More than 1500 volumes of East India Company Factory Records are being digitised though a partnership between the British Library and Adam Matthew Digital. The factories were the Company’s overseas trading posts from the 17th to 19th centuries. The Factory Records are copies of documents sent back to London to be added to the archive at East India House.  

 East India Company Factory at Cossimbazar 1795 Add.Or.3192 Online Gallery 

The main categories of documents included in this series are formal minutes of official meetings; diaries recording daily business and life at the factory; and correspondence.

A wide range of topics is covered, for example:
• Commercial transactions and dealings with local merchants
• Descriptions of goods traded, with prices
• Private trade of Company servants
• Relations with other European nations and with local inhabitants
• Ship arrivals and departures; negotiations with captains
• Personnel management
• Misdemeanours
• Establishments and salaries
• Complaints and petitions
• Sickness and death

The first of two modules of digitised Factory Records was launched recently. It includes the Company trading posts in South and South-East Asia. Amongst these are the records for the Hugli Factory in the Bay of Bengal, 1663-1687.

IOR/G/20/2 part 2 pp.19-21 Rules for good behaviour December 1679

In December 1679 the Agent and Council for the Coast of Coromandel and the Bay of Bengal composed a set of orders ‘’for advanceing the Honour of the English Nation and the preventing of Disorders’. All Company servants employed in the Bay of Bengal were instructed to –

• Stop lying, swearing, cursing, drunkenness, ‘uncleaness’, ‘profanation of the Lord’s Day’, and all other sinful practices.
• Be sure to be back inside the Company house or their lodgings at night.
• Say morning and evening prayers.

Penalties for infringement were specified.

• For staying out of the house all night without permission or being absent when the gates were shut at 9pm without a reasonable excuse – 10 rupees to be paid to the poor, or one whole day sitting publicly in the stocks.
• For every oath or curse, twelve pence to the poor, or three hours in the stocks.
• For lying - twelve pence to the poor.
• For drunkenness – five shillings to the poor or six hours in the stocks.
• For any Protestant in the Company’s house absent without a valid excuse from public prayers on weekday mornings and evenings - twelve pence to the poor or one week’s confinement in the house.
• For any Christian absent from morning and evening prayers on a Sunday - twelve pence to the poor.  If no payment was made, the money was to be raised by selling the offender’s goods, or he might be imprisoned.

If these penalties failed to ‘reclaim’ someone from these vices or if any man was found guilty of adultery, fornication, or ‘uncleaness’, or disturbed the peace of the factory by quarrelling or fighting, he was to be sent to Fort St George for punishment.  The orders were to be read publicly at the Factory twice a year so no-one could profess ignorance of them.

One of the Company officials who signed the regulations was Matthias Vincent. He was accused in India of corruption, immorality and extortion!

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

The East India Company digital resource is available online from Adam Matthew and there is access in British Library Reading Rooms in London and Yorkshire.

 

We recently acquired a little book with strong ties to Cornish trade and smuggling in the 18th century.  Money of England, reduced into money of Portugal was printed in the sea port of Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1787.  It is a pocket-sized book of tables and calculations of the rates of exchange between Portugal and England, together with conversion tables for measures of cloth, wine and corn, and weights – indispensable for the merchants and sailors involved in Falmouth’s lucrative trade network, clandestine or otherwise, wanting a fair price for their goods.

Money of England, reduced into money of Portugal

During the 18th century there was a thriving maritime trade between Lisbon and Falmouth, as described by Daniel Defoe in his Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, 1724:

"Falmouth is well built, has abundance of shipping belonging to it, is full of rich merchants, and has a flourishing and increasing trade.  I say 'increasing,' because by the late setting up the English packets between this port and Lisbon, there is a new commerce between Portugal and this town carried on to a very great value.  It is true, part of this trade was founded in a clandestine commerce carried on by the said packets at Lisbon, where, being the king's ships, and claiming the privilege of not being searched or visited by the Custom House officers, they found means to carry off great quantities of British manufactures, which they sold on board to the Portuguese merchants, and they conveyed them on shore, as it is supposed, without paying custom.  But the Government there getting intelligence of it … that trade has been effectually stopped.  But the Falmouth merchants, having by this means gotten a taste of the Portuguese trade, have maintained it ever since in ships of their own”.

