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Anne's Family History

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Anne's Family History

Category Archives: British East India Company

S is for saving a language

22 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2023, British East India Company, India, military

≈ 16 Comments

Many of my distant relatives were soldiers. One was my first cousin five times removed Lieutenant General George Byres Mainwaring, eighth of the fourteen children of George Mainwaring and Isabella née Byres. He was born on 18 July 1825 and baptised on 21 October 1825 in Banda, Bengal, India. (Three more soldiers were his older brothers, General Rowland Rees Mainwaring, Captain Norman Mainwaring, and a younger brother, Cornet Charles Mainwaring.)

George’s mother Isabella was the illegitimate daughter of Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers of the East India Company’s Infantry, who in 1817 inherited a family estate at Tonley, near Tough, 20 miles west of Aberdeen. Isabella was probably Anglo-Indian, with an Indian mother.

George attended school at Mr Tulloch’s Academy, Aberdeen, not far from the residence of his maternal grandfather Patrick Byers, who took an interest in his grandsons. George was later taught Classics and mathematics at the school of Messrs Stoton and Mayor in Wimbledon, London.

At the age of seventeen, Mainwaring was commissioned into the 16th Bengal Native Infantry regiment, probably through the influence of his grandfather Byers. On 8 January 1842 he sailed for India.

In 1843 Mainwaring fought in the Battle of Maharajpur in the Gwalior campaign, and was awarded the ‘Gwalior Campaign Bronze Star’. He took part in the Sutlej campaign of 1845-46, including the battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon. He was awarded the ‘Sutlej Campaign Medal’ and two clasps in 1846.

Death of Major-General Churchill at the battle of Maharajpore. 1844 lithograph from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1854 Mainwaring returned to England. A considerable linguist, fluent in both Hindi and Urdu, he returned to India in 1857 at the time of the Mutiny to serve as an interpreter. He was posted first to Cawnpore (where his brother Charles had been murdered), and later transferred to the Punjab region.

In August 1860 at Chini [Kalpa] in the Valley of the Sutlej River, 125 miles (200km) north-east of Simla, Captain Mainwaring encountered the war-correspondent and artist William Simpson.

Simpson describes his their meeting:

A few days before our departure from Chini a Captain Mainwaring arrived from Simla. Mainwaring had travelled among the Lepchas in the Darjeeling district, and he told me a great deal about that race. The noted peculiarity of this man might be expressed by saying that he was a serpentphil. He seldom went out but he brought back a serpent in his hands, "all alive 0!" He stroked them, expressed his admiration for their great beauty, and wondered how any one could kill such lovely things. He seemed to have acquired some manner of handling the serpents, and whether they were poisonous or not appeared to make no difference to him. Somehow he had the power of a serpent-charmer. We learned afterwards that at some station where he had been quartered he collected some hundreds of serpents, and when a change of quarters took place he could not carry off his pets, nor would he kill them ; they were all set free in his garden, to the horror and fright of every one at the station, particularly of the ladies.

We had now been over two months at Chini, and on the 28th of August we began our march back to Simla. Mainwaring accompanied us.

George Mainwaring, it seems, had earlier been posted to Darjeeling and had travelled widely in Sikkim. For a while he lived with the Lepcha ethnic group of the Lebong area near Darjeeling, before moving to to a village called Polungdong (present day Phalut). Lebong is a valley about 1,000 feet below Darjeeling, a few miles to the north. Phalut is 50 miles north-west of Darjeeling in very remote country.

Lepcha is spoken in Sikkim and the Darjeeling area of West Bengal. In his travels Mainwaring became acquainted with the language, and 1876 published a Lepcha grammar. He had great affection for the Lepchas and their language. ‘Lepcha’, he said, ‘was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden’. Mainwaring also compiled a dictionary of Lepcha, published posthumously.

Phalut, with Mt Kangchenjunga at background Photographed by user Rkb95 2017 Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
A view of the Himalayan peaks of (from the left) Mt.Lhotse, Mt.Everest, Mt.Makalu and Mt.Chomolonzo from Phalut in West Bengal, India. Photographed by user Shilbhadra in 2011. Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0
Lepcha man and woman from Dalton’s “Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,” 1872. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Mainwaring’s Lepcha grammar can be read through GoogleBooks

Mainwaring spent over 30 years among the Lepcha. He has been described as “Lepcha Mad”:

Mainwaring’s involvement with the Lepcha people was not confined to their grammar and dictionary only for he actually lived like a Lepcha and one could almost claim that he thought like a Lepcha. He opened up a Lepcha school at Lebong and has been credited for buying a hundred acres of land for a collective farm for the Lepchas. He dressed in the Lepcha costume and even while attending official matters in Darjeeling he would not shed the Lepcha dress.

