We might feel like we’re living through a surreal period of strange news at the moment, but that’s nothing compared to some of the stories reported in news pamphlets of the early 17th century.  During this period reports of freak weather, unearthly sightings of ghosts, monstrous births and more were frequent.  The question is, did people living in the 17th century think these reports were as strange as we do today?

In 1616, news broke of three dead bodies rising from their graves in a town in Germany.  In the aftermath of a ‘tempest’, the townspeople believed they saw three corpses rising from the graveyard to preach a terrible warning about God’s wrath.  Rumours of this spread, pamphlets were printed across Europe and news of it eventually reached Edward Allde in London, where he printed this account.

Miraculous newes, from the cittie of Holdt, in the Lord-ship of Munster (in Germany) the twentieth of September last past, 1616. Where there were plainly beheld three dead bodyes rise out of their graves, admonishing the people of judgements to come. London: Printed [by E. Allde] for John Barnyes, 1616.

As you can see, 'Miraculous Newes' is splashed across the half-title page, just as any sensational headline would be today, and a fantastic woodcut of the three skeletons is emblazoned below.  This incident may seem surreal to us today but then it would have been only too believable.  People in the early modern period were accustomed to interpreting strange sightings and weird phenomena as signs of divine judgement or wrath.  This was the only way they could interpret them.

So did people always believe these strange news reports?  Well, in 1620, Nathaniel Butter published a news report translated out of Italian about a vision seen over the Prophet Mohammad’s tomb in ‘Arabia’ and an account of the skies raining blood in Rome.

Cortano, Ludovico. Good newes to Christendome. Sent to a Venetian in Ligorne, from a merchant in Alexandria, Discovering a wonderfull and strange apparition, visibly seene for many dayes…with many other notable accidents. London: Printed for Nathaniel Butter, 1620.

In the preface, the translator writes that he found it hard to believe this account.  After all, other recent strange reports, such as the 'Sussex Serpent, the German Ghosts' (a reference to the pamphlet described above?) and a great army marching in the sky, all 'came out of the shop of invention'.  But he apparently realised his mistake and is now convinced that this vision isn’t fake news. This one is definitely true, and if it’s true, then it has to be a sign from God.

It wasn’t just ghosts and visions that were divine interventions either.  Extreme weather was also a likely sign from God.  This pamphlet is a 'true relation' of a storm and severe flooding in Barcelona and the surrounding area in November 1617.  The woodcut depicts people drowning in the floods.  It was only with much prayer and dipping of the Holy Cross into the water that the storm eventually abated.  The pamphlet ends with a reminder of God’s 'chastisements and warnings' and a warning to serve him with 'more truth and sinceritie'.

Rejaule, V. A true relation of the lamentable accidents, caused by the inundation and rising of Ebro, Lobregat, Cinca, and Segre, rivers of Spaine. Together with a narration of a fearefull storme, which happened the third of November, in the yeare 1617. In the haven and port of Barcelona. London: printed for William Blackwall, 1618. 

These strange news reports that today we would brush off as fake news were in fact serious matters in the early modern period.  Whilst people may not have believed every incredible story, they were wary enough of divine judgement to certainly believe some.  Strange news reports like these became more prevalent in times of upheaval, anxiety and uncertainty, such as in the build-up to the English Civil War, as people didn’t know what to believe.  Surreal times generated surreal headlines, and we can certainly empathise with that.

Maddy Smith
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

Further reading:
Sir Hans Sloane as a collector of “strange news”

In late 1904 William Foster took extended leave from the India Office Record Department to visit India, an experience he found most enjoyable.  Foster travelled with Henry John Tozer who was a clerk in the Statistical Department of the India Office.  The pair visited Calcutta, Madras, Trichinopoly, Madura, Conjeeveram, Tanjore, Tuticorin, and Columbo.  Tozer toured industrial premises and interviewed officials, and also studied the inscriptions and architecture of temples.

The principal shrine of the Varadarajaperumal Temple at Conjeeveram (Kanchipuram) from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Madras, 1896-98 British Library Photo 1008/3(321)

Tozer was collecting data for a paper on Indian arts and industries which he was to deliver on his return to London. On 11 May 1905 the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, who was on a private visit to England, presided at a meeting of the Indian Section of the Society of Arts.  Henry Tozer read his paper ‘The manufactures of Greater Britain – India’.

