Untold lives blog

On the eve of the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme, Laura Walker, our Lead Curator of Manuscripts 1851-1950, looks at diary accounts of the Battle. Tomorrow, on the day itself, Michael Day, our Digitisation Preservation Manager, considers the death of a British Museum clerk and soldier at the Somme.

The Somme is one of the most well-known battles of the First World War fought on the Western Front. It is chiefly remembered due to the scale of the casualties with over one million dead, wounded or missing by the end of the offensive. The British Library holds eye witness accounts of the fighting at the Somme from Major General Hunter Weston and Captain Roland Gerard Garvin.

Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.53v

Major General Hunter Weston was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1884 and saw active service on the North West Frontier, present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in Egypt and in the Boer War before he was given a command on the Western Front in 1914. Hunter Weston kept two diaries of his experiences of the First World War one official and one private. These diaries provide us with a fascinating insight into the fighting in 1914 on the Western Front, in Gallipoli in 1915 and at the battle of the Somme in 1916.

 Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.54

In his private diary for 1916 Hunter Weston has included photographs showing the advance of the troops under his command, the 8th Corps to their assault on the fortified hamlets of Beaumont-Hamel, Beaumont-sur-Ancre, and Serre on the first day of the battle on 1st July 1916. Despite their efforts the 8th Corp’s objective was not achieved and they suffered 14,581 casualties on that day alone.

 Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.55v

Captain Roland Gerard Garvin was the son of journalist and newspaper editor James Luis Garvin. The First World War broke out the week after his last day at Westminster School. Despite winning a history scholarship for Christ Church, Oxford, Garvin enlisted in the 7th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment.

Photograph of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/10/2

Garvin attended a staff training course in Chelsea in December 1914 and this continued in Camberley in April 1915 before he was sent over to France on 17th July 1915. The Library holds his notes from both of these courses and diary extracts from when he was serving on the Western Front. The diary extracts below record his account of the first day of the Somme.

Field Message Book of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/9/31

Field Message Book of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/9/31

On 20th July Garvin wrote a letter to his family saying good bye as he knew he was going into action in a day or two. Three days later between 12pm and 1pm Garvin was killed by machine gun fire. His body was never found.

Letter from Captain Roland Gerard Garvin to his family, July 20th 1916, Add MS 88882/3/9

Letter from Captain Roland Gerard Garvin to his family, July 20th 1916, Add MS 88882/3/9

The complete diaries of Hunter Weston and the papers of Garvin can be found online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.

Laura Walker, Lead Curator, Manuscripts and Archives 1851-1950.

An advertisement was sent to the Secretary of the East India Company in 1763 about the intended publication of a series of engravings of the Battle of Havana.  The views were to be taken from sketches drawn in 1762 by ‘the Inventor of the Machine for reducing stale and nauseous Water, sweet’. 

 Advertisement sent to the East India Company in 1763, IOR/E/1/45 f.470

The artist and inventor was Elias Durnford (1739-1794), a civil engineer with the British Army, who is better known for his role surveying and developing a town plan for Pensacola in Florida.

Durnford was born in 1739 in Ringwood, Hampshire, the eldest son of Elias Durnford senior.  He trained as a civil engineer under John Peter Desmaretz of the drawing office in the Tower of London.  Appointed ensign in the Royal Engineers in March 1759, he served with the Royal Navy at the battle of Havana in 1762.  Durnford was appointed aide-de-camp to Lord Albemarle and was asked to draw a series of sketches of the battle, which were later published as announced in the advert. After Cuba, Durnford was sent to Florida as chief engineer and surveyor, where he was responsible for drawing up the town plans for Pensacola. In 1769 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor, an appointment he held until 1778.

During his time in America, Durnford also designed a plan for a canal to run from the Mississippi to the town of Mobile. If it had been implemented the scheme would have been the first canal in America.  As well as potentially bringing new trade and settlement, the canal could perhaps have changed the course of the War. Military and political difficulties at the time however meant the proposal was never properly considered.

Maps K.Top.122.94.1 Plan of Mobile, 1763 Images Online 

Durnford was still living in Florida at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War and was given command of Fort Charlotte at Mobile, a town near his estates. Durnford was heavily outnumbered during the war but refused to surrender the fort, believing relief would come from Pensacola. He eventually surrendered in March 1780 after having safely negotiated safe passage home for the English residents, and protection from persecution for the locals who had assisted him. His estates and plantation were however burned to the ground.

Maps K.Top.122.97 Coastline of Pensacola as seen from the sea, 1763 Images Online

On returning to England Durnford worked on the ‘Makers Height’ defences at Plymouth Docks, before being appointed Chief Engineer in the Caribbean, where he eventually died of yellow fever on 21 June 1794.

Several of the engravings produced from Durnford’s original sketches are in the King George III Topographical Collection at the British Library. The Library also holds a copy of the published engravings from the 1760s.