In the forward to his 1876 Lepcha grammar Mainwaring wrote that:

“Of the language I cannot speak too highly. The simple and primitive state in which the Lepchas lived is admirably shown by it. It has no primary word (beyond the words for gold and silver) to express money, merchants or merchandise, fairs or markets. Their peaceful and gentle character is evinced by their numerous terms and tenderness and compassion, and by the fact that not one word of abuse exists in their language. Nevertheless the language itself is most copious, abounding in synonyms and possessing words to express every slightest change, every varying shade of meaning, it admits of flow and power of speech which is wonderful, and which renders it capable of giving expression to the highest degree of eloquence. The language also arrests the astonishing knowledge possessed by the Lepchas. I shall here again make an extract from the letter before quoted:- “Of all the almost inconceivable diversity of trees with which the hills are covered ; of all the almost incalculable variety of plants and flowers with which the forests are filled ; the Lepchas can tell you the names of all, they can distinguish at a glance the difference in the species of each genus of plants, which would require the skill of a practiced botanist to perceive ; and this information and nomenclature extends to beasts, to birds, to insects, and to everything around them, animate and inanimate ; without instruction, they seem to acquire their knowledge by intuition alone. The trees and the flowers, and the birds, and the insects have therefore been their friends and companions. But now, this simple knowledge, this beautiful language, this once happy people are fast dying out. The Lepchas have left their woods and innocence and have fallen into sin and misery, and is there no one that will help them, no one that will save?

Mainwaring’s army career continued alongside his involvement with the Lepchas and their language and customs. In 1862 he was promoted to captain, and in 1867 to major with the Bengal Staff Corps. His promotion continued and he reached Lieutenant General on 1 January 1887.

He died on 16 January 1893 at Serampore, near Calcutta. He is buried in the Danish cemetery, Serampore.The gravestone reads:

GENERAL GEORGE BYERS MAINWARING
60 Grenadiers.
Born 18th July 1824
died 16th January 1893.

Obituary in the ‘Englishman’s Overland Mail‘ (Calcutta, West Bengal) 25 January 1893:

On the 16th instant, General G.B. Mainwaring, of the Indian Staff Corps, died at Serampur, where he had lived for many years. On the military authoriteis at Barrackpur being made aware of hte fact, they ordered a public funeral, which took place on Tuesday afternoon. The Commanding Officer at Barrackpur, Lieutenant-Colonel J.D. Douglas, and a number of other officers were present, and the body was conveyed to the grave by Artillerymen. A Battery of Artillery stationed at Flagstaff Ghat, on the Barrackpur side of the river, fired the regulation number of minute guns as the funeral procession set forth. General Mainwaring, whose first commission was in the 16th Native Infantry, was present at the battle of Maharajpur, in the Gwalior campaign. He went through both the Punjab campaigns, and was also on service during the Mutiny. General Mainwaring was a student of Eastern languages, and had published a Lepcha Grammar. For some years he had been employed in preparing a dictionary of the same language. He claimed to have made some remarkable discoveries with regard to the origin of language, or what he called the "powers of letters," and he is supposed to have left some writings on the subject.

Obituary in the Madras Weekly Mail 2 February 1893:

General Mainwaring. 
The death of General G. B. Mainwaring, of the Staff Corps, says the Pioneer, carried off one of the few living students of the little known language of the Lepchas of the Darjeeling hills, For many years of his service General Mainwaring was on "general duty" at Darjeeling, engaged in the work of preparing a Grammar and Dictionary of the Lepcha language. The Grammar he lived to complete, and it was published by the Bengal Government some years ago. The body of the work is admirable, and it remains, and is likely to remain, the standard authority on the obscure language of a tribe which is rapidly dying out. For the Dictionary the General collected and collated very ample materials ; but towards the end of his life his health was weak, and he could not bring himself to face the task of carrying the work through the press. It will not, however, be lost to the scientific world. Some months before the General's death the Bengal Government had entrusted the task of bringing out the Dictionary to Dr. Adolf Grünwedel, Director of the Indian Section of the Museum of Ethnography in Berlin, a well known authority on Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Lepcha, who has already published a small glossary of the latter tongue. The fact that the work is in Dr. Grünwedel's hands is a guarantee that it will be a worthy monument of the labours of General Mainwaring, and of the German savant who has succeeded to the fruits of so many years' toil. 

Obituary in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 26 January 1893:

The late Lieutenant-General G.B. Mainwaring, of the Indian Army, whose death is announced this week, was a cousin of our fellow citizen, Lieutenant-General R.Q. Mainwaring. He was born in India and nearly the whole of a useful life was spent among the natives of our great dependency. For many years he dwelt among the hills in West Calcutta, and became so conversant with the language of the Lepcha tribe that by direction of the Government he prepared and wrote a Lepcha dictionary. He rarely visited England, but once when he went to Reading to see a sister, an amusing incident occurred. He left a hamper in the cloakroom at the railway station and told the porter in charge of heard anything moving, to pour a little warm water on the basket. When he returned, and inquired after his deposit, he found the official, having detected mysterious movements in the hamper, had deluged it with boiling water and administered an effective quietus to a rare and valuable snake. The deceased, who was in his 68th year, entered the army in 1842, and was placed in the Indian supernumerary list in 1884. He served with distinction in the Punjab and Indian Mutiny Campaigns.

The Danish cemetery is heritage listed by the West Bengal Heritage Commission. The listing of the cemetery in the Hooghly district mentions General Mainwaring, author of Lepcha language dictionary, who died at Srirampur.

