Untold lives blog

Some readers of this blog will know that we at the British Library have spent the last few years developing an integrated catalogue for our archives and manuscripts collections which is made available online as Search our Catalogue Archives and Manuscripts.  A bonus of having all the catalogue records in one system is that we can now share them with projects en masse beyond the British Library, and this includes the 300,000 or so records of the people who were involved in the creation of, or who are the subject of, the archives and manuscripts.

These records then have been included in the US based Social Networks and Archival Context project – more memorably known as SNAC.  Part of this is looking at how to help researchers find all the relevant material relating to a particular person, both archives and publications and so has developed a ‘Prototype Research Tool’  with this in mind: 

 

 
The British Library’s records are included alongside those from many US institutions and data is being loaded from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and university repositories in the UK. Anyone can click one of the ‘featured’ images on the front page or search for an individual they are interested in. The result will be a page for an individual such as this entry for Robert Clive:

 Here information about related archive collections is presented with links back to the originating repository’s catalogue, where details of how to get access to the material can be found. There are also links to publications and other resources relating to the person with links to WorldCat  which again can help with accessing the material.

The project is also interested finding out if the links between people found in catalogues when they are brought together in this way might help researchers navigate around all this data, so as well as providing links to related people the project provides a visualisation for the social and professional ‘network’ of individuals in a ‘radial graph view’ such as this one again for Robert Clive:

 

Given the richness of the catalogues and the millions of records included links can be found to the humble individual as well as the ‘great and the good’, so here can be seen a link between Lord Clive and one Mrs Bayly Brett, whose commonplace book includes a copy of a letter written by him to his mother in 1757.

Please have a look at SNAC and tell us what you think. Happy hunting!

Bill Stockting
Cataloguing Systems & Processing Co-ordinator

Eldred Pottinger came to prominence in the service of the East India Company in the 1830s as an assistant to his uncle Henry Pottinger, Resident at Cutch, and through his travels in Afghanistan. When the uprising against the British presence in Afghanistan broke out in 1841, Pottinger was serving as a political officer in Kohistan, a district north of Kabul. During what came to be known as the First Anglo-Afghan War, Pottinger received a serious leg injury, and was detained as a hostage by the Afghan leader Akbar Khan. On his return to India in 1842, he was granted medical leave and travelled to Hong Kong where he died on 15 November 1843.

 
Dr William Brydon,  the only survivor of the 4,500 British soldiers and 12,000 camp-followers who left Kabul on 6 January 1842 to escape, arriving at Jelalabad with news of the disaster, on 13 January © UIG/The British Library Board

At the time of his death, Pottinger was in dispute with the Company over compensation he felt was due to him for the loss of his property in Afghanistan. The India Office Records holds a memorial prepared by him, and submitted to government after his death by his younger brother Lieutenant John Pottinger of the Bombay Artillery. John hoped the Company would give the compensation he felt had been due to his older brother to his mother and sister living in Jersey, and he pointed out that three of his brothers had died in the Company’s service.

 
Bazaar at Kabul in the fruit season (X 614, plate 19) Images Online

Enclosed with the memorial is a list of Eldred’s property taken by the enemy in the castle of Laghman in the Kohistan of Kabul on 5 November 1841, and it gives an interesting glimpse into what a Company officer on political service felt he needed to do his job and to preserve the dignity of his position. There is a long list of books on a wide range of subjects such as history, botany, geology, mathematics, engineering, and politics. Not all seem to be directly related to his posting. There are volumes of poetry by Chaucer, Shelly, Byron and Wordsworth. Gillies’ History of Greece and Leland’s Life of Philip of Macedon sit alongside Robertson’s History of Scotland and Burke’s Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, and the satirical The Clockmaker, or Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick. The collection of Eldred’s books and maps alone was valued at £715 in 1843.

Title page of Burke’s Sublime and Beautiful (RB.23.a.18100) Images Online

As well as the books and maps, Eldred listed scientific equipment, guns and swords, European and Persian clothes, furniture (tables and chairs, bookcases not surprisingly), Persian carpets, dinning implements (plates, knives, forks, spoons, some in silver), wine, beer and spirits, and six horses. The total value of his lost property was taken as £2,322 or roughly £102,000 in today’s money!

The opinion of the Governor General of India was that Eldred Pottinger was only entitled to the same compensation as if he had sustained the loss on military, rather than political service, and that the compensation should have no relation to the value of the property lost, but only to the value of the property an officer ought to have with him on service.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:

Memorial from Lieutenant John Pottinger of the Regiment of Artillery respecting certain claims of his late brother, Major Eldred Pottinger for allowances and compensation alleged to be due to him for loss of his property in Afghanistan, October 1842 to June 1844 [IOR/F/4/2058/94289]

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Historical currency converter

On 20 January 1732, Bandar Abbas on the north coast of the Persian Gulf was gripped by panic, as musket shots rang out over the city and two local soldiers ran about warning of an impending attack by Afghan raiders.