The Falmouth-Lisbon Packet Service described by Defoe started operation in 1689.  It was an early postal service that carried mail on packet ships from country to country.  There were other packet stations on the south and east coasts and, together, they ran important routes across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and through Northern Europe.  The packet crews furtively traded goods on their own account, duty-free, on the side, making the packet service risky but potentially lucrative work.  Even when the government got wind of this practice and stamped it out, the smuggling continued using privately owned boats.  Portuguese gold bars and coin were particular favourites, and often found their way up to London.  This little pocket book would have been a handy guide for converting measures of smuggled goods, and calculating the exchange rate between currencies.

Money of England, reduced into money of Portugal

The last page has an advertisement for Elizabeth Elliot, bookseller, stationer and printer.  Elizabeth was the widow of the printer Philip Elliot and, together, their business was responsible for ten out of the 24 early printed books with Falmouth imprints that survive today.  Elizabeth’s shop sold an eclectic range of “books in all languages and all manner of bindings; stationary/wares of all sorts; mathematical instruments; violins, German and common flutes, and fifes, music, music-books and music-paper; the late Sir John Hill’s medicines, by appointment of Lady Hill; Wash-Balls, lavender-water, eau de luce, &c. &c.”.  Elizabeth took over the shop in 1787 and printed this book of tables, an English grammar for “young beginners”, two sermons, a book of spiritual songs and a satirical poem about slavery.

  Money of England, reduced into money of Portugal

Maddy Smith
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

 

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, Imam Yahya became ruler of independent northern Yemen, following the Turkish withdrawal in 1918. In August 1919, Colonel Harold Fenton Jacob set off from Aden in command of a British Mission to negotiate with the Imam at Sana’a. The Imam had been aligned with the Turkish during the War, whilst the British had supported his arch-rival, Sayyid Idris. However, Jacob failed to reach the Imam at Sana’a. Instead, Jacob and his Mission were stopped at Bajil, and held virtual prisoners for more than three months by Shaikhs of the Quhra tribe of Tihamah.

News of Jacob’s ill-fated mission was reported by the British Political Resident at Aden in monthly News Letters to the British High Commissioner at Cairo, copies of which are included in the India Office file P 3300/1916 Pt 3 'Aden News-Letters: 1919-20' (IOR/L/PS/10/611/1).

The Political Resident at Aden, C H E Lees, reported on 4 September 1919 that Jacob had sent a telegraph on 27 August stating that he was ‘temporarily held up by the Quhra Shaikhs’. Lees reflected that ‘nearly all the tribes in the Shafiet Tehama are anti-Imam and they are under the impression that our chief aim is to advance the cause of the Imam to their own detriment’, hence the Quhra Shaikhs wanted to prevent British negotiations with the Imam from taking place. Lees reported that anxiety about the safety of the Mission was lessened by efforts of the Imam to secure their release, the Imam’s representative the ex-Vali Mahmud Nadim arriving in Bajil, and ‘the general sanguine tone of Colonel Jacob’s telegrams’.

Extract from Aden News Letter dated 9 October 1919, IOR/L/PS/10/611/1

However, on 9 October 1919, the Political Resident at Aden conceded that negotiations for the release of the Mission had made no progress. He grew suspicious of the intentions of Mahmud Nadim, and by 12th November he had come to the conclusion that ‘Everything appears to point to the Wali [Vali], with or without the knowledge of the Imam is uncertain, having engineered the detention of Colonel’s Jacob’s Mission’.

