Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain 0192848232, 9780192848239

Table of contents :
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Preface
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Introduction: Mobile Caregivers for the Empire
1. Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire: Historical and Contextual Background
2. Waiting in the Heart of Empire: Abandoned Travelling Ayahs and the Contradictions of a Liberal Empire
3. Creative Resilience in Crisis: Making Arguments and Evoking Sympathy
4. Capitalizing on Waiting: Creative Use of Time by Travelling Ayahs
5. Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs’ Homes: Humanitarianism, Evangelism, and Profit
6. Travellers’ Tales: Negotiating Waiting in Wars and ‘Exotic’ Spaces
Conclusion
Profiles of Travelling Ayahs
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Waiting on Empire

Waiting on Empire A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain A RU N I M A DAT TA

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Arunima Datta 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934064 ISBN 978–0–19–284823–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For the brave travelling ayahs and their enduring spirits

Acknowledgements This book began with my being surprised (or as Mary Poppins would describe it, as having a ‘cod fish’ reaction) in 2012, when I encountered several travelling ayahs in archival records, particularly in ship passenger records which listed them as passengers travelling between Asia and Britain. At that time, I was a graduate student on my very first trip to the archives in the UK. While I worked on my PhD and then my first book, Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya, I continued working on these incredible women—­the travelling ayahs. Since then, this curiosity has been encouraged, nurtured, and supported by many scholars, archivists, colleagues, friends, and my family. The manuscript has been enriched by the detailed and insightful comments from three anonymous reviewers. My sincere thanks to them and Cathryn Steele, Editor of Oxford University Press. Cathryn, special thanks are due to you for always being so kind, supportive, and for constantly mentoring me through the process. You have been a dream to work with and I truly hope other authors are lucky to have the editorial experience I had. I owe a lot to the incredible generosity of scholars, friends, and mentors who have supported this project in reading earlier drafts of the chapters, related papers, and/or in being my sounding boards for my draft ideas for this book. For all this and more, special thanks are due to Antoinette Burton, Barbara Andaya, Catherine Hoyser, Daniel Grey, Erika Rappaport, Indrani Chatterjee, Jonathan Saha, Kelvin Low, Laura Tabili, Louise Williams, Megha Amrith, Siddharthan Maunaguru, Sumita Mukherjee, Sunil Amrith, Susan Grayzel, Tammy Proctor and Vineeta Sinha. I am particularly grateful to Kelvin Low, Siddharthan Maunaguru, and Vineeta Sinha, who patiently heard my new finds in archives when this project was just beginning and always were generous with their time and support whenever I wanted to discuss ideas and arguments about this project. Special thanks are due to Antoinette Burton for inspiring me to think about the resilience of the travelling ayahs while they were stranded and how they used different loopholes of the colonial administrative system to their advantage. A special thank you is also due to Susan Greyzel and Tammy Proctor for inspiring me to write a chapter on travelling ayahs during the war. The questions they asked me at a conference and the follow-­up discussions helped me formulate Chapter 5 in this book. No academic journey nor a book is complete without friends in academia who are always just a chat away when you feel stuck. Special thanks are due to Elaine Farrell, Allison Edgren Laura Seddlemeyer, and Gordon Ramsey. You were always there to make time for me and listen to my wild ideas about the book and give me mentoring

viii Acknowledgements and courage to carry on. You read my work patiently and made comments—­even if it meant hearing/reading the same case for the fifth time. Elaine, thank you for being such a good influence on my work and always suggesting a ‘way out’ whenever I felt stuck and needed more ideas. Thank you especially for all the chats regarding the profiles section. Gordon, without your careful reading and commenting this book would be incomplete. Allison and Laura, thank you for always being a call away and inspiring me with ‘tomorrow is another day’ whenever I felt stuck. A historian’s book is impossible without the expertise and support of archival experts. I owe special thanks to the staff of the APAC Reading Room, Imaging Services at British Library, some of whom through all these years have become almost my extended family—­ Aliki-­ Anastasia Arkomani, Annabelle Gallop, Arlene  C.  B., Charles Bonnah, Gary Carter, Haque Sarker, Jay, Jeff Kattenhorn, John Chignoli (Chop Chop), John O’Brien, Jonathan Vines, Lorena Garcia (Guapa), Marie Lewis, Richard Bingle, Richard Morel, Robert Boyling, and Sita Gunasingham. I am also indebted to the staff of the National Archives of India, West Bengal State Archives, National Archives of Malaysia, the National Archives of UK, the London City Mission Archives, the British Newspapers Archives, Hackney Archives, the National Maritime Museum of UK, and the National Army Museum of UK. I also thank the various conference organizers and panelists I met between 2014 and 2021 who have given me the incredible opportunity to share my research and whose insightful comments have helped me develop my arguments. Your time, comments, and suggestions were extremely valuable. Special thanks are also owed to Cailee Cunningham for patiently helping me with several design aspects of the project. A few chapters are revised and much longer versions of the following articles: ‘Responses to Traveling Indian Ayahs in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain’, Journal of Historical Geography; ‘Stranded: How Travelling Indian Ayahs Negotiated War and Abandonment in Europe’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies. I owe grateful acknowledgement to the journals and publishers for allowing me to build on this earlier work. Several funding agencies and organizations have supported the research and writing of this book. A post-­doctoral fellowship at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2016–18), a National Endowments Endowment for Humanities Sponsored Grant through the Idaho Humanities Council (2020–1), and Idaho State University’s College of Arts and Letters’ Course Release Award (Spring 2022). I would also like to acknowledge with gratitude the love and support I have received from Jonathan Fardy, Amy Wuest, Elijah Wiley Wuest, Raghava Kondepudy (Raghav Bhaiya), Mira Kondepudy, Riya Kondepudy, and Xiaoyang (Stella) Kondepudy during the writing of this book over the past few years. Thank

Acknowledgements  ix you for being my family and home away from home. Thank you for patiently listening to all my challenges and giving me the courage to go on. I am grateful for my parents, Rumjhum and Debasish Datta, who always found the right words, the right actions, and the right emotions to support me from near and far and helped me carry on. Whenever I felt ‘stuck’ you both inspired me to keep going. Mimi and Papa, without you this book would not have been possible. I can never thank you enough for the invisible labour you provided not only in forms of emotions but also in taking time to carefully read those illegible handwritings from archival records just to help me figure out what one word was, the hours you spent listening to me going on and on about the travelling ayahs and sometimes even raised questions about why was Martha or Mary or Nasiban (ayahs) not mentioned in one chapter but in another. You painstakingly proofread my chapters even if it meant foregoing some of your other plans. For everything and for always being by my side—­thank you! My heartfelt thanks to Shiladitya Mukherjee (Adi), my husband, who always kept reminding me in the power of words and stories and how the smallest stories of the travelling ayahs were worthy to mention in the book because they had the ability to put the readers in the shoes of these incredible women. Many times, when I as an author felt vulnerable to the missing links and silences in those stories, Adi always gave me courage to lay bare where the silences were and show the readers the vulnerability of the past. Adi, it’s really hard to express how grateful I would ever remain for your constant support in this arduous journey. Finally, to all the travelling ayahs of the past and mobile caregivers of the present day, thank you for being an inspiration. This book is for you!

Preface India’s travelling ayahs were once a familiar part of the British Empire, providing childcare and other domestic services for the families of the British privileged class as they voyaged between India, Britain, and further-­flung imperial realms. Life could not have been easy for these women, many of whom had left their homes for the first time to care for strangers in unfamiliar waters and lands, making journeys comfortable for their patrons whilst overcoming their own seasickness and fears. Today, travelling ayahs are largely forgotten: one of many groups of migrant workers in the history of the British Empire whose voices have been silenced if not erased. Their experiences and identities have seldom been the focus of archival records and have largely faded from social memory. Yet for close to two centuries, they were a vital part of the infrastructure of the Empire, their labour enabling the mobility of thousands of families in the globalized world in which they played a part in creating and in which they participated. Although their individual identities are often obscured, nevertheless signs of their activities are visible in archival records—­even if only in the margins of such records. It is from these archives, documents produced long ago through the routine activities of shipping clerks, border controllers, imperial administrators, businesses, legislators, and employers that I have sought to unearth their story. One of the most rewarding aspects of being a historian is going into long-­ neglected archives and disappearing into historical rabbit holes, which often lead to new and exciting research paths. In 2012 while doing archival research in Arkib Negara in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for my dissertation on Indian coolie women in British Malaya, I stumbled on a Labour Department file which discussed how an aged coolie woman could easily be employed as an ayah (a nanny) for a planter’s children.1 The image of an old coolie woman who could no longer accurately tap rubber trees, whose hands were probably rough from carrying pails of latex and handling knives for weeding and tapping, suddenly becoming an eligible recruit as a caregiver for the delicate body of a planter’s child—­the future of the British Empire—­lodged itself in my mind. Later the same year, researching the records of the India Office in the British Library in London, I came across a political and judicial file that documented the story of an Indian ayah who was brought to Malaya by a planter family and then taken to Britain

1  Although the term ‘coolie’ is sometimes seen as derogatory, veterans of the Malayan plantations whom I interviewed were proud to call themselves coolies, and in my publications I therefore use the term without quotation marks.

xii Preface during the family’s summer leave. Subsequently, the ayah had been abandoned in London and her case came to the attention of the India Office. The correspondence suggested that such desertion of travelling ayahs by their employers had become alarmingly common in Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Later during the same research trip, I found hundreds of passenger records in the archives revealing how common the profession was. This find intrigued me. The figure of the nanny or domestic servants in the British and broader Western imagination has tended to be dominated by Disney’s Mary Poppins or Downton Abbey, respectively. The fact, that many British middle- and upper-­class children were raised and cared for largely by women of colour, was not part of this image. As I continued my research on coolie women on Malayan plantations, I also collected all records I came across that mentioned travelling ayahs or in some cases travelling servants. By the end of 2012, I was torn between my research on coolie women and my new interest in travelling ayahs. A part of me wanted to simultaneously write about both communities of extraordinary South Asian women migrant workers, but that was not possible. When I discussed this with one of my mentors, Vineeta Sinha, she gave me the courage to focus my research on coolie women while suggesting that I should view the material on travelling ayahs as a second book in the making. Following her advice, I actively continued to collect and reflect on the voices of the travelling ayahs which I encountered in the archives, while being grateful to my mentor that she had confidence I could produce a second book when I was still unsure whether I would ever finish the first. Between 2012–17, during my annual research visits to London, I attempted to embody the experience of the travelling ayahs in the city. I walked the same streets they would have walked to get from the dockyards to the Ayahs’ Home in Hackney;2 I visited the London City Mission where many would have attended Sunday prayers and visited the various addresses of the employers of travelling ayahs that emerged from the archival files. On one of my many jaunts to the dockyards in 2014, I ended up in the Museum of the London Docklands. The museum did present material on ‘lascars’ (Indian seafarers of the imperial era), but had nothing to say about travelling ayahs, although they must have been a frequent sight, coming and going from the London docks. I took this silence as a sign that the story of travelling ayahs was long overdue for the telling. Carolyn Steedman has observed that a historian frequently experiences ‘archival fever’ long after leaving the archives. I was no different. The stories of the travelling ayahs kept me awake, wondering about their lives, their emotions, and their voices. But I experienced this archival fever in different ways in ­different spaces. While in the UK I constantly found myself attempting to re-­visit, 2  Ayahs’ Home was a typical lodging and service brokering place, which housed travelling ayahs in London. This is the focus of Chapter 5 in this book.