Afghan foot soldiers in their winter dress, 1848 (Plate 11 of 'Afghaunistan' by Lieutenant James Rattray)  Online Gallery

This would not be the first such attack, the Afghans and other Sunni rebels having recently plundered the outskirts of the city,  a caravan and the village of Afseen, where the East India Company’s Baghche or pleasure garden had been looted and used as the rebel headquarters (IOR/G/29/5 f.144). The previous attack on the city had been repulsed by the recently arrived Mir Haydar, an official from Shiraz. This same official, spurred to action by the warnings of people fleeing from the perceived danger, mounted his horse to face the attackers a second time. To his surprise, rather than finding an Afghan attack underway, he discovered that the two soldiers who had earlier evacuated the local population had taken the opportunity to burgle abandoned houses nearby in order to pay off gambling debts. The two were pursued by the Persians.

These events are recorded in an East India Company consultation book, written as a record of matters discussed in the regular meetings held by the British traders and administrators in the factory at Bandar Abbas. At this time, Persia was just lifting itself out of a decade of civil war, the Safavid dynasty having been toppled by an Afghan invasion in 1722. Raids and banditry as well as all-out war with the Turks made Persia at this time a very risky place to do business. We know, for example, that the Dutch and British factories in Bandar Abbas were fortified and armed against such dangers, the locals even flocking to the shadows of their walls for protection during the Afghan raid. A Company factor, William Cordeux, after leaving Bandar Abbas to warn approaching caravans of the Afghan’s presence as well as to hurry along one carrying Company goods, was subject to an assassination mission by the Afghans, whom he was lucky not to meet with on the road.

The continued presence and activity of the British in Persia during this tumultuous period go some way to showing the importance of Persia and more specifically Bandar Abbas, as a trading hub and outlet for the Company’s trade goods from India and Europe.

Peter Good
PhD student University of Essex/British Library

In our exhibition Enduring war: grief, grit and humour which opens in the Folio Society Gallery at the British Library in London today, we consider how people coped during the First World War both at home and at the Front.  Looking at themes such as family, friends, faith and humour we commemorate the contribution so many made to the war effort and the ways they were subsequently honoured,  giving a voice to some of the men, women and children who lived through the war.

 
"Fall in” answer now in your country’s hour of need. London: Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914. (Poster no. 12.).  Tab.17748.a.(156). Images Online 

The exhibition brings together material that has come to have national significance, such as the manuscripts of now famous war poets, with more ephemeral items, like Christmas cards and knitting patterns, that you might not expect to find in the Library’s collection. We’re displaying posters, trench journals, letters from Indian soldiers at the Western Front and a schoolboy’s essay about a Zeppelin raid over London together with manuscripts of works by Wilfred Owen, Vaughan Williams and Laurence Binyon. To give you a flavour - if you’re interested in Rupert Brooke, we have both a manuscript of his poem ‘The Soldier’ and a card sent to him about socks.

Enduring war is part of the Library’s wider involvement in the First World War Centenary. The Library has been leading the UK’s contribution to Europeana1914-1918.eu, a major, online digitised resource, and the exhibition includes a specially-commissioned and deeply- moving audio-visual installation and soundscape, which focuses on postcards sent home from soldiers drawn from the extensive collections contributed by members of the public to Europeana 1914-1918.

As you can see, the exhibition is a mix of the public and the personal – and one of the most poignant items is a letter dated 20 July 1916 from Roland Gerard Garvin, known as Ged, writing to his family, expressing his love and bidding farewell, knowing that his letter would only be sent if he did not return from battle.  He was killed on the Somme a few days later aged only 20. There is more about him in our World War One website which includes over 500 items from across Europe selected from Europeana1914-1918 as well as articles by leading experts and teachers’ notes. His is just one of the individual and shared stories you can find in Enduring war which has been curated by Alison Bailey and Matthew Shaw, project coordinator for Europeana 1914-1918. 

Alison Bailey
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1914- 

Read more about Enduring war: grief, grit and humour

See what our colleagues in Collection Care have to say about some of the items they worked on for the exhibition.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944.  Have you ever considered the role that NAAFI played in D-Day?  NAAFI placed advertisements in newspapers all over Britain in the summer of 1944 describing its work during the invasion campaign and appealing for new recruits to its canteens.

Map of defences Franceville-Plage May 1944 Online Gallery 

NAAFI (Navy, Army, & Air Force Institutes) was established in 1921 to run recreational establishments for the Armed Forces, and to sell goods to servicemen and their families.  In the weeks before the Normandy landings, thousands of young women working for NAAFI volunteered to be ‘imprisoned’ in the sealed invasion camps to provide a canteen service for the troops.  The units which left Britain on D-Day took a NAAFI invasion pack with essential supplies and comforts: cigarettes, matches, razor blades, boot laces, letter cards, shaving cream, toothpaste and soap.