It has been suggested that Mainwaring’s studies of the Lepcha grammar and lexicon helped save the language from extinction. He is still remembered by the Lepchas:

  • The Sikkim Lepcha Youth Association confers the ‘G.B.Mainwaring Award’ annually to recognise and encourage contributions to the field of Lepcha language in Sikkim.
  • The Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association (ILTA), Kalimpong, celebrates the G.B. Mainwaring Birth Anniversary.
Map of places associated with George Byres Mainwaring

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING:

  • H is for Haileybury about George’s father George Mainwaring
  • I is for Indian Mutiny George’s brother Charles was killed at Cawnpore and George and his brothers, Rowland and Norman, were caught up in the mutiny.
  • R is for railway accident
  • Roy, D.C. “George Byres Mainwaring: A More Lepcha Than Most Lepchas.” Aachuley, 4 Oct. 2013, https://aachuley.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/george-byres-mainwaring-a-more-lepcha-than-most-lepchas/
  • Wangyal, Sonam. ““Lepcha Mad” – Dr. Sonam Wangyal.” Kalimpong news and information: Kalimpong.info, 10 May 2008, https://kalimponginfo.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/lepcha-mad-dr-sonam-wangyal/

Wikitree: George Byers Mainwaring (1825 – 1893)

George’s grandparents, Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane Mainwaring née Latham (1755 – 1809), are my 5th great grandparents.

R is for Railway Accident

21 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2023, British East India Company, India, Mainwaring, military, railways

≈ 13 Comments

My first cousin five times removed Norman William Mainwaring, son of George Mainwaring and Isabella née Byres, was born on 21 July 1821 and baptised on 10 October in Benares, Bengal. He was the fifth of their fourteen children. Norman’s mother Isabella was the illegitimate daughter of Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers. She was probably Anglo-Indian, with an Indian mother.

Norman Mainwaring was educated in both classical and mathematical subjects by a Mr Tulloch at Bellevue school, Aberdeen, Scotland. His brothers Rowland, Harry, and George also attended this school. Norman was later a pupil at Kings College, Aberdeen; it is probably not a coincidence that his maternal grandfather Lieutenant-General Patrick Byers lived nearby.

On 26 August 1840 Mainwaring, 19 years old, petitioned to join the East India Company as a cadet in the Bengal Infantry. He was nominated by William Butterworth Bayley Esq, director and chairman of the British East India Company, to whom he had been recommended by his mother.

His application successful, Mainwaring joined the Company’s Bengal army. By 1841 he was firmly established in the 73rd Native Infantry regiment. In 1843 he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1854 to captain.

Mainwaring served in the Punjab campaign of 1848-49, which ended in its annexation by the British.

On 21 April 1849 Norman Mainwaring married Jane Kent in Lahore, at that time the capital of the Punjab region. Jane Kent was the illegitimate Anglo-Indian daughter of Robert Kent of the Bengal Army, quite likely Lieutenant Colonel R. Kent of the 18th Regiment Native Infantry, who had died at Lahore in 1848.

Norman Mainwaring and Jane Mainwaring née Kent had seven children:

  • Isabella Jane Mainwaring 1850–1934
  • Georgeanne Agnes Emma Mainwaring 1852–1863
  • Robert Byres Mainwaring 1854– died young
  • Norman Hawthorn Mainwaring 1855–1856
  • Rowland Kent Mainwaring 1855–1938
  • Edward Currie Mainwaring 1856–1914
  • Norman Hall Mainwaring 1857–1910

In 1851 Mainwaring, at the time a Lieutenant of the 73rd N.I. was seconded to a civilian engineering project, placed at the disposal of the director of the Ganges irrigation canal for employment as assistant executive engineer. He was attached to the 2nd division of the Ganges Division of the Canal Department of the Bengal Department of Public Works.

The Ganges Canal was constructed between 1842 and 1854 in response to a disastrous famine, the Agra famine of 1837–38, in which some 800,000 people died. The British East India Company sponsored the project; the driving force behind it was Colonel Proby Cautley (1802-1871), British palaeontologist and engineer.

Hindu priests opposed the canal, believing that it would imprison the waters of the holy river Ganges. In response Cautley undertook to leave gaps in the dams through which water could flow unchecked. He further appeased the priests by  repairing  bathing ghats along the river, and he inaugurated  dams by ceremonies honouring Lord Ganesh, the god of good beginnings.

The Canal opened on 8 April 1854. When irrigation commenced a year late,r over 3000 square kilometres, encompassing 5,000 villages, were able to draw on Canal water.

The Ganges Canal at Roorkee in the Saharanpur District of Uttar Pradesh, watercolour by William Simpson dated 1863. Image from the collection of the British Library.

In 1854, recently promoted to Captain, 73rd Native Infantry regiment, and with the civilian title of Deputy Superintendent Second Division Ganges Canal, Mainwaring resigned pleading poor health, and asked to be permitted to rejoin his regiment. A sceptical newspaper, the Indian Standard, commented “that any one acquainted with the late and present ongoings of that division of the canal would be able to form their own opinion as regards this excellent officer’s resignation”.

Two of Captain Mainwaring’s children were baptised in St. John’s Anglican Church Wynberg, Capetown, South Africa: Edward on 2 February 1857 and Norman on 14 March 1858. I cannot find any record of Norman Mainwaring serving in South Africa, however. He may have been passing through, for Captain N.W. Mainwaring of the 73rd Regt. B.N.I. [Bengal Native Infantry] was reported to have arrived on 21 September 1857 in Calcutta on HMS Belleisle. The Belleisle had sailed from Plymouth, possibly stopping over in South Africa.