Preface  xiii re-­walk the roads and places the travelling ayahs frequented, in India I encountered travelling ayahs in a different way. Travelling through the streets of Kolkata during my time carrying out research in the West Bengal State Archives, I frequently came across advertisements by ‘ayahs’ seeking employment, making me realize that the profession had not been consigned to the colonial past, but was still a way of life and a living for many Indian women, especially in India. Some advertisements in present-­day Kolkata, primarily pasted on the walls of hospitals and pharmacies (Fig. 1), specifically offered caregiving to patients, whilst others offered care services for the elderly and children (Fig. 2). These advertisements were very similar to advertisements I found in the archives that were circulated in Britain by travelling ayahs seeking employment on passages back to India. The only difference was that most ayahs in present-­day Kolkata were not always travelling ayahs. Looking at the first kind of advertisement, offering care for medically challenged individuals, I noticed that although some advertisements offered both nurses and ayahs, there was a care and wage hierarchy here. A nurse was a

Fig. 1  Advertisements offering the services of Ayahs on hospital walls in Kolkata Source: Author’s photograph Translation: “Florence Nurse Center / For Ayah and Nurse contact / Mobile: 9874392628”

xiv Preface

Fig. 2  Advertisements pasted on various market streets in Kolkata Source: Author’s photograph Translation: “Arogya Ayah Center / Ayahs available for child care, babysitting, caring for new born babies, caring for physically ill. / Available for 12 hours, 24 hours slots / Contact: 9836847191 8017935217 / 13/9 Dr. Neelmani Sarkar Street, Kolkata 700090”

professionally trained medical caregiver, but the ayahs in these advertisements were caregivers without formal qualifications who offered feeding, cleaning, and general care for the patients. Hence, they ranked lower in the professional hierarchy of caregiving, making them more akin to servants than nurses. The advertisements were a constant reminder of how capitalist languages and structures of work which were introduced during the colonial era remain part of everyday lives across the globe. The second kind of ayahs’ advertisement in Kolkata offered caregiving services for the elderly and children. In a country where old peoples’ homes are still taboo and hospices are not well established, family members often hire ayahs to take responsibility of caring for elderly family members. Ayahs are also hired by nuclear families who prefer not to, or don’t have the means to, send their children to day care centres, which have only recently appeared in cities in developing countries such as Kolkata in India. Even in our present-­day world, however, we find domestic servants who travel, albeit serving under different names and different contexts. In 2014, during the controversial Devyani Khobragade trials in the US, I was struck by a different

Preface  xv kind of archival fever. Khobragade was an Indian diplomat accused of fraudulently securing a visa for Sangeeta Richard, her domestic servant, whom she then paid less than the minimum wage, leading Richard to flee her house. In many ways, I witnessed the challenges faced by travelling ayahs being played out in the twenty-­first century. Whilst many academic colleagues were struck by the details of the case, to me it seemed much like many of the cases I had examined in archives dating from a century ago: this was the past being played out in the present. Yet again I was reminded of the importance of the historian’s role: to remind society that without the past we remain prisoners of the present. This incident re-­affirmed to me that the stories of travelling ayahs needed to be brought to the fore to historicize the experience of migrant domestic and caregiving work. Waiting on Empire: South Asian Travelling Ayahs in Britain brings this much-­ needed and long-­overdue focus to travelling ayahs. The work of these women was vital to the Empire’s everyday functioning, but serving the Empire in the globalized environment it had created also transformed the consciousness of the travelling ayahs as they moved from margin to centre and back again, learning along the way to assert their rights and negotiate their positions in interaction with the colonial employers and imperial administrators in which the power of the Empire was embodied. In the pages that follow, I explore how travelling ayahs—­women migrant caregivers in the empire’s metropole—­engaged with various hierarchies in Britain: through emotions, through discourses, through ma­teri­al­ist transactions, through religion, and more. During my research for this book, I was constantly struck by a contrast between the way I encountered travelling ayahs and the way I encountered coolie women in the archives. Whilst both groups of migrant women workers were marginalized and were never the focus of the archives, the presence of travelling ayahs was, nevertheless, considerably more visible than that of coolie women. The names, faces, and other personal information about travelling ayahs could often be found in archives, unlike those of coolie women who, as a commodified mass labour force, usually only appeared as statistics. A key factor that made the travelling ayahs more visible was the fact that they frequently travelled with colonial families and were intimately involved in their caregiving. This personal engagement with the dominant class not only made travelling ayahs more visible than coolies at the time, but made the imperial surveillance of these mobile bodies more crucial and thus rendered them more visible to historians. In its geographical focus, Waiting on Empire is a departure from my earlier work, which focused on South and Southeast Asia, specifically inter-­Asian connected histories under the British Empire. However, the unwavering focus on migrant South Asian women workers within the context of the British Empire connects this book to my previous monograph. I turned to this work in an attempt to make an intervention following widespread anthropological discussions about contemporary migrant labour (especially from South and Southeast Asia) and

xvi Preface their experiences in the ‘West’. Waiting on Empire aims to open a window into the longer history of Asian migrant women’s caregiving work, the role of these women in facilitating connections and mobilities within the British Empire, and the ways they asserted agency in making lives for themselves within the imperial context. The concept of ‘waiting’ is the lens through which I examine these issues.3 This book argues that waiting is a space and, for marginalized women, it could be a space of precarity and vulnerability. Yet waiting also had the potential to offer a myriad of opportunities for those who waited and those who engaged with them. In other words, waiting offered not just trepidation but also hope. Whilst waiting has sometimes been theorized as being characterized by ‘stuckedness’,4 the focus in this work is on waiting as a site and process of activity. Waiting for the Empire reveals that colonized migrant women never allowed waiting to become a state of exhaustion and hopelessness. Rather, they endured when they had to and actively engaged with a range of others from officials of the state to churches, businesses, and individuals in an effort to make waiting part of an onward journey to the better life they sought for themselves. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they were not, but they were never passive. This is therefore the story of ordinary women engaging with waiting in extraordinary ways. In the book I invite readers to share in the experiences of wonderment, epiphany, and sometimes profound sorrow that I encountered in my study of these extraordinary women. I ask readers to bear witness to the accounts of the travelling ayahs and see how their stories help us to re-­vision and remember the place of migrant caregivers in colonial histories and thus shed light on the situations of workers in similar situations today.

3  Waiting is a process and phenomena frequently encountered by migrants of past and present societies. 4 V.  Crapanzo, Waiting: The Whites of South Africa (New York: Random House, 1985); Christine M. Jacobsen, Marry-­Anne Karlsen, and Shahram Khosravi (eds), Waiting and the Temporalities of Irregular Migration (Oxon: Routledge, 2021); Shahram Khosravi, ‘Introduction’, in After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Shahram Khosravi (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and others.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables

Introduction: Mobile Caregivers for the Empire

xix xxv

1

1. Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire: Historical and Contextual Background

17

2. Waiting in the Heart of Empire: Abandoned Travelling Ayahs and the Contradictions of a Liberal Empire

45

3. Creative Resilience in Crisis: Making Arguments and Evoking Sympathy65 4. Capitalizing on Waiting: Creative Use of Time by Travelling Ayahs

83

5. Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs’ Homes: Humanitarianism, Evangelism, and Profit98 6. Travellers’ Tales: Negotiating Waiting in Wars and ‘Exotic’ Spaces

125

Conclusion145 Profiles of Travelling Ayahs Bibliography Index

153 279 287

List of Illustrations 1. Advertisements offering the services of Ayahs on hospital walls in Kolkata

xiii

2. Advertisements pasted on various market streets in Kolkata

xiv

3. Traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain (1835–1940)

20

4. Children’s Christmas dinner at sea by Godefroy Durand

22

5. Looking after a British baby

23

6. English girl and her Indian nanny or ayah, sailing to England, watch pet parrot and monkey

24

7. Ports from which travelling ayahs most commonly embarked in India  (1876–1940)25 8. Ports where travelling ayahs most commonly disembarked in Britain (1876–1940)26 9. Religion of travelling ayahs

26

10. Age groups of travelling ayahs

27

11. Marital status of travelling ayahs

28

12. Motherhood status of travelling ayahs

29

13. Structural plan of a deck on Viceroy of India41 14. Ayahs on streets of Glasgow in 1925

99

15. Nineteenth-­century postcard with an Indian ayah at Edinburgh with her ‘charges’

100

16. Painting of a travelling ayah named Nasiban (1895)

101

17. Ayahs’ Home sitting room with ayahs (1910)

102

18. Advertisement for the Ayahs’ Home claiming it was self-­supporting, 1885

106

19. Advertisement for the Ayahs’ Home without the phrase ‘self-­supporting’, 1887

107

20. Ayahs’ Home at 26 King Edward Road, London (1900)

108

21. The same building (as in Fig. 20) in 2017

109

22. Ayahs’ Home at 4 King Edward Road (1921)

110

23. The same building (as in Fig. 22) in 2016

111

24. Travelling ayahs with their matron at the Foreigners’ Fete114 25. Ayahs’ Home advertisement, 1890

116

26. British propaganda poster, World War II Indians in Civil Defence

132

27. Mary passport image

155

xx  List of Illustrations 28. Sarah passport image

156

29. Bril passport image

157

30. Anthony passport image

158

31. Ruth passport image

159

32. Jessiah passport image

160

33. Elizabeth passport image

161

34. Byrhui passport image

162

35. Bhagiramibai passport image

163

36. Amaravathun passport image

164

37. Hari Kala passport image

165

38. Magdaline passport image

166

39. Kajuli passport image

167

40. Haliman passport image

168

41. Sabastiamall passport image

169

42. Santhamam Mary passport image

170

43. Basiran passport image

171

44. Kunshi passport image

172

45. Teresa Johnson passport image

173

46. Niazan passport image

174

47. Annamah passport image

175

48. Saribon passport image

176

49. Arica Mary passport image

177

50. Hajra Begum passport image

178

51. Bhagwanti Natha Singh passport image

179

52. Yeddu Ramannah passport image

180

53. Radhabai Govind Parab passport image

181

54. Anastasia passport image

182

55. Dunamma passport image

183

56. Imelda Emma passport image

184

57. Jethi Lipchany passport image

185

58. Ruth Fancis passport image

186

59. Pasang Dolma passport image

187

60. Elizabeth Munisomey passport image

188

61. Mercy Panjul passport image

189

62. Adil passport image

190

63. Anthony Anmall passport image

191

List of Illustrations  xxi 64. Uma Bai passport image

192

65. Mary Anthony passport image

193

66. Maili passport image

194

67. Ka Plisimai Kharkongor passport image

195

68. Josephine passport image

196

69. Ruth passport image

197

70. Jatan Bai passport image

198

71. Lachhi passport image

199

72. Antree passport image

200

73. Mary Abaranam passport image

201

74. Bagubhai passport image

202

75. Danamah passport image

203

76. Kanti passport image

204

77. Gracie passport image

205

78. Muthuswami Chinaswami Ruth passport image

206

79. Pochammal passport image

207

80. Saema passport image

208

81. Yellamah passport image

209

82. Ka Krisibon passport image

210

83. Valliamma passport image

211

84. Loorthumarie passport image

212

85. Meenakshi passport image

213

86. Margaret Ernest passport image

214

87. Louisa Thomas passport image

215

88. Arpudamari passport image

216

89. Radhabai passport image

217

90. Thomas Bappoo Thresya passport image

218

91. Bhimmai Khasia passport image

219

92. Shaik Muram Bi passport image

220

93. Adeline Prem Gurdial passport image

221

94. Manoo passport image

222

95. Bali passport image

223

96. Mussamat Nageshar Mariyam Kesho Narain passport image

224

97. Palliyam passport image

225

98. Sukhmon passport image

226

99. Arockiamary passport image

227

xxii  List of Illustrations 100. Gladys Shilla passport image

228

101. Agnes Dowmony passport image

229

102. Basanti passport image

230

103. Nadran Bibi passport image

231

104. Kanickamary passport image

232

105. Bakiam Mari passport image

233

106. Yessamma passport image

234

107. Teresa Lawn passport image

235

108. Soniya passport image

236

109. Kurmama passport image

237

110. Sita passport image

238

111. Elly passport image

239

112. S. M. Aruldas passport image

240

113. Ammonie Chinnen Ayer passport image

241

114. Lackhi passport image

242

115. Aysuk Kenchi passport image

243

116. Nakki passport image

244

117. Jivi Bai passport image

245

118. Hungoon Napalni passport image

246

119. Nima Sarbani passport image

247

120. Elizabeth Bernard passport image

248

121. Gamboo Madria passport image

249

122. Mary Samuel passport image

250

123. Gracie Williams passport image

251

124. Lusai Joseph passport image

252

125. Rosie Pail passport image

253

126. Jatan Bai passport image

254

127. Rosa passport image

255

128. Zainab Bibi passport image

256

129. Katey Ammal passport image

257

130. Josephine Chinch passport image

258

131. Lakhi passport image

259

132. Pranpathi Lizie passport image

260

133. Gracie Violet Burkinson passport image

261

134. Gangubai Ramchandra Bhand passport image

262

135. Kochuparampil Anna Oothupan passport image

263

List of Illustrations  xxiii 136. Phulmaya passport image

264

137. Margaret passport image

265

138. Elizabeth passport image

266

139. Maharaji passport image

267

140. Suzana Rocha passport image

268

141. Miranda Pedro Sequeira passport image

269

142. Ka Lisbon Kharsing passport image

270

143. Mini Phemalu passport image

271

144. Dhan Maya passport image

272

145. Maili passport image

273

146. Sakinabai Ahmed Husain passport image

274

147. Ka Derissamon passport image

275

148. Gangabai Makan Misa passport image

276

149. Sivbai Narayan Shinde passport image

277

150. Rajpati passport image

278

List of Tables 1. Male travelling ayahs

30

2. Ships with only one travelling ayah onboard for ships travelling to Britain (1890–1940)38 3. Details of travelling ayahs recorded in the ship’s manifests of S.S. Golconda, 1891 and 1901

43

4. Examples of cases of abandonment of travelling ayahs

52

5. Emotions and emotional lexicons captured in various archival records concerning travelling ayahs in Britain

68

  Introduction Mobile Caregivers for the Empire

MAIDS FROM INDIA: HIRE INDIAN MAIDS FOR ABROAD: Maids From India is a tech enabled and most trusted platform for all your overseas household help needs. We are a one stop destination having our self collected and trusted database of 50,000+ candidates in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane location within our committed time. All the household services, be it hiring a house-­maid or a house-­keeping staff, babysitter, nanny or japa maid, cook or chef, elderly care, patient care or a nurse—­we provide solutions for all your needs. We specialise in providing housemaids in Dubai, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, USA, Saudi Arabia, Muscat, Hong Kong, Toronto, New York, Malaysia. Online Advertisement for Maids from India (2020)1 The above advertisement for ‘maids for abroad’ in local dailies and various online websites in 2020 India can be seen as an almost direct descendant of the advertisements placed by or on behalf of the ‘travelling ayahs’ during the imperial period. The term ayah derives from the Portuguese word aio, which closely translates to meaning tutor, carer or servant. In British India, ayah came to mean a child’s nurse or nanny, or a lady’s maid, and was widely applied to female domestic servants. Travelling ayahs comprised a particular subsection of the profession who specialized in serving colonial families travelling by sea between India, Britain, and other destinations.2 Mobile caregivers and domestic servants, then, are not entirely a product of late twentieth-­century globalization as they are often portrayed. Consider these two advertisements for travelling ayahs which appeared in newspapers in the late nineteenth century. The first, published in India in 1886 by a servant brokering agency in India on behalf of its client, a European family, read: ‘EXPERIENCED AYAH WANTED for voyage to England in April, must be a good sailor and accustomed to young children. Apply stating 1  ‘Maids From India: Hire Indian Maids For Abroad: Home Help Service Agency in Vikhroli’, https://maid-­in-­india.business.site/. 2  Primarily colonial families although there were few cases of privileged Indian families travelling with travelling ayahs.