From an advertisement in Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 4 August 1944 British Newspaper Archive

On 23 June 1944 a NAAFI reconnaissance party landed in France to look for suitable premises for warehouses, stores, canteens and billets. The first main supplies of canteen goods were landed on 25 June.  These were followed the next day by sports packs containing books and indoor and outdoor games, a free gift to the troops from NAAFI.  On 10 July, NAAFI started to serve outlying units using five mobile canteens.  By 15 July, in addition to the emergency packs, NAAFI had landed 670 million cigarettes, nearly 3.3 million bottles of beer, and over 9,500 tons of tobacco, chocolate, razor blades, matches, writing materials, handkerchiefs and toiletries. 

 
Rosemary Harris in her NAAFI uniform. She worked in the canteen at RAF West Raynham, Norfolk. (Family photograph)

More than 800 NAAFI men were at work in France by the end of July 1944. Hundreds of NAAFI women volunteers were ‘also standing by, eager for the adventure of service in Europe’.  Their places at home needed to be filled and so NAAFI sent out an urgent call in the press for manageresses, cooks and counter assistants to join its canteens.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:

Advertisements placed in local newspapers throughout Britain, for example Dover Express 7 July 1944 and Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 4 August 1944 British Newspaper Archive

In the winter of 1786, two Englishmen arrived unexpectedly at the East India Company Residency in Bushire on the Persian coast.  Major John Morrison was elderly and evidently in charge of his younger companion, Captain George Biggs.  They declared their intention to stay several days before heading to Delhi by sea.  The Resident in Bushire, Edward Galley, had heard rumour of two “European gentlemen” at the camp of Ja‘far Khān Zand, one of the contenders for the Persian throne.  He wrote to his superiors in Bombay.  Their response was the order to ‘keep an eye over [their] motion’ until Galley was ‘better acquainted with the real object of their journey into Persia’.

 
Letter from the Council at Bombay Castle to Edward Galley, Resident at Bushire, 27 January 1787. [IOR/R/15/1/1, f 45v] 

Who was Major John Morrison?  And what was he doing in the Persian Gulf on business that was seemingly neither commercial nor sanctioned by the Company?

Fifteen years earlier, Major Morrison had written to John Cartier proposing an alliance with Shah Alam II, the Mughal Emperor.  The provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa would be given over to the English in exchange for arms, military training, and payment of the tribute owed to the Shah.   When Cartier did not even reply, Morrison travelled to England as the Shah’s ambassador and peppered ministers and men of influence (in particular Henry Dundas) with the same and similar proposals, presenting them either as commercially or strategically advantageous depending on the audience.

 
Shah Alam II  [Add.Or.5694] Images Online 

After campaigning for more than a decade without success, Major Morrison returned to the East, arriving at Ja‘far Khān’s camp near Shiraz in late 1786.  His mission was to settle a treaty of commerce between the Khan and his employer Shah Alam.  However when Morrison heard of Shah Alam’s imprisonment by the Marathas, he wrote to Ja‘far Khān with an extraordinary offer.  In exchange for ten lakhs of rupees, (approximately £15,000,000 today), Morrison would travel to Europe and purchase ‘great guns and small arms and other articles of war’ with which he would return to Shiraz and ‘conquer the whole Kingdom of Persia for you’.

This shift in potential ally prompted Morrison to return to England instead of heading from Bushire to Delhi. He renewed his epistolary bombardment of Dundas: keeping a Zand on the Persian throne would prevent the capital moving northwards to Tehran, as would happen under the Qajars, and closer to the influence of Russia. 

 
1797 map of Persia and parts of Central Asia, the theatre of the Great Game [IOR/X/3097] 

Dundas was preoccupied with the French threat, and Morrison failed to get sanction for his schemes.  Was Morrison genuinely and patriotically trying to promote the interests of the Company and the English nation as a whole?  Or was he attempting to play a dangerous political game to further his own ends?  A letter sent from him in February 1792 to Lord Grenville contains a telling remark.  If his plan is not accepted, Morrison threatens, he will lay it before ‘a foreign court, who, I am convinced, will immediately carry it into execution’.

John Hayhurst
BL/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Qatar Digital Library

Tonight BBC2 is showing the second and final episode of the series The Birth of Empire: the East India Company.  Dan Snow will discuss the shift from trade to empire, and the increased state control of the Company.  We will see the defeat of Tipu Sultan and the treasures that were looted after his death; the creation of the Indian civil service; the problems caused by religious differences; and how the relationship between the British and Indian peoples changed in the years leading up to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ and the subsequent death of the East India Company.  

