Life in India

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The structure, and some of the contents, of this article follows the website British Voices from South Asia which contains material from an exhibition which was held in Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University, April 8 to August 6, 1996. The exhibition marked the acquisition by the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at LSU of a series of taped interviews with British people who lived and worked in India before Independence in 1947.

Also see Society reading list

FIBIS Resources

• Bombay Golf Club Members

Guides

• The East India Vade-Mecum or Complete Guide To Gentlemen Intended for The Civil, Military or Naval Service of The Hon. East India Company by Captain Thomas Williamson 1810 Google Books Volume 1. Volume 2
• The General East India Guide And Vade Mecum: For The Public Functionary, Government Officer, Private Agent, Trader Or Foreign Sojourner, In British India, And The Adjacent Parts Of Asia Immediately Connected With The Honourable The East India Company . Being a Digest of the Work of the late Capt. Williamson, with many Improvements and Additions by John Borthwick Gilchrist 1825 Google Books
• The Anglo-Indian passage, homeward and outward, or, A card for the overland traveller from Southhampton to Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta : with letters descriptive of the homeward passage by David Lester Richardson 1845 Google Books
• The Anglo-Hindoostanee Handbook; or, Stranger’s Self-Interpreter and Guide to Colloquial and General Intercourse with the Natives of India 1850 Google Books Contents. Includes vocabulary, weights and measures etc
• A Handbook for India: Being an Account of the Three Presidencies, and of the Overland Route; intended as a guide for Travellers, Officers and Civilians. Part I Madras by Edward B. Eastwick, published by John Murray 1859 Google Books
• A Handbook for India: Being an Account of the Three Presidencies, and of the Overland Route; intended as a guide for Travellers, Officers and Civilians. Part II Bombay by Edward B. Eastwick, published by John Murray 1859 Google Books
• Bradshaw's Hand-book to the Bengal Presidency, and Western Provinces of India 1860 Google Books
• Bradshaw's Hand-book to the Bombay Presidency and North-Western Provinces of India 1864 Google Books
• Handbook of the Bengal Presidency with an account of Calcutta City by Edward E Eastwick, published by John Murray 1882 Archive.org
• Handbook of the Madras Presidency by Edward B. Eastwick, published by John Murray 2nd edition, (almost entirely rewritten) 1879 Archive.org
• Handbook of the Bombay Presidency with an account of Bombay City by Edward B. Eastwick, published by John Murray 2nd edition, ("for the most part rewritten") 1881 Archive.org
• Handbook of the Panjab, Western Rajputana, Kashmir, and Upper Sindh by Edward B. Eastwick, published by John Murray 1883 Archive.org
• A Handbook for Travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon published by John Murray, London
  • Third Edition 1898, Fourth Edition 1901, Fourth Edition, Second Impression 1903, Eighth Edition 1911 Archive.org.
  • The Fifteenth Edition 1938 is available to read online on the Digital Library of India website.

The Passage to India

	The FIBIS Google Books Library has books tagged: Overland Route Travel

Also see Maritime Service for descriptions of some sea voyages to India.

The Suez Canal was opened for navigation on the 17 November 1869.

• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 1 LSU Interviews, Chapter 1
• This India List thread discusses the “overland route” from London to India.
• India List post transcribing a letter in The Times Thursday, 29 July, 1858 praising the captain of the Peninsula and Oriental Steamship Candida, travelling from India and China, with signatories, an India List response and a further India List transcription of a letter in The Times 5 January 1859 regarding the “evils and annoyances” experienced on the transit through Egypt to board the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam vessel Ceylon,(for travel to India), with signatories
• The story of Thomas Waghorn, at one time in the Bengal Pilot Service, who first developed the overland mail route between England and India MichelHoude.com
• “Three British Travellers to the Middle East and India in the Early Seventeenth Century” by Clifford Edmund Bosworth (April 2005?) Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It includes details of Thomas Coryate, an Englishman who walked from Aleppo in Syria to India, via Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan, arriving at Amjer, Rajasthan in July 1615 after a ten month walk.
• “Remarks and Occurrences in a Journey from Aleppo to Bassora by way of the Desert" by William Beawes, Esqr 1745 from The Desert Route to India by Douglas Carruthers from Sylvia Volk’s Page of Asia
• “Account of a Journey from Basra to Aleppo in 1748” by Gaylard Roberts from The Desert Route to India by Douglas Carruthers from Sylvia Volk’s Page of Asia
• "A Journal from Aleppo, over the Desert to Basserah, October 21, 1771" by Mr Carmichael, the appendix to A voyage to the East Indies: Volume 1 by John Henry Grose 1772. Google Books. Mr Carmichael had been dismissed from the East India Company and was refused a passage to India on board any of the Company's ships. This book commences with a description of a sea voyage to Bombay in 1750
• Journal of a route across India, through Egypt, to England, in the latter end of the year 1817, and the beginning of 1818 by George Augustus Frederick Fitzclarence (1st Earl of Munster) 1819 Google Books.
• The Greatest Escape - war hero who walked 4,000 miles from Siberian death camp 16 May 2009 mirror.co.uk. Witold Glinski's escape to freedom in India

