Untold lives blog

In the 1950s Britain was building a nuclear arsenal to bolster the country's position as a great power and deter the Soviet Union. At secretive sites across the UK, boffins toiled away developing nuclear weapon systems; giant rockets were tested in the Australian outback and on the Isle of Wight; in the remote Pacific, British scientists detonated a series of nuclear devices as they unravelled the secrets of the hydrogen bomb; and in a small town near Farnborough, a young rocket scientist named Roy Dommett had a tricky conversation with his wife Marguerite:  

[Roy] came home one day and he said, ‘We’ve got to have a talk.’  And he said, ‘I’m working on something that I think is very important, but I can’t talk to you about it.’  He said, ‘But it might help the world in the future, what do you want me to do?’  
Listen to this extract on Voices of Science

What Roy couldn't talk about was his work on Britain's nuclear deterrent as part of the guided weapons group at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. The work was so secret his wife knew little of it until he was awarded a CBE in 1991 for a life's work supporting Britain's nuclear deterrent, including the cancelled Blue Streak ballistic missile and the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris.  In his interview for An Oral History of British Science, Roy gives us a fascinating insight into the hidden world of the Cold War rocket scientist, and his unique solution to the stress and secrecy of the work – a lively interest in morris dancing:

My job was sitting in an office with one other person, and I could go day after day without talking to no more than one person at a time.  You know, I needed an activity where I actually met people, got out and did things with people.
Watch Roy Dommett talking about the problems of combining morris dancing with missile science.

Roy Dommett, middle left, with fellow morris dancers in Abingdon, early 1970s

The day job was challenging; developing complex systems to survive the incredible pressures and temperatures of being blasted into space, before hurtling down over the Soviet Union at many times the speed of sound, where they would have to fool Soviet defence systems around Moscow. All to deliver a nuclear payload if the worst happened. While their ultimate purpose may have been terrible nuclear devastation, such systems were intended to deter aggression and make nuclear war less likely, as Roy recalls in this clip it was a paradox not lost on the designers.

 
Roy Dommett at Farnborough Air Services Trust with the Chevaline missile bus, 2012

Roy Dommett is amongst a hundred engineers and scientists to feature on Voices of Science, the British Library's new history of science web resource, based on a thousand hours of interviews collected as part of An Oral History of British Science.

Thomas Lean
Oral History of British Science project interviewer (Made in Britain strand)

Twitter #VoicesOfScience  #histsci

Earlier this year, the British government received a bequest of £500,000 from Miss Joan Edwards.  Another large bequest to the State was made 200 years ago in the will of Admiral Peter Rainier (1741-1808).  Rainier was the senior Royal Navy officer in the East Indies 1794-1805 during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.  He amassed approximately £250,000, primarily through prize money.  In his will he referred to his naval career ‘in which I have acquired the principal part of my fortune I now have, which has exceeded my merit and pretensions’.  He therefore gave 10 per cent of his estate to help reduce the national debt.

Admiral Peter Rainier from Edward Pelham Brenton, The Naval History of Great Britain 

 In spite of his successful career, Rainier did not receive formal recognition of his achievements.  As early as 1799 a correspondent to a London newspaper was puzzled by the lack of honours for Rainier when compared to those showered on Nelson.  Government indifference even continued after he had returned home.  At the general election of 1806 Rainier was not selected to be the Admiralty candidate for Sandwich.  However, he stood as an independent and came top of the poll.

It is difficult to understand why Rainier received no honours.  Perhaps it was felt the vast fortune he made was sufficient reward, or those in power had no idea of how difficult it was to command a naval station of such size and complexity.  Maybe he had no friends or allies to push for him after 11 years away from Britain.  Rainier certainly was not a self-publicist in the style of Nelson – he never complained to the Admiralty about lack of favours, or rewards.
 
Here are some of Rainier’s achievements during the eleven years he was in the East Indies.
 
•    Trade grew rapidly under Royal Navy protection.  Rainier’s successful allocation of the ships of his squadron was helped by his vast knowledge of the uncharted waters of the eastern sea and its severe weather patterns.

