Edith E. Cuthell was a well-known author in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Many of her stories drew on her experiences as the wife of a British Army officer serving in India.  In ‘Up to the Hills’, published in 1893, Mrs Cuthell described a long march involving women and children.

Sketches of a march with elephants, camels, horsemen and Indian servants from Robert Place Smith, Sketchbook of 27 drawings of views made during a march from Benares to Bareilly 1814 British Library WD 312, f.25v Images Online

Troops moving between garrisons in India took a route march when there was no available railway.  They set off very early each morning in order to reach the shelter of the next camping place before the full heat of the day struck.  About ten miles were completed each day.  Troops never marched on a Sunday.

At the head of the march were the soldiers - a kaleidoscope of blue, red, green, and khaki uniforms.  They were followed by bullock carts carrying the married women and children.  Mrs Cuthell commented: ‘The soldier’s wife in India is a great grumbler, notwithstanding the comforts, and even luxuries, she enjoys in that land of extra pay and of many and cheap servants’.  However the wives might have had fair reason to complain when being jolted for days in bullock carts slowly creaking through the dust.  At the bottom of the carts was a layer of boxes with a couple of mattresses on top, all covered by thatched straw.  From time to time a wheel fell off, and pots, pans, baggage and children went flying in all directions.

Next came the sick and lame, laid on straw in bullock carts or carried along in canvas-hooded doolies. They were tended by a doctor and an apothecary.

Patient being carried in a doolie of ‘very ingenious construction’ invented by Surgeon J S Login 1850 IOR/F/4/2398/129162

 

Baggage animals accompanied the column.  Elephants and camels were loaded with tents, and mules carried the soldiers’ kit bags.  Cleared camping places were available at regular intervals by the roadside with trees planted by the government to shade them.  Tents were quickly erected on arrival, including one used as a hospital.  Indian cooks built fires and earth stoves to perform ’culinary wonders’.  Some of the soldiers played cards, whilst many took the opportunity to sleep.

An officer’s wife would enjoy the luxury of a tent serving as a dressing and sitting room with servants to attend her and provide a hot bath, and a separate bedroom tent furnished with a folding camp bed and washstand.  There was also a mess tent with waiters freshly dressed in clean white outfits and turbans after their march.

The camp awoke whilst it was still dark.  Fires were lit using straw bedding to ward off the bitter cold.  At the sound of a bugle, all the tents were taken down in readiness to begin the new day’s march.

Edith’s husband was Thomas George Cuthell, an officer in the 38th Foot and then the 13th Husssars.  The couple had married in Bedfordshire in 1873.  They had three daughters and one son, all born in England.  Mildred Frances, known as Millie, died at Lucknow in April 1878 aged 2¾ after suffering from convulsions.  Thomas retired from the Army in 1885 and the family lived on the Isle of Wight and later in Surrey.  Edith published books for adults and children as well as contributing articles to magazines.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
‘Up to the Hills’ in W. S. Burrell and E .E. Cuthell, Indian Memories (London, 1893)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Britain’s greatest woman poet, changed the course of literary history not only as a pioneering, modernising writer, world famous in her day, but as an influential political campaigner.  Born in 1806 in Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, she died in 1861 at Casa Guidi, her home in Florence.  In between, she lived a life of precocious achievement, writing poems from the age of six and verse drama in French at eight, and publishing her first book, The Battle of Marathon, at fourteen.  She did this despite living with a disabling, chronic respiratory illness so severe that – like Marcel Proust in his last years – she couldn’t leave her room for years at a time.

Portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from The poetical works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (London,1889-90) British Library flickr

There were other obstacles, too.  Barrett Browning wrote under her own name, at a time when most women published anonymously – Jane Austen as ‘A lady’ – or under male pseudonyms: the Brontë sisters as the Bell brothers, Mary Ann Evans as George Eliot.

As a result, contemporary critical reception was sometimes baldly misogynist: on the other hand, in 1850 she was the first woman to be nominated for Poet Laureate, 159 years before a woman Laureate was finally appointed.  A further challenge to any idea of becoming a writer, at a time with few Black literary role models, may have been that her Jamaican descent made her believe she had black heritage.  She was acutely aware of the appalling violence endured by those enslaved.  EBB, as she styled herself, passionately condemned that violence in her abolitionist poem ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim Point’.