Work

• Camping out in the country with the Collector of Kaira (Bombay Presidency) 1875 from Modern India and the Indians : being a series of impressions, notes and essays, page 30 by Sir Monier Monier-Williams 1891 Archive.org
• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 2 LSU Interviews, Chapter 2
• "How our British rulers 'legalised' bribery" The Hindu.com

Marriage and children

• This India List thread discusses under age marriage.

• This India List thread mentions a marriage performed by an Army Adjutant in 1809, with remarriage by a clergyman in 1812. Only the second marriage appears in the records.

• “Returns of Marriages at Outstations in the Madras Presidency, Recorded in the Register Book of St Mary’s, Fort St George, between 1783 and 1805” by F.E.P. gives background details of marriages by Civil Residents and Commanding Officers (from The Genealogist, Volume 22 1906, page 248 Archive.org)

• The following letter from Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, written in 1826 to the Archbishop of Canterbury sets out the situation applying to Army soldiers and permission to marry. In Church records of marriages, marriage is by licence or by banns. In India, at least in this period, marriage by banns included marriage under the conditions mentioned by Bishop Heber. From Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825; (With notes upon Ceylon,) an Account of a journey to Madras and the southern provinces, 1826, and letters written in India, Volume 2 Page 251 Google Books
  • This letter also contains the wording “...while the miseries and dangers to which an unprotected woman is liable in India are such as to make it highly desirable that widows and female orphans should remain as short a time unmarried as possible”. (page 252)
• Article "The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj" by Frances Wilson 30 July 2012 The Telegraph
• Article "Husband hunters of the Raj: How a 'fishing fleet' of 1920s society girls were drawn into sexual intrigues in India even steamier than the climate" by Annabel Venning dated 6 July 2012 MailOnline
• Husband-hunting in the Raj Download a radio interview with Anne de Courcy, journalist and author by presenter Phillip Adams, broadcast Tuesday 31 July 2012 ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission)
• Interview: The Fishing Fleet. Anne de Courcy Anne de Courcy paints a fascinating portrait of 'husband-hunting in the Raj the subject of her new book. (host Paul French) Adelaide Week, March 2013 YouTube
• British women married to Indian men.

It is interesting to note that two of the following three couples met in Britain when the future husband was studying.

• Mabel Henderson and her husband Dr. Bharat Chandra Ghosh, Indian Medical Service who were married in Scotland in 1905, including a photograph dated 1928. indianmemoryproject.com
• Photograph: Shanta Bhandarkar as a baby with her English Mother Louisa Bishop, and father Dr. Vasudev Sukhtankar Bombay 1910 indianmemoryproject.com
• “Back in Bombay” British attitude to the marriage of a British woman to an Indian man, and “The Wedding, a Moslem marriage ceremony in November, probably 1936, but possibly 1937 (conflicting dates). “Retroblog of Najm Tyabji (1930+)”. He was an Indian engineer born 1912, who studied in London where he met his Scottish future wife, Mona Knight. (Archive.org links 1 and 2}

• On the Strength: Wives and Children of the British Army, a Canadian website. Some of the information, particularly in respect of physical work performed, may not be applicable to India.
• The Army Children Archive (TACA) contains information about British Army children and wives, with themes such as Accomodation and On the Move. There are references to India in a number of the themes.
• "Childhood Memories of India" by John Goddard, KRRC pdf, html version KRRC Association. The author was born in 1923 and lived most of the time until 1933 in India, in cantonments in Lucknow and Calcutta. His father was officers’ mess sergeant in a battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (the 60th Rifles)
• Farewell the Winterline, Memories of a Boyhood in India by Stanley Elwood Brush, born 1925. His parents were American Baptist missionaries. He attended Woodstock School at Mussoorie in the Himalyan foothills
• Indian Tales by Patrick O‘Meara (born 1930) describes his childhood in India, spent in Army cantonments. His father was in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC). Indian-tales.com
• Peshawar Remembered by Walter Reeve (born 1934) whose father was in the Indian Army, and later the Pakistan Army. The recollections of an English schoolboy growing up in Peshawar around the time of partition. "Memories of Murree" also by Walter Reeve. Details of a visit to Murree in 1936 from the author’s father’s memoirs, and the author’s memory of visits in 1948 and 1949. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Scroll down. jang.com.pk 6, 13 and 20 November 2005, now archived websites.
• Photograph of “My mother being carried through foothills of Himalayas” from photographs of Janet MacLeod Trotter Enlarged version (archived)