Here are more of the interesting stories discovered by Robert Hutchinson, the historical consultant for the series.

Stunning architecture

The British were amazed at what they found in India. One intrepid traveller arrived at the Taj Mahal in 1796 and described his awestruck reaction:

– ‘I was mute with astonishment. We arrived at the tomb and then again I paused, lost in wonder and admiration to see a building as large almost as St Paul’s magnified also with four turrets, nearly the height of The Monument and all of pure white marble was a sight so truly novel, great and magnificent that imagination itself could have painted it…’ [IOPP/ [MSS Eur B284 f.4v]

P395 T. Daniell, A distant view of the Taj Mahal, Agra (London, 1801)    Images Online

Exotic wildlife

The popular guide to life in India, called the East India Vade Mecum warned in the early 19th century: ‘Snakes have been found in the beds wherein gentlemen were about to repose. A lady was called in by her servant to see a snake that lay contentedly between two of her infants while sleeping in a small cot. This perilous situation produced the utmost anxiety’.

  A Saumpareeah or snake catcher exhibiting snakes, from The costume and customs of modern India (London, c.1824)    Images Online

 Religion

In 1808, Maj. Gen Charles Stuart – ‘Hindoo Stuart’ - published a book, Vindication of the Hindoos, in which he attacked the spread of unauthorised evangelical missionaries in India, claiming that: Hinduism little needs the meliorating hand of Christianity to render its votaries a sufficiently correct and moral people for all the useful purposes of a civilized society.

He wrote of the dangers of these ‘obnoxious’ missionaries whose efforts to convert Indians to Christianity was ‘impolitic, inexpedient, dangerous, unwise and insane’.  If a Hindu’s religion is insulted, he warned, ‘what confidence can we repose in the fidelity of our Hindu soldiers?’

 Hindoo temple near the Strand Road, from Views Of Calcutta And Its Environs Images Online

Death of the East India Company

The last Company Governor General seemed to sense impending trouble. The speech made to the farewell banquet given by the EIC Court of Directors by Lord Canning before he sailed out to India, (arriving in Calcutta in February 1856) contained these prophetic words: ‘I wish for a peaceful term of office but… we must not forget that in the story of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise at first no bigger than a man’s hand but which, growing larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst and overwhelm us…’

East India Company coat of arms c.1730 originally hung above the chairman's seat in the Directors' Court Room at East India House, Leadenhall Street  Images Online 

Read our previous blogs about the programme and its exploration of the East India Company archives:

The Birth of Empire: the East India Company

Dipping into the archives with Dan Snow

See more about Birth of Empire here

A common sight across the length and breadth of Britain are memorials to those who lost their lives in the First World War. In cities, towns and villages, churches and cathedrals, public squares and gardens, and in public buildings of all kinds, these memorials commemorate the sacrifice made by men and women from all walks of life during that terrible conflict. In 1919, the India Office commissioned its own memorial tablet to commemorate the members of the India Office and the India Store Depot who died for their King and country in the Great War.

Quotes for the cost of the work were sought from three companies, J W Singer & Sons Ltd, Farmer & Brindley Ltd, and Ashby & Horner Ltd, and designs were received from each. A file in the India Office Records contains the correspondence and other papers relating to the memorial, along with examples of the different designs. Proposed designs included a bronze centre panel with Sicilian marble frame (by Singer & Sons) for £250, and a white marble panel with an oak frame (by Ashby & Horner Ltd) for £425.

 
IOR/L/SUR/6/20/49 

The contract was subsequently awarded to Farmer & Brindley Ltd for a design in alabaster and statuary marble at a cost of £316. The contract, dated 24 December 1919, and signed by T Herbert Winney, India Office Surveyor, stipulated that the work was to be completed within 20 weeks of that date. However, a number of points remained to be settled. It was decided on chocolate brown for the colour of the lettering in the inscription, and the date of 1914-19 was chosen (although the Military Department insisted that the Great War had not yet officially ended). These issues, along with amendments to the inscription, caused delays, and by October 1920 the India Office was urging Farmer & Brindley to finish the work in time for Armistice Day. The memorial was officially unveiled by the Marquis of Crewe on the 26 February 1921. It lists the names of 30 members of the India Office who died during the war, and is in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office building in Westminster.

IOR/L/SUR/6/20/49  

In the same file are copies of the India Office Roll of Honour, recording all those who served in the Great War in whatever capacity. Listed in alphabetical order, class distinctions were dissolved. Included equally in the list are messengers, such as C D A Simmons, Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, and J Teague, Motor Machine Gun Corps, and a Member of the Council of India, Sir T Morison, K.C.I.E., 2nd Lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Regiment. Also listed is Miss G F C Arnell, who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Lynn Osborne and John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:

War memorial for members of India Office who died 1914-19 [IOR/L/SUR/6/20/49]

War Memorials Archive