In January 1858 the Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affaires reported that Captain N.W. Mainwaring of the 73rd N.I. was to remain at the Presidency (Calcutta, the capital of Bengal) from 1st November 1857 to 1 January 1858 on a medical certificate. I know nothing about the illness or the injury covered by the medical certificate.

On 21 April 1858 Captain N. Mainwaring 73rd N.I. was appointed to act as a probationary assistant in the Department of Public Works in the Hyderabad assigned districts, also known as Berar Province.

Norman Mainwaring’s career as a engineer, however, and as a soldier, came to a sudden end on 3 June 1858, when he was accidentally killed in a railway accident at Howrah station near Calcutta:

A dreadful accident happened at the Howrah Station on the 1st of June. Captain Mainwaring of the 73rd N. I. was a passenger by the down train. When the train stopped at Howrah that the guard might collect the tickets, Captain Mainwaring attempted to get out under the impression that the train was to go no further. The train moved on, there was no standing room between the door of the carriage and a brick work buttress. Horrible to relate, Captain Mainwaring was thus crushed and dragged between the train and the brickwork till the bones of the pelvis had been almost reduced to powder, and other frightful lacerations had been inflicted. Captain Mainwaring lingered for forty-eight hours in great agony and then expired.

Friend of India and Statesman of 10 June 1858
‘Railway station near Calcutta’ photographed in 1895 by American photographer, William Henry Jackson (1843-1942). Image retrieved puronokolkata.com : Howrah Railway Junction Station, Howrah, 1854 – https://puronokolkata.com/2015/11/18/howrah-railway-junction-station-howrah-1854/ The present very grand station building at Howrah was built in the early 20th century.

Mainwaring was 37 years old when he was killed. His widow Jane née Kent received a pension and the five surviving young children were provided with assistance by the Bengal Military Orphan Society.

Not long after her husband’s death Jane Mainwaring took the children to England. At the time of the 1861 census she and the children, aged 3 to 10, were living in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. The household included a cook and a nurse.

Jane died in 1870 in Exeter, Devon. One daughter had died in 1863. Isabella married an English clergyman. Rowland emigrated to Queensland, Australia. Edward Mainwaring emigrated to America. Norman Mainwaring lived in Yorkshire.

RELATED POSTS:

  • H is for Haileybury about Norman’s father George Mainwaring
  • I is for Indian Mutiny Norman’s brother Charles was killed at Cawnpore and his brothers, Rowland and George, were caught up in the mutiny. I do not know about Norman’s experience in the mutiny.

Wikitree:

  • Norman William Mainwaring, born at Jaunpore and baptised 1821 at Benares, was killed in 1858 in a railway accident at Howrah. Son of George Mainwaring (1790 – 1865), and grandson of Rowland Mainwaring (1745 – 1817) and Jane Mainwaring née Latham (1755 – 1809), my 5th great grandparents.

O is for Opportunities Lost and Found

18 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2023, British East India Company, India, Sherburne

≈ 9 Comments

Joseph Sherburne, the husband of my 4th great grand aunt (1751–1805), was born in 1751 in Falmouth, Cornwall. His father, also named Joseph (c. 1721–1763), was a seaman, captain of the pacquet “Hanover” (a ‘pacquet’ or ‘packet’ was a small-to-medium mail, passenger, and general-cargo boat, usually coastal). In 1763, when young Joseph was twelve, the “Hanover” was wrecked in a hurricane and his father drowned.

EAST INDIA COMPANY

In 1767 Joseph Sherburne junior, aged 16, was appointed a writer (junior clerk) in the East India Company. He quickly rose to Head Assistant in the Accountant’s Office, and in 1870 was promoted to Assistant under William Harwood, the Collector of two Districts, Rajemehal [Rajmahal] and Boglipore [Bhagalpur], 200 miles north of Calcutta. Hoping to succeed to the collectorship, Sherburne took the opportunity to study the local language and the administration of collections.

A Collector was head of a district’s revenue management, responsible for the registration, alteration, and partition of holdings; the settlement of disputes; the management of indebted estates; loans to agriculturists, and famine relief. A Collector also served as District Magistrate, exercising general supervision over inferior courts and directing police work.

SUPERSEDED

In 1773 Sherburne missed out on promotion to Harwood’s position, superseded by another candidate, James Barton. Sherburne claimed that Barton was his junior in the service and less experienced. He ‘returned to the Presidency‘—was moved to Calcutta. For the next five years he held no substantial position in the Company and received only a small monthly retainer.

SUPERSEDED AGAIN

In 1778 he gained an appointment, becoming Superintendent of Police in Calcutta under Charles Stafford Playdell. When Playdell died in 1779 Sherburne was again passed over for promotion, superseded by a Mr Motte who, Sherburne noted, was not at the time even in the Company’s employment.

In 1781, Joseph Sherburne, Deputy Jemedar [a police rank, roughly equivalent to army Lieutenant] was a Member of the Grand Jury in the Calcutta trial of Mr James Augustus Hicky, printer of the Bengal Gazette. Hicky, a strong critic of Governor Hastings, was found guilty of libel and sentenced to jail. The newspaper was shut down.