Henry Tozer was born in 1864 in Cottishall, Norfolk, the son of an Inland Revenue officer.  By 1881 his family had moved to Romford in Essex and Henry was working as a junior clerk at the Admiralty.  He joined the Accountant’s General Department of the India Office in January 1882 as a clerk, 2nd class.  Tozer then studied at the University of London, gaining a B.A. (Hons) in 1889 and an M.A. in philosophy and political economy in 1893.  He transferred to the Revenue and Statistical Department in 1897.  The Society of Arts awarded Tozer a silver medal for a paper on Indian trade in 1901, and he published British India and its trade in 1902.

Tozer was a man of many interests. He addressed industrial conferences and spoke at the Economic Club of the Working Man’s College in Crowndale Road in the 1890s. He published an English translation of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract in 1895 which is still widely cited today. 

Title page of Rousseau's  The Social Contract translated by H. J. Tozer

Before he married Amy Jane Carruthers in 1908, Tozer lived at the Passmore Edwards Settlement in Tavistock Square London.  Young professional men living at the Settlement gave classes in academic and practical subjects to poor adults and children living nearby.  Tozer was an active member of the local committee of the Charity Organisation Society.  In 1898 Tozer corresponded with George Bernard Shaw about the appalling sanitation of the parish of St Pancras, and in 1903 about the Education Act.  Tozer wrote to Winston Churchill in January 1903 inviting him to open a debate at the Settlement on the fiscal question – Churchill declined.

Henry Tozer also corresponded with Pierre Kropotkine, the Russian writer and activist who spent part of his exile in Britain in the late 1890s.  Tozer sent Kropotkine a Blue Book on India.

There is evidence that Tozer acted as an informer for the India Office, reporting on a meeting of the London Indian Society in May 1901.  His report on ‘Resolutions Passed at a Meeting of the London Indian Society’ has been preserved in the records of the Public and Judicial Department.

Tozer was promoted to senior clerk in 1911 and principal in 1921.  He worked in the military, public works, revenue and industries and overseas departments. He retired in 1924.

In 1939 Henry and Amy Tozer were living in Kensington Park Gardens, Notting Hill, with a resident cook, parlour maid, and housemaid.  Henry Tozer died in October 1943.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Passmore Edwards Settlement
Nigel Scotland, Squires in the Slums - Settlements and Missions in Late Victorian Britain (London, 2007)
Dinyar Phiroze Patel, 2015. The Grand Old Man: Dadabhai Naoroji and the Evolution of the Demand for Indian Self-Government. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Resolutions passed at a Conference of the London Indian Society; report on the meeting by H. J. Tozer, May 1901 - IOR/L/PJ/6/570, File 970
British Newspaper Archive 

 

Historians of the East India Company and archivists working with the India Office Records owe a debt of gratitude to Sir William Foster whose publications are an invaluable source of information for them. Foster joined the India Office in Westminster in 1882, becoming Registrar and Superintendent of Records 1907-1923, and Historiographer to the India Office 1923-1927.

Photograph of Sir William Foster (1863-1951) by Bassano Ltd 12 February 1929 courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery  NPG x81132

So I was delighted when I was given a copy of Foster’s John Company as a present. 

Title page of John Company

The name R. A. Bell is written on the title page and there are three letters from 1945 pasted into the back of the book.  The first, dated 20 February, is addressed to Sir William Foster at his home in Mountfield Court in Hampstead from Mr Bell of Chiswick.  He was researching the older churches of London and wanted to know about the pictures of St Matthias Poplar in John Company.  Bell had visited the church last summer and found it badly knocked about by bomb blast but not beyond repair.

Bell's letter to Foster 20 February 1945 - copyright resides with the heirs of  Robert Arthur Bell

Mr Bell said that he was ‘an old Anglo-Indian’ who had worked in Negapatam in the late 1880s.  His grandfather had been a collector in Trichinopoly and his great-grandfather a General in the Madras Artillery.  Bell asked if Sir William had been head assistant collector at Negapatam.