Indeed as her literary fame developed, she deployed it repeatedly to change social attitudes.  She was at the forefront of the shift from Romanticism into an ethical, distinctively Victorian school of writing. In the verse novel Aurora Leigh (1856), the first ever woman’s Bildingsroman, she returned to rape in the form of forced prostitution.  She published in aid of Ragged Schools and against child labour (‘The Cry of the Children’).  Most influentially of all, in two books of political poetry, Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (1860), she argued for Italian independence, and Italians viewed her as a heroine of the struggle.

Other key works of Barrett Browning’s maturity included her breakthrough collection The Seraphim (1838), Poems (1844) and Poems (1850) – which included ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, among them one of the most famous poems in English, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’.  More to the point than its biographical occasion is the way this lyric shows off the poet’s gift for narrative, and a new informal, conversational style, which are the secrets of its popularity.  Her clandestine marriage at forty to the younger, and less-established poet Robert Browning, with whom she moved to Italy, was a love-match which is too often allowed to eclipse her work.  We gain a much more accurate sense of her legacy from noting the writers she influenced, including Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf.

Professor Fiona Sampson
Author of the first biography of Barrett Browning for more than 30 years, Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Profile, W.W. Norton, 2021) 

 

James Naish was Chief of the English East India Company Council in Canton (Guangzhou), China.  He kept a diary of ‘Observations and Transactions’ which includes a description of Chinese New Year celebrations in January and February 1730/31.

View of  Canton (Guangzhou) c.1760-1770 Maps K.Top.116.22.2 tab. BL flickr

Naish’s diary reads –

27th January This being the first day of the new Moon & of the new Year, great ceremony is observed by the Mandarins & all other persons in their visits and congratulations thereupon.

30th January The Foyen or Vice Roy of the Province haveing signified his approbation of all sorts of diversions, costly Pageants are daily carried about the streets, in which the State & Power of Mandarins in high stations are represented, Country & Low life well describ’d, & the seasons curiously discover’d.  At night the streets are finely illuminated, & a vast variety of fire works continually seen in the Air from all parts of the City.

17th February The Foyen hath Affixed a chop in several places which putts an end to the long continued festival, & likewise directs all persons to return to their professions & employments, the Mandarins of Justice may punish such Offenders as have been guilty of any crimes since new years day, from which time to this no sort of punishment could have been inflicted upon any criminal whatever.

Account of Chinese New Year celebrations from James Naish's diary IOR/G/12/32 p.1 27 January-17 February 1730/31

James Naish was a very experienced China trade merchant.  He was supercargo on East India Company voyages to Canton in 1716, 1722, 1725 and 1730, and had also worked for the Ostend Company.  In 1730-1731 he spent a whole year at Canton instead of returning to England between trading seasons, the only English East India Company supercargo ever to do this.   Naish wrote reports on the tea industry during his extended stay.

When China merchant George Arbuthnot arrived back in England in the summer of 1731, he accused Naish of fraud.  Arbuthnot claimed that Naish had understated the amount of money received for goods sold in China and inflated the cost of commodities purchased there.  Naish was also said to have imported a large quantity of gold bullion from China without paying duty. The East India Company decided that Naish had broken his covenant and considered sending a ship to seize his unlicensed goods and bring him to England under arrest.  Naish’s wife Hester was desperate to prevent this.  She had been given a letter of attorney by her husband in 1729 authorising her to conduct his business, so she agreed to deposit £20,000 with the Company to allow Naish to return as a free man.

The Company began proceedings in the Court of Exchequer.  Naish protested his innocence and lodged counter-claims against the Company in the courts.

The legal process dragged on for years.  When Naish made his will in 1736, he left everything to Hester because the size of his estate was uncertain, dependent upon the outcome of several pending law suits.  He said the family had long experience of Hester’s skilful management of his affairs whilst he was abroad and he trusted her to divide the estate as he would wish.  Although Naish did not die until January 1757, this will was the one submitted for probate.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/G/12/32 Observations and Transactions by James Naish at Canton in China (1926, 1929)
The Political State of Great Britain, Volume 44 July-September 1732
The Athenaeum January-June 1892,p.793
Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Courts of King's Bench ..., Volume 2 Naish v East India Company

Robert Preston (1740-1834) was born in Scotland, the fifth son of Sir George Preston of Valleyfield.  He started his career with the East India Company at the age of eighteen serving as Fifth Mate on the Streatham, which sailed for India in July 1758.

