Ribbons Among the Rajahs: A History of British Women in India Before the Raj

By Patrick Wheeler

From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, British women started traveling in any numbers to the East Indies, mostly to accompany husbands, brothers or fathers. Very little about them is recorded from the earlier years, about the remarkable journeys that they made and what drove them to travel those huge distances. Some kept journals, others wrote letters, and for the first time Patrick Wheeler tells their story in this fascinating and colorful history, exploring the little-known lives of these women and their experiences of life in India before the Raj.With a perceptive approach, Ribbons Among the Rajahs considers all aspects of women's lives in India, from the original discomfort of traversing the globe and the complexities of arrival through to creating a home in a tight-knight settlement community. It considers, too, the effects of the subservience of women to the needs of men and argues for the greater fusion of European cultures that existed prior to imperial times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473893290

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Ltd.

Introduction

This book is chiefly a social history. Any study of the lives of women during the Georgian and Regency period, and before the Victorian era with its Imperial power, could never have any flavour of politics or economics. They were simply barred from any consideration of that sort, unless they had unusual influence over their husbands. Therefore it can only be an account of everyday living; of the duties, responsibilities and amusements of women 200 years ago. This is not as long ago as it sounds. For older individuals, who possibly remember their grandmothers quite well, one is referring only to their own grandmothers, albeit in their childhood. As time passes, the first historical reality to become forgotten is an individual’s everyday manner of living and coping. Politics and great national or military events live on, and rightly so, because it is they which dictate the subsequent course of a nation’s life. Nevertheless, the day to day minutiae of the lives of these women had relevance, partly because of the effect they may have had on how the decision-makers (the men) conducted their lives, but also being of historical interest in their own right.

The period chosen begins with the arrival of British women in the East in the second half of the eighteenth century, and ends with the beginning of the Raj in the early Victorian period. The Raj, or Imperial India, dates approximately from the First War of Independence (Indian Mutiny) in 1857, and the dissolution of the East India Company shortly afterwards, right up to full independence in 1947, ninety years later. This later period was accompanied by a major social change. By then, the British regarded themselves less as visitors and traders in India, who had derived enjoyment, interest, and profit from the Indian people’s way of life, and had, in many cases, become closely associated with it. They behaved instead as overlords, acting with an austere aloofness from Indian people and culture, simply taking it all for granted. Although there may have been a detached curiosity about Indian social practices and religions and, among some, an admiration of the richness of Indian art and history, it was generally superficial, the real interest lying in matters political, military and sporting, and an evening session in the club, deep in an armchair, armed with whisky and soda. By then, India was just an oriental extension of the British Empire, exercising absolute control over most aspects of the Indian way of life, apart from its religions – although even that too became a source of suspicion among the Indian people.

An emphasis on Britishness at every level, within work or daily life, was a necessary part of maintaining this control over the jewel in the crown that was ‘our Indian Empire’. Any significant degree of fraternisation was out of the question, whereas in Georgian and Regency times, there was a tendency towards a merging of the two cultures. There was a honeymoon period of British fascination with India and its culture, an admiration that sometimes operated both ways. Local Indians found a means of employment when they might otherwise have struggled to make ends meet, and regional princes found military support to defend themselves against their neighbours.

There were notable names from that period, such as Sir William Jones and Warren Hastings. Jones was a judge, linguist, great orientalist, Sanskrit scholar and founder of the Asiatic Society; Hastings, although politically undermined by Edmund Burke, was, despite his faults, a sensitive supporter of intellectual learning about India, encouraging officials to learn the languages and study Indian texts. Hastings was also a founding supporter of the Asiatic Society, was a patron of Indian music and could even sing Hindoostani songs and, unlike most of his contemporaries, energetically encouraged an interest in all Indian culture, which he regarded as a prerequisite for sound administration. There were others, of course, who were less seduced, especially Richard Wellesley, Governor-General from 1797, who found little to attract him about Indian life. There were still others, middle-ranking officials and traders, who were there just to feather their Georgian nests. Very many in those earlier years, however, relished the oriental world: the colour, mystery and romanticism of language and custom, so much so that several took on Indian ways and learnt the languages. Many women of the time were equally fascinated, and wrote lengthy descriptions in their correspondence home about their enchantment with this new and strange world. Inevitably, not all felt this way. There were some, as always, who were just out to have a good time, and to score a good husband.