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0001

2  Waiting on Empire terms to “S”. ’3 The second, published in Britain in 1890 by a brokering agency in London, read: ‘. . . Experienced Ayahs always waiting for engagements to return to all parts of India.’4 These advertisements, placed by agencies on behalf of both servants and their clients, demonstrate continuity between past and present in the mobile domestic service industry, albeit in changed geo-­political contexts. In both cases, South Asian domestic workers, primarily female, were being recruited via brokers to work across the world in the capacity of caregivers. The expansion of the British Empire had facilitated movement across the globe for both colonizers and colonized. Travelling ayahs had to deal with the challenges of long sea voyages during which they were expected to provide crucial care to their employers and especially to employers’ children. Some of them travelled between India, Britain, and other destinations scores of times, making them some of the most experienced travellers of the imperial era. The ‘ordinary’ labour of these extraordinary women provided an essential part of the infrastructure of Empire, allowing imperial soldiers, planters, merchants, and administrators, amongst others, to undertake long sea voyages with the confidence that their families would be adequately cared for during the passage. Yet the travelling ayahs, a familiar sight in British port cities over a period of more than two centuries, have faded remarkably quickly from British public memory. The historiography of South Asian labour migrants under the British Empire remains overwhelmingly male-­ focused. This book seeks to disrupt male-­ dominated narratives by focusing on the gendered work of mobile South Asian women as they engaged with the process of labour migration, interacted with host societies, negotiated colonial laws, and engaged with temporalities in the migration process.5 While contributing to the fields of gender, transnational labour history, and Empire studies, the book also addresses the absence of Indian migrant women workers employed in domestic work from colonial history, especially in the British case. Whilst there is a flourishing literature covering other forms of migrant labour amongst Indian women—­such as labour on plantations and in public works in the Caribbean and other parts of Asia,6 the work of migrant Indian caregivers has remained almost invisible. 3  British Newspaper Archives (henceforth BNA), Times of India, 24 February 1886. 4 BNA, The HomewardMail, 9 June 1890. I discuss such advertisements in further detail in Chapters 1 and 4. 5  This book continues the focus on Indian migrant women workers within the British Empire initiated in my first book, Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 6 Datta, Fleeting Agencies; Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (Gurgaon: Hachette Book Publishing, 2013); Shobita Jain and Rhoda Rheddock (eds), Women Plantation Workers: International Experiences (Oxford: Berg, 1998); Brij V. Lal, ‘Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 22.1 (1985): 55–71; Marina Carter, Lakshmi’s Legacy: Testimonies of Indian Women in 19th Century Mauritius (Stanley, Rose Hill, Mauritius: Editions de l’Océan Indien, 1994); Marina Carter, Women and Indenture: Experiences of Indian Labor Migrants (London: Pink Pigeon Press, 2012).

Introduction  3 Furthermore, studies focusing on domestic caregiving work in colonial contexts have overwhelmingly looked at ‘local’ labour and not necessarily migrant labour in mobile domestic spaces.7 Waiting on Empire breaks this silence, centring the history of migrant care labourers recruited for caregiving on the high seas, on which the power-­relations of Empire were daily enacted. Exploring fragments from the lives of socially marginal women care-­workers, who played vital roles in the British Empire’s everyday functioning, Waiting on Empire interrogates colonialism and colonial migration history from a subaltern perspective, and places women’s labour migration and care work in a broad global context. In so doing, it foregrounds South Asian labour history and women’s history as important lenses through which we can study world history and history of the British Empire specifically. The title of this study, Waiting on Empire, of course, has a dual meaning. It refers both to the service the travelling ayahs provided to the Empire, but simultaneously to the active process of waiting—­that is, spending time in contexts where further movement depended upon actors more powerful than themselves. Waiting on Empire focuses on the everyday histories of travelling ayahs, some of whom travelled up to fifty times between India and Britain. In particular, the book focuses on the temporal period of waiting which usually interrupted their migration loops between India and Europe. This waiting period began once they arrived at Britain and lasted until they could find a passage back home to India. The various chapters of the book show how the dynamics of gender, class, ‘race’, and religion, in various combinations, played crucial roles in the ways travelling ayahs experienced waiting in the metropole.8 At a broad scale, this book explores how different actors and institutions interacted with female migrant care workers in the metropole, whilst at the personal level, the book allows the individual, everyday histories of travelling ayahs to emerge, thus recognizing their status as rightful citizens of the Empire: a recognition which they repeatedly demanded during their lifetimes. In the process, the book takes its readers on a journey 7  Fae Dussart, ‘Family and Household: Domestic Service in Colonial India’, in A Cultural History of the Home: In the Age of Empire, ed. Jane Hamlett (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 43–65; Swapna Banerjee, Men, Women and Domestics: Articulating Middle-­Class Identity in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004); Indrani Sen, ‘Colonial Domesticities, Contentious Interactions: Ayahs, Wet-­Nurses and Memsahibs in Colonial India’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16.3 (2009): 299–328; Joyce Grossman, ‘Ayahs, Dhayes, and Bearers: Mary Sherwood’s Indian Experience and Constructions of Subordinated Others’, South Atlantic Review 66.2 (2001): 14–44; Suzanne Conway, ‘Ayah, Caregiver to Anglo-­Indian Children’, in Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World, ed. S. Robinson and S. Sleight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Sucharita Sen, ‘Memsahibs and Ayahs during the Indian Mutiny: In English Memoirs and Fiction’, Studies in People’s History 7.2 (2020). 8  Whilst the term ‘race’ is regarded as scientifically meaningless today, during the imperial period under discussion, scientific racism remained respectable; the concept of ‘race’ was regarded as a meaningful distinction between different human groups and was used to build social hierarchies. I  use the term in parentheses to emphasize that this social significance was built upon a scientific fallacy.

4  Waiting on Empire through the everyday lives of travelling ayahs who waited on colonial families, but also were made to wait once they arrived at their intended destinations in Britain. Using a variety of archival records, the chapters allow us a glimpse into the experiences of travelling ayahs whilst they waited to repatriate: their struggles, their ordinary and extraordinary encounters, and the different kinds of interpersonal relationships they developed at the heart of the Empire. There is a considerable body of scholarship on the long presence of colonial migrants in the United Kingdom.9 Antoinette Burton’s seminal study shows us how the late Victorian metropole was itself a colonial space and thereby implicated in the changes occurring across the Empire. Burton argued that Britain, as much as her colonies, was a space of encounter between colonizers and colonized.10 In another equally important study, Caroline Bressey has shown that there were many ‘black’ migrants from British colonies employed in service industries in Britain during the same period, noting that the voices of these imperial subjects are largely absent from the archives and consequently from the writing of British history.11 Rozina Visram’s landmark work has been one of the few to address this absence with regard to labouring South Asians in Britain. Whilst travelling ayahs are highlighted in the title, however, engagement with their histories in the main text is limited.12 Subsequent crucial works by Michael Fisher, Laura Tabili, Sumita Mukherjee, Susheila Nasta, and Rehana Ahmed have given rich accounts of the presence of South Asians in Britain, including students, travellers, seafarers, artists, and doctors, from the nineteenth century onward.13 Tabili, Ahmed, and Mukherjee in 9 See, for example, Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-­Victorian Britain (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998); Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars, and Princes: Indians in Britain, 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1986) and Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002); Ron Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain (Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1987); F.  O.  Shyllon, Black People in Britain, 1555–1833 (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1977); James Walvin, Passage to Britain: Immigration in British History and Politics (New York: Harmondsworth, 1984); Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984); Norma Myers, ‘The Black Poor of London: Initiatives of Eastern Seamen in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Immigrants and Minorities 13 (November 1994): 7–21; Shompa Lahiri, Indians in Britain Anglo-­Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880–1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000). 10 Burton, At the Heart of the Empire. 11  Caroline Bressey, ‘Looking for Work: The Black Presence in Britain 1860–1920’, Immigrants & Minorities 28 (2010): 164–82; J. Wolffe, ‘Plurality in the Capital: The Christian Responses to London’s Religious Minorities since 1800’, Studies in Church History 51 (2015): 232–58; N. Ahmed, J. Garnett, B.  Gidley, A.  Harris, and M.  Keith, ‘Historicising Diaspora Spaces: Performing Faith, Race and Religion in London’s East End’, in Religion in Diaspora: Cultures of Citizenship, ed. Saundra Garner and Jane Hauser (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 12 Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes. 13 Burton, At the Heart of the Empire; Antoinette Burton, ‘Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-­de-­Siecle London’, History Workshop Journal 42 (1996): 126–46; Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes; Michael Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers to Britain 1600–1857 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004); Collin Chambers, ‘A Flute of Praise: Indian Theatre in Britain in the Early Twentieth Century’, in India in Britain, ed. S. Nasta (London: Springer, 2013); Sumita Mukherjee and Rehana Ahmed (eds), South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858–1947

Introduction  5 their respective studies present dynamic accounts of South Asians engaging in radical discourse, economic negotiations, and political activism in imperial Britain, revealing the permeable interstices of British society through which South Asians made their voices heard.14 These bodies of work show that South Asians in Britain were not passive victims of imperialism but social and political agents who worked to transform British society. The landmark works discussed above focus on colonized migrants to Britain who were, for the most part, privileged by class, education, or, in the case of the Indian seafarers known as lascars, privileged by the public nature of their professions; female domestic workers, who were less visible as a result of their gender, class, and the private spaces in which they worked, remain neglected. Recent work by Olivia Robinson, as well as my own previous papers, have briefly addressed the history of Indian travelling ayahs in Britain, but in our respective works we were only able to explore snippets of their experience.15 In Waiting on the Empire, therefore, I use the case studies of travelling ayahs to explore how colonized women labour migrants asserted their rights, made their voices heard, and negotiated their needs with the imperial powers that kept them waiting in the metropole. Whilst one of the first appearance of travelling ayahs dates to the eighteenth century, I primarily focus on the period from the mid-­1800s to the late 1930s, since this is the period for which most evidence is available in the records of the India Office, British courts, and various other institutions. Using archival case studies, I explore how travelling ayahs actively negotiated survival and employment opportunities in precarious conditions, capitalized upon sympathy amongst sections of the British population, and confronted or collaborated with various British institutions and individuals to demand justice and humane treatment. Travelling ayahs did not write memoirs of their experiences: their stories have to be unearthed from traces in the archives. Those archival traces, however, are sufficiently substantial to position them at the heart of histories of colonialism (London: Continuum, 2012); Laura Tabili, Global Migrants, Local Culture: Natives and Newcomers in Provincial England, 1841–1939 (Basingstoke: Springer, 2011). 14 Tabili, Global Migrants; Mukherjee and Ahmed, South Asian Resistance in Britain; Sumita Mukherjee, ‘Locating Race in Suffrage: Discourses and Encounters with Race and Empire in the British Suffrage Movement’, in From Suffragette to Homesteader: Exploring British and Canadian Colonial Histories and Women’s Politics through Memoir, ed. Emily van der Meulen (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018); Rehana Ahmed, ‘Equality of Citizenship’, in South Asians and the Shaping of Britain, 1870–1950, ed. Ruvani Ranasinha, Rehana Ahmed, Sumita Mukherjee, and Florian Stadtler (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 15  Olivia Robinson, ‘Traveling Ayahs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Global Networks and Mobilization of Agency’, History Workshop Journal 86 (2018): 44–66; Arunima Datta, ‘Responses to Traveling Indian Ayahs in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain’, Journal of Historical Geography 71 (2021): 94–103; Arunima Datta, ‘Stranded: How Travelling Indian Ayahs negotiated War and Abandonment in Europe’. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 30.1 (2023); Arunima Datta, ‘Becoming Visible: Travel Documents and Travelling Ayahs in the British Empire’, South Asian Studies 38.2 (2022): 141–60.