I have identified the writer as Robert Arthur Bell (1865-1949), son of Robert Courtenay Bell and his wife Clara.  Bell worked as civil engineer for the South Indian Railway in the 1880s and 90s.  He married Eveline Maud Richardson in Negapatam on 29 October 1891.  The couple had two children born in Cuddalore: Eveline Clara in February 1893 and David Courtenay in October 1894.  Sadly Eveline Clara died in December 1893 and David Courtenay was killed in 1918 whilst serving in the Royal Navy.  Robert and Eveline had returned to the UK by the time that their daughter Lavinia Courtenay was born in 1898 and they had four more children.

Foster's letter to Bell 23 February 1945 -  copyright resides with the heirs of Sir William Foster

Foster replied promptly on 23 February.  The verger of St Matthias had lent him a faded photograph and a pencil drawing by Miss Sexton, a local schoolmistress.  Mr Baragwanath had drawn the illustrations for the book using copies of these.

Sir William said that it was many years since he had visited St Matthias and had not realised it had suffered bomb damage.  The population of East London was estimated to have been reduced to one third of the pre-war figure and he had heard that there were plans to amalgamate parishes.  As it was very close to Poplar parish church, St Matthias might be deemed superfluous.

In answer to Bell’s question, Foster said he had never served in India.  However in 1904-1905 he had taken extended leave to visit India, a most enjoyable experience.  He had seen little of the Madras Presidency but he had known several officials based there, such as Sir Murray Hammick, Colonel Love, and Julian Cotton: ‘All these are now dead; and I myself am now in my eighty-second year and very much of a back number’.

The third letter is from Bell dated 5 March 1945. He replied that he had known Hammick, Love and Cotton whilst in India.

Our next post will focus on Sir William’s companion on his trip to India - Henry John Tozer.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
William Foster, John Company (London, 1926)
Digitised entries for baptisms, marriages and burials from the India Office Records can be seen at the British Library and via findmypast -
Marriage of Robert Arthur Bell to Eveline Maud Richardson IOR/N/2/78 f.297
Baptism of Eveline Clara Bell IOR/N/2/75 f.68
Burial of Eveline Clara Bell IOR/N/2/76 f.164
Baptism of David Courtenay Bell IOR/N/2/77 f.312 

 

During the last few months you’ve probably puzzled over at least one emoji quiz, one of many inventive online distractions people are sharing to while away the time during lock-down.  These quizzes have something in common with the 'rebus' – a kind of picture puzzle which gained popularity in Europe from the 16th century onwards.  In place of words, the writer inserts pictures and letters whose names sound out the meaning of the sentences.

A childhood letter in the form of a rebus addressed to two young girls survives among the papers from the Granville family archive preserved by Harriet Cavendish, later Lady Granville (1785-1862), now part of Add MS 89382.

Portrait of Lady Harriet Cavendish, Countess Granville (1785-1862) by Thomas Barber the elder, from the collections at Hardwick Hall © National Trust 

In 1790, young Harriet and her siblings Georgiana and William, the three children of William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire (1748–1811), and his wife Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806), were joined in their nursery at Chatsworth by two new playmates – five year old Caroline Rosalie St Jules and two year old Augustus Clifford.

View of Chatsworth House by Paul Sandby, published by George Kearsley in The Copper Plate Magazine 1775. British Library, Kings Topographical Collection.

Caroline and Augustus were actually the children’s half sister and brother. They were the illegitimate children of their father, the Duke, and his mistress, Lady Elizabeth Foster, who had been living with the Duke and Duchess in a long-lasting ménage à trois.   The children had been born abroad where they spent their earliest years, and only came to live with their mother at Chatsworth in 1790.

Caroline was almost exactly the same age as her half-sister Harriet (or Hary-o, as she was called by the family).  Both girls had both been born in August 1785, though far apart.  From this time on, from the aged of five, they spent the rest of their childhoods together.  Besides having the company of their three brothers and sisters, they were often joined for visits and on holiday by Hary-o’s cousins, including Caroline Ponsonby, later Caroline Lamb, who was also born in 1785, the same year as the two sisters.