The Mission was finally released on 12th December 1919. This followed two British aeroplane flights over Bajil, which the Political Resident at Aden reported had ‘had an excellent effect and brought before the recalcitrant Shaikhs the fact that they and their villages are within reach of bombing raids’. It also followed the arrival in Bajil of a deputation from Sayyid Idris, demanding the release of the Mission on pain of assault on Bajil by the Idrisi force.

The historian R J Gavin asserts that ‘British impotence in the face of tribal hostility’ during Jacob’s imprisonment ‘amply demonstrated the dangers of a more ambitious policy in the Yemen’. The British reverted to the wartime policy of securing only what was strategically necessary and easy to defend in the Yemen. The British also continued their support of Sayyid Idris, and relations between the British and Imam Yahya deteriorated. Meanwhile, Jacob ‘returned utterly discredited in the sharper eyes of the men in Whitehall’ following the failure of his Mission.

Susannah Gillard

Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:

British Library, File 3300/1916 Pt 3 'Aden News-Letters: 1919-20' IOR/L/PS/10/611/1

J. Gavin, Aden Under British Rule, 1839-1967 (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1975)

Although there are many examples within the India Office Records of sons following fathers and grandfathers into military or administrative careers in the sub-continent, today we shine the spotlight on a family where the opposite appears to have happened.

'A civilian going out' from Twenty four Plates illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal. Drawn on the stone by A Colin from sketches by Mrs Belnos. (London, 1832?) Images Online

James Dewar Bourdillon was the son of a Huntingdonshire clergyman who entered the East India College at Haileybury in 1828, and arrived to take up a post in the Madras Presidency civil service early in the following year. He seems to have spent the 1830s and 1840s in a variety of administrative and judicial posts in Trichinopoly, Salem, and Nellore, later rising to become secretary to the Board of Revenue. The summit of his career was probably reached in 1856, when as a member of the three-man Commission tasked with investigating the local system of public works he wrote its Report. Unfortunately a few years later he was obliged to retire and return to the U.K. because of ill health, but he retained sufficient interest in Indian affairs to publish A Short account of the measures proposed ... for the restoration of the Indian Exchanges in 1882 under the pseudonym 'An ex-Madras Civilian'. He died in Tunbridge Wells in the following year aged seventy two.
 
So far, so conventional - Bourdillon's life and achievements were not radically different from other early Victorian servants of the Raj. One of his children, however, was to travel down a very different path.

This was his son Francis Wright Bourdillon, known as Frank, who was born in Madras on 7 November 1851. He appears first to have tried his hand at earning a living as a coffee planter, but also being a talented amateur artist he decided to leave India and undergo training at the Slade School of Art in London, following this with some time in the centre of the contemporary painterly universe, Paris.

'On Bideford Sands' by Frank Bourdillon from The art-journal March 1890

After returning to England he settled in Cornwall, where in 1887 he became a member of the Newlyn School, a colony of artists who were stimulated by the local scenery, residents, and light quality (not to say the cost of living). His style may well have been influenced by the example of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Thomas Cooper Gotch who was living in Newlyn at the same time, as can be discerned in works such as The Jubilee Hat, Duel on Bideford Sands and Aboard the 'Revenge'. We shall no doubt never know whether his artistic career was in some sense an act of rebellion against his upbringing, or if his family encouraged him in such endeavours.
 
There are two more twists and turns to record. In 1892 he all but abandoned art and went back to the land of his birth to work not as an administrator but as a Christian missionary. Eventually, however, he left India and died in the quintessentially English venue of Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, in 1924. 

Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Services 

Further reading: 
J.D. Bourdillon's application to Haileybury IOR/J/1/42/280-290, available on FindMyPast
F.W. Bourdillon's baptism IOR/N/2/30/568, available on FindMyPast
J.D. Bourdillon, First report of the Commissioners … digitised on Explore the British Library
J.D. Bourdillon, A Short account of the measures proposed ... for the restoration of the Indian Exchanges, London, 1882, shelfmark 8228.dd.22
 

A new collection in the India Office Private Papers has recently been catalogued, and is available to the public for research.  The papers of Edward Philips Charlewood were acquired by the British Library in 2017.  The catalogue of the papers can be found online.