6  Waiting on Empire and labour migration within the British Empire. Through these archival traces, Waiting on Empire explores the power-­dynamics which formed the travelling ayahs’ world, showing the ways that their experience was conditioned by intersections of class, gender, and ‘race’: the hierarchies upon which imperial power was built. Waiting on Empire brings into focus the everyday socio-­political history of South Asian migrants in the heart of the Empire and analyses the complex relationships that developed between colonized mobile subjects, on one hand, and imperial institutions and British civic society, on the other. It explores how travelling ayahs dealt with long periods of waiting in Britain and sometimes elsewhere in Europe; how they survived between voyages; how they built solidarity with others and found emotional and social support; and how they overcame challenges ranging from abandonment without pay by unscrupulous employers to the dangers of shipwreck and war. In so doing, it provides a historical context for ongoing political debates around ‘race’, class, labour and migration.

Understanding Waiting: Historiography One of the principal historical objectives of the book is to re-­vision historical understandings of waiting. Waiting is arguably one of the most recurrent and universal human experiences, from the palaeolithic fisherwoman waiting to hook her prey to the twenty-­first-­century knowledge-­worker waiting for that crucial email. Yet it is an experience that is often marginalized or even ignored as a non-­experience, particularly in historical studies. In complex bureaucratized societies, waiting tends to take particular forms in which the subordinated and marginalized wait for those with power over them to make decisions which will determine their future. Consequently, when waiting is left out of historical accounts, what are also overlooked are the power dynamics that determine who waits on whom and in what conditions they wait. Waiting forms a significant part of histories of migration, and yet it has not always been a focus of historical studies focusing on migration. Some scholars have engaged with waiting as an important part of the migration experience, however. Joya Chatterjee, Uma Dhupelia-­Mesthrie, Clive Glasser, and others have focused on the struggles of the relations of migrants who are left behind and wait for news, remittances, or their loved one’s return.16 Shahram Khosravi, who focused on waiting experienced by the people on the move, conceives of waiting 16  Joya Chatterji, ‘On Being Stuck in Bengal: Immobility in the “Age of Migration” ’, Modern Asian Studies 51.2 (2017): 511–41; Uma Dhupelia-­Mesthrie, ‘Betwixt the Oceans: The Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, Clarence Wilfred Cousins (1905–1915)’, Journal of Southern African Studies 42.3 (2016): 463–81; Huifen Shen, China’s Left-­Behind Wives: Families of Migrants from Fujian to Southeast Asia, 1930s–1950s (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012); Clive Glaser, ‘Home, Farm

Introduction  7 as ‘stolen time’ which delays or prevents migrants from achieving the mobility which they had planned.17 Studies by Salim Lakha, Christine  M.  Jacobsen, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and many others focus on the precariousness and uncertainty of waiting and the emotional experiences of anger, frustration, anxiety, shame, and fear of failure which can accompany the experience.18 Similarly, Ghassan Hage conceives of waiting as ‘stuckedness’: a period of nothingness which individuals have to endure. For Hage waiting thus becomes more about endurance and ‘sticking it out’ rather than calling for change.19 These studies are all valuable, in that they recognize the reality and the significance of waiting as part of the migration experience and also recognize the power dynamics involved. This study accepts the insights previous scholarship has offered into the effects of hegemonic power on the waiting subject, but it goes a step further, by examining the responses of migrants, specifically travelling ayahs, to the experience of waiting and the constant threat of becoming ‘stuck’. What we find is that for travelling ayahs, waiting was never a space of resigned acceptance. Rather it was a space of constant striving and struggle, in which travelling ayahs actively deployed a wide range of methods and tactics to overcome difficulties, win support, change minds, increase their material or symbolic capital, and ultimately to improve the conditions of their lives. In Waiting for the Empire, then, I show that people, however marginalized, never just wait; rather, they actively engage with waiting—­emotionally, socially, economically, and politically. In this study, therefore, I emphasize that ‘wait’ is a verb: a term that refers to doing. In focusing on waiting as an active process, this study recognizes that the idea that waiting as an experience of passivity, or wasted time, is largely derived from a capitalist worldview in which time is commodified and related to production processes. These associations are not universal. In several languages from South Asia, ‘to wait’ can be expressed using various terms, some of which have connotations of active ‘watchfulness’, suggesting that those who wait are awake and observant.20 Thus, in re-­ visioning waiting, we can also move towards

and Shop: The Migration of Madeiran Women to South Africa, 1900–1980’, Journal of Southern African Studies 38.4 (2012): 885–97. 17  Shahram Khosravi, ‘Deportation as a Way of Life’, in Detaining the Immigrant Other: Global and Transnational Issues, ed. Rich Furman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 18  Salim Lakha, ‘Waiting to Return Home: Modes of Immigrant Waiting’, in Waiting, ed. Ghassan Hage (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009); Christine M. Jacobsen, ‘They Said Wait, Wait—­ and I Waited: The Power of Chronographies of Waiting in Asylum in Marseille, France’, in Waiting and the Temporalities of Irregular Migration, ed. Christine M. Jacobsen, Marry-­Anne Karlsen, and Shahram Khosravi (Oxon: Routledge, 2021); Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Filling the Apps: The Smartphone, Time and Refuge’, in Waiting and the Temporalities of Irregular Migration, ed. Christine M. Jacobsen, Marry-­Anne Karlsen, and Shahram Khosravi (Oxon: Routledge, 2021). 19  Ghassan Hage (ed.), Waiting (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009). 20  Words such as dekho, dekhtehain, in Hindi, and darao, in Bengali, have connotations which suggest waiting is seen as an active state of being rather than a state of inactivity or passivity.

8  Waiting on Empire decolonizing our understandings by recognizing that time not spent in the generation of profit is not necessarily time wasted and that waiting is not, therefore, necessarily a passive or neutral condition, but rather can be an active process replete with possibility, planning, and doing. In framing waiting as an active space and experience, I find allies and inspiration in histories of gender and sexuality and in queer studies which have engaged with waiting in more nuanced ways. Ishita Pande, for example, in the context of marriage in India, has explored waiting as a process of coming of age, which in colonial and nationalist discourses was seen as a universal and natural measure of human capacity, particularly in the legal and political realms. Waiting, in Pande’s study, means acquiring the required training and maturity to ‘come of age’. For Pande, then, waiting is an active state and has no connotations of paralysis or passivity.21 Victoria Pitts-­ Taylor observes that waiting is a common experience in medicalized gender transition processes, wherein patients are often put on waitlists and experience myriad medical delays which Pitts-­ Taylor sees as expressions of biopolitical power. Yet those who wait create narratives to express their weariness and precarity in their own ways. In waiting, they create a community, a voice, and a potential movement to attract support for their cause.22 Similarly, Stacey Jones Holman explored waiting as the manufactured delays to which queer families are subjected in adoption processes, due to the biopolitical presumption that transgender individuals cannot biologically reproduce. Holman, in exploring how queer parents wait anxiously for ‘the call’ bearing news of a child, considers not only the subjectivity of waiting but also the active performances during the waiting period which make it a zone of becoming in which ‘acceptable’ families emerge.23 For travelling ayahs, waiting was an inevitable part of their lives. Their waiting usually took place far from home in situations where payment of wages and provision of promised passages home was uncertain and where gendered expectations might have been at odds with the exigencies and opportunities of circular migration. Consequently, for them, waiting could involve isolation and lack of both support networks and material resources. Whilst such waiting undoubtedly involved precarity, the evidence presented in this study shows that this did not lead to passivity or paralysis. Paul Corcoran has argued that an anxious hunter waiting to capture prey necessary for his own survival is in a 21  Ishita Pande, Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 22  Victoria Pitts-­Taylor, ‘ “A Slow and Unrewarding and Miserable Pause in Your Life”: Waiting in Medicalized Gender Transition’, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 24.6 (2020): 646–64. 23 Stacey Jones Holman, ‘Waiting for Queer’, International Review of Qualitative Research 10.3 (2017): 256–62. For further discussions on related topics, see J. E. Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

Introduction  9 precarious situation, but his waiting is an active act of preparation and is full of possibilities.24 Like the hunters in Corcoran’s study: travelling ayahs exhibited preparedness, resourcefulness, and endurance in negotiating precarity and pursuing their aims. Most of the many thousands of travelling ayahs who arrived in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries probably spent a few weeks waiting before securing passages back to India without incident and without, therefore, any appearance in the archives. Of those who do appear in the archives, many found their waiting to be precarious because they had been abandoned by their employers upon arrival in Britain and their active appeals for help from the imperial authorities resulted in their appearance in the records. In a smaller number of cases, travelling ayahs appear to have actively chosen to wait in Britain to explore new opportunities or create a new home. Again, these cases only appear in the archives when they emerged as anomalies or problems which administrators felt obliged to address. In waiting, then, travelling ayahs found both challenges and opportunities, which made it a busy space within which different kinds of negotiations, voices, and emotions came together. Whilst waiting had its pitfalls, it also had stories of difficult negotiations being won and opportunities being gained. While analysing the various racialized, classed, and gendered experiences that travelling ayahs had to negotiate as temporary labour migrants in the metropole, the study also shows how these extraordinary women positioned themselves within the context of debates around labour, migration, imperial subjecthood, governmental responsibility, and humanitarian help. Examining the discursive positions adopted by these marginalized colonial subjects in the imperial ­metropole and administrative responses, or lack of response, to them exposes the cusp of the Empire’s power and vulnerability. Travelling ayahs seemed amongst the least powerful and therefore least threatening subjects of Empire: colonized single women far from home with limited support networks and no revolutionary political goals which might challenge the power of Empire. And yet, their appeals for the humane treatment which they saw as their due repeatedly exposed the contradiction between the rhetoric of Empire as a civilizing process and its reality as a process of exploitation, thereby bringing imperial fallibility and hypocrisy into the public eye in ways which sometimes frustrated even the bureaucrats whose task it was to enforce imperial power. In focusing on the active engagement of waiting subjects, this book also highlights how the space of waiting has a complex social life of its own. Waiting becomes a space of interaction wherein we can witness the association and disassociation of people from different backgrounds, classes and ‘races’. In studying travelling ayahs’ myriad experiences of waiting, we observe not only the 24  Paul E. Corcoran, ‘Godot Is Waiting Too: Endings in Thought and History’, Theory and Society 18 (1989): 495–529.

10  Waiting on Empire diverse personalities and goals of the women who waited but also a range of different socio-­cultural responses to their waiting. Thus, through exploring the waiting experiences of travelling ayahs, this study exposes other histories including the way the Empire was conceived and emotionally related to in the metropole; social understandings of ‘charity’; and the ways waiting itself became a commodified process for certain social actors, including newspapers, brokering agencies, and missionaries. The study reveals how travelling ayahs, imperial administrators and other members of civil society interacted legally, commercially, and socially in response to the process of waiting. In short, this study does not see waiting simply as the shadow of mobility but as an important space of social interaction in its own right.