Portrait of Sir Robert Preston by William Dickinson (1794) © National Portrait Gallery, London NPG D40492

In November 1759 the Council of the East India Company at Calcutta was concerned about seven Dutch ships which were effectively blockading their port and they issued an order for the Duke of Dorset, the Calcutta and the Hardwicke to make a stand.  After considerable negotiation with the Commodore of the Dutch fleet, conducted under Flags of Truce, it was clear that battle was inevitable.  Charles Mason, Captain of the Streatham, joined the Duke of Dorset with ten of his crew including Robert Preston.

Page from the journal of the Duke of Dorset, 24 November 1759 IOR/L/MAR/B/612H 

The journal of the Duke of Dorset gives a detailed account of the battle.  The Dutch initially brought their broadsides to bear on the English ships, but they manoeuvred until ‘being now in the middle of their fleet we played on them as fast as we were able to load and fire, as did the Dutch on us, which was pretty galling on both sides but with the most success on ours.  For, after a smart firing of two hours with double round & grape shot, the Dutch Commander struck his broad pendant and hoisted a flag of truce, when we ceased firing at him.  We continued engaging the other ships which, on ten minutes close fire, all surrendered.  Our officers were sent on board to secure their magazines, spike their cannons and divide their prisoners on board our three ships. . . . The killed and wounded on board our ships is very inconsiderable to that of the enemy’.

Captain Bernard Forrester of the Duke of Dorset was wounded in the knee by a grape shot.  His leg was amputated but he died on 3 March 1760 about three months after the battle. 

Robert Preston served on the Clive as Third Mate 1761/2 and Second Mate 1764/5 under Captain John Allen, both voyages managed by Charles Raymond of Valentines, Ilford.  Then between 1767 and 1776 Preston made three voyages as a Captain, on ships under the management of Charles Foulis of Woodford.

Preston accumulated enough wealth to invest in shipping himself and he took over the management of several ships for the East India Company which made 55 voyages.  For a time he served as chairman of the Committee of Managing Owners of Shipping.

Charles Foulis and Robert Preston set up as insurance brokers in London and became managers of the Sun Fire Office.  Preston was elected MP for Dover 1784-1790 and then for Cirencester 1792-1806.  He was an Elder Brother of Trinity House 1781-1803 and a Deputy Master 1796-1803.  By the 1780s Preston was living in a substantial house in Woodford which had been the home of his colleague and close friend, Charles Foulis, who left the house and other property to him when he died.

Window at Trinity House dedicated to Robert Preston © Trinity House

On 23 March 1800 Robert Preston succeeded to his family baronetcy.   He returned to Valleyfield but continued his London business connections until around 1823.  Preston died at Valleyfield on 7 May 1834, aged 94, said to be worth one million pounds.

Georgina Green
Independent scholar

Further reading:
Details of the career of each officer who served with the East India Company can be found in Anthony Farrington, A Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers 1600-1834 (London, 1999), whilst details of each voyage are given in Anthony Farrington, A Catalogue of East India Company Ships’ Journals and Logs 1660-1834 (London, 1999)
Obituary for Sir Robert Preston in The Gentleman’s Magazine (1834), ii. pp..315-16
R. G. Thorne, The House of Commons 1790-1820 (London, 1986)

 

We’re returning to the ship New Year’s Gift to share some more of the instructions it carried.  This time we’re looking at rules for record-keeping in Asia in the earliest days of the East India Company and the use of codes in correspondence.

The Company merchants in the fleet of four ships which sailed from England in March 1613/14 were told before they sailed that they were expected to record their work with care and ‘exquisiteness’. They were provided with –
• Four pairs of ‘faire bookes,’ i.e. journals and ledgers
• Four large ‘industriall’ or day books
• Books for expenses
• Books for copies of letters
• Large ruled sheets of paper for making copies of the journals
• Eight reams of paper, large and small
• Ink
• Penknives
• Quills
• Hard wax

More books had been sent to the Company’s trading post in Bantam in the ship Concord.