I have been unable to discover anything so far about Durnford’s machine for purifying stale water. Was it a success?  Can any of our readers help?

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/1/45, f 470 - advertisement for a publication of engravings of the battle of Havana.
William Elliot,  A view of the Harbour & City of Havana.  Six views for Lord Albemarle, inscribed by Elias Durnford (London, 1764).
Maps K. Top. 123.28.a through to Maps K. Top. 128.28.f - The King's Topographical Collection holds the six engravings, produced from Elias Durnford’s original sketches, which were published between February 1764 and August 1765.
Add MS 16367 G - A coloured military plan of the attacks carried on by the English in 1762 against the city of Havanah and Moro Fort, surveyed by Lieut. [Elias] Durnford, 1762.
The National Archives hold the plans and drawings for the town of Pensacola; along with drawings and correspondence relating to the proposed canal from Mississippi to Mobile.

In 1939, in the early months of the Second World War, British officials began making enquiries into the presence in Bahrain of members of a paramilitary Islamic social movement that sought the overthrow of British rule in India, and drew inspiration from Adolf Hitler.

The Khaksar movement was founded in Lahore in 1931 by Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, a Cambridge-educated mathematician and Islamic scholar.

The movement was overtly Islamic, but claimed to wish to give equal rights to all faiths. It was highly organised, and rapidly acquired millions of members. It was also militaristic, with khaki uniforms, organised marches, and mock warfare. The movement’s emblem was the spade, egalitarian symbol of the dignity of labour, which its members literally carried around with them.

Khaksars in uniform, 1930s. The figure in the centre of the back row carries the Khaksar belcha (spade). Source: Wikipedia.

The Khaksar movement’s philosophy was enshrined in a creed and set of principles, which emphasised discipline and self-sacrifice, and encouraged the spread of Islam. However, the movement denied any involvement in politics, and its anti-colonialism went unstated.

The movement’s dictatorial beliefs and uniform prompted comparisons with contemporary Fascist organisations in Europe. Indeed, Mashriqi is said to have met Hitler in 1926 and to have been influenced by Mein Kampf, which he translated into Urdu.

Bahrain was the centre of the embryonic oil industry on the Arab side of the Gulf in 1939, and with the advent of war against those same European Fascist powers, the region constituted a key source of oil for Britain’s war effort.

The British compiled lists of those involved with the movement in Bahrain (about forty people, all of them members of the Indian community), including oil industry workers and a tailor.

Part of a letter dated 20 December 1939 from the Assistant Political Agent, Bahrain to the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Government of India, New Delhi, giving information on the Khaksar Movement in Bahrain, which he describes as ‘the object of much derision by the Arab population’: IOR/R/15/2/168, f 24.

The conclusion reached by British officials was that there was ‘nothing objectionable’ in the activities of the movement’s members in Bahrain, which were confined to a weekly uniformed march, and regular meetings. The British Political Agent in Bahrain was also sceptical about the movement’s wider appeal to Muslims, stating that it was ‘not likely ever to be of much significance on the Arab Coast, where a movement whose symbol is a spade can excite only derision’.

However, all that changed in March 1940 when more than thirty Khaksars were killed by police in a protest at Lahore. The movement was now viewed by the authorities as a danger and banned, and the ban prompted further enquiries into the strength of the movement in Bahrain. Fifteen further members, including workers at a shipping company and the RAF base, were identified by tracing the distribution of the Khaksar newspaper, Al Islah.

The Gazette of India, 20 March 1940, published the day after the deaths of Khaksar members at Lahore, announcing the Chief Commissioner of Delhi’s decision to declare the Khaksar Movement an unlawful association: IOR/R/15/2/168, f 31.

If the British feared a wartime outbreak of pan-Islamic unrest they need not have worried, because the Gulf states gave loyal support to the Allied cause throughout the war. Inayatullah Khan too, on his way to jail in New Delhi, pointed out that he had previously offered to raise a force of 50,000 men to fight alongside the British.

However, the implications for British rule in India were different, and the activities of Mashriqi and the Khaksars were a contributory factor in achieving the independence of Pakistan in 1947.

Martin Woodward
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library: 'File 1/A/47 Khaksar Movement'. IOR/R/15/2/168
Amalendu De, History of the Khaksar Movement in India (1931-1947) 2 vols (Kolkata: Parul Prakashani, 2009) I
Roy Jackson, Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam: Authority and the Islamic state (Taylor and Francis, 2010)

 

The India Office Records holds many files relating to the award of medals and honours to soldiers for bravery in battle. One interesting file on the subject of honours is from the India Office Information Department, which was responsible for communicating official policy to the press, advising on broadcasting and films about India, and liaising with the Ministry of Information and the Governments of India and Burma about publicity and propaganda.