This was the time of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), that remarkable business empire having its origin in the Charter given by Elizabeth the First. The HEIC, and its court of Directors, saw itself primarily as a trading entity with initial resistance to territorial acquisition, due as much to the cost implications as anything. Larger amounts of territory did not necessarily increase profit, but to have its own army was essential for defending its trading outposts from the predations of local Indian princes, and also the French. Maintaining this quite often put a large hole in the company’s finances. Unfortunately, tempting offers of cash, or the gift of useful villages or coastline, in exchange for the use of the company’s regiments for the defence of a local potentate against his acquisitive neighbour, led inexorably to the company’s tentacles spreading from the coastal towns into the interior. Often they would find themselves facing their opposition, likewise backed by a foreign national force acting in mercenary fashion: the French. Apart from Clive’s individual territorial ambitions after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the India Bill of 1784 brought a parliamentary Court of Directors into political control of the company. Once the politicians were involved, territory and Empire became a gradually expanding concept, overcoming the East India Company’s prior ambition to profit from trade only, much like a modern multinational with its shareholders in mind.

At that stage, India was not much involved in the tea trade, which then came by Company ships from China. The tea was purchased with specie, or silver, but this was a drain on financial resources, and so the idea was born to grow opium in India, and use this to trade for the tea. There was already a market for opium in China; the British hadn’t especially introduced it, and there were large numbers of immigrant Chinese elsewhere in the East Indies growing opium for shipping back to China; something Sir Stamford Raffles attempted to control during his time in Java, and later. Nevertheless, the use of opium as a trading entity by the British has to be questionable, certainly to modern minds. The main Indian trade in the earlier years, before tea, was the export of cotton, textiles, saltpetre and indigo. The British tried to export wool in exchange, which not surprisingly didn’t have a ready market. The threat posed to the cotton mills of the Midlands by this textile trade led to the bizarre situation whereby cotton was imported to England, transformed into textiles for subsequent export back to India, in an attempt to replace the textiles that the Indians could perfectly well make for themselves.

This book is based on the diaries and letters of the women that were there at that time, several of which can be found in various libraries and elsewhere, although the number is pitifully few compared to the number of women who actually travelled there in that pre-Victorian era. Not surprisingly, nearly all of these writings are the work of middle-class women and above, despite the fact that there were soldiers’ wives, servants and trades people, who also found their way out there. These latter women were mostly either illiterate, or disinclined to put pen to paper or, if they did, the results have long since been lost. One impression gained from reading documents of that era is how the intellectual power of the period was no less extraordinary than it is today. It just followed a different line. Among some, linguistic ability, application of logic, political judgment, rationalisation, and the ability to absorb vast amounts of information about a people’s culture and history was immense. This was, after all, the later stages of the Age of Enlightenment, containing such luminaries as Adam Smith, John Locke, Newton, Gainsborough, Samuel Johnson, Rousseau, Mozart, Handel, Wordsworth, Shelley and, among women, Mary Wollstonecraft. Even this list carries only a handful of the high achievers of that age. Unlike philosophy, politics, music and economics, technological or scientific topics were still in their infancy, especially medicine, which was still archaic. What had also not yet arrived in the West, let alone anywhere else, was a maturity of social conscience; a recognition of a need for redistribution of wealth, and of human rights for the sick, poor and elderly; education for all, and a development of what today we would call infrastructure. Such maturity of thinking was gradually coming, but did not really take off until the 1830s onwards.

Interestingly, there is a hint, among their personal correspondence that some women were beginning to sense a lack of social provision of this kind, particularly when witnessing the extreme poverty, and potential for famine, among ordinary Indian people. A number of British women in India became closely involved in the running of schools for the children of less well-off Europeans, and of institutions for the growing number of orphans, but even this diminished a good deal during the era of Imperial loftiness, by which time the numbers of European poor and orphaned were lessening in any case.

Described here are the complex social circumstances in which European women of that era lived in India; the personal pressures, tensions and discomforts; the complexities of household management; the endless dinners and balls; the food and beverages that were available, and the overall domestic responsibilities. Also described are their skills, leisure pursuits and occupations and, finally, their role in circumstances of ever-present illness. This they experienced in large numbers themselves, but they also nursed members of their own families, their staff and, above all, their children. They painfully watched many of these succumb; the inevitable fate of many such women themselves.

Chapter 1

The Voyage

It isn’t difficult to imagine the feelings of those women headed for India a few decades either side of 1800, facing the prospect of four or five months in a ship smaller than the Isle of Wight ferry, and at the mercy of endless sea and all extremes of weather. They had to be apprehensive to say the least, and perhaps fearful for their lives, depending on the gossip they had listened to. Every now and then a ship was lost or, if at war, captured by the French, and most of these women’s experience of travelling on water was at best an afternoon’s rowing on a lake or river near home.