Instructions to East India Company factors 1614 from Thomas Elkington’s notebook IOR/G/40/25

Having provided ample supplies of stationery, the Company expected accounts to be kept ‘perfectly’ in all places.  The chief factor at Surat, or someone else appointed to the task, was to keep a fair pair of books for the Company general account.  All factors, whether working at settled factories or employed buying and selling commodities in fairs or markets, were to give their accounts from time to time to the chief factor at Surat so they could be brought into the general books there.  But all factors were also to send to London a copy of their journal and the balance of their ledger whenever Company ships sailed for England.  The chief factor was to send by every shipping a verbatim copy of his journal written on the large ruled paper being supplied.  Since all copies sent would be the same size, they could in future be bound together in one volume in London.  The Company also expected to receive the balance of the chief’s ledger from time to time, and an exact copy of his ledger once a year.

Changes in personnel at Surat must not lead to alterations in the methods of record-keeping.  No factor was to take away Company books as had happened in the past.  Completed books were to be sealed up and sent to London, with copies made to retain in the factory if required.  Local coinage and weights should be used in the accounts, with an explanation provided for London.

Similar instructions were given for the factory at Bantam, with a central record taking in information sent by merchants working away from base.  The Company advised all factors to write down immediately everything that happened – ‘our memory at the best hand is very slippery’.  Moreover, sickness and death could strike at any time.

If factors wrote home about an important matter using a dangerous or doubtful conveyance and passage, the Company asked them to write the letters, or at least ‘poynts of moment’, in ‘caracters’ i.e. a code or cipher.  Then, if the letters were intercepted, trade secrets would not be disclosed and cause damage to the Company.  A copy of the cipher was included with the instructions.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/G/40/25 Instructions to East India Company factors from Thomas Elkington’s notebook
IOR/B/5 Minutes of East India Company Court of Directors 1613-1615

Major William Down of the Madras Army was a subscriber to the Madras Military Fund Pension scheme.  He was invalided in service and sent home in February 1859.  He died on 20 April 1868 aged 46.  On 1 September 1847 he had married Christian Tripp Hutchinson (1823-1898) and the couple had ten children, aged between five and nineteen at the time of their father’s death.

Three of his children found themselves caught up in or at the centre of scandals including allegations of adultery and involvement in criminal enterprises.

The first was Arabella Almond Down, fifth child of William and Christian, born in Secunderabad, Madras on 13 December 1852.  In May 1869 Arabella was referenced in the divorce proceedings of Samuel George Hulse and Catherine Theresa Ingram.  Samuel Hulse filed for divorce from his wife of four years on the grounds of serial adultery.  They had married in Bengal in 1866 when Samuel was 21 and Catherine was just 15.  Samuel returned to England September 1868 leaving his wife behind in Delhi, where it was alleged she commenced a relationship with another man, returning with him to England in March 1869 and leaving her husband for good shortly afterwards.  During the proceedings, Theresa (as she preferred to be known) submitted a counter claim accusing Samuel of also having committed adultery with Arabella Down.  The court dismissed this counter-claim and the divorce was granted on the grounds of adultery by Samuel’s wife.

Two lovers in bed caught in the act by a husband holding a whip - from R. Gill, A new collection of trials for adultery (London, 1799) P.C.19.a.11 volume 2, frontispiece Images Online

There may however have been some truth to the counter claim made by Theresa Hulse.  On 23 December 1871 Arabella Georgina Catherine Hulse was born in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, the child of Samuel George Hulse and Arabella Almond Down,  I have been unable to find a marriage record for Samuel and Arabella.  The couple had two more children: Samuel Rusk Ramsay born in October 1873 and Violet born September 1876 but dying a month later.

Samuel and Arabella’s relationship appears to have dissolved quite rapidly, as on 22 March 1879 Arabella Down was married in Manhattan USA to Dr Gordon Edward Corbould.  At the time of their marriage Arabella and Gordon already had a son, Gordon Bruce, born in October 1877, and Arabella was six months pregnant with their second child.  Following the marriage they moved to New Westminster, British Columbia, where they had five more children between 1881 and 1890.  Arabella died in New Westminster on 20 February 1894.