The rebus letter is addressed to both Hary-o and Caroline St Jules, but it is unsigned.  Could it have been written by their cousin Caroline Ponsonby?  Or was it from another young friend of their acquaintance?

Rebus letter to Harriet Cavendish and Caroline St Jules. Undated c. 1795-1800 (Add MS 89382/3/5) 

Can you read the letter? If you know the French for 'well' and 'sea' and the names of the notes in the sol-fa music system you are nearly there!  Our imperfect attempt is at the end of this post.  Bonus points if you can hazard a guess at the identity of the village or town drawn at the foot of the page.

This charming and affectionate letter must have held particular significance for Hary-o, who kept it all her life.  It came to the British Library folded in a silk purse, along with surviving letters from her mother Georgiana and other treasured papers.

Tabitha Driver
Cataloguer, Modern Archives & Manuscripts

Address: A[mi] Le[Dé] Henriette [E] [A] Mademoiselle [Ka]roline St Jeule

Letter:
Accep[Té] cheres [E] douce a[mi]
Acceptez chères et douces amis
[Sept] fidelle pettit ^gaie [ré- bé/si(?)]
cette fidelle petit gaie rebus
[E] [croix] combien les [heures]
Et crois combien les heures
[Cent] les [deux] [Dé]lice de ma vie
Sont les deux délices de ma vie
[E –la], Je [ré]grette a[mer]ment
Hélas, Je regrette amèrement
Que je ne [puits] vous conter a pres[cent]
Que je ne puis vous conter à présent
Ce qui [E] passé de[puits] quelque Jours
Ce qui est passé depuis quelques Jours
[Cent] les [deux] a[mi] de mon [coeur]
Sans les deux amis de mon coeur
Maïs jamais Je ne soufrir[ré]
Mais jamais je ne souffrirai
[Un] jour de passé (?) [cent] [ex]primé
Un jour de passer sans exprimer
A mes a[mi] bien aimee
À mes amis bien aimées
Que je ne [puits] les oubli[E]
Que je ne puis les oublier

 

Beautifully tooled bookbindings signed with the initials C.E.G. appear on printed books dating from the early 20th century.  These are the initials of Charles Elsden Gladstone (1855-1919) of the Royal Navy. 

Extract from record of service for Charles Elsden Gladstone - image courtesy of  The National Archives, ADM 196/19/266 ©Crown Copyright

The National Archives chart his somewhat unusual career.  Like his later fictional counterpart James Bond, he attained the rank of commander.  Also like Bond, he used cutting edge tech.  There is even a suggestion of covert intelligence gathering activities!  Admiralty service papers refer to an early specialism in torpedos, submarine weaponry and skill in photography which aided research on the subject of armaments.  He saw action in 1873 when he was landed with the Naval Brigade in the Ashanti War, while serving on the corvette H.M.S. Druid.

Photograph of starboard side of H.M.S Druid, a corvette at sea with sails down, 1880 - image courtesy of Royal Collection Trust 

As for hobbies, Gladstone’s name is included in the annals of specialist societies relating to microscopy and optical magic lanterns, interests which suggest he had a keen eye and feeling for accuracy.  His family house was based in Thanet where he lived with his wife, a son, a governess and enough domestic help to make his situation comfortable.  Gladstone’s life, therefore, is quite well documented, but, annoyingly for the fans of bookbinding, not his connection to the craft!

Apparently Gladstone family lore confirms that Gladstone bound books but what does this mean?  Traditionally, binding was a two stage process, making the structure (called ‘forwarding’) and applying the decoration (‘finishing’).  Practitioners did not usually teach themselves.  Apprentices spent seven years training with an accredited bookbinder.  Did Gladstone master both techniques and who taught him?  I have found no evidence either way.

People outside the craft did learn to bind but were usually guided by professionals in some way.  A contemporary of Gladstone’s, Irish barrister Sir Edward Sullivan (1852-1928), ‘finished’ ready-bound books to a high standard.  Today, these bindings fetch high prices, as do Captain Gladstone’s though to a lesser extent.  Was this a pastime for Gladstone or the means of raising income?  The latter seems unlikely as his navy salary was good and his retirement pay (from 1904) was £400 a year.  In 1919, the Liverpool Probate Registry listed the gross value of his estate as £27030 2s 5d.

Gladstone’s well bound colourful goatskin book covers, displaying a range of finishing skills, are attractive additions to sales catalogues.  Antiquarian book sellers have included images on their websites, notably David Brass Rare Books, Temple Rare Books (see Temple Rare Books online Book of the Month January 2014), and Nudelman Rare Books.  The bindings usually (though not exclusively) include all-over designs comprising small flower and leaf motifs, have smooth spines and elaborately decorated turn-ins.  Here is the British Library’s example, Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l’amour.

Alfred de Musset, On ne badine pas avec l’amour (Paris, 1904) British Library shelf mark C.188.114

 

Tooling on the turn in showing the initials C.E.G.  - Alfred de Musset, On ne badine pas avec l’amour (Paris, 1904) British Library shelf mark C.188.114

For a naval officer Gladstone was a quite remarkable bookbinder!

P.J.M. Marks
Curator, Bookbindings

Further Reading:
The National Archives Admiralty records ADM 196/19/266; ADM 196/38/621; ADM 196/40/207
Dreadnought Project
Commander Charles Elsden Gladstone

 

Carrying out some family history research, I came across Frank Gore’s entry in the 1911 census.  Frank was a 14-year-old boy from Birkenhead so what was he doing on Tyneside, and why was he described as an ‘inmate’?

Frank was on the Wellesley Training Ship, moored on the Tyne, which prepared young men from poor and troubled backgrounds for service in both the Royal and Merchant Navies.  On census night in 1911, the ship housed the Superintendent, the wonderfully named Lieutenant Percy de Winton Kitcat, and his family – wife Edith, sons John and Charles and daughter Delicia - as well as a visiting mother-in-law, and a female servant.  Staff consisted of a drill instructor, a master sailor, three seamanship instructors, a woodwork instructor, a carpenter, and a school master.  There were 280 boys on board, from across the North East, Yorkshire, Durham, Lancashire and Cheshire, and from as far away as Nottinghamshire, Glamorganshire and even Surrey.  The boys were given a practical education in seamanship and woodworking skills, and a basic general education.

Boys of the training ship Wellesley from the Illustrated London News 2 December 1876 British Newspaper Archive

Frank’s family were scattered in 1911.  His father John Robert, a ship’s riveter, had died in 1904, and his two surviving brothers were at sea.  His sister Lillian was living with relatives and doing piece work wrapping soap.  I haven’t been able to trace his mother Ellen in 1911, so perhaps it is no surprise that he was being looked after in an institutional setting.

Frank’s life was very different from that of Percy de Winton Kitcat, who was born in 1872 in Swallowfield, Berkshire, the son of John Kitcat and Emma Margaret de Winton.  Percy and his brothers, but not their sisters, all received the de Winton name in addition to Kitcat, a tradition that followed on amongst Percy’s own children.  In the 1881 census Percy was boarding at a school run by Martha Hibbard at Bell Farm, Clewer, Windsor, along with twelve other boys aged from 8 to 12.  Two of the boys – Hugh Marendon and Keith Jackson both age 10 – were born in India, as was their teacher Emily Clarke.

Percy was apprenticed into the Merchant Navy in Feb 1890 and by 1895 he was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  At the time of the 1901 census, he was serving on HMS Resolution, a 1st class Battleship at Gibraltar.  By 1908, Kitcat was a Commander Instructor in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve based in Bristol.  He was appointed as Superintendent to the Wellesley Training Ship in July 1910.

Article in Newcastle Daily Journal 18 July 1910 on Kitcat's appointment to the Wellesley Training Ship British Newspaper Archive

The Wellesley Training Ship was destroyed by fire in 1914.  The nautical school continued on land, first at Tynemouth and then at Blyth, Northumberland.  It became an approved school in 1933 and continued to provide a nautical education.  It officially closed as an educational institution in 2006.

Training Ship Wellesley on fire at North Shields 1914 - image courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums 

So did the Wellesley Training Ship prepare Frank Gore for a life at sea?  He did join the Merchant Navy, and was still at sea in the early 1920s. 