Having made the decision to take such a voyage, or for the most part had that decision made for them, there was plenty of time to consider all the extraordinary and worrying possibilities that lay ahead. But they were resilient people in Georgian times, and life in general was risky, from sudden disease, bankruptcy, fire, theft, violence and all those experiences from which we are so protected today. Apprehension is likely to have been coloured by a hint of excitement. What, after all, might lie ahead in the way of social prospects, wealth and the overall amazement of experiencing the mysteries of an oriental land?

East Indiaman ships were the universal mode of transport, and were, at most, 180ft long – or the length of three rowing eights in line ahead, although happily somewhat wider. This is little more than half the length of the ferry running from Portsmouth to Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. Despite this, they were considered large by merchantmen standards of that era. They were absolute workhorses; built mainly for trade, but also able to ferry passengers to and from the East Indies. The great majority were built in the Thames, in areas such as Blackwall, Deptford and Rotherhithe, in yards able to handle up to a dozen at once, such as Perry’s or Pitcher’s. In the years 1793 to 1813, ninety-eight Indiamen first baptised their hulls in the pewter stream of the tidal Thames, averaging around five a year at that time. Each had a displacement of 500 to 1200 tons, the commonest being about 800 tons. This latter was calculated by an archaic method that encouraged a relatively narrow beam, and a deep hold; good for cargo capacity, but which made it corkscrew lurchingly in a heavy sea.

The captain was already appointed by the launch, and invariably present for it, and the whole affair was a major social event with much junketing for a few hundred people.¹ These East Indiamen were actually fine ships, and in some respects better than the men-of-war of the time, because of less reluctance to consider innovation in design, as well as the incorporation of ideas from India, where the art of shipbuilding was in many ways more advanced than anywhere in Europe. They were armed with thirty-eight guns, mostly 18 pounders, and crewed by up to 130 men. They were sometimes confused by enemy shipping for Royal Navy frigates, which had its obvious advantages, although, under the East India Company charter, the guns were for defence rather than for aggressive purposes. Cargo was carried on the lower deck where it stood a reasonable chance of remaining dry from rain, or shipped seas; crucial if it was to retain its value. The officers were invariably British, although not invariably of high calibre but, thankfully for the passengers, most were good or adequate. The crew was a motley selection of Europeans, Chinese and Lascars (Moslem natives of India), among others, and could be of less good quality on the return trip if the better calibre of men had been impressed by Royal Navy ships, or squadrons. This often happened in the anchorages off the Indian coast, and was a distinct disadvantage in that the return trip was made more vulnerable to predatory attack, at a time when a valuable cargo was being imported to England.

The journey by sea to India, which at that time had to be round the Cape of Good Hope, measured approximately 12,000 sea miles. East Indiamen sailed between 75 and 150 miles per day, and thus at four to five knots, and so the length of the journey took about four to five months depending on any ports of call, and the vagaries of the weather; not a pleasing prospect for any woman with no experience of the sea. At the extreme, the voyage could be as little as three and a half months, or as long as seven. Ships would tend to sail singly in times of peace, or in convoy during war, usually with a naval escort. The introduction of copper-sheathed hulls increased the speed, and also the life, of these ships to about six round trips, over about twelve years, rather than the pre-existing four. In later years ships were kept going for longer still, but needed a very thorough structural check after three return journeys.

The cost of a passage to India was astronomical by today’s standards. There was no question of one’s employer paying for this, although the price was officially graded according to civil or military rank from about £250 for a general to £110 for a company writer, or a subaltern. In a sense these were subsidised prices, as independent ladies and gentlemen paid about £400–500, which was negotiated with the captain.²,³ Later arrivals even had to barter for a junior officer’s accommodation, if they were lucky enough to get agreement to this. When one remembers that £1 sterling in 1810 is worth around £34 in modern times (2005 – National Archive Office), the price of such a journey, one way, is equivalent to £17,000 in today’s world; an unimaginable expense when one knew that it might end in death, either at sea or, more commonly, in the East. One really had to be quite strongly motivated – although premature death did at least save the cost of a return journey.