Samuel Hulse kept custody of his two surviving children and they were still in Simcoe, Ontario at the time of the 1881 Census of Canada.  All three seem to disappear from official records shortly afterwards, although London probate records show that Samuel senior died on 22 August 1896 in Belize, British Honduras.  What happened to his children remains a mystery to me.  Can anyone help?

Watch out for a story of forgery, deceit and more alleged adultery featuring two more of the Down family siblings, Eva and Charles.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading:
IOR/L/AG/23/10/1 no.4003 Madras Military Fund Roll of Subscribers: William Down
IOR/L/AG/23/10/11, Part 1 ff. 195-202 Madras Military Fund Pension Certificates, No. 90: Birth/baptism, marriage and death certificates for William Down and family.
The National Archives: J 77/93/1164 Supreme Court of Judicature, Divorce Court File No. 1164: Samuel George Hulse & Theresa Hulse

 

A common question which India Office Records curators receive from researchers is what sources there are  in the records for the Bengal and Punjab Boundary Commissions of 1947. The Boundary Commissions have featured previously in an Untold Lives story.  The Commissions were created in 1947 for the purpose of determining the new border between India and Pakistan following independence from British rule.  Both were chaired by the British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe.  The Radcliffe Line became the border between India and Pakistan when the Award was published on 17 August 1947, two days after independence.

Map of India taken from Report on the last Viceroyalty, Rear-Admiral The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 22 March to 15 August 1947, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/5/396/15

Files relating to the Boundary Commissions can be found in the principal series in the official records relating to the Transfer of Power, in particular the Public & Judicial Department Papers and the Private Office Papers.  A list of specific file titles and shelfmarks can be found at the end of this post.  Some papers are reproduced in the last volume of Constitutional relations between Britain and India. The transfer of power, 1942-7, edited by Nicholas Mansergh (London, 1970-83).

Map of India/Pakistan boundaries as fixed by the Boundary Commission 17 Aug 1947 (London: War Office, 1947) shelfmark: Cartographic Items Maps MOD OR 6409 Images Online

Discussions concerning the Boundary Commissions appear in several collections of private papers, in particular:
• IOR Neg 15538-67: copies of the papers of Lord Mountbatten as Viceroy 1947 and Governor-General 1947-48 of India.
• Mss Eur C357: weekly correspondence of the Earl of Listowel, Secretary of State for India Apr-Aug 1947, with Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy of India.
• IOR Neg 10760-826: Papers of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of Muslim League in India and founder of Pakistan.
• Mss Eur C645: letters, dated 1967-1973, from Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins, Governor of Punjab 1946-47, to Stuart Evelyn Abbott, his Private Secretary in 1947, on the question of last minute alterations to the boundary commission award partitioning the Punjab. See also Mss Eur D807.
• Mss Eur Photo Eur 358: copies of statements, dated 1989-1992, by Herbert Christopher Beaumont, Private Secretary to the Chairman of the Boundary Commissions. Also family letters at Mss Eur Photo Eur 428, and oral history recordings at C63/89-93.

Comments on the Boundary Commissions also appear in the private papers of Sir Penderel Moon, Indian Civil Service, Punjab (Mss Eur F230); Sir Francis Mudie, Governor of Sind and West Punjab (Mss Eur F164); Walter Henry John Christie, Indian Civil Service, Bengal (Mss Eur D718); and Sir Laurence Barton Grafftey-Smith, United Kingdom High Commissioner in Pakistan (Mss Eur C631).

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Establishment and composition of Boundary Commissions, Jun-Nov 1947, shelfmark: IOR/L/PJ/5/396/15.

Information Department file on the partition of Bengal and the Punjab, and the appointment of the Boundary Commission, 1947-1948, shelfmark IOR/L/I/1/770.

Appointment of Sir Cyril Radcliffe, Chairman, Punjab and Bengal Boundary Commissions, Jun 1947-Jan 1948, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/7/12500.

Boundary Commissions of Punjab and Bengal: petitions, memoranda and telegrams and protests against awards, Aug 1947-Oct 1948, shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/7/12465.