Historical books online

• "Anglo Indian Life: Marriages, Elopements and Disappointments", page 12 ‪The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and Its Dependencies‬, Volume 29 1839

Life in the Bungalows

An Indian Bungalow

See also Food and Drink

• "A daughter of the Empire": Edwardian life in India, 1901-03" on website of Kings College London, looks at the life of Beryl White, a member of the British ruling class. Her father, John Claude White, was the first British Political Officer in Sikkim, refer Photographer - Books
• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 3 LSU Interviews, Chapter 3
• "“A Feeling of Absence from Old England:” the Colonial Bungalow" by William J Glover Home Cultures Volume 1 Issue 1 pages 61-82 2004(?)
• Review of the book The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, a reprint of the 1898 edition,(first published 1888) Washington Times Friday, 4 June 2010 ; Extract about camp life; India List thread about the 1904 edition. This book is available through Amazon,co.uk from the FIBIS Shop
• "The Landour Community Centre Cookbooks: From the 1920s to the 1960s and the present" by Katharine (Kittu) Parker Riddle. An article dated 1 July 2003
• This British Raj List thread led to a British Raj list post with a transcription of a newspaper report about the Lillywhite family, poisoned by arsenic by the family cook in Mandalay, Burma, c 1899, resulting in three deaths.
• Family budgets in 1920s India by John O’Brien 27 February 2012 British Library Blog: Untold Lives: Sharing stories from the past
• The Dak Bungalow 19 October 2012 livemint.com
• "Little Luxuries: Splendour in the grass" by Vikram Doctor May 24, 2013 The Times of India: The Economic Times. Alternative version with a photograph "...a system of cooling that used the roots of a type of jungle grass called khus-khus that, she noted was "collected on account of their aromatic smell, to form thatch tatties, or screens for the doors and windows.""

FIBIS resources

• "A Parsonage in Madras - Elizabeth Sharp’s letters" by Diana Bousfield-Wells FIBIS Journal Number 29 (Spring 2013) pages 38-48. She married Thomas Smith at the end of 1883. The letters from Madras were written in 1884 until she died in December 1884 following childbirth. See FIBIS Journals for details of how to access this article
• "Calvert Smith, the baby from the Parsonage" by Diana Bousfield-Wells FIBIS Journal Number 30 (Autumn 2013) pages 33 -42 . Continuing the previous article. Letters by the Rev Thomas Smith until his death in early 1888, regarding the care of his young son.

Historical books online

• The European in India: From a Collection of Drawings by Charles Doyley with descriptions by Captain Thomas Williamson 1813 Google Books. Contains many coloured plates such as "Plate XVII An European Lady and her family, attended by an ayah, or nurse". List of the coloured plates

• "Curry & Rice," on Forty Plates; or, The Ingredients of Social Life at "Our Station" in India by George Francklin Atkinson. Third edition (1860?) First published 1858. Archive.org. The author was in the Bengal Engineers, in the Umballa Division
• "Anglo Indian Society", Colburn's United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal Part 1 page 232 of 1860 Part 3, Part 2, page 221 of 1861 Part 2
• Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book: comprising numerous directions for plain wholesome cookery, both Oriental and English, with much miscellaneous matter, answering all general purposes of reference connected with household affairs likely to be immediately required by families, messes, and private individuals, residing at the presidencies or out-stations by R. Riddell 5th edition 1860 Google Books
• The Englishwoman in India: Information for Ladies on their Outfit, Furniture, Housekeeping .... and Receipts for Indian Cookery by "a Lady Resident" 1864 Google Books Indian Cookery page 113
• Sketches of Social Life in India CT Buckland: 1884 considers the lives of differing sectors of society. Source: Archive.org.
• Behind the Bungalow by EHA [Edward Hamilton Aitken] 10th edition 1911. First published 1889. Archive.org
• Flowers And Gardens In India: A Manual for Beginners by Mrs R Temple Wright 1902 Archive.org
• Indian life in town and country by Herbert Compton, 1904 has six chapters called "Anglo-India Life" from page 183 Archive.org
• The English Bride in India by Chota Mem ((Junior Memsahib, [Mrs. C. Lang]) 1909 Archive.org. The author is mentioned in "Cooks of the British Raj: In the Shadows of the Cantonments" from Cynthia Bertelsen’s Gerkins and Tomatoes
• Indian Idylls by Edith E Cuthell 1890 Archive.org. Short stories by the wife of an Army Officer
• In Tent and Bungalow by Edith E Cuthell 1892 Archive.org. Short stories by the wife of an Army Officer
• My Garden in the City of Gardens: A Memory by Edith E Cuthell 1905 Archive.org. Memories of life as an Army Officer’s wife in Lucknow.
• The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib 
by Sara Jeannette Duncan ... With illustrations by F. H. Townsend. 1893 Archive.org