Reconstructing Waiting: Historical Sources and Charting Travelling Ayah Histories Much of the evidence upon which this book is based is elicited from a close reading of passage permission records, ship manifests, ancestry records, travelling ayahs’ passports, travelling ayahs’ legal case files, official correspondences about travelling ayahs, children’s story books, newspapers, institutional reports about ayahs, and images from over ten archives: the National Archives of the UK (Kew), the India Office Records in the British Library (London), the London City Mission records at London City Mission Archives (London), the British Newspapers Archives (London), Hackney Archives (London), the National Maritime Museum (London), the National Army Museum (London), the National Archives of India (New Delhi), the West Bengal State Archives (Kolkata), the National Library (Kolkata), and Arkib Negara (Kuala Lumpur). It is from these records that the identities and voices of travelling ayahs emerge: voices which until now have remained largely muted, forgotten, and absent from the pages of imperial histories. Yet the ways in which these documents were recorded, which aimed to serve agendas that were not those of either travelling ayahs or historians, provide a selective and sometimes frustratingly partial picture of these women travellers. For instance, the names of travelling ayahs were often only partially recorded and frequently not recorded at all. Often the story of a particular travelling ayah may appear briefly in documents in London, only to disappear before, perhaps, reappearing in the archives in India, whilst remaining untraceable in between. Nonetheless, though these records were made and circulated for official purposes, they offer tantalizing glimpses into migrant women workers’ everyday lives within the context of British colonialism. The faint and often muted voices of the travelling ayahs which emerge through their individual files help us understand complex histories of migration and migrants. I use the evidence from these sources to reconstruct ‘waiting’ as a social, political, and economic experience for migrants within c­ olonial contexts. These

Introduction  11 documents show how both imperial institutions and travelling ayahs used periods of waiting to secure advantage in active processes of assertion and negotiation. Exploring the archives reveals that the presence of imperial subjects from the colonies was seen but not necessarily administratively recognized, whilst the voices of the travelling ayahs were rarely recorded. I turned, therefore, to the work of historical geographers who have argued that historians must map the archives, defining available and unavailable sources, in order to reach a fuller understanding of past societies. Mapping both the information that the archives present and that which they leave out allows us to interpret the broader contexts and specific power dynamics in which certain voices are recorded whilst others are muted or even silenced.25 The transient presence of travelling ayahs in Britain and India adds an additional layer of complexity to the task, as records remain dispersed across many geographical spaces. Hodder et al. observe that the transnational nature of such scattered archival materials reveals the uneven and ambiguous decisions of administrators in the past which influences the present-­ day availability of global histories.26 One of the most difficult aspects of this archival research was that the fragmentary records of travelling ayahs’ lives were not only scattered across different geographies but also across different kinds of records: sometimes appearing in colonial office correspondence, sometimes in ship’s ledgers, sometimes in legislative and political files, and sometimes in files discussing economic issues within the British Empire. Moreover, whilst part of a travelling ayah’s story might appear in a legislative file it often disappeared abruptly, never to reappear. An exhaustive search would sometimes result in a fleeting glimpse of the same case in a coroner’s record or in official correspondence regarding international trade, yet some records were incomplete, damaged or missing. Thus, there are no clear signposts for scholars researching global histories. Historians researching subaltern subjects in global contexts must therefore engage in a two-­ stage process: first, understanding the organization of archives maintained in various imperial sites and institutions and uncovering relevant material within them; second, constructing their own archives from the fragments recovered to piece together the scattered glimpses of subaltern lives. As Gagen et al. have shown, the ways information is organized within the archives reveal the power dynamics underlying the practice of archiving as much through the information and voices that it leaves out as through those that it

25  D.  Timothy and J.  Guelke, ‘Introduction’, in D.  Timothy and J.  Guelke (eds), Geography and Genealogy: Locating Personal Pasts (Burlington: Routledge, 2008), 1–22; H. Lorimer, ‘Caught in the Nick of Time: Archives and Fieldwork’, in Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography, ed. D. DeLyser, S. Atiken, M. Crang, S. Herbert, and L. McDowell (London: Sage, 2009), 248–73. 26 Carolyn Steedman, Dust (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Jake Hodder, Michael Heffernan, and Stephen Legg, ‘The Archival Geographies of Twentieth-­ Century Internationalism: Nation, Empire and Race’, Journal of Historical Geography 71 (2021): 1–11.

12  Waiting on Empire records.27 Following their lead, this study situates the presences in the archives in the context of absences. In the cases of subaltern imperial subjects, such as travelling ayahs, the silences often speak loudest, revealing the internal anxieties, contradictions and fears that the presence of colonized British subjects in the metropolis forced into the consciousness of imperial administrators. Carolyn Steedman in her ground-­breaking work about the physicality and realities of archives, described ‘archive fever’ as an overwhelming experience that ‘comes on at night, long after the archive has shut for the day’. It begins ‘in the bed of a cheap hotel, where the historian cannot get to sleep’. In the course of my research for this book, I came to understand and experience Steedman’s sleepless nights, haunted by the myriad voices of the dead and lost, who press their concerns on a historian’s mind.28 Even after a full day of research at the archives, I felt lost and incomplete not knowing what had happened to some of the women whose files I had unearthed, but which had proved to be incomplete, damaged, or, worse, lost. In an attempt to embody some element of these women’s experience, I walked the streets of London from the dockyards to the site of the Hackney Ayahs’ Home on multiple occasions. I felt a responsibility attached to working with these records: to do these women justice, to convey the complex realities of their lives and the society in which they waited, lived, loved, and strove for better times. Individual stories about individual women thus have a central place in this book, even if these stories are often short and inconclusive. Yet together these stories can provide us with real insights into the social history of waiting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as experienced by colonized and transient women workers. Each chapter in the book focuses on a specific experience of waiting and explores the ways that they were interconnected. Following this Introduction, Chapter 1, ‘Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire’, frames the book for readers by providing background knowledge of travelling ayahs, how and why they were recruited, and their importance to the British Empire. The chapter explains the concerns and considerations that underlay the selection of caregivers who travelled with European women and children and demonstrates the central place of travelling ayahs in the regular traffic between Britain and Asian colonies which was essential to the Empire’s administration. It highlights key differences between the experience of travelling ayahs and of ayahs who worked in their home regions in India. Using the archival records discussed above, the chapter explores how travelling ayahs figured within the broader traffic of people moving between colonies and the metropole; discusses the life, work, 27  E.  Gagen, H.  Lorimer, and A.  Vasudevan (eds), Practicing the Archive: Reflections on Methods and Practice in Historical Geography (London: Historical Geography Research Group, Royal Geographical Society, Institute of British Geographers, 2007). 28  Carolyn Steedman, Dust, 87. Carolyn Steedman, An Everyday Life of the English Working Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 17.

Introduction  13 and challenges faced by travelling ayahs whilst onboard ship; and in the process highlights the particular place of travelling ayahs in the imperial British imagination. Finally, it notes the ways that travelling ayahs exerted agency in negotiating for what they considered rightful compensation and deserved benefits and how they consciously struggled, sometimes individually, sometimes in alliance with others, to ensure that their interests were addressed by employers. In so doing, this chapter also considers the ways in which travelling ayahs used broader gendered understandings of health, morality, and vulnerability within the context of imperial labour migration networks to influence employers and gain acceptance of what they regarded as their rights. Chapter  2, ‘Waiting in the Heart of Empire’, examines the experiences of travelling ayahs on arrival in Britain, paying particular attention to the cases that appear in the archives due to the abandonment of ayahs by irresponsible employers. The chapter explores the relations between travelling ayahs and their employers as well as the difficult interactions with imperial administrators that travelling ayahs encountered when they found themselves in vulnerable situations. Whilst focusing on how the Empire managed the traffic of the travelling ayahs between India and Britain, the chapter also reveals the contractual expectations that travelling ayahs had of their employers, what happened to travelling ayahs once they disembarked at a port in Britain, and how travelling ayahs made their way back to India. In the process of exploring these questions, the chapter unveils the ways the power dynamics of colonial capitalism and the contradictory migration policies of the Empire imposed periods of waiting ranging from weeks to years on travelling ayahs in Britain. Chapter  3, ‘Creative Resilience in Crisis’, focuses on the various kinds of creative agency that travelling ayahs exhibited whilst waiting. Most importantly, the chapter introduces emotion as a lens through which to examine the archives, thus allowing travelling ayahs to become visible as human beings who demonstrated agency in precarious situations of waiting. The chapter focuses on various cases wherein travelling ayahs used emotions explicitly revolving around home, family, and motherhood to negotiate access to social and administrative aid in their attempts to find a way home to India. It demonstrates the busy-­ness of travelling ayahs in waiting, as they engaged in planning, emotional appeals, and carefully crafted actions in order to achieve their goals and end their period of waiting. In Chapter 4, entitled ‘Capitalizing on Waiting’, the study moves on to look at the ways some travelling ayahs, often those more experienced in the trade, used periods of waiting creatively to improve their situation in material or symbolic ways, by increasing their wealth or status. In particular, it focuses on those travelling ayahs who capitalized on entrepreneurial and other socio-­cultural opportunities that waiting in the imperial metropolis offered them. This chapter reminds us that the travelling ayahs were not slaves, traded into servitude, but

14  Waiting on Empire were women who had chosen to enter the extraordinary profession of travelling ayah: a profession that placed them in a unique social situation. Travelling ayahs were part of both British and Indian societies. In some ways, they were marginal to both, yet they constituted a vital link between the two. Crucially, at least some women entered this profession in the hope and expectation of bettering themselves in ways that may not have been available to them had they stayed at home. The cases discussed in this chapter become particularly interesting and inspiring because they help us to understand how waiting, which was an unavoidable and potentially threatening part of their professional experience, could be turned into a space of opportunity for the realization of their aspirations. In such cases, travelling ayahs interrupted the colonial gaze with their own colonized gaze on the metropole, where they saw opportunities that they could exploit for their advantage. This is not to suggest that travelling ayahs were the ideal entrepreneurs of recent neoliberal ideology: they remained marginalized and racialized subalterns and their schemes were often confronted with challenges from the hegemonic power of an Empire that saw them as inferior subjects as a result of both their skin colour and gender. Yet the evidence that emerges from the archives suggests that, whilst they may sometimes have been discouraged, they were never deterred from pursuing their own goals. Travelling ayahs were not the only ones actively engaging with their waiting in Britain. Chapter  5, ‘Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs’ Homes’, turns the readers’ attention to ayahs’ homes: the institutions which emerged in Britain in response to the needs of travelling ayahs as they waited in the imperial heartland to secure employment that would enable them to return to India. The chapter shows how this space of waiting became a site of activity not only for travelling ayahs but also for British people who engaged with them in the name of humanitarianism, Christianity, and profit. In colonial discourses, private social welfare often played a significant role in the Empire’s ‘civilizing mission’. The politics of providing such welfare within a capitalist society required the definition of who was and who was not legitimately needy and thus qualified to receive welfare. Consequently, welfare was never monolithic, but was motivated by a variety of religious or socio-­ political agendas including capitalist enterprise itself. This chapter thus also explores how the operators of ayahs’ homes furthered their various agendas by providing for the needs of travelling ayahs and how travelling ayahs themselves engaged with these institutions. In Chapter  6, entitled ‘Travellers’ Tales’, the book turns to explore the experiences of travelling ayahs during the two world wars, which disrupted travel and made waiting not only uncertain but often extremely dangerous. It also examines the experiences of travelling ayahs who found themselves waiting or abandoned in various countries in continental Europe, noting the ways that those experiences differed from those of travelling ayahs waiting in Britain.

Introduction  15 The concluding chapter sums up the arguments developed in the preceding chapters, presents answers to the questions regarding waiting posed in the Introduction, and discusses the implications of these answers for the study of migrants. Emphasizing the travelling ayahs’ self-­determination, survival strategies, and active engagement with the process of waiting, the chapter draws attention to the insights available to us from studying the travelling ayahs’ relationship with the Empire and their upper-­class employers and shows how these insights are relevant to historicizing the present-­day experiences of migrant domestic and care workers. It also brings the lives of travelling ayahs into a larger framework, noting that women’s transnational labour has been neglected within the histories of Britain, South Asia, and the British Empire, an absence which this book seeks to go some way to fill. Finally, the book includes a discussion entitled ‘Profiles of Travelling Ayahs’, which records brief narratives of all 124 travelling ayahs for whom I was able to access information through the India Office Record’s duplicate passport series and Ancestry records. Whilst some of them were discussed in the chapters of the book, the majority of them could not be accommodated. The ‘Profiles’ seek to do justice to their history and presence in the archives by making these hidden lives visible. I hope this part of the book might be of value to history students and teachers who want to invite primary sources of this kind into their classes but may not have ready access to the archives. And I also hope they may allow me to sleep peacefully, feeling that I have done my duty towards those women with whom I spent so much time in the archives and on the streets of London. With the release of the TV series ‘Downton Abbey’ in 2010, and the movie ‘Victoria and Abdul’ in 2017, there was considerable media and public reflection on the lack of diversity within media depictions of the servant population in Victorian and Edwardian England. Although ‘Victoria and Abdul’ challenged such partial portrayals, their predominance in media portrayals of the era continues. The publication of this book in the contemporary context draws attention to the imperial roots of ‘multicultural’ Britain. In the context of ongoing campaigns in the UK to decolonize the curriculum, this research seeks to contribute to re-­envisaging South Asian contributions to British society, as well as to the British Empire, and reveal both the unequal treatment female Indian migrants received in Britain and the ways they posed dilemmas for the Empire by challenging such treatment. Waiting on Empire thus speaks to the ongoing South Asian predicament in Britain in relation to the enduring influence of colonialism and continued struggles for social and political equality.