Having found the payment for a passage, it was then a matter of deciding where in the ship to install oneself. This partly depended on the amount paid, but for a single woman this would nearly always be in the roundhouse. This curiously named entity was by no means round, but formed part of that larger accommodation space on the rear part of the upper deck, covered over by the poop deck, which formed its ceiling. The Captain’s stateroom and the cuddy (dining area) were in its forward part, opening onto the upper deck, and the roundhouse was the stern-most part. It could be subdivided into six or more smaller cabins, perhaps 9ft square, for individual ladies, or couples, by lightweight wooden, or even canvas, screens. The degree of visual privacy might have been reasonable, but the audible must have been non-existent. It requires little imagination to speculate on the array of sounds from neighbours, particularly in heavy weather. These sub-cabins were light and airy, having port holes which rarely had to be shut, they were secluded from the riff-raff in steerage and, in the case of a lady, they were close to the captain for his supposed protection. A berth here was the recommendation of Emma Roberts in the East India Voyage 1845, but with reservations:

It may seem fastidious to object to meeting sailors employed in getting up different stores from the hold, or to pass and repass other cabins, or the neighbourhood of the stewards pantry; nevertheless, if ladies have the opportunity of avoiding these things, they will do well to embrace it; for, however trivial they may be in a well-regulated ship, very offensive circumstances may arise from them. Neither during the night nor the day can the inmates of the poop-cabins (roundhouse) expect peace: persons on duty are always stationed above their heads, and it is a favourite walk with the passengers; added to this, the hencoops are usually placed upon the poop… . In bad weather, or during the working of the vessel, the noises made by trampling overhead, ropes dragging, blocks falling etc. etc. are very sensibly augmented by the cackling, chuckling, and screaming of the poultry, while throughout the day, whether fair or foul, they are scarcely ever silent.⁴

Below the roundhouse was the great cabin, also in the extreme aft of the ship, and with its floor flush with the middle, or main deck (gun deck). This was again divided by partitions into eight or twelve smaller cabins, which were usually the domain of the unmarried civilian men, and army officers. The wealthy could afford to purchase a third or a half of the great cabin for themselves and their wives, if present; any children might be in a smaller cabin elsewhere, in the charge of a nurse. Even this supposed luxury was relative only, as William Hickey described on planning his berth for his return to England in the Castle Eden, in 1807, for which he paid the huge sum of £1,000.

But on the gun deck, if you avoid the noises above specified, they are more than counter-balanced by a variety of inconveniences, the grand one that of being completely debarred of all daylight in tempestuous weather by what is very expressively termed the dead lights being then fixed in all the windows in order to prevent the sea breaking in, which nevertheless it does not effectually do, for I was often set afloat in my cabin by heavy seas breaking against those dead lights, and entering at the seams, especially so at the quarter gallery door and window, where it poured in in torrents, beating even over my bed. You have also at times the horrid screeches and crying of children going home for education, or what is full as bad, their vociferous mirth when playing their gambols in the steerage, added to which grievances is frequently being half poisoned by a variety of stinks, and that notwithstanding the Company’s ships are considered, and certainly with truth, as being remarkable for their cleanliness, being regularly purified twice a week by a complete washing of the deck from the forecastle to the aftermost part, and last but not least of the evils, the perpetual creaking of bulkheads, accompanied by the music of the rudder working, all of which unpleasant circumstances are avoided by being in the upper cabin or round house.⁵

It seems as if there were problems in every place, and it was therefore a matter of what bothered one the least.

Attached to the sides of the great cabin and roundhouse were quarter galleries projecting from the ship’s side. These contained a flight of steps connecting the two levels, so avoiding the mayhem of the main part of the ship. They also contained a lavatory; an advantage over using one’s own cabin, and doubtless any commodes in these were emptied by one’s servant, or even a hapless sailor. Seen from the outside, these quarter galleries were rather beautifully carved and painted structures, somehow belying their purpose, but the fact that they projected made them vulnerable to heavy seas, and they were quite often smashed and washed away. It is said that this once occurred just after some lucky fellow had vacated it.⁶ This must have made a good story over the port and cigars, although perhaps not in front of the ladies.

In front of the great cabin, between the upper deck and the middle, or main, deck were the numerous small cabins for the use of the junior officers of the ship, and the military, as well as the surgeon and purser: the more humble a person, the closer to the mess decks and the soldiers’ accommodation. Occasionally late-arriving, or impecunious, passengers used these spots and the experience was not always pleasant, as recounted by the loquacious Mrs Sherwood in 1805:

When Mr Sherwood hurried to the ship to make what preparations he could, every cabin was already taken with the exception of the carpenter’s, and had he not been able to secure this I must have stayed behind.