MEMORIALISING THE COMPANY

In 1784 and 1785 Sherburne, by then senior merchant at Fort William, Calcutta on the Bengal Establishment wrote a series of memorials to John Macpherson, acting Governor General, to Warren Hastings, the Governor-General, and to “The Honorable Court of Directors for the Affairs of the Honorable United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies”, giving a history of his employment with the Company and petitioning to be appointed again, in a different capacity.

Sherburne’s memorials were published and can be read through GoogleBooks

BAZAAR

In the early 1780s Sherburne established Sherburne Bazar in Calcutta, where the Chandni Chawk now stands. Sherburne and two other merchants separately petitioned the Governor General and Council for permission to build market places in accordance with a 1781 Bye Law. They pledged to set up bazaars with pucca (lit. ‘ripe’, here, ‘well-constructed’, ‘permanent’) buildings, tiled shops and stalls instead of the straw huts of the desi (native Indian) bazaars.

Sherburne’s was a private bazaar, specialising in articles catering to European demands. Of the private bazaars his is said to have stocked the largest number of articles.

A view in the Bazaar, leading to the Chitpore Road in about 1815 by James Baillie Fraser from his ‘Views of Calcutta and its Environs’ . Image retrieved from the British Library.
Chandni Chowk Street, Kolkata 2008 photograph by P.K.Niyogi Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

SCAVENGER OF CALCUTTA

In June 1785 Joseph Sherbourne was appointed” Scavenger of Calcutta” under the Commissioner of Police. “Scavenger” is derived from “Scavage”, a tax levied upon goods offered for sale subject to duty. A Scavenger was an officer charged with inspecting the goods and collecting the tax. In 1786, when he joined the Freemason Provincial Grand Lodge of Bengal, Joseph Sherburne described himself as “Scavenger of the Town of Calcutta”.

It seems Sherburne’s persistence in his memorials petitioning to be re-employed by the Company paid off, for in April 1787 Joseph Sherburne was appointed Collector of Beerbhoom [Birbhum] and Bishenpore [Bishnupur], 80 miles north-west of Calcutta.

COLLECTOR

In histories of rural Bengal, Sherburne’s appointment of April 1787 as Collector of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore is regarded as the beginning of a new period of order and prosperity in those districts. Sherburne is said to have ruled sternly, “as a governor of a newly subjected frontier ought to rule”. During Sherburne’s brief administration—a year and a half—“the capital of the united district was transferred from Bishenpore, on the south of the Adjii, to Soorie [Suri] the present headquarters in Beerbhoom, on the north of the river; the larger bodies of marauders were broken up, and two hereditary princes reduced to the rank of private country gentlemen.”

Under Sherburne’s administration of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore, “the two frontier principalities had passed from the condition of military fiefs into that of a regular British district administered by a collector and covenanted assistants, defended by the Company’s troops, studded with fortified factories, intersected by a new military road, and possessing daily communication with the seat of government in Calcutta.”

In November 1788 Sherburne was removed as Collector, recalled on suspicion of corruption. With the charge no longer an impediment to his employment in the Company, however, 12 years later, in 1801 he was again employed by the East India Company.

Water-colour painting of the Fort of Rajanagar in the district of Beerbhom [Rajnagar, Birbhum] dated 1790, during the third Mysore War, by Colin MacKenzie (1754-1821). Image from the collection of the British Library.

DEBTOR

Discussing the ruinous interest rates that debtors in 18th century Calcutta sometimes incurred, the memoirist William Hickey, who knew Sherburne, recounts that he, “upon his first arrival from England, borrowed from a Bengal sitcar [probably sowcar, a native banker] nine hundred sicca rupees [coined money] for which he executed a bond and warrant of attorney to confess judgment, payable in six months, and not having a command of money he continued to renew the security every six months ; I myself [Hickey] saw this gentleman prosecuted in the Supreme Court for fifty-eight thousand odd hundred rupees, to which enormous amount the comparatively trifling sum of nine hundred had swelled in the manner above mentioned.”

(On these figures, Sherburne was being sued for 65 times the original loan.)

MARRIAGE

At some point in the twelve years between his removal as Collector in 1788 and his re-employment in 1801, Sherburne appears to have left India to travel to Boston Massachusetts, where he had distant cousins. He was possibly hoping to find a wife. There, on 7 July 1793, Joseph Sherburn married Frances Johnstone Dana (1768–1832). She was the older sister of my 4th great grandfather William Pulteney Dana, and the aunt of my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Frances Dana. The marriage record is annotated “of Great Britain”. Frances Dana’s father had been born in Cambridge, Massachusetts; presumably she was visiting her cousins there.

Joseph Sherburne and his new wife returned to Bengal.

In June 1802 Joseph Sherburne was appointed Collector of Boglepore (present day Bhagalpur in Bihar).

Water-colour drawing of the Hill House at Bhagalpur by Sir Charles D’Oyly (1781-1845), September 1820. Image from the British Library. Hill House was built by Augustus Cleveland (1755-84) of the Bengal Civil Service who was Collector and Judge at Bhagalpur.

CHILDREN

In 1785 Eldred Thomas Sherburne, son of Mr. Joseph Sherburne, Senior Merchant, was baptised in Calcutta. His mother was ‘a Brahmin’. In the early years of the nineteenth century Thomas Eldred Sherburne kept a school in the Chitpore Road.