1 Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire Historical and Contextual Background

Once the British Empire became firmly established in India, there was a marked increase in travel between Britain and India by British colonial families. Such colonial mobilities frequently also translated to employment and mobility of ‘native’ colonized people through the hiring of travelling ayahs who would travel with their (mostly but not exclusively British) employers to make the latter’s journey tolerable if not comfortable. As discussed in the Introduction, histories of Indian ayahs have overwhelmingly focused upon those serving colonial families locally in British India.1 Travelling ayahs are an under-­researched but fascinating segment of the profession. This chapter provides a historical and contextual background crucial for understanding the place of travelling ayahs in the British Empire and their ex­peri­ ences with the Empire. It begins with an investigation into archival records including ships’ manifests, passage permission seeking correspondences, government proceedings and passports to understand how travelling ayahs figured within the broader traffic of people moving between colonies and the metropole. Thereafter it explores travelling ayahs’ demographic backgrounds, revealing who travelling ayahs were. It goes on to examine the processes through which travelling ayahs were recruited, offering a glimpse into the qualities that employers sought in these mobile servants. These two sections together offer an understanding of the ‘making’ of a travelling ayah. The following section then explores the life and work of travelling ayahs while onboard ship and in the process, highlights some key differences and similarities between the experience of 1 Indrani Sen, ‘Colonial Domesticities, Contentious Interactions: Ayahs, Wet-­ Nurses and Memsahibs in Colonial India’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16.3 (2009): 299–328; Ishita Sinha Roy, ‘Nation, Native, Narrative: The Fetish and Imagined Community in India’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southern California, 1999; Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Joyce Grossman, ‘Ayahs, Dhayes, and Bearers: Mary Sherwood’s Indian Experience and Constructions of Subordinated Others’, South Atlantic Review 66.2 (2001): 14–44; S.  Conway, ‘Ayah, Caregiver to Anglo-­Indian Children’, in Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World, ed. S. Robinson and S. Sleight (Basingstoke: Springer, 2016); Swapna Banerjee, Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-­Class Identity in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0002

18  Waiting on Empire travelling ayahs and that of ayahs employed locally in India. The chapter wraps up with a brief discussion of the ways that travelling ayahs were simultaneously included and excluded aboard British passenger ships as well as in British imaginations. Travelling ayahs were not the only Indian domestic servants who served European families while on the move or after they returned to Britain. Some families also travelled with young native ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ as companions to their children and as cheap domestic servants, whilst others chose adult male servants.2 However, the figure of the travelling ayah became the most visible and publicized of these Indian domestic workers. Even a cursory glance at passenger announcements, advertisements, and articles in newspapers in both India and Britain show that travelling ayahs were discussed far more frequently than male or child ser­ vants. This may have been primarily due to the intimate nature of the ‘care’ services they rendered to ‘vulnerable’ colonial travellers—­women and children.

Travelling Ayahs as Part of the Traffic of Empire Following the establishment of East India Company rule in India, Europeans began settling in India for long periods—­a trend that continued under the British Raj established in 1858. This led to frequent travel by colonial staff and their fam­ ilies between Britain and British India. Such journeys were not comfortable and typically lasted up to seven months prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The opening of the canal, in combination with the replacement of sail by steam, reduced the travel time to two to three weeks. However, even with the significant reduction in travel time, sea travel remained challenging for families and the employment of travelling-­helps provided some comfort to passengers. Consequently, most families who could afford to engage travelling ayahs would eagerly do so.3 One of the earliest references to travelling ayahs in surviving and accessible archival records appears in an East India Company correspondence file dated

2  Examples of such cases can be easily found in: British Library, India Office Records (henceforth BL, IOR) L/PJ/11/8/1968; BL IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801; The National Archives, UK (henceforth TNA), BT 26, P30, I77, and many others. In 1763, Joshua Reynolds painted a portrait of Edward Cruttenden’s children, the Lieutenant-­Governor of Fort William. In the portrait the children were painted with their Indian girl ayah from Bengal, who Cruttenden had sent back to England with his children. See Joshua Reynolds, The Children of Edward Holden Cruttenden and Ayah (1759). The original painting is currently housed in Museum of Arts of Sao Paulo. 3  Britain was not the only place to which ayahs travelled. British families posted to other parts of Europe also employed Indian travelling ayahs to travel with them. There were also few Chinese nurses or maidservants known as amahs who travelled with colonial families. In this study, I focus entirely on Indian travelling ayahs. In my research I found just a few cases of Indian families employing a travelling ayah. This suggests that whilst such relationships were possible, they were probably not common.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  19 March 1730, which is stored within India Office Records. The file consists of a shipping notice to the East India Company office from a shipping company stating that a native servant, Jonana from Bengal, who had arrived in England in February 1730 while attending to Mr Mandeville’s children, was ready to travel back to India. The letter also mentioned that Jonana would pay for her passage back to Bengal and was scheduled to leave on the ship Asiatic.4 The name Jonana warrants some discussion here. While her name is anglicized, the fact that she is described as a Black woman servant and that she was returning to Bengal reveals that she was most likely either an Anglo-­Indian native of India or a native of India who had converted to Christianity and therefore anglicized her name.5 Another important point to note here is that while these women were performing the same jobs during the eighteenth century as a travelling ayah in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term ‘ayah’ was not yet in common use and was rarely used in shipping records or related files during this period. Instead, they were simply recorded as ‘native servants’ or ‘black servants’ attending to women and children onboard. The terms ‘ayah’ and ‘travelling ayah’ become visible in records from the mid-­nineteenth century onwards. While Jonana paid her own passage back to India after serving a family on their voyage to England, the records imply that many employers paid the return passages for their travelling ayahs. For example, a 1743 letter from William Lindsay to the East India Office in London requested permission for passage of a travelling ayah, Isobell Lamingo, to Bengal, India. Lindsay had sent the letter on behalf of his client, Mr George Grays, who had been a surgeon in India and had returned home to Britain in 1742, accompanied by Isobell. In the letter, Isobell is described as a native nurse from Bengal who was hired specifically to take care of Grays’s child during the voyage. The letter further explained that Mr Grays had arranged and paid for Isobell’s passage back to India and that the purpose of the letter was to notify the East India Company office of the intended passage and seek their permission for Isobell’s travel.6 In the absence of passports and visas during this period, these permission letters were required as proof of eligibility for travel both in and out of Britain, especially for non-­British nationals. In such records, which were created as instruments of state surveillance, travelling ayahs who might otherwise remain historically invisible are brought into view, even though only partially. 4  BL, IOR E/1/203, letter 2 March 1730. This was the earliest mention of a travelling ayah or maid mentioned in the archives. However, there is no way of being absolutely sure whether there were others before this—­primarily because of the silences in the archives and the way the individuals were recorded therein. 5  It is also crucial to note the linguistic and geo-­political shifts over time in usage of the term ‘black’. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and sometimes later, ‘black’ was used to describe any person of colour. This could include people of African, South Asian, and Southeast Asian heritage amongst others. 6  BL, IOR E/1/32 ff 71–72V, letter 35, 4 February 1743. In most cases, these permissions were merely for record keeping of the incoming and outgoing passengers.

20  Waiting on Empire While these cases involve passages from Britain to India, similar letters of permission were required when embarking from India to Britain. Some of these are accessible in the Indian archives, although they are few and far between. For instance, in 1835, Mr Dyer wrote to Fort William administrative office requesting a passage approval letter for his travelling ayah, Ameerun, onboard the ship St. Lyco, enroute to Britain.7 Similarly in 1843, Mr and Mrs Campbell sought passage permission for their travelling ayah, Kerameen, who was to proceed with them to England onboard Plantagency.8 Although arrangements for return passages to India differed (e.g., Joanna paid her own way whilst Isobell’s return passage was paid by her employer), the initial passage was always paid for by the employer. The traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain became increasingly noticeable in archival records from the turn of the nineteenth century onwards. The majority of passenger ships outbound from India to Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had travelling ayahs onboard. Figure  3 shows a sample of ayah traffic during this period. While not all travelling ayahs’ passages were accurately recorded and not all records survived, the sampling of a few years available in various archives and various kinds of records allows a rough estimate of the scale of the traffic across time. Newspaper articles and passenger notices during the 1800s and early 1900s make it clear that several travelling ayahs crossed the oceans more than once. For instance, the travelling ayah Mrs Antony 70

NUMBER OF AYAHS

60 50 40 30 20 10

1835 1837 1839 1840 1843 1844 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1919 1920 1921 1922 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

0

YEARS

Fig. 3  Traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain (1835–1940) Note: Not all data from all years is available, but these numbers reflect numbers in the records I could access between archives in UK and India. It is not clear from the figures why some years have lower numbers than the others. This could be related to changing political or economic conditions or it could be that records from some years were less well preserved than others. Source: Compiled from passport records, ship manifests, permission slips, and passage notices 7  West Bengal State Archives (henceforth WBSA), general proceedings, 12 January 1835, no. 28. 8  WBSA, general proceedings, 27 November 1843, no. 99.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  21 Pareira, in an interview with a journalist, claimed that by 1922 she had made at least fifty-­four trips between India and Britain.9 On each of these voyages she would have covered between 7,000–10,000 kilometres—­depending on the port of embarkation, port of disembarkation and months of the year in which the journey was made.10 By the late nineteenth century, travelling ayahs were becoming archivally vis­ible outside administrative records. A newspaper article from 1882 noted that on a P&O passenger ship, it was common to see a ‘swarthy ayah’ playing with her charges whilst ensuring that they didn’t cause chaos and distraction for crew members and passengers.11 Alongside newspaper articles, the presence of travelling ayahs onboard ships was documented in sketches, artwork, and personal photographs. For instance, in Figure  4, a travelling ayah is depicted onboard a ship bound for Britain, managing her charge whilst Christmas dinner is served at sea. The travelling ayah is the central figure in the image. Similarly, Figure  5 depicts an artist’s impression of a travelling ayah entertaining an infant onboard ship. The title of the sketch ‘A Study in Black and White in the Bay of Bengal’, most likely refers to the travelling ayah and her charge, respectively. Figure  6 shows how a travelling ayah worked hard to keep her charge entertained throughout the long and strenuous journey. Finally, there also remain personal photographs in the archives like that of infant Sandie Marie Sands (nee Sandie Marie Drew) and her travelling ayah onboard S.S. Ludhiana in 1904.12 While no further record of the travelling ayah is found in the archives, the fact that Sandie kept this image in her personal album till she passed in 1969 in London hints towards some attachment to the travelling ayah.13 Compiling data from various ship’s manifests, newspaper shipping notices, and immigration records we can also see which ports in India and Britain were most used by travelling ayahs. Figure 7 and Figure 8 show heat maps of the ports from which travelling ayahs embarked and disembarked. Figure 7 reveals that Calcutta was the most popular port of embarkation for travelling ayahs departing from India, followed by Madras and Bombay. Figure 8 reveals that travelling ayahs and their employers most frequently disembarked in London, followed by Southampton and Plymouth.

9  London City Mission (henceforth LCM), A. C. Marshall, ‘Human Birds of Passage’, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, 104–6. 10  Travel during certain periods of the year took longer due to the weather conditions. 11 BNA, Pall Mall Gazette, 9 October 1882. 12  Unfortunately, Ancestry was not able to provide me permissions for this image and consequently I could not include it here. (See https://www.ancestry.co.uk/mediaui-­viewer/tree/48552816/person/ 12905352629/media/cb35be65-­62c9-­4e3e-­bef4-­ed659e0b6349?_phsrc=sMn264&_phstart=success Source&_ga=2.268938225.1682038144.1660660398-­925215064.1660660390.) 13  Ancestry photos and ship passage records for Sannie Drew. The image with her ayah was found in her album. (See https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-­tree/person/tree/48552816/person/12905352629/facts.)

22  Waiting on Empire

Fig. 4  Children’s Christmas dinner at sea by Godefroy Durand (1889) Source: Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  23

Fig. 5  Looking after a British baby, Victorian, nineteenth-­century sketch by Duncan 1890 Source: Private collection, Getty Images

‘Figuring’ Travelling Ayahs Unlike other migrant workers shipped across the Empire, such as indentured labourers or ‘coolies’, travelling ayahs were not sought from particular regions or castes.14 Travelling ayahs were recruited from all over India: Lahore, Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Gujarat, Bengal, Kerala, and other places. The castes of travelling ayahs also varied, unlike those of ayahs who served colonial families in India, who Alison Blunt has shown, ‘frequently came from the sweeper caste and were often married to the sweeper working within British households’.15 There were travelling ayahs who reported in their travel documents that they belonged to Ayer and Zamindar castes. For instance, Mrs Ammonie Chinnen Ayer, identified herself as an Ayer—­a Tamil Brahmin caste.16 Similarly, Mst Zainab Bibi, identified her class and caste as Zamindari (landowning caste).17 However, what was their economic situation despite their higher caste and whether the women 14  Gaiutra Bahadur, ‘Coolie Women Are in Demand Here’, Virginia Quarterly Review 87.2 (2011): 49–61; Arunima Datta, Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Brij  V.  Lal, Kunti’s Cry: On a Journey through Indenture in Fiji (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2012). 15 Alison Blunt, ‘Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886–1925’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24.4 (1999): 421–40. 16  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/201. 17  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/2512.