Papers of Edward Philips Charlewood Mss Eur F711

Edward Philips Charlewood was born on 14 November 1814 at Oak Hill in Staffordshire.  The son of the Rev C B Charlewood, he entered the Royal Naval College in 1827 and embarked on a long and successful career as a naval officer.  In 1834, Charlewood joined the Euphrates steamship as Acting Lieutenant as part of the expedition led by Francis Rawdon Chesney.  The purpose of the expedition was to explore the Euphrates River as a possible route to British India.  The story of that expedition is told in a previous posting on Untold Lives.

From Francis Rawdon Chesney, Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition

The collection of Charlewood’s papers includes five volumes of journals he kept from 23 November 1834 to 6 May 1837 recording his experiences during the expedition.  Additionally, there is a small collection of letters Chesney sent to Charlewood from 1834 to 1841, and 1862 to 1864.

Chesney's letter confirming Charlewood's appointment 24 October 1834 Mss Eur F711

The collection also includes some papers relating to a project to establish a Euphrates Valley Railway Company. This was a project pursued by Chesney and Sir William Patrick Andrew, Chairman of the Scinde Railway Company, again for the purpose of establishing a quick and secure route to British India. The project failed because of the lack of a financial guarantee from the British Government.

Plan for Euphrates Railway Mss Eur F711 

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further reading:
Journals and papers of Edward Philips Charlewood (b 1814), naval officer, relating to the Euphrates Expedition of 1835 to 1837, the navigation of the river Euphrates and the Euphrates Railway [Reference - Mss Eur F711]

Passages from the Life of a Naval Officer by Edward Philips Charlewood [With a preface by Henry Charlewood] (Manchester: Cave & Sever, 1869)

Francis Rawdon Chesney, Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition carried on by Order of the British Government during the years 1835, 1836, and 1837 (London, 1868)

Untold Lives post - The Euphrates Expedition of 1836: Ingenuity and Tragedy in Mesopotamia

 

In 2013 the British Library acquired the papers of Charles Canning (1812-1862) and his wife Charlotte (1817-1861) together with the papers of Charles’s father George Canning (1770-1827), Britain’s shortest serving Prime Minister. Charles Canning held posts in successive British Governments of the 1840s and 1850s. But he is most well-known as Governor General and first Viceroy of India.

Charles John Canning, Earl Canning by Henry Hering. From albumen carte-de-visite, late 1850s-early 1860s NPG x25261
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Appointed in 1855, Charles Canning arrived in Calcutta on 29 February 1856 to succeed Lord Dalhousie. In a prophetic speech to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London, Canning had said “I wish for a peaceful time in office, but… We must not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a cloud may arise, at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but which growing bigger and bigger, may at last threaten to overwhelm us with ruin” [Maclagan p.21]. He had been in India for a year when disturbances broke out amongst the Indian sepoys of the Bengal Army. This was the start of the uprising known as the’ Indian Mutiny’.

‘Clemency’ Canning was severely criticised both in Britain and in India for being too lenient in his punishment of those involved in the uprising, particularly sepoys not involved in violence. Canning refused to exact vengeance upon the general population.

The events of 1857-58 had profound consequences for the governance of India. In 1858, the rule of the East India Company was transferred directly to the Crown. Canning became India’s first Viceroy, acting as the British monarch’s representative.

Mss Eur F699/1/1/2/4 f.87

Canning’s period in office was one of reform. Indian finances were given an overhaul, with new taxes and a new paper currency. There was reform of the Executive and Legislative Councils in India, and the first Indian members were appointed to Council in 1861.

Wide reaching reforms were experienced by the Army too. Many European troops returned to Britain rather than transfer from Company to Crown, and in 1860 the East India Company’s European forces were amalgamated with those of the British Army.

Mss Eur F699/1/1 Governor General’s Papers

The Canning papers have been catalogued and re-packaged to enable them to be used by researchers. They comprise 155 volumes, 222 boxes and 9 oversize portfolios. The bulk of the collection originated in India and relates to Canning’s time as Governor General, although the collection includes material relating to Charles Canning’s early career, and to the Canning family.

The Indian papers include letters between Canning and principal officers of Government in both India and England, as well as letters between Canning and Regional Governors. There are formal Minutes, day to day telegrams, and Miscellaneous Correspondence. A significant part of the collection comes from the offices of Canning’s Private Secretary and his Military Secretary, and these include day to day correspondence, telegrams, applications for positions, and subject papers. The papers also cover the Persian campaign of 1856-57 and the China Expedition of 1860, and there is material from Pegu and Rangoon.

Charlotte Canning (née Stuart), Countess Canning by Henry Hering.  From albumen carte-de-visite, c.1860 NPG x45082 © National Portrait Gallery, London

The collection also contains papers of Charlotte, Lady Canning, including family correspondence, and papers originating in India such as letters and diaries.  There is a noteworthy correspondence between Charlotte Canning and Queen Victoria, whom she served as a Lady of the Bedchamber (1842-55), and papers relating to Lady Canning's interests in nursing, education, and charity work. Charlotte Canning's papers will be explored in more detail in a future blog post. 

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer Modern Archives & Manuscripts

Further reading:
Mss Eur F699 Papers of Charles Canning and Charlotte Canning, Earl and Countess Canning
M. Maclagan, ‘Clemency’ Canning: Charles John, 1st Earl Canning, Governor-General and Viceroy of India (London: Macmillan & Co., 1962)
William Gould, The Indian papers of the Rt. Hon. Charles John, Earl Canning: an introduction to the microfilm edition (Microform Academic Publishers, 2007)

Charlotte Canning's burning tent

 

 

In the British Museum’s Asahi Shimbun Gallery there is a permanent display of sculptures from Amaravati Stupa. These beautifully carved limestone sculptures originally surrounded a massive Buddhist monument in Andhra Pradesh, India. It was constructed between the 3rd Century BC and the 3rd Century AD. When Buddhism’s popularity in southern India went into decline, the Great Stupa at Amaravati became disused, and was eventually abandoned.

The recently reopened Asahi Shimbun Gallery in the British Museum.

In 1816-17 a British survey team excavated Amaravati Stupa’s remains, and in 1859, 121 of the stupa’s sculpted stones were shipped to the British Museum. What few people realise is that some unusual things happened to these precious sculptures in the four decades between these two events.

  King standing with attendants -  in the Asahi Shimbun Gallery.

King standing with attendants - drawing taken during the 1816/17 excavation. WD1061, f.13.

King standing with attendants - photograph by Linnaeus Tripe taken at Madras in 1856, before it was sent to London. Photo 958/(23b).

Francis W. Robertson was the East India Company’s Assistant Collector at Masulipatam from 1817 to 1819. Masulipatam was the closest seaport to Amaravati, and Robertson knew the man in charge of the stupa’s excavation in 1816-17. Together, they made plans to beautify Masulipatam’s market place by building a monument out of Amaravati sculptures.

The resulting monument, known locally as “Robertson’s Mound”, was probably completed in around 1819. It attracted virtually no outside attention until 1830, when the Governor of Madras, Sir Frederic Adam, paid a visit to Masulipatam. Adam wanted to establish a museum in Madras Presidency, and upon seeing Robertson’s Mound in the market place, he gave orders for it to be dismantled so the sculptures could be deposited in the new museum, once it was created.

Horse walking through gate - in the Asahi Shimbun Gallery.

Horse walking through gate - drawing taken during the 1816/17 excavation. WD1061, f.28.