Merchant Navy card 1918 for Frank Gore from The National Archives BT350 via findmypast © Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London England

Frank Gore went back to the Wirral, married, had children.  His entry in the 1939 Register shows him living in Birkenhead and working as a labourer in a margarine works.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer Modern Archives & Manuscripts

Further reading:
An Illustrated Guide to the Tyne Training Ship "Wellesley" (South Shields: Gazette Office, 1904) British Library 806.bb.33.
An Illustrated Guide to the Tyne Training Ship "Wellesley" (South Shields: Gazette Office, 1909) British Library X.529/14682.
Minute Books of the Wellesley Training Ship can be found at Northumberland Archives.
The National Archives BT 150/50 & ADM/196/137/84 via findmypast and Ancestry for Percy de Winton Kitcat’s naval apprenticeship papers and naval certificates.
Frank Gore's merchant seaman papers can be found at The National Archives BT 348/1, BT 350 via findmypast.
British Newspaper Archive – also available via findmypast.

 

Like many, the Covid-19 lockdown has provided British Library staff a bit more space and time to get through some spring cleaning.  You might think that archivists would find themselves a little distanced from their cleaning tasks with all their precious archives locked up in their respective institutions, but there is always more to sort in the archive sector, whether physically or digitally.  Whilst quarantined the Modern Manuscripts team has taken this opportunity to sort through reams of our metadata in order to write new collection guides.

We have been working on summarising our archive collections relating to the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.  The women’s suffrage collection contains the archives of Sylvia Pankhurst, Ethel Smyth and Harriet McIlquham, but we have also had the opportunity to sift through some of our catalogue records and identify some fascinating suffrage campaigners, whose correspondence is held across various collections.

Some examples of these campaigners include:

Barbara Bodichon, 1827-1891

Barbara Bodichon, Sketch by Samuel Lawrence, 1861 Wikimedia Commons

Barbara Bodichon was an early suffragist and women’s rights activist.  She began meeting with friends in the 1850s to discuss women’s rights in a group which became known as the ‘Ladies of Langham Place’.  She co-founded the English Woman’s Journal, which examined women’s position and rights in society.  She published her thoughts on women’s right to property in her essay, Brief Summary of the Laws of England Concerning Women.  Items of her correspondence can be found in the Clough-Shore papers (Add MS 72832 A) and the William Lovett Papers (Add MS 78161).

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, 1833-1918

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy Photo via Wikipedia

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy was a feminist and suffrage campaigner.  She founded the Manchester Committee for the Enfranchisement of Women in 1866 and would campaign for women’s suffrage for over 50 years.  The British Library holds six volumes of papers relating to her work in the suffragette movement at Add MS 47449-47455, which contains her correspondence with many prominent women activists.

Hertha Ayrton, 1854-1923

Painting of Hertha Ayrton, c. 1905, by Héléna Arsène Darmesteter via Wikimedia Commons

Hertha Ayrton campaigned for the women’s vote with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, as well as Emily Davison.  She was also an engineer, mathematician and physicist whose work was awarded the Hughes Medal.  There is correspondence between her and her friend Marie Stopes in the Stopes Papers (Add MS 58685 and Add MS 58689).

Ethel Snowden, 1881 -1951

Photograph of Ethel Snowden, by S. A. Chandler & Co, 1921 via Wikimedia Commons

Ethel Snowden was a socialist, feminist activist and campaigner for women’s suffrage. In 1907 she wrote a book called The Woman Socialist, which advocated the collective organisation of housework and a state salary for mothers.  Items of her correspondence can be found in the Mary Gladstone papers (Add MS 46253), the Burns Papers (Add MS 46300) and the Koteliansky Papers (Add MS 48974).

These individuals are just a few of the many fascinating women who feature in the Modern Manuscripts collections.  As we continue to explore our collections from home, we hope that we will find many more which we can bring to light in our collection guides, so that many more people will eventually be able to explore the papers of these ground-breaking women.

Jessica Gregory
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further Reading:
For more information on British Library collections relating to the women’s suffrage campaign, visit Votes for Women BL.

 

In 1799 Captain John Norris of the Madras Engineers was aide-de-camp to Colonel Gent at the Siege of Seringapatam.  Following the assault and capture of the fort on 4 May 1799, Norris was appointed Superintending Engineer of reform of the fortifications there. In the months following the siege Norris undertook a detailed survey of the island of Seringapatam for the Company.