24  Waiting on Empire

Fig. 6  English girl and her Indian nanny or ayah, sailing to England, watch pet parrot and monkey, Victorian, 1880s, nineteenth century Source: Digital Vision Vectors, Getty Images

agreed to be a travelling ayah for their passion to travel or in dire financial need, we can never know. Travelling ayahs varied in their religion too. Christians and Hindus were the most common religions recorded but there were also travelling ayahs from other faiths (see Figure 9). The permission slips and ships passage records before the late nineteenth century include little detail. Particularly the ship manifests anonymized the travelling ayahs’ names and made them distinguishable only based on age. However, sometimes the ages were not recorded and in such cases the travelling

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  25

Karachi .47% Bombay 26%

Calcutta 41%

Madras 32.4%

Fig. 7  Ports from which travelling ayahs most commonly embarked in India (1876–1940) Source: Data compiled from ship manifests, immigration records, and newspaper shipping notices which offered details about ports

ayahs became unrecognizable or identifiable in the records. Moreover, with no passport requirements during this period demographic information is difficult to come by.18 From 1920 onwards, passports were required and these included more detailed information which, combined with ships’ passage records, allows the identification of some demographic trends amongst travelling ayahs: 38% of travelling ayahs were aged between 30 and 39 years; 40- to 49-­year-­old women formed about 30%; whilst 23% were aged 20 to 29 (see Figure 10). Most travelling ayahs, then, were aged between 20 and 49 with the largest group being in their thirties. While travelling ayahs belonged to various marital groups: married, widowed, or single (see Figure  11 a and b),19 a sweeping majority of 95%, irrespective of their marital status, had no children. Only 3% of travelling ayahs had children who were left behind while they travelled (see Figure 12).20 Therefore, childlessness 18  For detailed discussion on demographic information as available from passports see the Profiles section in this book. 19  Two separate figures because the details in the two separate sources of data were not comparable in terms of the groups. While passports specifically mentioned single, married, and widows as marital status, the ship manifests only had two categories: single and married; and there is no way of knowing if the single category accounted for spinsters and widows or only spinsters. 20  For determining marital status, I exclusively relied on passports as they provide reliable archival data. While ship passage records also recorded single/married status, there is no way of knowing if the ‘single’ category meant the ayah was travelling alone or was being categorized as maritally single or a widow. The lack of standard practices in recording demographic details of travelling ayahs played a role in making them archivally ‘invisible’.

26  Waiting on Empire

Liverpool 3.8%

London 64.7%

Southampton 22.4%

Plymouth 12.7%

.8% Tillbury

Fig. 8  Ports where travelling ayahs most commonly disembarked in Britain (1876–1940) Source: Data compiled from ships’ manifests, immigration records, and newspaper shipping notices which offered details about ports

.8% .14%

21%

46% 32%

Christians Hindus Not available Muslims Other

Fig. 9  Religion of travelling ayahs Source: Compiled from travelling ayahs’ passports from 1920–40 (no other passage records provide information about their religion)

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  27 .67% .33%

23.3%

.83% 7% 60–69 years old 50–59 years old 40–49 years old 30–39 years old 20–29 years old 10–19 years old 0–9 years old

38.5% 29.9%

Fig. 10  Age groups of travelling ayahs Source: compiled from ship manifests and passports (1871–1940)

emerges as a shared or common characteristic amongst the majority of travelling ayahs. This demographic profile may be because childless women were more likely to seek overseas employment, perhaps as a way to negotiate a tem­poral escape from the gendered burdens of being a widow or a spinster in a society that did not necessarily favour ‘single’ women. It could also be because employers preferred to hire women who did not have any other ‘mothering’ duties or attachments to home, or it could be due to a combination of both dynamics. Irrespective of their motherhood and marital status, almost all surviving records of travelling ayahs reveal that they travelled alone; those who were wives or mothers left their family in India while they travelled overseas.21 In regard to religion, 46%, by far the largest group, were Christians, making Christians massively over-­represented in relation to their presence in the population; 32% were Hindus and 21% Muslims (see Figure 9). The reasons for the over-­ representation of Christians cannot be ascertained from the available records, but there are a number of possible factors. It may be that travelling ayahs of Christian faith felt more comfortable crossing the kala pani without the fear of losing caste.22 It is possible that European families preferred to entrust their children to Christian women rather than Indians of other religions. It is also possible that the close contact between travelling ayahs and Europeans exposed travelling ayahs to Christianity and that they saw either spiritual or material benefits in conversion.

21  The motherhood status of 2% of travelling ayahs was unavailable in the records. For more discussion of travelling ayahs who left behind children and husbands, see Chapter 3. 22  Kala pani translates literally as ‘black water’ and refers to the Hindu proscription on crossing seas to foreign lands which is understood to lead to a loss of purity.

28  Waiting on Empire

21% 52% 27%

Married Widow Single

14.4%

27.4%

58.2%

Married NA Single

Fig. 11  Marital status of travelling ayahs Source: (a) Compiled from passports (1920–40); (b) Compiled from ships’ manifests (1871–1940)

Nevertheless, the fact that there were significant numbers of Hindu and Muslim travelling ayahs suggest that neither religion nor caste anxiety were de­cisive factors in determining who entered the profession. While the above discussion shows some common identities amongst travelling ayahs, some strikingly uncommon identities also appear in the archival records. Some records show that ‘child ayahs’ could be recruited as young as 4 or 5 years of age. A record from 1892 reveals that Mrs Colgrave travelled with her child and infant along with a ‘child ayah’ of 4 years of age from Bombay to London.23 Similarly, in 1900 a travelling child ayah, Mariammah, was brought to Britain by

23  TNA, BT 26, P30, I77.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  29

2% 3%

Without children With children No data available

Fig. 12  Motherhood status of travelling ayahs Source: Compiled from passports (1920–40); only passports recorded this kind of data

her employers, in the capacity of a ‘child servant’.24 In 1937, another case of a child travelling ayah appears in the archives, wherein a child travelling ayah named Suzanne was brought to Britain by her employers but was eventually dismissed and sent to the Ayahs’ Home.25 While little information on the origins or use of child travelling ayahs is available, it seems likely that they were employed as playmates for the employers’ children onboard ship and may have been employed as servants as they grew older. There were also male travelling ayahs whose identities become visible mostly in ship manifests (see Table 1). While this is clearly a remarkably interesting find, due to the focus of this project being female travelling ayahs and the source of male travelling ayahs being limited to these few ship manifests I am unable to explore more on the male travelling ayahs at this moment. To sum up, travelling ayahs were usually aged between 20 and 50, with most being in their thirties; they came from a broad range of religious and caste backgrounds but Christians were significantly over-­represented in the profession; further, whilst travelling ayahs could be single, married or widowed, the vast majority of them were childless.

24 BNA, South Wales Echo, 8 December 1900. 25 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, 1938, 144.

Table 1  Male travelling ayahs Name

Employer

Marital Status

Age

From

To

Ship

Travel date

Ayah Ayah Ayah Ayah Ayah Mullin’s Ayah Ayah Mrs David Chotey Ayah

Mrs Pogson Mr Lackinstern Rev. & Mrs Dodson McPherson Mrs Smith Mr & Mrs Mullins Mr & Mrs David S. Nazir Alam

Married Married Married Married Married Single NA Single

34 30 30 42 42 54 NA NA

Madras Calcutta Madras Calcutta Calcutta Bombay Madras London

London London London London London Plymouth Plymouth Bombay

Manora Dunera Dunera Monebassa Monebassa China Manora P&O Strathaird

April 1892 July 1895 April 1896 April 1897 April 1897 May 1900 March 1905 October 1938

Source: Compiled from ship manifests between 1800 and 1940 (between India and Britain, both ways)

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  31

Becoming a Travelling Ayah The absence of adequate archival records makes it difficult to suggest definitively how travelling ayahs were recruited. Nonetheless, it is clear from the available sources that in some instances, travelling ayahs were initially engaged as domestic servants in India, and subsequently agreed to travel with their employers, most frequently when their mistresses travelled alone or with children.26 Sometimes, women who became travelling ayahs in this ad hoc fashion found the profession congenial and took employment on other voyages, sometimes remaining constantly mobile for years. For instance, one travelling ayah employed by a local planter in India moved to Malaya with the family and when the planter’s family subsequently visited England, the ayah went with them. Eventually, following the dissolution of the service contract with that family, she continued to work as a travelling ayah for other families.27 However, there were also women who refused to serve as ayahs in India but were eager to be employed as travelling ayahs onboard passenger ships to Britain.28 Again, motives are impossible to discern from the records, but these could range from money to desire for travel and adventure, or the opportunity to escape oppressive relationships or social situ­ ations in India. For travelling ayahs not already employed by families in India, servant brokering agencies and newspaper advertisements played crucial roles in finding employment opportunities. By the late 1880s, both domestic servant agencies and individual employers were frequently advertising in local newspapers across India for travelling ayahs. For instance, in the late 1800s, Geo. W. Wheatley & Co. in Bombay regularly advertised their brokering services to families travelling to Britain who required travelling ayahs.29 Their advertisements appeared in local newspapers, mainly the Times of India and Indian Statesmen. Similar services were offered and advertised by the Servants’ Agency Office in Karachi.30 In southwest India, during the early 1900s, the Domestic Servants’ Agency in Bombay frequently advertised its brokering services for travelling families, offering travelling ayahs, servants, cooks, and butlers.31 In east India, Messrs Carlyle and Company Servants Agency at 27 Waterloo Street offered similar services to patrons in Bengal Presidency.32 The presence of such servant brokering agencies across India suggests that there was both a clear demand for travelling ayahs in 26 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, November 1858, 291. 27  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1957, file 915 (1928); Arkib Negara 1957/0629473 (1913). 28  Catharine Peirira and Minnie Green are two examples of women who regularly worked as travelling ayahs but were reluctant to serve as ayahs when in India. See BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1631/6640 for Catherine’s case; see BNA, Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 4 September 1892 for Minnie’s case. 29 BNA, Indian Statesmen, 5 February 1872. 30 BNA, Civil and Military Gazette, 14 March 1889. 31 BNA, Civil and Military Gazette, 31 October 1905. 32  BL, IOR PJ/6/1023, file 2801, 1910.

32  Waiting on Empire the subcontinent and a significant number of women seeking employment in such roles. British colonial families who could not persuade their domestic ayah to travel with them and who did not wish to turn to brokering agencies often advertised personally for a travelling ayah in local newspapers. For instance, in 1907, Mrs Leslie Jones advertised in the Civil and Military Gazette as follows: ‘Wanted at Once. A good Child’s AYAH, who will do night work and go to England in April.’33 Some prospective employers were more detailed in their advertisements, another advertisement in the Civil & Military Gazette read: ‘WANTED. A good AYAH for a lady going Home in April next with two children, aged 4 and 1 year, respectively; must be a good sailor, thoroughly experienced with children and used to travelling. Apply, stating terms, &c., to ‘M.B’ general Post Office, Lahore.’34 A similar advertisement in the Times of India read: ‘EXPERIENCED AYAH WANTED for voyage to England in April, must be a good sailor and accustomed to young children. Apply stating terms to “S” .’35 These somewhat formulaic ad­vert­ise­ments make it apparent what qualities employers often sought in a travelling ayah. Experience with children, experience in travelling, and being a ‘good sailor’, understood as meaning able to manage seasickness, were paramount. It seems clear that families wanted to hire somebody capable of caring for them, and particularly for their children, in the challenging conditions of a long sea journey: they did not want to find themselves responsible for a seasick travelling ayah who was incapable of working. Brokers and prospective employers were not the only ones making use of newspapers to advertise for travelling ayahs. Sometimes, travelling ayahs desirous of serving families themselves took the initiative to advertise their services in local newspapers. In 1865, a travelling ayah from Calcutta advertised: ‘Calcutta Ayah wishes to proceed to England in charge of a lady or children. Can be highly recommended by her present employer.’36 Similarly in 1878, a travelling ayah’s advertisement in the Times of India read: ‘An experienced ayah is desirous of an engagement to accompany a Lady and children to England. First Class References.’37 In the same year another advertisement read: ‘An experienced Mahomedan Ayah WANTS TO ACCOMPANY a LADY to ENGLAND not later than next July, she has made several voyages with a family to ENGLAND and can give certificates and references.’38 These advertisements show that significant numbers of women had established themselves in the profession of travelling

33 BNA, Civil and Military Gazette, 12 January 1907. 34 BNA, Civil and Military Gazette, 20 January 1890. 35 BNA, Times of India, 24 February 1886. 36 BNA, Times of India, 11 February 1864. The advertisement could be put forward by the travelling ayah herself or she might have requested the help of her employer to do so. 37 BNA, Times of India, 1 November 1878. 38 BNA, Times of India, 2 July 1878.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  33 ayah, that they were actively seeking further such employment and that they knew what made them desirable candidates in the eyes of prospective employers. Accordingly, travelling ayahs, sometimes with the help of brokering agencies, highlighted those traits and characteristics that employers frequently ranked highly: prior experience, being good with children, being good sailors, ability to speak English, and quality of references. The agency of these women is apparent in these adverts: however they may have come into the profession, by accident or design, it is clear that this is a career that they find rewarding enough to deliberately pursue. Once recruited, some employers provided their travelling ayahs some funds to buy clothing appropriate for the long voyage and to the weather in Britain. The employer was also required to arrange for the travelling ayah’s travel documents, including tickets, permission slips, and from 1920 onwards passports.39 Over the period from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, the EIC, and then the India Office in London, required employers to complete various forms of documentation before the movement of travelling ayahs was approved. Consequently, after accepting employment by a family, travelling ayahs usually faced a brief period of waiting before their voyage began.

