(This article by Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones first appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Chowkidar, Volume 16, Number 6)

During the troubled period of the 1930s, when calls for Indian independence grew stronger, three British officers were gunned down within eighteen months of each other in the Bengali town of Midnapore. Their stories are related in a well-researched article published in the Kolkata Telegraph together with photographs of the three graves at St John’s church.  Sadly the graveyard is utterly neglected today, rat-infested and subject to vandalism and overgrown vegetation.  The Telegraph’s focus was on the young Bengali men who carried out the assassinations while BACSA’s interest is in the history of these three men, James Peddie, Robert Douglas and Bernard Burge. The post of District Magistrate in Midnapore had been a fairly uncontroversial one until the Hijli Detention Camp was established there in 1930. This housed men who were being held for offences against the British government which was cracking down hard on the armed struggle for independence.

James Peddie was a 38-year old Scotsman, born in Fife, who had served in the Great War.  He joined the ICS in 1921, and a decade later was appointed magistrate at Midnapore. His short tenure there was marked by arrests and raids on the townspeople and ‘oppressive measures’, including public floggings. An underground organisation, Bengal Volunteers, planned to kill him and he was shot down inside Midnapore School, while visiting an exhibition one evening.  The old-established school had no electricity and the room was dimly lit by kerosene lamps. Peddie died the following day, 8 April 1931, in hospital.  His grave is marked by a handsome stone cross and the inscription bears the words ‘Carry On’.

Peddie’s successor was another Scotsman, Edinburgh-born Robert Douglas, known as a good cricketer. It was during his tenure that one incident in particular sparked a deep resentment in local people. This was the shooting of two unarmed detainees in the Hijli Camp.  Douglas blamed the prisoners and this caused an outcry in Bengal, with Rabindranath Tagore writing a strong letter to The Statesman, which the British editor refused to publish. Douglas had increased his own security and began to work from home, only visiting the District Board office for monthly meetings. But it was here on 30 April 1932 that he was shot by two young Bengalis who got in through a rear entrance.  He died immediately and one of his assassins was hanged at Midnapore Central Jail the following year.   Douglas was buried alongside Peddie under another stone cross (recently vandalised) and his inscription concludes ‘There is peace to thee and no hurt’.

Not surprisingly it became increasingly difficult to fill the office at Midnapore.  Two British District Magistrates killed within thirteen months was not an inviting prospect. Against the wishes of his wife, Bernard Burge accepted the post.  Like Peddie, Burge had served in the Great War, for which he was decorated and he subsequently served on the North West Frontier during the Third Afghan War.   Leaving the Army, he joined the ICS in 1921.  Like Douglas, Burge was a keen cricketer, having captained the Ballyganj Cricket Club in Calcutta. He had also, briefly, been in command of the Hilji Detention Camp after the shooting incident, which made him a strong target for the Bengal Volunteers.  His bungalow was patrolled by sentries night and day and his own bodyguards accompanied him everywhere. His wife, Barbara, was punctilious in vetting anyone who wanted to meet her husband, interviewing everyone beforehand and accompanying the visitors  to see her husband. Perhaps surprisingly she herself was not a target and so was able to travel freely around Midnapore.

Football has a particularly strong following in Bengal, both in the past and today.  As an avid football fan, and president of the Town Football Club, Burge decided to watch a match at the Midnapore ground against the Mohammedan Sporting Club on 2 September 1933.  It was reported that Burge and his security team felt no harm could come to him on a football field.  This was a dreadful mistake. Getting out of his car, Burge is said to have changed into a football jersey and as he walked towards the pitch he was gunned down by five assassins.  His police security officers retaliated and two of the killers were shot dead – the remaining three being captured by the football crowd and subsequently hanged.