Imperial Diversions: The Club, the Hills, the Field

• Unique collection of Sport images held on Fibiwiki
• Sports in British India You Tube. Short FIBIS video of photographs of sporting events
• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 4 LSU Interviews, Chapter 4
• The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj by Dane Kennedy, 1996 University of California Press online edition.
• English Howdah Pistols, ca. 1846 A howdah is a very large saddle, which was used on the back of an Indian elephant and these pistols were used in emergencies while hunting from an elephant. Antiques Roadshow Archives from the episode Corpus Christi (#1703) (USA) originally filmed August 4, 2012. Howdah pistol Wikipedia. Tiger Tamer: A 12-Bore Howdah Double from the collection of Tony Orr. acant.org.au
• Hunting trip in Coimbatore, India 1920 Photographs taken during Charles Foulkes' big game hunting trip, from "The Serving Soldier" collection, King’s College London
• Hog Sticking Raj Style! Part I, Part II with extracts from Field Sports in India 1800-1947 by Major General J.G Elliott
• Pigsticking by Major S Nargolkar (Retd) racingworldindia.com
• Video: The Muttra Cup Meeting: India’s Largest Pig-Sticking Contest 1934 1 min 33sec preview British Pathe
• Photographs: Pigsticking in India pigsticking.com

Historical Books Online

• Glimpses of Old Bombay by James Douglas, JP has a section on Bombay Clubs and can be found at Archive.org.
• Oriental Field Sports Volume 1 by Captain Thomas Williamson 1807 Google Books. With coloured illustrations. Oriental Field Sports Volume 2 with Plates Volume 2 1808 chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au
• Sketches of Indian Field Sports: with Observations on the Animals by Daniel Johnson 1827 Google Books
• The Old Forest Ranger, or, Wild Sports of India on the Neilgherry Hills, in the Jungles and On the Plains by Walter Campbell 1853 Google Books
• Wild Men and Wild Beasts Scenes in Camp and Jungle by William Gordon-Cumming, 1872 Archive.org
• Thirteen Years Among The Wild Beasts Of India: Their Haunts and Habits from Personal Observation: With an Account of the Modes of Capturing and Taming Elephants by GP Sanderson, Officer in Charge of the Government Elephant Catching Establishment in Mysore 6th edition 1907 Archive.org (first published 1878). The author was the model for the Rudyard Kipling character 'Petersen Sahib' in the story Toomai of the Elephants, Scroll down for the article 'Petersen Sahib' by Sir Theodore Tasker The Kipling Journal December 1971 Kipling Society
• The New Shikari at our Indian Stations by Julius Barras 1885 Archive.org Volume 1, Volume 2
• Shikar Sketches, with Notes on Indian Field-Sports by J Moray Brown, late 79th Cameron Highlanders, 1887 Archive.org
• Wild Beasts and Their Ways: Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America by Samuel White Baker 1890 Archive.org Volume I Volume II
• Tent Life in Tigerland with which is incorporated Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier : being twelve years' sporting reminiscences of a pioneer (indigo) planter in an indian frontier district by James Inglis 1892. Archive.org. Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier was first published 1878.
• Jungle by-ways in India; leaves from the note-book of a sportsman and a naturalist by Edward Percy Stebbing 1911 Archive.org. The author spent sixteen years in the Indian Forest Service
• Days and Nights of Shikar by Mrs W W Baillie 1921 Archive.org
• Sonepore reminiscences. Years 1840-96 by Harry E Abbott 1896. Archive.org Horse racing at Sonepore (a native state, South-West Frontier of Bengal, now Orissa state)
• A Guide to Training and Horse Management in India, with Hindustanee vocabulary by M. Horace Hayes Archive.org New Edition much enlarged 1878, 6th edition 1905
• Indian Racing Reminiscences by M. Horace Hayes , illustrated by J.K.Ferguson 1883 Archive.org
• Letters on Sport in Eastern Bengal by Frank B. Simson, Bengal Civil Service (retired) 1886 Archive.org
• Rifle and spear with the Rajpoots: being the narrative of a winter's travel and sport in northern India by Mrs Alan Gardner (Nora Gardner) 1895 Archive.org
• Pigsticking or, Hoghunting: a complete account for sportsmen, and others by Captain R. S. S. Baden-Powell [of Scouting fame] Illustrated by the author. 1889 Archive.org
• Reminiscences of twenty years' pigsticking in Bengal by Raoul 1893 Archive.org
• Modern pig-sticking by A. E. Wardrop, Royal Horse Artillery, with chapters by J. Vaughan, F. W. Caton Jones, M. M. Crawford, and H. E. Medlicott 1914 Archive.org