The Storming of Seringapatam - engraving by John Vendramini, published in 1802. Shelfmark P779. Images Online

Norris's work brought him into conflict with Colonel Arthur Wellesley who had been appointed to command the fort following the siege.  Wellesley had instructed Norris to supply him with the plans and maps made during the survey, which Norris declined to do as it was contrary to his orders from Government.  Wellesley was reportedly very angry at what he viewed as Norris’s insubordination and reported him to the Madras Government as ‘not a fit person to be employed as the Engineer at Seringapatam’.  The Government however supported Norris’s refusal to supply the documents.

Plan of Seringapatam, 1792 taken from A Guide to Seringapatam and its Vicinity. Historical and traditional, 3rd Edn (Revised). 1897. BL flickr

John Norris was appointed an ensign in the Madras Engineers on 3 October 1781 rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retiring on 25 September 1811.  For most of his time in the corps he served alongside Captain Colin Mackenzie, the renowned surveyor whose collections are one of the foundations of the India Office Private Papers.

Norris’s time at Seringapatam appears to have made its mark on both him and his wife Lydia, the daughter of William Harcourt Torriano, whom he married in 1790.  On 19 January 1800 John and Lydia Norris christened their second daughter Helen Harness Seringa Norris.  The couple had one other daughter Lydia Dampier Norris born in 1794 who died at Cawnpore in 1825.

Baptism entry for Helen Harness Seringa Norris IOR/N/2/2, f. 420

Historical records suggest Helen Harness Seringa Norris was fond of her unusual name as it was often recorded as her sole forename, including on her death register entry in 1866.  

Seringa Norris was married in 1819 to the Reverend Charles Norman, Vicar of Boxted in Essex.  The couple had eight children, though only four survived infancy.  In 1820 they named their eldest child Seringa Lydia Frances Norman.

Seringa Norman married in 1842 to Joseph Proctor Benwell, a bank manager.  The Benwells had four children, their eldest being a daughter Seringa born in 1845.  Seringa Benwell married Charles Fuller Grenside, a printer ink manufacturer, in 1879.  They had a daughter in 1885 christened Seringa Dorothea.  Seringa Dorothea Grenside was married in 1908 to Laurence Arthur Grundy Lane, an insurance inspector, and their only child was named Audrey Seringa Lane.

By the time Audrey Seringa Lane was born in 1908, the Seringa forename had been passed down through five generations spanning over 200 years.  Naming daughters Seringa carried on, and by the 1960s it had spanned seven generations of John and Lydia Norris’s family and lasted for over 260 years.

Oher branches of the family continued the name too.  Charles and Seringa Norman’s daughter Sarah Elizabeth and son Edward both had daughters named Seringa and the name continued there for several generations too.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading:
The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, from 1743 up to the present time (London, 1888). British Library shelfmark V 6503. Snippet view on Google Books. 
Baptisms, Marriages and Burials available via the British India Office Collection on findmypast -
Marriage entry for John Norris and Lydia Torriano IOR/N/2/11, ff. 631-632.  Baptism entry for Helen Harness Seringa Norris IOR/N/2/2, f. 420.  Baptism entry for Lydia Damper Norris IOR/N/2/2, f. 213.  Burial entry for Lydia Dampier Norris IOR/N/1/13, f. 689.
Birth, marriage, death and census records for subsequent generations of the Norris family are also available in other collections on findmypast.
Biographical Notes compiled for R. H. Phillimore, Historical records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945-48). Includes biographical entry for John Norris Volume II, p. 360, shelfmark OIR 354.54
IOR/F/4/95/1926 Papers regarding repair and improvement of the fort at Seringapatam – report by Captain John Norris, observations on Norris’s report by Col. Arthur Wellesley, observations by the Chief Engineer Major-General Patrick Ross. 
IOR/F/4/193/4397 Demolition of forts in the southern districts of the Madras Presidency and of Public buildings and works in the former Dutch settlements of Cochin and Quilon, under the direction of Major John Norris and Lieutenant Hilary Harcourt Torriano, Madras Engineers.