Burge joined his two predecessors in St John’s graveyard.  A marble cross with an image of Jesus crucified marks his tomb. His inscription concludes with the words ‘The Price of Empire’ – an overtly political statement and certainly not a religious sentiment.  There was huge outrage over Burge’s murder, from the Viceroy to the Secretary of State for India and the Governor of Bengal.  It was pointed out that Burge was not a soldier in a country at war but ‘a civil official performing just his daily round, the common task with the shadow of death as a constant companion, simply because he was doing his job’. His widow, Barbara who had done all she could to ensure his safety was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind medal.  Burge’s war medals were auctioned recently at Spink, fetching a total of £1,800.  No further British officials seem to have been appointed to the Midnapore post and the three graves at St John’s are a poignant reminder of men working in the closing years of Empire with fatal consequences.

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In January this year Mr Anirban Bhadra, of Calcutta decided to photograph every tomb in the South Park Street cemetery there and record the inscriptions. ‘I would spend all day in the cemetery’ he tells us ‘and would clear the stones with a small painter’s brush to clean the face so that the writing would become visible. I would get into any tricky place covered with vegetation, much to the displeasure of the mali. When summer came I stopped because of the heat but will soon resume this winter. Near the entrance I found a huge dark marble slab lying on a bed of grass. It was clean, although broken in two. Fussy as I was, I didn’t spare even this crude-looking slab and took a photo to transcribe later. I found that it was an all-Latin inscription which commemorates an Angelica de Carrion followed by the phrase Edwardii Tiretta Tarvisini and a date of 15 June 1796 but didn’t translate the text. I almost forgot about it until recently when going through my notes and only then found that Angelica was actually the wife of Edward Tiretta. I checked the Bengal Obituary and found that this inscription is the first in the section on Tiretta’s Burial Ground. I knew about Tiretta and his burial ground but didn’t know the whereabouts of his wife. I eagerly would like to know if this is recorded in Â鶹´«Ã½records. Or is it my discovery? The verdict is very much anticipated.’

This was indeed an exciting find, especially as the tomb is not recorded in BACSA’S definitive guide South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta: Register of Graves and Standing tombs from 1767. The first thing to do was to get an accurate translation of the Latin inscription, which Mr Bhadra had gallantly tried to do through google. Â鶹´«Ã½member Richard Morgan provided his own version:

‘Here lies Angelica de Carrion, the very dear wife of Edward Tiretta of Treviso, whom on the third day after a pledge of love had been given, Death snatched away on the 15 June 1796 in her 18th year. Her grieving husband set up this marble sacred to her memory.’

(For members who would like to try their hand, the Latin inscription is reproduced on the back cover.) The next thing was to learn more of Edward Tiretta and his Burial Ground. Treviso is near enough to Venice for Tiretta to be called a Venetian and as a youth he had worked for Casanova, the great lover, before arriving in India about 1781. He was quickly appointed Superintendent of Roads in Calcutta as well as the Land Registrar, recording ownership deeds and marking the limits of the town. He was also a civil architect, though it would be more accurate to describe him as a property developer.

He established Tiretta’s Bazaar in north Calcutta which became a centre for Chinese immigrants and still offers Chinese food today. Angelica, his child bride, whom he had married when she was only fifteen, was the orphan daughter of a French officer, the Comte de Carrion who had settled in Calcutta and may also have had Venetian links. Three years after the marriage, Angelica died in childbirth, leaving ‘a little babe as a pledge of her friendship’ as Tiretta wrote to Warren Hastings.

Angelica was interred in the Portuguese burial ground at Boytaconnah near the Circular Road, but for reasons ‘too painful to relate’ her widowed husband was forced to have her body distinterred shortly afterwards. This was apparently because such was the demand for burial spaces for Catholics, that even recent graves were being used for new interments. Tiretta therefore bought a plot of land in Park Street which became known as the French Cemetery or Tiretta’s Burial Ground and here Angelica was laid to rest for a second time. A large obelisk was erected over her grave in the centre of the new site. (see back cover) The inscription was inserted at the base, facing the entrance. Nothing is known of her infant, nor indeed of Tiretta’s own burial place.