Railway Life

• Railways of the Raj Exploring Railway Life in Anglo India
  • Pam and the antique stove
• Railway Colonies in India by John Alton Price
• Among the Railway Folk by Rudyard Kipling 1888. Web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide. Jamalpur E.I.R.
  • Article Among the Railway Folk from Kipling.org.uk
• "Race, Railways and Domiciled Europeans" by Deborah Nixon Transforming Cultures eJournal, Vol 3, No 1 February 2008
• Ajmer 1933-40 Life in a railway colony from An Indian Childhood by Eugene Blanchette born 1933, from his website.
• Grandpa’s Story. Percy Morris joined the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway (MSM) as an Assistant Locomotive Superintendent in 1925. He became Chief Mechanical Engineer, and later Director of the Railway Board, until he retired in 1955. Blog by his granddaughter of 1986 interviews in 15 parts. Scroll to the bottom for part 1 Indian service commences part 2.

Death

• This India List post advises “Personnel of all ranks were usually buried on the spot, with what to some today think of as unseemly haste, but it must be remembered that there was then no refrigeration and the human body does not last long in tropical heat."
• This India List post and this post and response refer to the preservation of bodies after death at sea.

Indo-British Relations

• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 5 LSU Interviews, Chapter 5

Departure and Connections

• British Voices from South Asia, LSU - Chapter 6 LSU Interviews, Chapter 6
• Lahore: Blood on the Tracks by William Dalrymple 1997. archive of travelintelligence.com. (Another archived version). Also an episode in the 1997 TV documentary series Stones of the Raj
• "The Curious Exclusion Of Anglo-Indians From Mass Slaughter During The Partition Of India". Experiences in India During 1947 of some who went to New Zealand by Dorothy McMenamin in 'The International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies Volume 9, Number 1, 2006.
• Bloody memories for child of the Raj Express and Star dated 30 March 2009. Also see Biographies reading list for more details of Farewell Raj: Witness to End of Empire by Tony Hearne
• Last Days of the Raj by Duncan Allan. Scroll down to the post dated September 17 2012. The author was in the 2/1st Gurkha Rifles at the time of Partition and witnessed many dead bodies. Koi-Hai website.
• Letter: Massacres at the partition of India by F B Manley Wednesday, 20 August 1997 independent.co.uk
• Maxine Steller’s Bombay. Born in 1930, daughter of Bill Taylor who was in the Bombay Police Force, they lived in quarters behind the various police stations he was assigned to. She describes her early life, including becoming the female singer in a band, and the conditions before and after independence, until she left in 1950 for Australia. tajmahalfoxtrot.com
• Sunset on the Raj: The Last to Leave The last British troops to leave India were the 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry on 28 February 1948 at Bombay. britains-smallwars.com

Miscellaneous

• "Identifying Domiciled Europeans in Colonial India: Poor Whites or Privileged Community?" by Dorothy McMenamin The International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies Volume 6, Number 1, 2001. Details four formal oral histories which are lodged at University of Canterbury [N.Z.] Library.
• The University of Cambridge - Centre of South Asian Studies has a collection of oral histories and home videos, as detailed in this Times On Line article. Access the Oral History Collection. The interviews are available to listen to, or a transcript may be read.
• The San Francisco Minstrels. David Carson and Tom Brown organized a company which toured India 1861-1866. Circus Historical Society: Brown’s Burnt Cork Activity. Scroll down to the entry Carson and Brown.

Recommended Reading

• This Indian Express article describes the book Mehtars and Marigolds by Barbara Dinner 2009, about four generations of her family from 1874, starting in Simla. This link also discusses the book which has been favourably reviewed in FIBIS Journal no 25 (Spring 2011).