•    Rainier’s positioning of his squadron off the Malabar Coast stopped French reinforcements reaching Tipu Sultan of Mysore and ensured British control of Southern India.

•    Rainier cared for his men.  He aimed to provide them with the best food and drink, even buying cocoa although it was twice as expensive as that in the West Indies!  He established a hospital in Madras, and ordered that each captain and surgeon should visit their sick men ashore in hospital at least once a week.  He listened to the crew’s complaints, never punishing too harshly.  He obtained permission to pay lascar sailors locally on their release instead of requiring them to go to London to get paid and then find a return passage to Asia.

•    Rainier was a stickler for efficient logistics and financial administration.  He established excellent support structures over this 30 million square mile station to enable men and ships to get the best possible resources available.

•    Rainier opened up full communication and co-operation between the Navy and the East India Company, leading to success for all combined operations.

Peter Rainier was not a man with a large ego.  His gift to the government points to a man conscious of his good fortune, not one to bear a grudge or feel slighted,  a man of great loyalty to the Crown, the Royal Navy, and his family.
 
Peter Ward
Independent Scholar

Further reading:
Peter A. Ward, British Naval Power in the East, 1794-1805: The Command of Admiral Peter Rainier (2013)

Correspondence and papers for Admiral Peter Rainier are held at the British Library - search our catalogues

Guest blogger Dr Maya Parmar, Research Associate at the Open University, marks the publication of Asian Britain, a photographic history published in partnership with the British Library.

Growing up in North London, where I was born, I was acutely aware that neither my family nor I had a stake in patriotic narratives that centred upon grandfathers and great grandfathers who had heroically fought in world wars.  This, I thought, was because my heritage stretched across to India.  Archives deposited within the British Library, however, confront this misnomer.  They highlight key contributions South Asians made in British war efforts, both in the trenches in the First World War, as well as during the Second World War.  These moments in history where imperial subjects made crucial contributions to British war efforts, now unveiled, redistribute and share memories that are largely absent in the way we remember participation in conflicts.  A testament to these hidden stories of conflict, and to the many more interventions South Asians have made, is Asian Britain: A Photographic History.  Having been published earlier this month, this photographic history, authored by Professor Susheila Nasta and compiled with Dr Florian Stadler, extensively draws upon the British Library’s collections.  The book extends the research of a long collaboration between the British Library and The Open University on the Making Britain and Beyond the Frame projects.

British Library SW 107, also in Asian Britain, pilots  have joined the RAF to compensate for shortages (1942) 

Alongside representations of South Asians during wartime, Asian Britain too foregrounds other stories that tell of the multifaceted and long relationship between the subcontinent and Britain.  One of these is the narrative of the South Asian community displaced from their settled homes in East Africa, in the sixties and seventies.  Many of these families came to Britain, and indeed mine was one of them.  The painful expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda in 1972, by Idi Amin, is emblematic of this larger history. 2012 marked forty years since this moment when Britain became the home of many double migrants: double migrants who had first settled in Africa from India, and have since become an integral part of British life.  These forty years can, however, be contextualised by a much longer four hundred year old presence of South Asians in Britain, and it is this surprising, complex and challenging history Asian Britain pictures.

Maya Parmar
[email protected]

You may be surprised to learn that there are documents about Italians in the India Office Records.  Family, military, and social historians will find much of interest in the records of Italian prisoners and internees held in India during the Second World War.

A two-volume alphabetical list of Italian prisoners of war can be found in the India Office Military Department files, compiled from card indexes and nominal rolls prepared in the camps on or about 24 March 1942.  It was an attempt to combine into a single register the names of all Italian prisoners of war other than merchant seamen who were held in India on that date, or who had previously died in India.

On each page the entries are listed by surname, first name, rank, “M. E. number”, corps, and camp number.  The figures in the last column denote the number of the camp in which the prisoner is held.  Where there is more than one figure, the first shows his location on 24 March 1942, and the last represents the latest information which could be included in the list.  Owing to extensive transfers, this is not always up to date. The information following on from the camp numbers, e.g.  R.28.4.45, indicates the man's release date.

Second World War Italian Propaganda poster ©De Agostini  Images Online

Another useful file from the Public and Judicial Department of the India Office Records is entitled  'Internees: release and repatriation of Italian and other foreign internees in India'.  This has detailed information of Italian internees including names, addresses, occupations, and next of kin, covering the period September 1943 - July 1948.  These files are a boon for those trying to trace their Italian heritage.  I used them in a presentation given to the Anglo-Italian Family History Society in autumn 2012.

John Chignoli
Asian & African Studies Reference Services 


Further reading:

IOR/L/MIL/5/1069 Italian POWs surnames A - I
IOR/L/MIL/5/1070 Italian POWs surnames J - Z

IOR/L/PJ/8/35 Internees: release and repatriation of Italian and other foreign internees in India 1943-1948

On 18 June 1815, Henry Paget, Marquess of Anglesey, was struck in the right leg by a cannonball at the Battle of Waterloo.  Immediate amputation above the knee was required. Paget exclaimed “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!”, to which Wellington responded “By God, sir, so you have!” before turning back to the field.  The leg was buried with its own tombstone, which still survives, and became a Belgian tourist attraction.

Paget subsequently wore an articulated above-knee prosthetic which came to be named after him.  The “Anglesey Leg” (later known as the “American Leg”) had been invented by James Potts in 1800.  It consisted of a wooden calf and thigh socket, connected by a steel knee joint and finished with a flexible foot connected to the knee with catgut tendons.  Potts’ design was innovative for several reasons – most notably the tendon system which allowed for greater foot flexibility – and was a significant early milestone in aesthetic and practical prosthetic development.

David Copperfield and a man with a wooden leg from The Works of Charles Dickens  Images Online

In Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, freak show manager Mr Vuffin waxes lyrical on the subject of false limbs:

“Look at wooden legs.  If there was only one man with a wooden leg what a property he’d be!... If you was to advertise Shakespeare played entirely by wooden legs, it’s my belief you wouldn’t draw sixpence”

Wooden legs recur regularly throughout Dickens’ works, providing a piratical flourish to his most straight-faced of stories.  They are worn by Simon Tappertit in Barnaby Rudge, Mr Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit, and Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend.  It is a preoccupation which speaks clearly of the regularity with which wooden legs and prosthetics were to be seen in Victorian society.  Adrienne E. Gavin has noted that Dickens, living in Chatham as a youth, would have been surrounded by the sailors and soldiers stationed there towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and would consequently have seen large numbers of amputees and false limbs.

Most amputees of the time, whether soldiers or civilians, could be assured of some kind of replacement, however rudimentary.  In those pre-anaesthesia times, the process of first having the offending limb sawed off was an intimidating prospect and one with a mortality rate of about 30%.  Wealthy amputees could aspire to advanced prosthetics, known as “cork legs” (made in Cork Street), which offered jointed movement and expensive blends of materials such as ivory, steel, leather and vulcanized rubber.  The less fortunate had to make do with “peg” legs.  “Cork legs” developed a good deal over the course of the nineteenth century, with features such as ivory balls in rubber-socketed ankles for a fuller range of movement, whilst lightweight leather prosthetics were also developed which could be laced on like knee boots.  Advanced legs of this sort were not only superior in the natural movement they supplied but also were less liable than basic wooden legs to rotting and splitting mid-stride.

Some sporadic development of false legs continued into the American Civil War, which produced some 30,000 amputees, and again throughout World War I, but it was not until much later in the twentieth century that combined progress in mechanics, technology and surgical practice both advanced the quality and durability of prosthetic legs and lessened the overall need for them.


Julia Armfield
Former Intern, Printed Historical Resources


Coming soon: False arms…


Further Reading:

Adrienne E. Gavin , Dickens, Wegg and Wooden Legs

Antedecents: Lower Limb Prosthetic Devices

Gordon Philips, Best Foot Forward: Chas A. Blatchford and Sons Ltd, (Artificial Limbs Specialists), 1890-1990, (London: 1990)

Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais is best remembered as the naval commander who captured the English settlement at Madras during the War of the Austrian Succession in September 1746. Having fallen out with his superior the Governor of Pondicherry Joseph-François Dupleix over the generous terms he offered to the English, La Bourdonnais returned to Europe and was captured at Falmouth. When cataloguing a volume of East India Company correspondence for 1747-1748, I discovered original intelligence reports submitted by the Admiralty and Post Master General to the East India Company. This correspondence adds significantly to La Bourdonnais’ own account of his capture published in 1748.

Falmouth, Cornwall (G.7046 plate 297) Images Online  

The initial report of La Bourdonnais’ presence at Falmouth was submitted to the Post Master General by George Bell on 4 January 1747. It recounts how La Bourdonnais left the East Indies in company of four French men of war which put in at Martinique following a hurricane. After sending his wife and family ahead with his treasure on board a schooner bound for Portugal, La Bourdonnais with four of his principal officers boarded a Dutch vessel bound for Holland, where he hoped to remain until he could settle matters with the French Court. Contrary winds forced the Dutch ship to put in at Falmouth where she waited ten days for provisions and an outward bound convoy. A local merchant learned that there were French officers on board the vessel and told Bell. Bell’s report led to the capture of La Bourdonnais and his retinue by HMS Mercury commanded by Captain Bladwell. In light of his generous treatment of the English at Madras, La Bourdonnais was treated well, granted parole and allowed to return to France.

Richard Scott Morel
Curator, East India Company Records  

Further reading:
IOR/E/1/34 ff. 283-284v: Mr George Bell dated at Falmouth 4 January 1747 to the Post Master General.

Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, The Case of M. de la Bourdonnais in a letter to a Friend (London, 1748).

Previous postings on this blog have mentioned the extracts from the letters of Indian soldiers serving in France during the First World War which are appended to the reports of the Censor of India Mails in France found in the India Office Records.

  Photo 24/1 Dome Hospital in Brighton  Digitised Manuscripts    Images Online

One interesting aspect of the letters is the description of English life by injured Indian soldiers who were recovering from their wounds in the various Indian military hospitals which had been established in Brighton and other parts of the south coast.  Here are some examples from October and November 1915.

A Ali, a storekeeper at one of the Brighton hospitals, wrote to his brother in Lyallpur of a trip he took with his father to London on 1 October.  They visited the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, which he described as absolutely magnificent, and the Zoological Gardens.  He was very impressed with the respect the police commanded, remarking that “If one policeman raises his hand every single person in that direction rich and poor alike, stands still where he is as long as his hand is raised.  There is no need to talk”.  Ali was also impressed with London’s shops, saying that “There is no need of asking as the price is written on everything”.  Ali and his father used the London Underground to get around, and he recalled his excitement: “Then we went in the train that goes under the earth, it was for us a strange and wonderful experience”.

The cost of living was a common topic for letters.  G R Chowam at the Kitchener Indian General Hospital in Brighton wrote that “Unlike India nothing cheap can be purchased here”.  Abdul Said, a Punjabi Muslim, wrote on 1 November to his brother in Jammu , commenting on how expensive the newspapers were.  He attributed this to the fact that “…everyone great and small reads the papers.  Several newspapers come out during the day”.  Like Ali, Abdul Said was impressed by English shops, noting how clean and tidy the butchers' shops were, and how “…every shopkeeper tries especially to keep his shop spick and span and everything is in perfect order”.

  Photo 24/2 Indian soldiers outside the Brighton Pavilion Hospital   Digitised Manuscripts    Images Online

The British weather was often noted by the Indian soldiers.  Abdul Said picked up on the very British custom of starting every conversation by commenting on the weather: “Now the winter has begun and the sun is always hidden.  If by accident it comes out, the day is regarded as we regard the day of Id, and whoever you meet that day will first of all praise the fine day & then go on to whatever else he has to say”.  Desraj at the Pavilion Hospital in Brighton complained that “It rains all the year round”.  One Indian Sub-Assistant Surgeon at Brighton reported that winter had already begun: “Weather is very wet and cloudy and it is raining day and night with few breakages…After 5pm it is so dark that no one could dare to go out of the huts”.