No woman who has not made such a voyage in such a cabin as this can possibly know what real inconveniences are. The cabin was in the centre of the ship, which is so far good, as there is less motion there than at either end. In our cabin was a porthole, but it was hardly ever open; a great gun ran through it, the mouth of which faced the porthole. Our hammock was slung over this gun, and was so near the top of the cabin that one could hardly sit up in bed. When the pumps were at work, the bilge water ran through this miserable place, this worse than dog-kennel, and, to finish the horrors of it, it was only separated by a canvas partition from the place in which the soldiers sat and, I believe, slept and dressed, so that it was absolutely necessary for me, in all weathers, to go down to this shocking place before any of the men were turned down for the night……………Our cabin was just the width of one gun, with room beside for a small table and single chair. Our cot, slung cross-ways over the gun, as I have said, could not swing, there not being height sufficient. In entering the cabin (which, by the way, was formed only of canvas) we were forced to stoop under the cot, there not being one foot from the head or the foot of the cot to the partition. The ship was so light on the water that she heeled over with the wind so much we could not open our port, and we had no scuttle. We were therefore also in constant darkness. The water from the pump ran through this delectable cabin, and I as a young sailor, and otherwise not in the very best situation for encountering all these disagreeables, was violently sick for days and days, the nights only bringing an increase of suffering. The cabin could not be borne during the daytime.⁷

Having secured a cabin, a passenger was then faced with wooden walls, deck, and deck head, or ceiling, and absolutely nothing else. All the internal fittings, furnishings and decoration were his or her responsibility. In addition, there was an allowance of 1½ to 2 tons of baggage in the hold. Although this sounds generous, passengers returning from India might have a good deal to bring home, and these ships were additionally laden with cargo for sale. One passenger allegedly succeeded in bringing back 63 tonnes to the consternation of the East India Company.⁸ There was published advice for what a passenger should take with him on board ship to India and what follows is a list of Necessaries for a Lady Proceeding to India.⁹

The East India Register and Directory for 1821

Having accumulated all this, at no mean price over and above the passage fare, the prudent person then ensured that the furniture stayed where it was put when the ship started rolling, by tying everything down to rings or cleats on the deck, especially those ladies who had brought a harp or piano. The cot was slung from an overhead beam, hopefully with enough space to allow one to sit up, and the walls and deck would often have been lined and carpeted, as implied by these recommendations. Elizabeth Grant gives a description in her memoirs from 1827:¹⁰

With Fatima’s help our cabin was soon set in order. It was well filled; a sofa bed, a dressing table that closed over a washing apparatus, a writing table, a pianoforte, a bookcase, and a large trunk with trays in it, each tray containing a week’s supply of linen. In the locker was a good supply of extra stores, water well bottled, in particular. A swing tray and a swing lamp hung from the roof, and two small chairs filled corners; there was a pretty mat upon the floor, and no little room could look more comfortable. The whole locker end was one large window, closed till we left the colder latitudes, open ever after, and shaded by Venetians during the heat of the day. A small closet called a galley, in which Ayah kept her peculiar treasures, had a shower bath in it, readily filled by the sailors, and a most delightful and strengthening refreshment to us.¹⁰

She proved to be one of those passengers who, unlike many, learnt to be contented with shipboard life, and she goes on:

We soon learned to employ our days regularly, taught by the regularity round us. The life we led was monotonous, but far from being disagreeable, indeed after the first week it was pleasant; the quiet, the repose, the freedom from care, the delicious air, and a large party all in spirits, aided the bright sun in diffusing universal cheerfulness. Few were ill after the first weeks, the soreness of parting was over, a prosperous career was before the young, a return to friends, to business, and to pay awaited the elder; and we had left misery behind us and were entering on a new life free from trials that had been hard to bear.

Before the start of the voyage there would be a turmoil of visitors on deck, with boxes and baggage still being loaded, or scattered chaotically about waiting to be stored, like jetsam on a beach. It was at this stage that sad separations occurred. Sherwood commented:

Unhappy as I was I could not but feel that there were others more wretched than myself. Each company [of the army] was allowed to take 10 women, and I had the privilege of choosing one who was to be my servant on the voyage. I, of course, could do no other than choose Luke Parker’s wife, Betty, Mrs Andrew’s old servant, although she had behaved most indiscreetly; I could not, however, be cruel, and Betty was assured of her passage as my servant; but when the rest of the women came to be mustered in the Devonshire there was one too many, and lots were drawn on deck to determine who was to be sent back. I saw this process, I saw the agony of the poor woman whose lot it was to be carried back to shore; I saw her wring her hands, and heard her cries; and I saw her put in a boat