Joseph and Frances Sherburne had two children, both baptised in Boglepore [Bhagalpur]. Their son Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne was baptised on 16 December 1802 and their daughter Frances Henrietta Laura Sherburne on 3 October 1803.

DEATH

Joseph died 54 years old on 15 July 1805. His death notice in the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser of 10 February 1806 states that he was late Judge Magistrate of Purneah (Purnia, a district in the Baghalpur Division of Bengal), and Senior Merchant on the Bengal Establishment. He died intestate; administration was given to his widow.

Frances stayed in India for a number of years but eventually returned to England, probably in 1819 after 14 years of sorting out Joseph’s affairs and then the affairs of her brother Charles Patrick Dana who died in India in 1816. Frances died in England in 1832.

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING

  • Frances Johnstone Sherburne (1768 – 1832)
  • Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne (1802 – 1831)
  • Hunter, W. Wilson. (1868). The Annals of Rural Bengal. London: Smith, Elder. pp 16-18. Retrieved through Hathitrust. 
  • Mukhopadhyay, Asok. “CHANDNEY BAZAAR: A Neglected Element of Change Toward Social Awakening of Bengal.” PURONOKOLKATA, 13 Aug. 2019, https://puronokolkata.com/2019/07/01/chandney-bazaar-an-ignored-element-of-change-toward-social-awakening-of-bengal/

Wikitree: Joseph Sherburne (1751 – 1805)

H is for Haileybury

10 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2023, British East India Company, India, Mainwaring

≈ 11 Comments

My 4th great uncle George Mainwaring (1791–1865) was the youngest son of my 5th great grandparents, Rowland Mainwaring and Jane Mainwaring née Latham. Three of Rowland’s sons, including George, joined the Honourable East India Company; a fourth son, also named Rowland, enlisted in the navy.

George Mainwaring’s petition to join the clerical and administrative arm of the Honourable East India Company is dated 23 December 1806. It was supported by his maternal grandmother’s second husband, Sir Henry Strachey, and a year later, at the age of fifteen or thereabouts, George was accepted as a Writer [junior clerk].

George’s career began with two years training—1807 to 1809—in the East India Company’s College. This had been temporarily accommodated in the Gatehouse buildings of Hertford Castle; by 1809 it had moved to new quarters, known as Haileybury College, in Hailey, Hertfordshire.

The former East India Company College, now Haileybury and Imperial Service College. Photograph in 2005 by Chris Hunt, CC BY-SA 2.0, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

The College had been established in 1806, the year before George began there, its purpose to train ‘young gentlemen’ sixteen to eighteen years old as clerks for the Company. General and vocational education was provided, and its graduates were assigned by Company directors to Writerships in the Company’s Indian bureaucracy. Officers of the Company’s Presidency armies were trained in Surrey at Addiscombe Military Seminary.

The curriculum at Haileybury was intended to equip students for their future responsibilities. They were taught political economy [economics], history, mathematics, natural philosophy [science], classics, law, philology, and languages including Arabic, Hindustani [Hindi–Urdu], Bengali, Marathi, Sanskrit, Telugu, and Persian.

Many of the College staff were noted figures in their field. Among George’s teachers were the linguist Alexander Hamilton, the jurist Edward Christian, Thomas Malthus the economist and demographer, the mathematicians William Dealtry and Bewick Bridge, and Classicists Edward Lewton and Joseph Hallett Batten (College Principal from 1815 to 1837).

In 1810, aged 18, George was appointed to the Company, arriving in India on 30 July. He rose steadily through the ranks, in 1832 becoming a Civil and Session Judge of Benares. After more than thirty years of service, in 1841 he retired and returned to England.

In 1816 George Mainwaring married Isabella Byers, daughter of an East India Company colonel. They had 13 children including five sons; all five joined the Bengal army. Three of these died as young men, one of them murdered in the Mutiny. Two of George’s sons became generals.

George Mainwaring died in London on 24 June 1865. From the Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser 5 July 1865:

On the 24th ultimo, at 9, Porchester-square, Hyde Park, London, George Mainwaring, Esq., late Judge of the Bengal Presidency, E.I.C.S., and brother of the late Admiral Mainwaring, Whitmore Hall, Staffordshire.

RELATED POSTS:

  • Mainwaring younger sons go to India

Wikitree:

  • George Mainwaring (1790 – 1865), fourth son of Rowland Mainwaring and Jane Latham
  • Sons of George:
    • Rowland Rees, born in 1819 and baptised Calcutta, a General in the Bengal Native Infantry, died unmarried
    • Harry, born 1820 at Jaunpore, and died of smallpox, unmarried, at Agra, in 1845. He first joined the Bengal Army. At the time of his death Harry was Lieutenant And Adjutant, 2d Grenadiers.
    • Norman William, born at Jaunpore and baptised 1821 at Benares, and was killed in 1858 in a railway accident at Howrah. At the time of his death he was a Captain with the 73rd Regiment N.I.
    • George Byres born 1825 Banda, lieutenant-general in the Bengal army, died unmarried. He became a noted scholar of the  Lepcha language spoken in the Sikkim and Darjeeling district in West Bengal.
    • Charles, born at Calcutta in 1839, a Cornet in the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry killed on the boats at Cawnpore on 27 June 1857 age 18

G is for garden at Dapuri near Poona

08 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2023, British East India Company, Champion de Crespigny, India

≈ 7 Comments

My third cousin four times removed Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny (1821–1895), by profession a medical practitioner, was a keen amateur botanist who became Superintendent of the Government Botanical Gardens at Dapuri [Dapodi] near Poonah [Pune] in India.