In 1977 the French Cemetery was cleared for redevelopment. The last photographs were taken by Â鶹´«Ã½member Mrs Elizabeth McKay and the surviving inscriptions were recorded before the tombs were demolished. A handful of gravestones which could be moved were brought to South Park Street through the generosity of the Compagnie Française des Petroles (Total), but the majority were lost. Â鶹´«Ã½was then in its infancy and unable to do anything. The information was collated and published in 1983 as a Â鶹´«Ã½booklet edited mainly by the late Basil LaBourchardière, himself of French descent. Writing about the Tiretta tomb he noted that the inscription was ‘alas now no more’ which makes Mr Bhadra’s discovery all the more exciting. It appears that Angelica’s inscription, removed from its monument, was simply left, face down, in South Park Street. It is such an important memorial that it should be carefully restored with a plaque detailing the history of this much travelled inscription. Anirban Bhadra is to be congratulated on his find.

And another sharp-eyed visitor to the same cemetery, Mr Sovan Dutta, found something that puzzled him – two stone plaques lying side by side on the ground. One was inscribed with foreign place names: Toulouse, Salamanca, S. Africa 1846-47, Central India and Alma. The second adjacent plaque had a regimental crest and the words ‘Derbyshire Regt.’ and ‘Sherwood Foresters’ could be made out. This placed the plaques later than 1881 when the two regiments, from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were amalgamated. Apart from a mention of ‘Central India’ the Regiment does not seem to have spent long in India, but played an important part in the American war of Independence, in the Napoleonic wars, and in the Crimean war. Mr Dutta asked the pertinent question ‘Why is Alma mentioned first?’ because it appears separately above a list of other battle names. Perhaps a military historian could explain the ranking order of names? Mr Dutta’s query was passed to Dr Sudip Bhattacharya, who believes the plaques may be from a memorial originally at Dum Dum, now part of the Kolkata Municipal area. Possibly there was a military cemetery here which no longer exists, suggests Dr Battacharya and the two plaques, like the Tiretta inscription may simply have been dumped here. Who knows what will turn up next, we wonder.

Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE
Editor of ‘Chowkidar’

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‘On a recent visit to Allahabad I was shocked beyond words to find that in the famous Alfred Park the grave of G.R.Watkins, Quartermaster Sergeant of the 6th Regiment, killed on 6th June 1857 has been just razed to the ground and no trace left of it. The grave was in existence till recent weeks. Please keep me abreast of action being taken and let me know if I can be of assistance.’ This shocking piece of news was emailed to °ä³ó´Ç·É°ì¾±»å²¹°ù’s editor in November 2021 by Mr Gurpreet Singh Anand.

Alfred Park was named after Queen Victoria’s second son and had previously been called Company Bagh – the East India Company’s garden – an extensive site of 133 acres. (Today it is called the Chandra Shekhar Azad Park.) QM Sergeant George Richard Watkins, to give him his full name, is one of those Englishmen who have taken on a mysterious persona after death. His is not the first such tomb that has subsequently become a place of pilgrimage for Indian people. The story goes that he was known as Richard Sahib, and also as Richard-ud-din (‘Richard of the Faith’). Among some circles in Allahabad it is believed that he was ‘an English gentleman who decided to lead an austere life of spirituality and ultimately went on to become a revered saint’. It is not easy to reconcile this description with that of a QM sergeant, and it may be that confusion has arisen over an earlier Richard Sahib but nevertheless ‘the tomb is highly venerated as a mazaar (the grave of a holy man), by the locals who often come and mark their presence by paying regular homage’. The grave itself was a flat stone fenced with iron railings and a metal cross. (see page 58) As befits a holy man, the stone was covered with a silk cloth, and the inscription underneath read: ‘Sacred to the memory of George Richard Watkins Quarter-master Sergeant of the 6th Regiment who was killed on 6th June 1857. Aged 30 years, 1 month and 21 days.’ The 6th Bengal Native Infantry had initially supported its European officers as news of the rebel Uprising spread across northern India. But on the evening of 6th June the sepoys suddenly turned on their British officers and a number were killed, shot down on the parade ground. European women, children, male volunteers and army pensioners were already inside the Fort, but there was anarchy in the city itself as the jail was opened, the prisoners released and the treasury looted. Order was restored with the arrival of General Neill and his Madras troops five days later when the dead were retrieved and buried.