The file contains a splendid booklet produced by the Inter Service Public Relations Directorate, India Command, in late 1945. Titled Officers & Men of the Indian Army who have been awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the field it gives information on the 21 men who had been awarded the medal during the course of the Second World War (up to February 1945). Each page of the booklet gives a photograph of the soldier, with a description of the action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross, and a dramatic drawing showing the action.

Included in the booklet is a page on the Indian Army’s second youngest winner of the Victoria Cross, 20 year old Sepoy Kamal Ram, 8th Punjab Regiment, from the small village of Bholupura, Karauli State, in what was then the United Provinces. The action for which Kamal was awarded the VC took place in Italy in May 1944 just after the Regiment had crossed the river Gari. Kamal’s Company found itself held up by four German machine gun posts, and he volunteered to deal with one of them. He attacked the post alone killing the two German gunners and a German officer who suddenly appeared from a trench. Kamal then successfully attacked the second post, and hurled grenades into the third. Not surprisingly the remaining Germans surrendered. He later rushed a house, killing another German soldier, and taking two more as prisoners. The VC ribbon was presented to Kamal by King George VI in Italy in July 1944.

King George VI pinning the Victoria Cross on Sepoy Kamal Ram, 26 July 1944. © IWM (NA 17270)

Also in the file is a telegram from the Government of India War Department reporting on a letter received by the family of Kamal Ram from him following his act of bravery. Written for him in Hindi by a friend, it was intended for the whole village. In it he mentions nothing about his exploits, instead asks about news of relatives, their cattle, the crops and the weather. Clearly not wanting to worry his family he wrote to reassure them: “I am serving with great pleasure. I will never disgrace your name. I am at a great distance from you in Italian Raj. I have good food and I am quite fat”. His citation stated “His sustained and outstanding bravery unquestionably saved a difficult situation at a critical period”.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
India Office Information Department File 462/80(c) Honours, 1941-1944 [IOR/L/I/1/1034]

See my previous posting on the award of the Victoria Cross to the first soldier of the Indian Army during the First World War.

When Thomas Hickey sketched Prince Shukr Ullah on January 13 1801, this elegant ten year old boy’s life had just undergone a seismic shift. In 1799, when he was 8 years old, his father, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, had died in battle against the English East India Company.

WD3213 - Shukr Ullah, 7th son of Tipu. Inscribed, “Shuk’r Ullah Saheb, 7th and favourite son of the late Tippoo Sultaun and aged about 10 ½ . Jan 13 1801.” 

Tipu Sultan’s death brought the turbulent Mysore Wars to an end. The East India Company now controlled most of southern India. To ensure this victory, the Company’s next move was to quietly destroy Tipu Sultan’s family. The British placed a new, compliant ruling family onto the throne of Mysore, and Tipu Sultan’s potential heirs, his thirteen sons, were moved to Vellore Fort, the East India Company’s strongest fortress in the Carnatic.

According to the inscription on the drawing of Shukr Ullah, he was the “7th and favourite son of the late Tippoo Sultaun”. It is entirely possible that Tipu wanted this “favourite son” to ascend the throne of Mysore, but instead, he lived the rest of his life under house arrest. It is difficult to understand why the British found Shukr Ullah so threatening; At his young age, he probably hadn’t lived beyond the palace confines of the zenana.

Thomas Hickey’s sketch of Shukr Ullah was made into an oil painting, which is now in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta. It was part of a set of 16 portraits by Hickey, which were sent to Calcutta in 1804 to be framed and displayed in the Governor General’s residence. All 16 portraits depict Indian men and boys whose fates were altered by the British after the Fourth Mysore War. Shukr Ullah’s six older brothers were painted as part of this set, but his six younger brothers were not. Today, the 16 Hickey portraits are in Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial Hall and in Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

In July 1806, Shukr Ullah’s older brothers were implicated into a Sepoy mutiny at Vellore Fort. Soon afterward, their place of internment was moved from Vellore to Rasapagla, in Bengal. Shukr Ullah died there on 25 September, 1837 at the approximate age of 47.

Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia

Further Reading:
British Library, IOR/F/4/113, 2126. Pages 24L, 24M.
William Dalrymple. “Tipu Sultan: Noble or Savage?” The Open Magazine, 27 November 2015.

DISSEGNO E FORTIFICATIONE DI PIADENA E DI CANETO.  [Maps K.Top.78.10.1.]

This map really presents the case for an unknown, and certainly untold, life; its maker, or rather cartographer, remains anonymous and no other institutional examples of the map have been traced to date.

Titled “DISSEGNO E FORTIFICATIONE DI PIADENA E DI CANETO” the map forms part of the King’s Topographical Collection. The collection, formerly belonging to George III, was donated to the British Museum by George IV and is now held by the British Library. It comprises some 40,000 maps, prints and drawings of all areas of the world. The collection is currently being digitised and re-catalogued, improving records that often date from 1829 and show only brief titles concerned solely with the geographical location depicted and not with those involved in an item’s creation, its physical attributes or its context.

