Daughter Of Colonialism

By Jenny Maslen

Life hasn't always been kind to Jenny but that has never stopped her from shining as brightly as possible. From her time in West Africa to her strict and oppressive education at St Theresa's School, Jenny's resilience and desire to come out stronger have shaped her into the independent individual she is toda

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nielsen
• Release date: Jun 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781739642020

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PREFACE

This is the story of my life and of the people who came before me: my parents and grandparents. My family story is a story of colonialism and religion but also a story of bullying and control, and truth and freedom.

I only began to investigate my ancestry in my later life. What I uncovered surprised me, and it was illuminating, helping me to understand why people had behaved as they had and why my childhood had been as it was.

I was born in Cornwall, and I always felt a strong connection to Cornwall, so I was surprised to learn that family members had come from Yorkshire and Lancashire. In some ways, it seemed to make sense. After all, I had always been told by northerners that I was too friendly to possibly be a true southerner. Through investigating my family’s past, I also learned more about their lives in India and understood how colonialism and religion had unconsciously shaped my experiences and made me the person I am.

The ancestry work illuminated things about my mother and grandmother and their respective childhoods. I had always struggled to understand why they were so remote, so cold and distant. But now, it made much more sense. They had been brought up in colonial India, living in British urbanisations where they were waited on by servants. My mother and grandmother simply didn’t know how to be mums; they didn’t have those basic instincts because they had always relied on servants. No doubt, this impacted my life hugely, including the experiences that I had and the decisions that I made.

My story is a colourful one but also a difficult one. It is a tale of isolation and coercive control and the consequences of telling the truth. But it is also a story of liberation and independence. My story needs to be told.

1

INDIA

My great grandmother was born in Ireland and my great grandfather in Derbyshire. I know that they were both connected to the military – that’s why they were sent to India. My great grandfather was in the Indian Army, in the 47th Lancers (Hussars). My grandmother, Millicent Perpetua Shaw, was born in Mysore State in South India in 1895. She was one of 14 children¹.

It was in South India that Millicent met Luke Colclough, my grandfather. Luke had been born in Accrington, Lancashire, in 1896 and was one of 10 children². During the First World War, he had joined the Lancashire Regiment and had been on his way to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) when his ship was torpedoed and then diverted to India. Luke then took his demob in India and went to work in the gold mines at Kolar Gold Fields, near Bangalore. It had been set up by a British man, and the British had built a colonial urbanisation around that area.

Luke and Millicent got married, and they lived at Ooregum Mine, Kolar Gold Fields. They had five children – George, Dennis, Theresa, Jimmy and Peter. Theresa Patricia Colclough (known as ‘Pat’ or ‘Patty’) was my mother, and she was born in 1924. My mother grew up surrounded by her four brothers, whom she totally adored.

George, Dennis and Theresa initially attended local schools on the mine and were looked after by their ayah (a nurse/nanny) before moving up to senior school at Lawrence Memorial Royal Military School. Jimmy would eventually join them there. Peter was the youngest, and the family would leave India before he reached secondary-school age. Lawrence Memorial was in Lovedale in the Nilgiri Hills, many miles down south. It was a boys’ school, and I have never understood what the policy was in terms of accepting girls, what my mother’s experience was like or, indeed, what type of education she had. I only know that my mother was not well educated at all.

The children were sent to Lawrence Memorial by train, on their own, and they would journey up to Ootacamund ending up in Lovedale. My mother later told me about the Badaga and Toda people that she would see from the train window, whom she described as ‘little people’ and the ‘original tribes who lived in this area’. My mother and her brothers would wave to the Badaga and Toda people from the train, and they would wave right back. The children would then spend most of the year at the school, returning home just once a year for the big school holidays.

My mother hardly ever spoke about India. In fact, it wasn’t until the end of her life, when she started to write her own eulogy, that I realised the extent of the family connections to India. In the 1990s, I