In trying to establish what had happened to Sergeant Watkins’ grave, Mr Anand put BACSA’s Secretary in touch with Mr Nilesh Narayan who runs a tour company specialising in ‘off-beat’ cities of Uttar Pradesh andwho has a keen interest in Alfred Park. Mr Narayan was able to unpick what had happened and to provide a possible remedy. A complaint about illegal encroachments in the Park had gone before the High Court of Allahabad. Encroachment is a serious problem in India and old Christian cemeteries are often the victims of the ‘land-mafia’ as the encroachers are called. In this case the High Court ordered that all encroachments in the Park that had taken place after 1975 were to be removed, including ‘graves and mazaars’. ‘Unfortunately,’ reports Mr Narayan ‘due to laxity of the authorities, the grave of Sergeant Watkins bore the consequences….the authorities went overboard to demolish a documented site.’ A few undocumented graves, believed to be those of Mewati Muslims who were killed fighting the British in 1857 were also lost. Mr Narayan proposes that the grave should either be reconstructed, or a memorial plaque placed nearby. Photographs show that although the site has been levelled, with the stone and railings removed, no disinterment appears to have taken place.

Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE
Editor of ‘Chowkidar’

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In 1764 a young black slave boy, born at St Kitts in the West Indies, was bought by a Royal Navy captain and taken to England. Little is known about his parents – he was believed to be the son of an enslaved African woman and an English father. It may be that his father sold him to the captain in the hope that the young boy would have a better life in Britain and this is indeed what happened. The well-connected captain presented the ten-year-old lad to his cousin, the Duchess of Queensberry, who freed him from slavery in an act called manumission and gave him the name of Julius Soubise after a French prince. (We do not know his original name.) He was certainly a handsome and engaging dark-skinned man and as he grew up in London he was considered a ‘macaroni’ the term for a fashionable fellow in the 18th century. He was taught fencing by the Italian master Domenico Angelo and horse-riding as well, two skills that he would later put to good use, and he was also a musician, singer and actor, being tutored by David Garrick.

Julius liked to imagine he was an African prince and had his portrait painted wearing exotic robes and a turban plumed with feathers. It was rumoured that his employment with the Duchess of Queensberry may have developed into something more than a servant/mistress relationship. But things suddenly went wrong and the glittering London life ended abruptly when Soubise was accused of raping a maid servant and running up large debts. His protector, the Duchess, died in June 1777 and the next month Soubise was packed off to India arriving in Calcutta in March 1778. There his story seemed to end, and his days of entertaining London society gone for ever. But thanks to recent research we now know what happened when the 23-year-old arrived in India to start a new life. By 1780 Soubise had set up a ‘riding academy’ in a manège rented from Captain (later General) Claude Martin of Lucknow. The manège was described as a place for the reception of horses, where they were fed, stabled and shoed. At the same time Soubise also advertised himself as a fencing master, ready to teach this gentlemanly art to European men in Calcutta. His acting skills led to the staging of ‘Othello’ at the newly built theatre where he naturally took the title role and the part of Desdemona was played by a man ‘of doubtful gender’ as the Calcutta Gazette has it. A fencing school was opened in 1784 and four years later he set up a new riding school with an opening banquet and ball for 200 hundred people. Although insolvency dogged Soubise’s ambitions, he always seemed to bounce back but there was a three year hiatus spent in Lucknow at the nawabi stables. During this period he rented a bungalow from Claude Martin and also borrowed money from him too, which was not repaid. Returning to Calcutta he was assaulted by his French neighbour who slashed him with a razor, possibly over another debt or another woman, but he found marital happiness with Catherine Pawson, the daughter of an East India Company officer. The marriage of a black man to a white woman raised several eyebrows, but the couple were clearly devoted and had a number of children. Soubise’s final venture was the grandly entitled Calcutta Repository which provided ‘spacious, airy and convenient stables’ for the horses of wealthy Europeans. It was situated in a prime location at the top end of Chowringhee where the Tipu Sultan Shahi mosque stands today. It may have been here that Soubise met with a fatal accident. Thrown from a horse he was found with a fractured skull and blood seeping from his right ear. He died the following day, 25 August 1798, in hospital in the arms of his devoted wife. He was buried in the Bhowanipore cemetery, then known as the Military Burial Ground at Alipore, which had been opened in 1782. Sadly his grave no longer exists, the cemetery having been extensively cleared in the late 1990s (see Chowkidar Spring 2012). But what is even sadder is that Soubise has been completely erased from Calcutta’s history. He gets no mention in William Hickey’s engaging diaries of the period, nor in Cotton’s extensive Calcutta Old and New. His name is consistently mis-spelled in Claude Martin’s financial accounts (see book review on page 39). Julius Soubise deserves to be remembered as a man who rose from the humblest possible circumstances to become a celebrity in England and India. He was certainly a rogue, both with women and with money but also someone whose remarkable achievements should not be forgotten. He deserves a decent full length biography rather than being side-lined in academic journals.

Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE
Editor of ‘Chowkidar’

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BALLOONS OVER BURMA (AND BENGAL)

‘Colonel Percy Wyndham died in a balloon accident in 1879 in Burma’ was the intriguing headline of an email recently sent to Â鶹´«Ã½from an American correspondent. Mr Frank Jastrzembski told us that he wants to make sure ‘the Colonel is honoured for his service, especially during the American Civil War’. So we asked what the British-born officer was doing in America, and how he came to drown in Rangoon’s Royal Lake? Clearly a colourful character, with a magnificent moustache to match, as his photographs show, Chowkidar began to unpick the Colonel’s story and to look at his unusual career.

Born at sea in 1833, Percy claimed to be the son of Colonel Charles Wyndham, a British soldier who had been ADC to the Duke of Wellington. Young Percy further claimed to have supported French students during the Year of Revolutions in 1848 and then gone on to serve as a cavalry officer in the Austrian Army before travelling to Italy to join Garibaldi. By his own account he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was knighted by king Victor Emmanuel which, he said, entitled him to use ‘Sir’ before his name. In 1861 Percy got leave to travel to America where he offered his military expertise to Union forces during the Civil War. He was captured by Confederates the following year but quickly released in a prisoner exchange. He commanded the 1st New Jersey Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Thoroughfare Gap and on 9 June 1863 he was wounded at the Battle of Brandy Station. Evacuated to Washington DC it was here that he met his namesake, the English politician Percy Wyndham, who accused the Colonel of being a fraud, an allegation which was not refuted.

Wyndham returned to Italy at the end of the Civil War to complete his military service before setting up a number of business ventures, all of which failed. He then travelled to India, and after selling his military medals to raise cash, established himself in Calcutta in several eclectic roles. He became an opera impresario (there was an Opera House in Lindsey Street), returning to Italy to negotiate with the singers and he also founded the Indian Charivari in 1872, a satirical magazine based on the English Punch. After apparently falling out with Sir Richard Temple, lieutenant governor of the Bengal Presidency, Wyndham travelled to Burma where he offered his services to King Mindon. At the same time he began building hot air balloons and announced he would make an ascent on 25 January 1879 at 5.00 pm from Rangoon’s public park, next to the Royal Lake. An estimated 15,000 Burmese crowded into the park, many of whom paid for a grandstand view.

The balloon rose successfully and drifted westward, but then, according to an eyewitness, ‘a rent occurred in the cloth, and it was seen to be descending at first slowly, but as it neared the earth, with frightful rapidity; it fell into the Royal Lake only a few hundred yards from where the ascent took place…’ Taken unconscious from the water, Percy Wyndham could not be resuscitated. He was buried on 9 February in the Rangoon Town cemetery at Pazandaung. As BACSA’s Burma Register noted, the better-known Rangoon Cantonment cemetery was completely cleared in 1991, but perhaps the Town cemetery, in a less prominent location, still exists? Any news of it would be welcome, particularly by Mr Jastrzembski.

Although Colonel Wyndham’s later life, certainly in the USA, India and Burma is well documented, it is clear that questions remain. Why, for example, would a retired soldier and failed business man, educated only up to the age of fifteen, want to set up a satirical magazine? But perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why no-one has chosen to write a biography of this extraordinary man.

Thirteen years after Wyndham’s death, an American balloonist plunged to earth in Dacca. She was the exotically named Jeanette Van Tassel and had been invited by the Nawab of Dacca, Sir Khwaja Ahsanullah, to perform in front of the Ahsan Manzil palace on the bank of the Buriganga river that runs through the city. (The event had been noted briefly in Chowkidar in 1983, but we have more details today.) On 16 March 1892 a huge crowd gathered, some in boats, while the Nawab and various dignitaries watched from the palace gardens. All seemed to go well at first – the hot air balloon, inflated by a fire of burning wood, rose into the air, and flew over the palace, swept by a strong current of air. Then smoke was seen and it was clear something was wrong. The balloon, falling to earth over the nearby Ramna park, became enmeshed in a tall tree, though Jeanette seems to have survived the crash. It was as she was being helped down a bamboo pole or ladder that tragedy happened. The bamboo snapped and Jeanette plunged to the ground, fatally injuring herself. She died in hospital two days later. Her husband, Park Van Tassel, himself an experienced balloonist, seems to have accompanied his wife to Dacca, and arranged for her burial in the old Narinda cemetery there. But BACSA’s Area representative for Bangladesh, Mr Waqar Khan tells us that extensive research in the 1990s failed to find her grave.

The short-lived balloon craze lasted for a couple of years in the 1780s, inspired by the Montgolfier brothers’ experimental flights in France. The first unmanned balloon in India was launched from the Esplanade in Calcutta in July 1785 and Colonel Claude Martin, visiting from Lucknow, quickly built his own balloons using silk fabric over a bamboo frame, sealed with gum arabic. Colonel Wyndham’s balloon was made of longcloth, a cotton fabric produced in India, covered with petroleum and varnish. The challenge of producing an air-tight balloon that would not catch fire is met today with nylon and heat resistant fabrics but one has to admire these early aeronauts who supervised the manufacture of their own balloons and met untimely deaths in the East.

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Thanks to details and a photograph published in Chowkidar in 1986, Dominic Medley has found the grave of Lady Florentia Sale, a survivor of the first Afghan war, who died in Cape Town in 1853 after a gruelling voyage from India. Here is his report:

‘Lady Sale was an extraordinary woman. Here are just a few quotes from her much-feted diary and account of the British under siege in Kabul in 1841, the disastrous retreat and defeat at Gandamack in January 1842 and her subsequent captivity of nine months:’

Read the full leading article below.

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Nostalgia for the Raj often presents a glamorous picture of British life in India before Independence in 1947, but careers outside the major cities could be challenging and lonely. Â鶹´«Ã½member and historian Dr Avril Powell tells us a tragic story about a relative.

‘On a recent visit to Kerala I visited my uncle’s grave in a tiny cemetery perched on a hillside overhanging the precipitous Western Ghat highway. St John’s Church is situated where the road connecting the coast with the hill country, after an almost vertical ascent, and many breath-stopping hairpin bends, flattens out to the small town of Vyathri, and to the green vistas of the tea plantations beyond. Belonging now to the Church of South India, the cemetery contains only half a dozen pre-Independence graves. Â鶹´«Ã½granted £400 some twenty years ago to prune the undergrowth and to repair its perimeter fence (apparently in order to keep the local goats ‘out’, or perhaps, according to correspondence at the time, to keep them ‘in’). Consequently, when my niece visited shortly afterwards, the graves were in excellent condition. Sadly things have deteriorated since: the chapel roof leaks, the stone edging of my uncle’s monument has been removed, and the inscription is half-obscured. (see photo below) I met the minister, the Reverend Anil David, who, fairly new to the parish, knew very little about the history of the cemetery, but who unlocked it for me and expressed interest in my quest.