The map shows Piadena and Canneto sull’Oglio in Italy.

With a title and key in Italian, as well as the Italian subject matter, then Italy is a likely place of publication. Reference to the Duke of Nevers in the key, as well as to the quarters of Spanish and other troops, suggests a date of publication for the map during or shortly after the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631). Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers and Duke of Mantua, as he would become, was successful in his claim to the Duchy of Mantua.

The map’s existence within the K.Top in a printed and published state, and not just as a manuscript, suggests that public interest in the War had warranted the map’s publication. However, that interest may have been relatively short-lived; if this K.Top example is the single exemplar then the numbers published are likely to have been relatively small. Thus, the map’s survival illustrates the importance of K.Top as a repository for such ephemeral, but extremely scarce, material .

The engraving shows traces of a pair of initials at lower left, perhaps “K. K.”.  If these initials do indeed suggest the identity of a person involved in the map’s creation, then that creator remains enigmatic.

Kate Marshall, Map Cataloguer Kings Topographical Collection.

Indian seamen, or lascars, remain forgotten heroes of the world wars, partly because information about them is very scarce. The blog I posted earlier today details the death toll, the numbers of men taken prisoner and acts of bravery and selflessness in circumstances of extreme danger. We thought it appropriate to remember the Indian seamen commended for their bravery and devotion to duty by publishing their names recorded in an India Office Records file (IOR/L/E/8/2909).

Image of Head Lascar
Photo 472/25 (110)

Documents from the India Office Records file, below

 In the file, details of the individual reasons for their award are detailed down the right hand side of the pages above. Unfortunately, these flimsy papers with their slightly smudgy text are too wide to be photographed in their entirety and remain legible in this blog. The original file may be consulted in the Asian and African reading room at the British Library once you have obtained a reader's pass.

Penny Brook
Head of India Office Records

Further reading

Rozina Visram Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (Pluto, 2002)

IOR/L/E/8/2909 E&O 5216/45 - Preparation of a Brochure on the War Effort of Indian Seamen, 1945

Making Britain database

Asians in Britain learning resource

Images

Seamen from South Asia, known as lascars, played a vital role during both world wars, providing manpower to keep the supply lines open. However, their bravery and commitment, in often terrifying situations, have been largely overlooked, even though thousands paid the ultimate price. During the First World War 3,427 lascars lost their lives and 1,200 were taken prisoner. It is thought that around 6,600 died during the Second World War, 1,022 were wounded, many severely, and 1,217 became prisoners of war. Pioneering historians such as Rozina Visram have highlighted the importance of their role and the extent of their sacrifice, but until now, relatively little has been known about the stories of individual lascars. The India Office Records team was therefore delighted to find this modest-looking file, dated 1945.

A note inside the file states ‘We’ve very little information about Indian Seamen. The attached represents all there is.’

  According to a further note ‘Indian seamen served in all the Seven Seas throughout the war. They took part in the landing operations in Africa, Italy, France and Burma.’ The file contains five pages listing honours awarded to Indian officers and men for gallantry and devotion to duty, or for long and meritorious service at sea. Honours were awarded for bravery under fire and when ships were torpedoed and sinking, courageous rescues, service to others, leadership and fearless devotion to duty. A further page lists those who received civil commendations for brave conduct or were mentioned in despatches. The images below are taken from the list of honours and give a flavour of the individual acts of courage.

s.s. British Judge
Award: B.E.M. 

m.v. Sutlej
Award: B.E.M. 

s.s. Fort Maisonneuve
Award: B.E.M. 

The slightly fuzzy typescript and flimsy paper in the file seem inadequate as a memorial to such courage, but this record is remarkable for the way it brings together the elusive details of their service.

This story also illuminates the Untold Lives of the staff at the British Library. The importance of the file was spotted by Luke Marriage when he was cataloguing the India Office Economic Department records, so he showed it to colleagues at the India Office Records team meeting and we agreed that we should blog about it. Before he catalogued it, researchers could only have found it by painstakingly searching in the original registers and indexes which would have led them to the rather cryptic catalogue record below.

Thanks to Luke’s work, the new catalogue record includes the brief description below which means that in future, researchers will easily find it in our online catalogue.

We are very pleased that our efforts to improve access to the India Office Records have also enabled us to pay tribute to the courage and fortitude of Indian seamen during the Second World War. At 11-00 am today, we will remember them further by using the Untold Lives blog to post the names of all those listed in the file. 

Penny Brook and Luke Marriage
India Office Records

Further reading

Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (Pluto, 2002)

IOR/L/E/8/2909

Making Britain database

Asians in Britain learning resource

Images: