Untold lives blog

Launched on 22 October 2014, the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) was developed as part of a longstanding partnership between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library, and the British Library.  The partnership includes the digitisation of a wide range of material from the British Library’s collections, aimed at improving understanding of the modern history of the Gulf, Arabic cultural heritage, and the Islamic world.

Following on from part 1 , members of the team of experts working on the QDL reflect on memorable material that they and former colleagues have encountered in the last decade.

• Preserving original order in George Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question – Mss Eur F111/33

Annotated pages in George Curzon’s personal copy of his 1892 book, Persia and the Persian Question – Mss Eur F111/33 ff. 74v-75r. Image digitised by the BLQFP

George Curzon’s personal copy of his two-volume tome stands out for the interesting challenges it posed during conservation and cataloguing.  Rather unexpectedly, it contained dozens of assorted papers between its pages, including received correspondence, newspaper cuttings, various journal and magazine articles, and a few handwritten notes by Curzon.  The question for the conservation and cataloguing teams was how to preserve the inserted papers’ original order while ensuring their long-term preservation and indeed that of the book itself.  The solution was to number the pages of the book and the inserted items with the latter still in place, forming a single foliation sequence.  Now, when viewed on the QDL, the inserted items remain in their original order, between the pages of the two volumes (though some, e.g. certain newspaper cuttings, do not appear online for copyright reasons).  Physically, however, the inserted items are now preserved in a separate file.

• Discovering the unexpected – IOR/R/15/1/355 

A British wartime propaganda poster, dated c. 1941-42 – IOR/R/15/1/355, f. 42v

Cataloguing can be very serendipitous, as unassuming files can reveal the unexpected.  Such was the case with this financial file, containing two rare Arabic-language propaganda posters, which the British Government produced during the Second World War.  The posters only survived because of a wartime paper shortage, which led to financial accounts of the Bahraini Government being typed on their reverse.

• Personal reflections on life in the Gulf during the last years of Empire – Mss Eur F226/2, Mss Eur F226/7, Mss Eur F226/10, Mss Eur F226/13, Mss Eur F226/22, Mss Eur F226/23, Mss Eur F226/26, Mss Eur F226/28, Mss Eur F226/30, and Mss Eur F226/34

Excerpt from John ‘Jack’ Bazalgette’s 1984 memoir – Mss Eur F226/2, f. 152r. © Estate of John Bazalgette

These ten memoirs belonging to former British officials of the Indian Political Service provide a unique insight into one generation’s experiences of living and working in the Gulf during the last years of British India, as discussed at length in three blogs and in this QDL expert article.

• Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id: the protector of Muscat – IOR/F/4/1435/56726

Heading to a letter written by Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id, to the Governor of Bombay, dated 8 April 1832 – IOR/F/4/1435/56726, f. 235v

As in many archival collections, women are under-represented in the records, and those who do feature are largely misrepresented.  For these reasons, this item is particularly notable, since it contains a letter to the Governor of Bombay from Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id, who, in the absence of her nephew the Imam of Muscat, took charge and defended his territories.

IOR Cataloguing Team, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Researching the East India Company's London warehouse labourers is a challenge because many of the documents about them were destroyed by the India Office in the mid-19th century.  So it is always exciting to discover fresh sources of information about them.  Recently I came across the King's Freemen collection at The London Archives.  This consists of military discharge papers lodged with the Chamberlain of the Corporation of London by servicemen and their families in order to obtain certificates of entitlement to exercise a trade in the City, without being admitted to the freedom.  There are papers for East India Company warehouse labourers who served in the Royal East India Volunteers in the period before 1814.

I have found 25 discharge certificates for Company warehouse labourers in the King's Freemen collection.  Almost all are copies, but the document submitted for Willliam Jordan is the original certificate issued at East India Buildings, Cutler Street, on 5 May 1814, signed by Robert Markland Barnard, Captain and Adjutant of the Third Regiment of the REIV, and bearing the Company’s seal in red wax. 

As well as giving an outline of the man’s service, many of the certificates give interesting and useful personal details.

John Morgan of the Third Regiment was born in the parish of St Leonard Shoreditch in Middlesex and in December 1814 he was living at 1 George Street in Bethnal Green.  He was about 33 years of age, 5 feet 9 ¾ inches in height, with a sallow complexion, grey eyes, and light brown hair, and his skin was pitted by smallpox.

Robert Dynan served as a Private in the 5th Company of the First Regiment of the REIV.  He was born in London and was living in August 1814 at Field Lane in Holborn.  Aged about 44, he was 5 feet 5 ½ inches tall, and had a light complexion, grey eyes, and brown hair.

Dynan had joined the Company warehouses as a labourer in July 1803.  Having worked in the Private Trade warehouse, he transferred to the Crutched Friars tea warehouse in December 1834.  He was made redundant in March 1835 because the Company’s commercial operations were being wound up, and he was awarded a weekly pension of 11 shillings.

Field Lane, Holborn, from Illustrated London News 23 January 1847. Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

The information about Dynan’s residence in the discharge certificate makes it possible to identify him in other records which show his life outside the warehouses.  Dynan lived for decades in Field Lane which was described by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist as’ a narrow and dismal alley’, ‘the emporium of petty larceny’.

Description of Field Lane from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - Illustrated London News 23 January 1847, Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

Whilst he was employed as a warehouse labourer, Dynan also kept a shoemaker’s shop in Field Lane. He was sued for debt in 1811 and imprisoned in Newgate. In 1827 William Sage was convicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a pair of shoes worth 5s from Dynan’s shop.

Dynan’s wife Margaret had a clothes shop in Field Lane. In 1829 she was tried at the Old Bailey for knowingly receiving stolen goods, a pair of trousers worth 19s.  Margaret was acquitted but William Scasebrook, aged 18, was found guilty of theft and transported for seven years.

Margaret and Robert were still living in Field Lane when they died in 1837 and 1842, aged 68 and 80 respectively. Both were buried at the church of St Andrew Holborn.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
The London Archives COL/CHD/FR/11/04 King's Freemen 1780s-1820s
Colours of the Royal East India Volunteers
Black labourers in London
IOR/L/AG/30/4-5 Registers of East India Company warehouse labourers
Margaret Makepeace, The East India Company's London Workers: Management of the Warehouse Labourers, 1800-1858 (2010)
British Newspaper Archive
Old Bailey Online

On 31 May 1916, the India Office Library purchased seven items at auction from Hodgson & Co.  Lot 29 cost £1 10 shillings, with 9d postage.  The correspondence about the purchase is significant because it establishes that the items once belonged to the collection of Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice and President in Council in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).  This provenance information had not previously been recorded in our catalogues and the link between the items had been obscured.

Notice of auction at Hodgson & Co - Westminster Gazette 27 May 1916 British Newspaper Archive

Lot 29 included copies of letters relating to Baptist Missionary Henry Beddy.  Born in Dublin, he enlisted in the East India Company’s Bengal Army at 19, arriving in India in 1811 to serve in the Bengal Artillery.  Beddy married three times.  His first wife Mary Anne died in childbirth in 1816, and his second wife (also Mary Anne) died in 1822.  On 16 January 1823 he married Margaret MacDonough, and they had at least 11 children.

List of correspondence relating to Henry Beddy -Mss Eur C92

Henry Beddy was baptised into the Baptist faith about 1827, and having left the Bengal Army was appointed as a Baptist Missionary to Patna in 1831.  Margaret’s younger sister Ellen (Eleanor) MacDonough lived with the Beddys from childhood and was closely involved in missionary work, running the Orphan Refuge.

Ellen became involved with government servant George Hutteman.  Henry Beddy tried to put an end to the relationship, but on 20 November 1847 Ellen eloped with George, married, and moved to Calcutta.  Beddy found it impossible to understand Ellen’s actions and wrote a number of letters to her, besmirching her character.  On 1 December 1847 he wrote ‘Not a member of my family shall ever speak to you with my permission... I shall impress on the children’s mind that their Aunt Ellen MacDonough is to them dead’.  Beddy was later to admit: ‘I had written language capable of being used to my discredit’.

The Huttemans attended the Lall Bazar Baptist Church in Calcutta.  The Minister James Thomas wrote to Beddy about his sister-in-law.  Beddy’s reply accused Ellen of falsehood and deception and stated that George was an ‘unbeliever’.  His hostile attitude led to an investigation into his conduct towards Ellen. 

Note by James Thomas introducing the collection of documents about Henry Beddy and Ellen MacDonough -Mss Eur C92

Thomas gathered together copies of correspondence from the various protagonists and witnesses, so they could be presented to a Baptist Committee in London.  Beddy’s own letters admitted ‘an intimacy, friendship and affection sprang up between us that led to great familiarity, and it is now lamentably true that this familiarity was looked upon by some persons as improper’, whilst Reverend Nathaniel Brice was of the opinion that ‘there are facts connected with the affair which would make your ears tingle...’.

Extract of letter from Henry Beddy to James Thomas, 13 March 1848 --Mss Eur C92

Removed from Patna, Beddy and his family moved to Simla, where he became Pastor at the First Baptist Church.  He died there on 3 June 1857.

Ellen and George had three daughters, and after his death in 1866, she married Reverend John Lawrence of Monghyr.  She died in Christchurch, Hampshire, in 1879.

The India Office appreciated that the contents of the volume were problematic.  In a letter dated 26 January 1936 the Librarian H N Randle wrote that he hesitated to include the letters as part of the forthcoming catalogue of manuscripts as ‘there may be relatives alive, even after 90 years and it seems best to let these personalities rest in obscurity for another hundred years’.

Provenance research is more than acquiring a greater understanding of our collections and their history. It uncovers fascinating human stories along the way.

Lesley Shapland
Archivist & Provenance Researcher
India Office Records

Further reading:
Mss Eur C92: Volume compiled by Rev J Thomas, Calcutta, containing copies of correspondence relating to charges of misconduct against Rev Henry Beddy, missionary at Patna for the London Baptist Missionary Society
IOR/L/R/7/20, R961/16: India Office Record Department Annual Files, 1916
Mss Eur F303/23, p.137: India Office Library, Day Book, 14 Jul 1916
IOR/L/R/9/26, L36/37: Library Committee Papers & References, 1937
Missionary Herald, May 1832 
Full text of 'The story of the Lall Bazar Baptist Church Calcutta : being the history of Carey's church from 24th April 1800 to the present day'
India Office Library Catalogue of Manuscripts in European Languages. Vol. II, Pt. II: Minor Collections and Miscellaneous Manuscripts. By G. R. Kaye and E. H. Johnston. Section I, Nos. 1–538 (London: HMSO, 1937)

In this summer of major sporting competitions, we’re looking back to the 1940s and the exploits of the cadets of the Indian training ship Dufferin.

Notice of the application procedure for the Dufferin from The Indian Cadet Second Term 1944 - IOR/L/E/8/4977

The Indian Mercantile Marine Training Ship Dufferin was established at Bombay in 1927.  The ship prepared Indian youths for a career at sea, with Executive and Marine Engineering Branches.  Regulations from the 1940s state that applicants had to be aged between thirteen years and eight months and sixteen years, and they had to have reached a certain standard in education.  Qualifying examinations were held in different parts of India, and successful candidates had to pass an interview and medical and eyesight tests.  Although the focus was on training officers for the Merchant Navy, there were opportunities for boys to compete for commissions in the Royal Indian Navy.

Front cover of The Indian Cadet Second Term 1944 - IOR/L/E/8/4977

Reports of the sporting activities of Dufferin cadets in the 1940s are found in The Indian Cadet, the ship’s own journal published twice a year.  The boys played football and hockey, and competed in athletics and swimming.

Photograph of the Dufferin hockey and football teams in their sports kit and uniform jackets - The Indian Cadet First Term 1944 - IOR/L/E/8/4977

The Indian Cadet for Winter 1943 lists the results of athletics events.  Some of the times and distances are impressive.  Netto came first in the 100 yards for under 16s in a time of 12 seconds (record 11 seconds), whilst Wellington won the 100 yards open in 11.7 seconds (record 10.2 seconds).  Rees won the 120 yards hurdles (senior) in 19 seconds (record 15.4 seconds), and also triumphed in the long jump (open) with a leap of 17 feet 8½ inches (record 19 feet 10 inches).  Harding smashed the javelin record of 109 feet 5 inches with a throw of 128 feet 3 inches, and Jellicoe won the pole vault by clearing 8 feet ½ inch, easily beating the previous best of 7 feet 2 inches.  Valladaras ran a mile in 5 minutes 45 seconds.  A new event, the ‘Hop, Step and Jump’ (triple jump) was won by Ramakrishnan with 36 feet 5½ inches.

Table of athletics results - The Indian Cadet Winter 1943 -  IOR/L/E/8/4977

At the end of 1944 only fifteen cadets had not passed the ship’s swimming test, whilst seventeen held badges for proficiency.  For the first time, a cadet was entered for the Western India Swimming Championships.  Cadet Captain Aubrey William Wise was hampered by the lack of intensive training but acquitted himself well, reaching the finals of the under 18s breaststroke, free style, and backstroke.  At the ship’s Annual Aquatic Sports held at Back Bay Baths on 10 November 1944, Wise was named the best swimmer in the Dufferin for a third time.

Champion swimmer Cadet Captain Aubrey William Wise - The Indian Cadet Second Term 1944 - IOR/L/E/8/4977

‘Football Notes’ for the Second Term of 1943 reported that the team’s performance was not up to the usual high standard at the start of the season, although enthusiasm was not lacking.  An assessment of each of the players was given. Goalkeeper Jellicoe never hesitated ‘to use his boxing ability against the ball’.  Centre-forward Bhattacharya played a very swift game, dribbled well, and was a sure shot, with ‘the grace of an expert ball-room dancer’.  Outside-left Pillai was a promising fresher, but ‘gentle to a fault and forgets that Football is a game meant for men and not for girls’.  I hope I heard a sharp intake of breath from our readers then?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/E/8/4977 Issues of the Dufferin journal The Indian Cadet 1942-1945
IOR/L/E/9/861-862 Indian Mercantile Marine Training ship Dufferin 1933-1947
IOR/V/27/750/13 Copies of the Dufferin prospectus 1928-1951

When JMW Turner died in 1851, his chief executor was solicitor Henry Harpur, a cousin on his mother’s side of the family.  The will, however, was contested by another cousin, Jabez Tepper, also a solicitor, representing Turner’s father’s relations.

Letter from Jabez Tepper published in The Times 24 December 1851

Tepper’s successful challenge meant that that ‘Turner’s Gift’, the proposed alms houses for ‘the maintenance and support of poor and decayed Male Artists being born in England’, was never established. Tepper invoked the Mortmain Law, under which the transfer of land in Twickenham to a trust had to be at least a year before Turner’s death.  This had not happened.

Extract from the will of Joseph Mallord William Turner, 10 June 1831 – The National Archives, document reference PROB 1/96

In 1856, the relatives represented by Tepper inherited a substantial part of Turner’s estate.  In January 1858 Tepper offered to buy the other relations’ shares of Turner’s engravings for £500 each.  All but one accepted his offer.

Jabez Tepper was born in South Molton in Devon in August 1815, one of seven children born to James Tepper, a wool stapler, and Mary Turner Tepper, JMW Turner’s cousin.  Jabez left Devon to join the legal profession, becoming an indentured clerk in London in 1835.

Like his cousin Turner, Tepper lived an unconventional private life, never marrying but fathering two daughters, Victoria Helen and Catherina Mary Jane, probably born in 1840 and 1841, although no records of their births have yet been traced.  In the 1841 census Tepper was described as a law student living in Gravesend, with wife Jane and seven-month-old daughter Helen.  Family historians have identified the woman who was the mother of Tepper’s daughters as Jane Cook, born in London in October 1817.  According to some family trees, she died in 1842, but the only death record I can find for a Jane Tepper in London that year is for a two-year old child.

There is, however, a Jane Tepper, also known as Cook, a shoebinder, who died aged 47 on 21 February 1865 in the London parish of St Giles.  This Jane lived in poverty; could they be one and the same and if so, when did she and Tepper separate?

About 1855, widow Mary Pennell moved in with Tepper,  She is also referred to as his wife, although they never married.  Born Mary Smith in Walworth in 1824, she married gardener Edward Pennell in 1846.  Their daughter, Mary Jane, died as a baby in 1848 and Edward Pennell died the following year.

After Mary moved in with Tepper, his two daughters lived with them for some time but there is some suggestion that Pennell treated them unkindly and they were found lodgings.  In the 1861 census, Tepper is living at 24 Notting Hill Square with Mary, whilst his daughters are boarding with the Taylor family in St Pancras.

In 1864, Tepper was granted freedom of the City.  He was an active freemason, and in 1871 he was Worshipful Master of the Metropolitan Grand Steward’s Lodge.

The Freemason, 25 March 1871 - Museum of Freemasony Masonic Periodicals Online

For some time between 1868 and 1871, Tepper lived at Turner’s former studio and gallery in Queen Anne Street.  The 1871 census shows Tepper living on a farm at Hellingly, Sussex, with Mary.

Death notice for Jabez Tepper - Morning Advertiser 14 December 1871 British Newspaper Archive 

Jabez Tepper died at his London home on 10 December 1871.  His actions would be challenged in the law courts in the years following his death.

To be continued…

CC-BY
David Meaden
Independent Researcher

Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive for Jabez Tepper’s career and reports on the court cases involving the Turner estate.

Turner’s restored house in Twickenham is open to visitors.

One of the distinctive features of Oman is that the majority of its population are adherents to the Ibadhi sect of Islam - neither Sunni nor Shi’a - which established itself in the early Islamic period on the periphery of Islamic empire and survives today in Oman and in North Africa on the island of Jerba, the Nafusa mountain range and the Mzab region. 

British India Office Records written in the 1920s and 1930s shed light on the life of one Ibadhi scholar and statesman', ‘Sulaiman al Baruni al Nafusi’,who traversed from Italian-occupied Tripoli to become an adviser in Muscat and Oman.

Cover of India Office file on Sulaiman al-Baruni and his relatives - British Library IOR/R/15/6/449

Al-Baruni was a notable author and had been a member of the last Ottoman parliament.  In November 1922 he wrote to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, Taimur bin Faisal, that he was attending the peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland and after that hoped to travel to Oman.

Translation of letter from Sulaiman al-Baruni to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, November 1922 - British Library IOR/R/15/6/449 f.4

In December al-Baruni again wrote, saying that his options were becoming more and more constrained by French, Italian and British hostility to him.  British officials noted with suspicion that he ‘seems to claim three nationalities, Turkish, French and Italian’.

Owing to his espousal of nationalist ideas antipathetical to British dominance, in 1923 the Government of India described him as a ‘prominent figure in the turmoil of politics in North Africa’ - an ‘undesirable intriguer’ and ‘a person whom His Highness the Sultan of Muscat would do well to refuse admittance to his country’; however al-Baruni gained entry anyway on a pilgrim’s ship from Jeddah in 1924.

After the First World War al-Baruni had spent time in the Hijaz with the Sherif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, and in 1924 he visited his ‘old acquaintance’, Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali, recently installed by Britain as King Faisal I of the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq.  The British noted he was held in high esteem as of ‘religious consequence’ by both the Sultan of Muscat on the coast and the Imam of Oman in the mountainous interior.  In accordance with their strategic interests at the time, Britain had mediated a de facto separation of Muscat and Oman by the ‘Treaty of Sib’ in 1920.  From 1924-1932 al-Baruni served as Financial Adviser to the Imam of Oman in Nizwa. Sa’id bin Taimur, who became Sultan of Muscat in 1932, appointed him in 1938 as Advisor for Internal Affairs and Inspector of Walis.  The British surmised that it was part of Sa’id bin Taimur’s strategy to reunify Muscat and Oman.

Comment on appointment of al-Baruni as advisor for Internal Affairs and Inspector of Walis IOR/R/15/6, f 123

From September 1939 to April 1940 the British intercepted his correspondence with other members of Tripolitania diaspora as the circle of exiles contemplated the future and how they might be free of Italian colonial rule in Tripoli.  This included support of Muhammed Idris Al-Sanussi who was to become the first king of Libya when it gained independence in 1951.

Sulaiman al-Buruni died on his way to Mumbai with Sa’id bin Taimur in May 1940.  Today, on the island of Jerba, Ibadhi texts are still being collected, conserved and digitised for posterity by his descendants and the wider Ibadhi community, so his legacy lives on.

Francis Owtram
Gulf History Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/449 '15/3 Vol I XV - B/1 VISITORS SUSPECTS & UNDESIRABLES SULEMAN AL BARUNI AL NAFUSI & HIS RELATIVES Jan 1923 - June 1940.'
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/450 'FILE NO. 15/3 SULEIMAN AL BARUNI AND HIS RELATIVES'
British Library, IOR/L/PS/12/2990 Coll 20/30 'Muscat: Employment of one Suleman al Baruni al Nufusi'
British Library, IOR/R/15/6/264, 'File 8/67 MUSCAT STATE AFFAIRS: MUSCAT – OMAN TREATY.'

Al Muatasim Said Saif Al Maawali, ‘The Omani Experience of Multi-religious Coexistence and Dialogue: A Historical Approach to the Omani Principles and its Luminous Examples’, Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 11, no. 1 (2021). 59-78.
Adam Gaiser, Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origins and Elaboration of the Ibadhi Imamate Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Valerie J. Hofmann, The Essentials of Ibadhi Islam (Syracuse University Press, 2012)
Abdulrahman al-Salimi: From the First Renaissance to the Second: The Historical and Legal Basis for the Sultanate, in Allen James Fromherz and Abdulrahmen al-Salimi, (eds), Sultan Qaboos and Modern Oman, 1970-2020 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

When Edward Godfrey was born in Nettleton, Wiltshire, on 4 September 1820 it could perhaps be foreseen that he would go on to be a priest, following in the footsteps of his father the Reverend Daniel Race Godfrey.  But it is unlikely he could have predicted that he would become known as the last surviving Chaplain of the East India Company.

Edward attended Clare College, Cambridge achieving his M.A. in 1846.  He had already been serving as Curate of Chard in Somerset since 1844, and in 1847 was appointed to as Curate to St Peter’s in Plymouth.

Marriage announcement for the Reverend Edward Godfrey to Miss Emily Clare Payne, London Evening Standard 7 December 1844 British Newspaper Archive

That same year he applied for an appointment with the East India Company, and he was formally appointed as an Assistant Chaplain to Bengal on 29 March 1848.  He left England with his wife Emily Clare, daughter of Captain René Payne of the Bombay Army, whom he had married in 1844. They sailed for India aboard the Wellesley on 10 June 1848.  The couple already had two children, whom they appear not to have taken to India with them.  Their first child, Vaughan was born in 1846, and on the 1851 census is living in Bath with his paternal grandfather Daniel Race Godfrey.  Daughter Julia was born in 1847, and in 1851 was living in Cheltenham with her maternal grandmother Eliza Julia Payne.

Baptism of  second son Francis Edward Godfrey born at Meerut, Bengal 16 May 1849 (their first child born in India) - British Library IOR/N/1/75 f.193

The couple would have six more children, all born in India between 1849 and 1871 as Edward held appointments across Bengal over the next 25 years serving in places such as Meerut, Subathoo, Ferozepore, Saugor and Landour.  He was promoted to Chaplain in 1869.

Godfrey was a keen amateur photographer.  His photographs of tribes of Central India were displayed at the London International Exhibition in 1862.  He also contributed photographs to The People of India, an eight-volume publication compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye between 1868 and 1875.

Edward retired from service in India on 20 October 1873, and on returning to England was appointed Curate of Stainsby, Lincolnshire in 1875.  However, this was not the end of his travels as in 1878 he was appointed Chaplain at Coblenz in Germany, transferring to Dusseldorf in 1880, and then to Milan in 1889.  He returned to England in 1891 serving at St Peter’s Hospital in Covent Garden before being appointed as Vicar of Great Tey in Essex where he remained until 1916.

St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex where Edward Godfrey served as Vicar from 1891 onwards. Wikipedia - attribution Robert Edwards, St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex CC BY-SA 2.0 

Edward Godfrey died in Bedfordshire on 24 February 1918 at the age of 97.  He had followed his calling for over 72 years and at the time of his passing had been the very last living Chaplain appointed under the East India Company.  His wife Emily Clare passed away five years later aged 95.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading
The Chaplains of the East India Company, S.J. McNally, 1976 – British Library OIR 253.0954.
John Falconer, A Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Photographers in South and South-East Asia.
London Evening Standard, 7 December 1844 – announcement of the marriage of Reverend Edward Godfrey to Emily Clare Payne British Newspaper Archive.
British Library IOR/N/1/75 f.193 - Bengal Baptisms – baptism of Francis Edward Godfrey, 2nd son of Edward & Mary Clare Godfrey.

St Barnabas Church, Great Tey, Essex