John O’Brien
Post 1858 India Office Records    


Further Reading:

IOR/L/MIL/5/825/7 Reports of the Censor of Indian Mails in France, October to November 1915

The collection of photographs of the Indian Army in Europe during the First World War by H D Girdwood, reference Photo 24, is available to view online

Other Untold Lives postings on the WWI Indian censored letters:

The Indian sepoy in the trenches

Letter from an Indian Soldier in France during World War I

In the context of the military history of the East India Company, what would you imagine is meant by the term 'Minor cadets'?  Unmemorable junior officers who failed to distinguish themselves on any field of battle?  Wannabe soldiers who fell foul of an entry regulation concerning minimum height?
 
The term relates to a practice which flourished very briefly in India in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.  As a privilege and reward for loyal service, in August 1777 the Company decided to authorize the appointment of the sons of officers and surgeons to cadetships in its armies.  The Directors in London did not foresee quite how this would be interpreted, with a number of fathers having their male offspring marked down as cadets before they could even walk or talk.  Lt.Col. Thomas Higgins of the Bengal Army, for example, had his son Edward granted a cadetship on 1 September 1783 when the boy was sixteen days old; Major Thomas Whinyates followed his example on 23 November that year with his son George, who had been born on 31 August, following in the footsteps of Major William Sands, whose eldest son William was appointed on 18 April 1782 aged four months and twelve days. Surgeon John Stormonth and Lt. Col. William Tolly had their sons appointed several days before their baptisms, in 1782 and 1780 respectively.  Mr. Showers saw his sons Nathaniel and Samuel given cadetships on the same day, 20 March 1780, before either boy had reached the age of six.

Baby in a cradle hanging from a branch  11646.h.32 Images Online 

The names and brief personal details of no fewer than 116 such minor cadets are given in  V.C.P. Hodson's List of the officers of Bengal Army.  In many cases Hodson tells us what happened to the cadets when they reached adulthood.  Robert Achmuty, Henry Gahagan and Warren Jackson perhaps disappointed their fathers by choosing careers in the law, whereas Henry's elder brother Frederick became a writer in the Madras Civil Service. Charles Hampton opted for the less martial attraction of running an indigo works in Berhampore.  Others did embark on military careers - Thomas Gibson, Robert Kelly and John Maclean all entered the Madras Army, and Emilius Smith served in the British Army's 36th Regiment of Foot, dying of wounds in October 1801.

 First necessary - a cot!    Necessaries for a Cadet  X 1186(n)

Possibly prompted by the establishment of the Board of Control in 1784 to rein in corruption in India,  the Company decided to reverse this aspect of its recruitment policy. Minutes dated 2 May 1786 stated:
 
We have hitherto as an indulgment to our Military Officers tolerated the appointment of their Infant Sons as Minor Cadets; but as We have great reason to believe this indulgence has been much abused and we are thereby put to great expense, We have come to the determination to put a stop thereto, and ... expressly forbid any such appointment in future ...
 
The pill was sweetened somewhat by the next sentence:
 
Whenever you wish to interest yourselves for the Sons of deserving Officers your recommendation of them to the Court of Directors will be properly attended to.
 
The closing of this loophole and the creation of the Board of Control did not end the favouritism embedded in the system as members of the Board as well as the Company Directors were permitted to nominate cadets until 1858, although the minimum age went up from fifteen to sixteen at the end of 1808.
 
Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Team Leader 

 Further reading

Appendix C of part IV of V.C.P. Hodson's List of the officers of Bengal Army (1947), Asian & African Studies Reading Room OIR355.332

More on Hodson's List: Bengal Army officers - names, nationalities, fatalities and a phantom