File in the political papers of the Viceroy's Private Office on the Boundary Commission, Jun-Sep 1947, shelfmark IOR/R/3/1/157.

Reports of the Bengal Boundary Commission 1947 and Punjab Boundary Commission 1947, shelfmark IOR/V/26/261/60. The maps accompanying the reports are in the India Office Map Collections, shelfmarks IOR/X/9076 (for Bengal and Assam) and IOR/X/9077 (for Punjab).

Photocopies of the reports of the members of the Bengal and Punjab Boundary Commissions, Jul-Aug 1947, shelfmark Mss Eur Photo Eur 211.

`The Origins of the Frontier between India and East Pakistan': confidential printed memorandum, with maps annexed, dated 19 Feb 1969, by Research Dept. of Foreign and Commonwealth Office, shelfmark Mss Eur D768.

India/Pakistan boundaries as fixed by the Boundary Commission 17 Aug 1947 (London: War Office, 1947), scale 1:2 000 000, shelfmark: Cartographic Items Maps MOD OR 6409.

India/Pakistan boundaries fixed by the Boundary commission, 17 Aug 1947, Bengal and Assam, (London: War Office, 1947), scale 1:2 022 000, shelfmark: Cartographic Items Maps MOD OR 5682B.

 

A volume listing court cases from Surat, India, in 1796, reveals a lot about the legal process in a British trading post and a little about a Scottish administrator.

Introductory paragraph to the diary of Daniel Seton IOR/G/36/81

As part of the India Office Records team’s ongoing efforts to identify historically overlooked individuals in our collections, I recently compiled a summary of the cases held in a judicial diary (IOR/G/36/81).  The summary has been added to the catalogue description on the British Library website.  The diary was compiled by Daniel Seton, Chief of Surat, while completing his duties in 1796.  It lists 242 cases and includes the names of the petitioners and defendants, the crimes or subject of dispute, and the decisions made by Seton.

List of cases from the diary of Daniel Seton IOR/G/36/81 

The Surat factory or trading post, in Gujarat, was established by the East India Company in 1612.  A history of the area can be found in the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Surat and Broach.  At first the chief seat of the Company’s trade, Surat declined in importance when the British took possession of Bombay in 1661 and made it their centre of administration in 1687.  By the time Seton was writing, Surat was run-down, having borne the brunt of warring European powers, a vicious storm in 1782, and a famine in 1790.

The History of the family of Seton during eight centuries lists Daniel Seton as the second son from the second marriage of Daniel Seton of Powderhall, Edinburgh, but we know little else about him.  Daniel’s role as Chief seems to fit between the Governor of the city and its administrators.  According to the Gazetteer of Bombay, a Dutch visitor to Surat in 1774 saw the native Governor as a puppet ruler under the Chief.  He claimed they had to obey British commands like ‘the lowest inhabitant’, although the Company men would ‘show him externally some honour’.

However this doesn’t seem to match with how Seton saw his role.  He wrote in this volume that he held ‘all the duties of magistrate prescribed by law to subjects living under the Anglish protection’ and hoped ‘to act up to a true sense [of] humanity.’  And in a letter from Seton to the Governor, or Nabob, of Surat, he claimed friendship and a desire ‘to co-operate with you to the honor of your Government and the Protection of the Subjects’.

Seton also favoured local advice, such as ‘a punchat or arbitration’ for property cases, or using ‘the patells or heads of the caste’ to solve social disputes ‘conformally to the laws of their sects’; thus demonstrating consideration of an unfamiliar culture.

Seton also imposed rules on the treatment of the accused.  Following reports about violent treatment and internment before trial, Seton ‘established as a rule never to be deviated from, that he should not himself or any other of the officers of Government attempt to p[un]ish before conviction any individual whatever’.

Of course we cannot know truthfully how fair Seton was, or how true to his word, but we can be thankful he has left us a valuable record of individuals and their crimes under his jurisdiction in 1796.

Matthew Waters
India Office Records

Further reading:
Surat Factory Records (IOR/G/36/81 : 1796)
Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Surat and Broach, Sir James MacNabb Campbell, Reginald Edward Enthoven (Bombay, 1894)
National Library of Scotland – History of the family of Seton during eight centuries – Volume 1