Horse walking through gate - photograph by Linnaeus Tripe taken at Madras in 1856, before it was sent to London-  Photo 958/(32a).

Over 20 years later, the Madras Government Museum was finally established. In 1854 the stones from Robertson’s Mound, along with some other sculptures from Amaravati, were sent to Madras. 121 of them were sent to the British Museum in 1859. By looking at drawings, photographs and other documentation in the British Library, one can identify which of the British Museum’s 121 Amaravati sculptures were part of Robertson’s Mound. One can also ascertain the condition of these sculptures before and after they were attached to this curious and short-lived monument.

Man and woman standing next to a horse - in the Asahi Shimbun Gallery  

Man and woman standing next to a horse - drawing taken during the 1816/17 excavation. WD1061, f.31. 

Man and woman standing next to a horse - photograph by Linnaeus Tripe taken at Madras in 1856, before it was sent to London. Photo 958/(31)  

Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia

Further reading:
Howes, Jennifer. “The Colonial History of Sculptures from Amaravati Stupa.”
In Hawkes, J. & Shimada, A. Buddhist Stupas in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Taylor, William. On the Elliot Marbles. Madras: 1856. (BL, V9700)
Tripe, Linnaeus. Photographs of the Elliot Marbles. Madras: 1858-9. (BL, Photo 958)

 

At the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Charles Stuart (later Charles II) unsuccessfully tried to reclaim the throne lost through the execution of his father Charles I. He was forced into retreat to avoid capture, and whilst on the run from Cromwell’s New Model Army he stopped at Boscobel House. When the patrols came looking for him, Charles concealed himself in the nearby woods by hiding in a tree, known today as The Royal Oak.

A manuscript newly acquired by the British Library claims to be a coded message passed to Charles at Boscobel by an unnamed lady, warning him of his imminent danger. A small sheet of music which, when folded correctly, reveals the message ‘Conceal yourself your foes look for you’ (Add MS 89288).

Add MS 89288

The manuscript ended up in the hands of John Port, who said he came into possession of it through his wife, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Port lived out his life in Portland, Dorset after losing the family fortune and left the manuscript in the hands of his landlord, William White.

Also in the British Library is a 19th-century copy of this message (Add MS 45850, f. 68). This manuscript names the author of the message as Jane Lane, who helped Charles escape England by disguising him as her servant.

Add MS 45850, f. 68

However, this is not the only story of this code’s origin. Elsewhere, the same cryptograph is said to have been passed to other historical figures.

Walter William Rouse Ball, a mathematician at Trinity College, Cambridge, used a version of the message in his book ‘Mathematical Recreations and Essays’ as an example of a cryptograph.

W. W. Rouse Ball, Mathematical Recreations and Essays, 4th Edition (MacMillan and Co., 1911), p. 403 ( 8507.e.35.)

He reports that this was a message to Prince Charles Edward (also known as The Young Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie) after the Battle of Culloden, although the author points out, ‘…of the truth of the anecdote I know nothing, and the desirability of concealing himself must have been so patent that it was hardly necessary to communicate it by a cryptograph’.

Another version of this code was apparently given to Napoleon Bonaparte ‘At a period when the Emperor was surrounded by Spies & pretended Friends who had combined with his enemies to betray him’.

h.127.(1.)

Published in 1830, this facsimile purports to be reproduced from the original held by the Emperor’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt. It claims, when presented with the note, Napoleon ‘…with his usual penetration instantly solved the Enigma & carelessly remarking “Tis pretty Air to caper to” immediately removed to a place of safety’. Why a French soldier would present the French Emperor with a coded message in English we are not informed.

Whilst it may not be possible to verify the true origins of this message, all these items are now available to be viewed in the British Library Reading Rooms for you to make up your own minds.

Stephen Noble
Cataloguer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further reading:

Readers of this blog may be interested in this forthcoming publication, which discusses the cryptograph: Nadine Akkerman, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)