‘This quest was to explore the background to a sad tale of utter despair with plantation existence, followed by suicide just as the Second World War commenced. For on 6 October 1939, my uncle, Walter Raymond Bradford, aged 32, and apparently among the ‘most promising younger members of the planting managership’, shot himself in his bungalow on the Chembra Peak tea estates, after first shooting his horse. The latter action was not as unusual as it may sound, as according to local informants, planters often acted so, even when merely leaving a region, for fear others might ill-treat their steeds. As for the suicide, family letters suggest that such despondency was the culmination of a number of causes. Born in Upper Burma, the son of a Methodist missionary, it seems that my uncle was directed to a plantation career for lack of alternative career prospects, following an indifferent record at a famous Methodist boarding school in Britain (a case, most probably, of what would now be recognised as dyslexia). By the time of his suicide, thirteen years later, having had only one home leave, he had nevertheless advanced from assistant manager to manager of two tea estates in the Chembra Peak region of present day Wyannad district. But his letters emphasize the extreme loneliness of such plantation postings, an impression certainly supported by memoirs from other tea plantations in India, especially when marriage was discouraged until ten years’ service was complete. In his case, at least one ‘jilting’ by a proposed bride left him still a bachelor in 1939. Letters written after his suicide by his general manager, showing great empathy for his situation, suggest that matters reached desperation point when, on the declaration of war, unlike many ‘other fellows of his age’ who were called up for war service, he was passed over on the practical ground that his presence was vital, war or no war, to ensure the flow of tea to the motherland.

The local planters’ association organized an immediate burial, with one of their number officiating in a ‘lay’ ceremony. War conditions made correspondence with the family in Britain very difficult, but eventually a headstone and inscription were provided, with donations from local planters. Present family members are now relieved to know that their relative was buried in consecrated land (although at that date suicides were usually buried in unconsecrated graves), but as a child I was never told of the manner of the death, and not until my mother’s death did I read the locked-away correspondence. Yet, the shock of the event in Wyannad itself was such that, sixty years later, the children of estate workers could relate details (such as the shooting of the horse) handed down to them by their parents.

Written records and oral testimonies are too sparse to contemplate a full memoir of a planting career suddenly cut off, and a sad one at that. However, my recent stay at a nearby ‘homestay’ in the heart of the plantations surrounding Chembra Peak, and the help of my host, Mr Victor Dey (awarded a life-membership by Â鶹´«Ã½for his earlier services to cemetery research in Kerala), have stimulated an interest in the wider question of the under-researched lives of the many others occupying the ‘subaltern’ stratum of British, and increasingly Indian, assistant-managership on such plantations during the final years of the Raj. There has been considerable study recently of social aspects of plantation life in Assam and Sri Lanka, but Wyannad, in the remote north-east of Kerala state, has had scarcely any attention (although Heather Lovatt’s evocative history of a neighbouring Kerala district, in Above the Heron’s Pool, published by BACSA, provides a parallel context). I welcome contact with any Â鶹´«Ã½members who have knowledge of plantation conditions during the inter-war years in Kerala in general, but in this particular district in particular.

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`Let me tell you my story,’ began the message from Michael Heath, and it is such an encouraging story of research, discovery and restoration, that it is told here in his own words. ‘I live in Toronto, Canada and since retiring five years ago I have taken on the task of researching and documenting our extended family in Canada and before. It was known in the family that the widow Agnes Heath (my great, great, great grandmother) brought her three children (Charles, Finny and Elizabeth) to Canada in 1836 following the death of her husband in India in 1819. It was understood that they left India sometime after 1819 and spent the intervening years in Switzerland and Italy where the children were educated. Beyond dying in “Camp at Ajanta” (the world famous Buddhist caves) nothing was known of the burial location of my great, great, great grandfather.

Read the full leading article below.

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