He was born on 7 May 1821 in Switzerland, near Montreaux, oldest child of the Reverend Heaton Champion de Crespigny (1796-1858) and Caroline née Bathurst (1797-1861).

Following a succession of scandals in the late 1820s Heaton, improvident and unstable, was committed in 1832 to a debtors’ prison, and the family was rendered destitute.

By 1834, however, through Caroline’s family and friends, means were found to send Eyre to Segrave House, in Cheltenham, where he received a book prize, early evidence, perhaps, of his abilities.

On 2 March 1835 Eyre, now aged 13, ‘son of Heaton de Crespigny, clergyman of 27 Queen Street Grosvenor Square’, is recorded as having been admitted to St Paul’s School, London.

In the late 1830s Eyre and several of his brothers moved to Heidelberg with his mother, now separated from her husband Heaton.

In 1842, at the age of 21, Eyre graduated from Heidelberg University with a medical degree. He returned to England, and gained medical experience as an intern in St Bartholomew’s and Guy’s Hospitals. In 1845 he took up an appointment with the Medical Establishment of the East India Company in Bombay, arriving there in September. In 1846 he was posted to Rutnagherry [Ratnagiri], a port city some 300 km south.

On 5 November 1850, at Malligaum [Malegaon, a town in Maharashtra, 300 km northeast of Bombay], Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny, Esq., Bombay Medical Establishment, married Augusta Cunningham, daughter of a wealthy West Indian planter.

They had five children, one of whom died an infant. Their first child was born 1853 at Ahmedabad in Gujarat, 500 km north of Bombay. Four more children were born at Rutnagherry.

During his residence in India Eyre was employed in several different military, naval, and civil medical roles for the East India Company .

In 1859 he became Acting Conservator of Forests and Superintendent of the Government Botanical Gardens at Dapooree [Dapuri], Poonah [Pune].

The gardens had been established on the estate of Major-General Sir John Malcolm at his residence there. Malcolm, Governor of Bombay from 1827, had purchased the Dapooree estate, originally owned and developed by an English Naval commander, Captain Ford.

Malcolm was keen to convert the Dapooree garden into a botanical establishment, where scientific experiments would be conducted for the naturalisation of fruits, vegetables, and timber, to be obtained from all over the world. The first superintendent was Assistant Surgeon Williamson, who died shortly after taking up the post. He was succeeded by Dr Charles Lush, also an Assistant Surgeon. The most notable superintendent was Alexander Gibson (1800 – 1867), a surgeon of the East India Company. He served as superintendent of the Dapuri botanical gardens from 1838 to 1847, becoming the first Conservator of Forests of India in 1847. Eyre de Crespigny’s move to the gardens from the post of Assistant Surgeon was quite in line with previous appointments, all of them medical men.

In 1862 Eyre returned to England. Though unwell he continued his enthusiasm for botany as an active member of the Botanical Exchange Club, which later became the Botanical Society of the British Isles. In 1877 he published A New London Flora. His obituary in the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign notes that “Beyond this Dr. de Crespigny did not publish, but devoted himself quietly to the study which had for many years been his chief interest.”

Eyre de Crespigny died in 1895. He was survived by his widow, a son and three daughters.

During his residence in India Eyre had collected coloured drawings of plants. After his death these were acquired by the Botanical Department of the British Museum. He had also compiled a herbarium of botanical specimens, which was donated, with 42 snake skins, to Manchester Museum.

From the 2002 book The Dapuri Drawings: Alexander Gibson & the Bombay Botanic Gardens.
Page from the 2002 book The Dapuri Drawings showing an 1865 plan and some views of the bungalow at Dapuri. Image retrieved through AbeBooks.

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING

  • I is for interested in India
  • Obituary in the 1895 issue of the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, page 127 retrieved through archive.org
  • Middleton, Richard. “De Crespigny, Eyre Nicholas Champion (1821 – 1895).” Natural History Biographies http://www.natstand.org.uk, 29 Mar. 2023, http://www.natstand.org.uk/time/DeCrespignyECtime.htm
  • “The Weird and Wonderful World of Collecting.” Conservation at The Manchester Museum, 18 Apr. 2013, https://conservationmanchester.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-collecting/
  • Sahoni, Pushkar. “Planting the Roots of Empire.” Latest Pune News & Updates | Pimpri Chinchwad Local News, 16 Sept. 2017, https://punemirror.com/entertainment/unwind/planting-the-roots-of-empire/cid5100446.htm 
  • Damle, Chinmay. “Taste of Life: How Sir Malcolm Built a Botanical Garden in Poona.” Hindustan Times, 16 Feb. 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/pune-news/taste-of-life-how-sir-malcolm-built-a-botanical-garden-in-poona-101676543622765.html 
  • Damle, Chinmay. “Taste of Life: How Dapooree Botanical Garden Was Instrumental in Bringing New Fruits, Vegetables to India.” Hindustan Times, 23 Feb. 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/pune-news/taste-of-life-how-dapooree-botanical-garden-was-instrumental-in-bringing-new-fruits-vegetables-to-india-101677148626959.html 

Wikitree: Eyre Nicholas Champion de Crespigny (1821 – 1895)

A is for Addiscombe

01 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2022, British East India Company, education, Mainwaring

≈ 31 Comments

Between 1832 and 1834 Gordon Mainwaring (1817 – 1872), one of my 3rd great grandfathers, was enrolled as a cadet at Addiscombe Military Seminary, military academy of the British East India Company. The Academy, in Surrey near Croydon, had been founded two decades previously, in 1809, occupying a 1702 mansion called Addiscombe Place.

Before his enrollment in the Academy, Gordon had been a pupil of a private master named Adam Thom in Tooting, some five miles distant. On 1 August 1832 Thom certified that:

“Mr Gordon Mainwaring has resided in my house during the last three months – that he has studied Caesar’s commentaries, Vulgar [common] and decimal fractions, and that he has displayed praiseworthy diligence and that his general conduct has been marked by exemplary propriety.”

Before they were admitted cadets were required to have a fair knowledge of Arithmetic, write a good hand, and possess a competent knowledge of English and Latin Grammar. They should also have learnt Drawing, and have some knowledge of French, Mathematics and Fortification.

In the 1830s there were two regular admissions to the Seminary, in January and in July. Cadets, aged 14 to 16 when they entered, normally remained for 2 years (4 terms), although it was possible to pass the final examination within a shorter period. The intake comprised about 75 cadets a year, with about 150 cadets in residence at any one time.

Cadets or their families were required to pay fees (£30 a year when the Seminary first opened; £50 a term by 1835), but these fees represented only a small proportion of the real costs of their education and were heavily subsidised by the East India Company to secure a satisfactory class of officers for their armies in India.

Besides the £30 tuition fee cadets were obliged to provide two sureties who signed a bond for this payment and “for the reimbursement to the Company of all expenses incurred upon his account which shall not be defrayed by the said sum in the event of his not proceeding to India.” By 1835 the fees were £50 a term. (The relative value of £50 from 1835 in 2020 ranges from £5,000 in simple purchasing power to £60,000 in income value.)

Addiscombe Military Academy, with 9 cadets posing in foreground. Photographed in about 1859 from Addiscombe, its heroes and men of note. The Academy’s motto “Non faciam vitio culpave minorem” (I will not lower myself by vice or fault) was the motto of the Draper family who built the mansion in 1702.

According to Colonel Vibart in Addiscombe, its heroes and men of note, necessaries to be provided by the cadet when he joined, were :

  • One military great-coat
  • One uniform jacket, waistcoat and pair of pantaloons
  • One military cap and feather, with plate in front embossed with the
    Company’s arms
  • Ten shirts
  • Six pairs of cotton socks
  • Six pairs of worsted socks
  • Two pairs of gaiters
  • Two pairs of military gloves
  • Two pairs of strong shoes
  • Six towels
  • Six night-caps
  • Six pocket-handkerchiefs
  • Two black silk handkerchiefs
  • Two combs and a brush
  • One tooth-brush
  • One foraging-cap

The Company supplied each cadet with the following clothing :

  • Half-yearly : Jacket, Waistcoat, Black silk handkerchief, Foraging-cap
  • Quarterly : Pantaloons and Gaiters
  • Shoes every 2 months

Medical attendance and washing were also provided.

Each cadet was provided with the necessary books, stationery, drawing and mathematical instruments; and the Seminary was supplied with philosophical instruments [in this context, probably surveying and laboratory equipment] and the requisite apparatus and materials to pursue the courses of chemical lectures.

The woollen clothes were of superfine cloth. The cadets were also supplied with linen when necessary in the opinion of the Head Master.

The cadets were in dormitories with framed partitions which formed separate sleeping places. These, 9′ by 6′ and 8′ high, were called “kennels”. Kennels had an iron bedstead which could be raised to rest against the wall during the day if required. Beside the bed was a fixed table and drawer. A wash-stand stood between the foot of the bed and the wooden partition. One chair was provided. The door was a curtain.

The Acadamy curriculum was “instruction in the sciences of Mathematics, Fortification, Natural Philosophy, and Chemistry; the Hindustani, Latin, and French languages; in the art of Civil, Military, and Lithographic Drawing and Surveying; and in the construction of the several gun-carriages and mortarbeds used in the Artillery service, from the most approved models”.

Examinations were held twice-yearly in June and December: they lasted about three weeks, and culminated in a Public Examination, a day-long affair of some ceremony before a distinguished invited audience. This included orchestrated demonstrations of book-learning and of military exercises such as swordsmanship and pontoon-building; an exhibition of drawings and models; a formal inspection; and the distribution of prizes.

According to their degree of talent, acquirements, and good conduct (and the number needed) some cadets were selected for the Engineers and Artillery corps. The remaining cadets were sent to the Infantry line of service.

In 1835 Gordon Mainwaring joined the 53rd Bengal Native Infantry Company of the Honourable East India Company Service.

Sources

  • Addiscombe, its heroes and men of note; by Colonel H. M. Vibart… With an introduction by Lord Roberts of Kandahar.. (1894) retrieved through archive.org

Related posts:

  • A Quiet Life: Gordon Mainwaring (1817-1872)
  • Two Gordons

Wikitree: Gordon Mainwaring (1817 – 1872)

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