Thomas Titterton, in Port Elizabeth [Gqeberha], South Africa. 

The Fletcher family headstone in Bridgnorth cemetery, made with local sandstone. Photograph by David Fitzpatrick, 2024.

William’s diary is an absorbing read, enhanced by Killick’s footnotes and additional biographical information (and an appendix containing an aborted diary by William, dated March-April 1857).  It is a fascinating insight into daily life in Bridgnorth during a time of great change, and a reminder of the fragile and ephemeral nature of life.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
Jane Killick, Talking With Past Hours: The Victorian Diary of William Fletcher of Bridgnorth (Ludlow: Moonrise Press, 2009)

 

750,000 India Office Records (IOR) catalogue descriptions have recently been uploaded to the National Archives’ Discovery platform, providing access while the British Library’s Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue is out of action. 

Researchers can use this catalogue to search for IOR materials, make a note of relevant references, and then visit the British Library to order material for consultation. The interim website provides information on reader registration and ordering during the ongoing disruption to library services. 

This post provides an overview of what’s included, what isn’t, and tips on how to use the Discovery platform. 

What is included

The records uploaded consist of the majority of the official IOR collections, including records of the East India Company, the Board of Control for the Affairs of India, the India Office and the Burma Office. 

Older IOR descriptions in Discovery were deleted and replaced with updated versions dating from April 2023. 

The following IOR classes, record groups or fonds have been uploaded: 

• IOR/A Charters, Statutes and Treaties 
• IOR/B Minutes of the East India Company’s Directors and Proprietors 
• IOR/C Council of India 
• IOR/D Minutes and Memoranda of General Committees and Offices of the East India Company 
• IOR/E East India Company General Correspondence 
• IOR/F Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India 
• IOR/G East India Company Factory Records 
• IOR/H Home Miscellaneous 
• IOR/I Records relating to other Europeans in India 
• IOR/J Records of the East India College, Haileybury 

• IOR/K Records of institutions in Britain connected to the East India Company and India Office 
• IOR/L/AG Accountant General’s Records 
• IOR/L/E Economic Department Records 
• IOR/L/F Financial Department Records 
• IOR/L/I Information Department Records 
• IOR/L/L Legal Advisor’s Records 
• IOR/L/MAR Marine Department Records 
• IOR/L/MIL Military Department Records 
• IOR/L/PARL Parliamentary Branch Records 
• IOR/L/PJ Public and Judicial Department 
• IOR/L/PO Private Office Papers 
• IOR/L/PS Political and Secret Department Records 
• IOR/L/PWD Public Works Department Records 
• IOR/L/R Record Department Papers 
• IOR/L/SG Services and General Department Records 
• IOR/L/SUR Surveyor’s Records 
• IOR/L/WS War Staff Papers 
• IOR/M Burma Office Records 
• IOR/N Ecclesiastical Returns 
• IOR/O Biographical Series 

• IOR/Q Commission, Committee and Conference Records 
• IOR/R Records transferred later through official channels 
• IOR/S Linguistic Survey of India Records 
• IOR/V Official Publications 
• IOR/X India Office Maps Reference Collection 

What is not included

Recent additions to the India Office Private Papers (IOPP) have not yet been uploaded. 

Entries for index volumes (IOR/Z) have not been uploaded, as they lack descriptive information and are more easily browsed and located using the physical lists in the British Library Asian and African Studies Reading Room.

Using Discovery

Discovery primarily holds catalogue records for the National Archives, but also hosts descriptions from over 3,500 other UK archive repositories. 

There are extensive help guides to be found in the Discovery help pages, but we will show you a couple of helpful tips below. 

Filters

You can use the Filters to restrict search results to records held by the British Library. For the India Office Records, use the ‘British Library: Asian and African Studies’ filter, found under ‘Other archives’. 

Screengrab showing filter selection for British Library: Asian and African Studies

Navigating the hierarchy

The India Office Records are organised into record groups as discussed above. If you know which record group you wish to use you can easily find it by searching for its reference in quotations, e.g. “IOR/E” will return the entry for the East India Company General Correspondence.  

You can view records within this section by using the ‘(browse here from hierarchy’) link at the top of the description.

Screengrab showing hierarchy link above IOR/E description

 This will show you the ‘child’ records of IOR/E on the right-hand side of the screen, as well as listing the other higher level IOR descriptions in reference order.

Screengrab showing IOR/E, with child records

If you wanted to see all the higher level IOR descriptions arranged in reference order, you could search for “IOR/A” (note the quotation marks), click into the description, then select ‘browse here from hierarchy’.

Similarly, if you search on a subject and topic and find an interesting entry, you can navigate using the hierarchy to browse other records within the sequence. For example, a search for 'Irrigation control Iraq' returns IOR/L/PS/20/C253/1, f 162, a map showing irrigation control in central and lower Iraq. The hierarchy can then be used to view the descriptions for the military report containing the map, the books within the Political and Secret Department Library ‘C’ Range, or the records of the whole departmental library.

Screengrab showing the hierarchy for IOR/L/PS/20/C253/1

 Advanced search

The advanced search option can be used to specify search term combinations within reference groupings and dates.  

For example, a search for ‘tax’ within reference IOR/L/PJ (Political and Judicial Department) for the years 1880-1900 returns 52 records. 

Screengrab showing search results for tax within IOR/L/PJ, 1880-1900