Negotiating Responsibilities Onboard Ship: The Everyday Experiences of Travelling Ayahs Once onboard, travelling ayahs had to constantly juggle a myriad of roles and responsibilities. Whilst ayahs in colonial households in India had clearly defined responsibilities, primarily childcare, travelling ayahs were often expected to fill multiple roles as nanny, cook, laundry-­maid, and caregiver to the entire family. Essentially, travelling ayahs were expected to make the experience of families aboard ship equivalent to being in a floating hotel in which all their needs were met. These increased responsibilities were reflected in significantly better payments for travelling ayahs, which may have attracted women into the profession, despite the fact that these payments may not always have been commensurate with the potentially onerous nature of the work. During the early twentieth century, an ayah serving a colonial family in India would earn anywhere between five to twelve rupees,40 whereas the pay for travelling ayahs usually ranged from one

39  After 1920, primarily because of the outbreak of the World War II and Britain’s need to increase surveillance on travellers, passports became mandatory for all travellers in and out of Britain and hence for the first-­time passports were required for travelling ayahs too. 40 R. Riddle, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book (Bombay: Bombay Gazette Press, 1852): 3–5. Note: unfortunately, Riddle does not specify whether this was monthly or weekly rate. However, it can be estimated that this was a monthly wage for the ayahs in India.

34  Waiting on Empire hundred and twenty-­five to one hundred and fifty rupees for two to three weeks of work during the voyage.41 Once aboard, travelling ayahs were expected to relieve the lady and her family of all daily chores, from stowing the baggage, bathing children, ensuring the children get their daily exercise, doing laundry, and preparing meals, to playing with children on deck, whilst ensuring that over-­adventurous children were kept out of harm’s way.42 While attending to all such responsibilities, travelling ayahs were also expected to ensure that the children did not cause any distraction to the work of the crew and the social lives of other passengers. Although the work of the travelling ayahs seemed to have been largely taken for granted by their employers, a number of newspaper articles and op-­eds based on observers’ reports reveal the significance of their roles onboard ship. A newspaper article in the Madras Weekly Mail in 1902 stated that a P&O steamer without an Ayah ‘would be as distracted as Piccadilly without Policemen’.43 The author, himself a traveller from Britain to India, focused on the extraordinary service of Mary ayah, a travelling ayah from Madras who was on her way to Britain while serving a family with children. The author heaped praise on Mary ayah for keeping order onboard, keeping the children entertained, and ensuring that they did not harass crew members and cause disturbance or distraction to their parents and other passengers. The writer also noted that Mary ayah managed sea-­sickness and home-­sickness amongst children and adults alike. The account suggests that Mary ayah and others like her served as nurses, caregivers, and therapists during their journeys between Britain and the Indian subcontinent. While highlighting the absolute necessity of a travelling ayah for British travelling families, the author compared Mary ayah and her brethren to nuns: ‘She does a nun’s work, but being paid for doing it.’44 This comment shows an ambivalence about the role of travelling ayahs. It was apparent to the author that the demanding character of a travelling ayah’s role required the dedication of a spiritual vocation, yet the relationships in which travelling ayahs were involved were not charitable but transactional. Travelling ayahs had no desire to be saints: the demanding nature of their work was a result of ex­ploit­ation as much as personal commitment. Large families, which were common at the time, may have posed particular challenges for travelling ayahs. In 1796, Mr Wronghton and his family hired a travelling ayah named Domingas Gomes to attend to his seven children—­James, William, Thomas, Richard, Sophia, Fanny, and Charlotte—­ aboard the ship Favorite, on passage from India destined for England.45 Like the travelling 41  This was the usual rate between the 1900s and 1930s. See BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023/2801 and BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1260/2966. 42 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, 104–6; BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886; BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 43 BNA, Madras Weekly Mail, 26 June 1902. 44 BNA, Madras Weekly Mail, 26 June 1902. 45  TNA, Home Department, Public Branch, 1796, O.C., 2 May, no. 43.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  35 ayahs Jonana and Isobell discussed above, Domingas Gomes’s name, which is of Portuguese origin, suggests that she was probably a Christian convert or a member of the European-­Indian community in India. The case of Domingas Gomes was not an exception, there are many other cases across various archives—­newspaper passage notices, passage slips, immigration records and more—­which reveal travelling ayahs serving large families such as the Wroughtons. Whilst travelling ayahs most frequently accompanied complete families or children with at least one adult parent or relative, there were times when the travelling ayahs took on sole responsibility for British children on passage. Sometimes, parents chose to send their children back to Britain and were unable to accompany them, entrusting their welfare and safety entirely to an Indian travelling ayah.46 The travelling ayahs in such cases thus served as personal child couriers. In 1837, for instance, Choonee Ayah travelled with Mr  F.  M.  Reid’s children from Calcutta to London. Similarly, in 1891, Mary Ayah travelled the same route with her charge, Charles Mathews,47 and in 1893 the Remsburg’s hired a travelling ayah to accompany their infant from Bombay to London by herself.48 In such cases, travelling ayahs were solely responsible not only for the comfort of their charges but also for their safety and broader well-­being. Children and travelling ayahs must have become emotionally close, at least sometimes if not always,49 particularly when travelling without parents, only to be separated at the end of the voyage. At the same time, travelling ayahs could be under enormous pressure in dealing with both children and their employers during the difficult voyages. Because we do not have access to the voices of travelling ayahs themselves, it is impossible to know to what extent they found the extra responsibility irksome or to what extent being able to care for children without having to respond to the everyday demands of parents was a relief. The extent to which the demands of both children and adults could take an overwhelming toll on travelling ayahs became manifest in a tragic incident onboard the steamship Violette, on passage to Plymouth in 1885, when Mrs Abbott reprimanded her travelling ayah for being careless toward the children in her charge. The travelling ayah seized the Abbotts’ eldest daughter and threw her overboard. Moments later, she threw herself into the sea. Although the ship was stopped, neither the child nor the travelling ayah could be rescued.50 46  European children were often sent back to Britain for educational or health reasons or for vacation. Often these children lived with their relatives in Britain until they were returned to India, or their parents came to Britain. 47  WBSA, general proceedings, 5 April 1837, no. 38; TNA, BT26, P16, I66. 48  TNA, BT 26, P42, I42. 49  There are some ayahs’ pictures in scrapbooks that families kept after returning to Britain and also the emotional bonds between the children and the travelling ayahs become visible in children’s literature produced in Britain (discussed in the last section of this chapter). 50  While this case involved a Japanese travelling ayah and not an Indian travelling ayah, it is a telling example of the taxing labour experiences that the travelling ayahs had onboard. This case was widely

36  Waiting on Empire Other travelling ayahs expressed their grievances in less extreme ways. From time to time, reports appear in the archives which make it evident that travelling ayahs felt overwhelmed by the work assigned to them and found ways of resisting and challenging the expectations of their employers. For instance, in 1876, Peerun Ayah constantly made her dissatisfaction with her onerous workload known to her employer, Mrs Field, during their voyage from Britain to Calcutta. When they landed and Peerun Ayah was not paid the wages that she thought were due to her, she took the case to the local civil court in Calcutta. The case was decided in favour of the employer, Mrs Field, and it was stated that as Peerun Ayah had ‘misbehaved’ and did not work as her employers expected, she would not be paid her due.51 Although the case was decided against Peerun Ayah, it shows that she was prepared to fight for her rights and challenge what she saw as an unacceptable workload. In another case from 1885, a travelling ayah serving a retired Major and his family on their way back to Britain from India was reported to have dragged her feet and refused to work at the pace her employers demanded. The record states, that the ayah ‘repeatedly refused to work and was guilty of insolence’.52 While the Major paid her wages, he refused to pay her passage back to India. This is another case showing that travelling ayahs were not always prepared to accept subordinate status and were sometimes willing to challenge demands they saw as excessive. Other than exploitative employers, and less than ideal working conditions, travelling ayahs also faced the same dangers as other seafarers. Although these reduced with time and improving technologies, they were never completely absent and were exacerbated in wartime. In 1892, for example, a ship travelling from India to Liverpool sank. Amongst the casualties were three travelling ayahs. However, because of the lack of detail in ship’s manifests, which do not record the names or other identifying characteristics of the travelling ayahs, identification of those who drowned is impossible.53 In 1915, Mary Fernandez, a 30-­year-­old ayah serving Mrs Bird, Mrs McGinn’s Ayah (age and name not listed), and Mrs Mand’s Ayah (age and name not listed) drowned on their way to Britain when the S.S. Persia, a P&O passenger liner, was torpedoed and sunk without warning by a German U-­boat, U-­38; 343 out of a total of 519 passengers died in the incident.54 There were also cases wherein travelling ayahs embarked on the long voyage, knowing or not knowing, while they were pregnant. There are at least two cases where travelling ayahs had their children onboard. In 1857, onboard ship Theresa enroute to London, Meran ayah delivered her son named Muryo on 25 July.55 Similarly, in 1858, onboard ship Blenheim enroute to London, Emma ayah had a covered in multiple newspapers in Britain. See BNA, Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 June 1885; BNA, The Herald, 13 June 1885; BNA, Lancaster Gazette, 10 June 1885, and many more. 51  BL, IOR V27-­142-­21. 52  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/158-­1282. 53 BNA, St. Andrews Citizen, 5 November 1892. 54  TNA, UK BT 99-­3112-­25G. 55  TNA, BT 158, P1.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  37 daughter on 19 September 1858. Emma’s daughter’s name was not registered, suggesting that the child might have died at birth or was not recorded by the ship master.56 No further information about either case are available and hence there is no way of knowing what happened to them thereafter. Alongside all these challenges, travel onboard could potentially be isolating and lonely for travelling ayahs. Passenger ship manifests between late 1800s to 1940s show most passenger ships would have at least two to three travelling ayahs onboard, and sometimes more. For instance, S.S. Golconda, sailing from Calcutta to London in 1891, had seven travelling ayahs onboard.57 Similarly in 1894, S.S.  Peninsula, sailing from Bombay to London carried five travelling ayahs.58 Travelling ayahs embarking in the same city are likely to have had similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and even if they did not, there was a cultural fa­mil­ iar­ity, and most could communicate at least in some English (as a common language).59 It is likely, therefore, that they would have been able to create a sense of community and support one another. The records also reveal, however, that there were numerous ships between 1891 and 1940 (see Table 2) which only had one travelling ayah onboard. For first-­time travelling ayahs in particular, with their closest relationships onboard being with their European employers and the children for whom they cared, the lack of peer support could have led to isolation and loneliness. Whether travelling ayahs would have been able to, or would have wanted to form supportive relationships with others onboard, such as European servants or lascar seafarers, is simply impossible to know from the terse ­documentation available. Nonetheless, the dangers of the sea, the stresses of travelling with strangers to foreign lands, the taxing physical and psychological demands of the job, and the many uncertainties attached to working as a travelling ayah do not appear to have reduced the traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain. Industrious travelling ayahs capitalized on the widespread demand for their services and were able to secure successive positions advertised in newspapers with families travelling between India and Britain.60 The redoubtable Mrs Antony Pareira, who as noted 56  TNA, BT 158, P2. 57  TNA UK, BT26, P16, I66. 58  TNA UK, BT 26, P58, I57. 59  Some records claim that most travelling ayahs could speak English (to varying degrees). See BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 60  Many newspapers carried advertisements from Indian women seeking employment as travelling ayahs on passage to India and from families looking for ayahs to travel with them to India. Newspapers wherein such advertisements commonly appeared included the East London Observer, Bradford Observer, Homeward Mail from India, Hereford Times, Portsmouth Evening News, Mid-­Sussex Times, The Era, China and the East, Northern Whig (Belfast), Hampshire Independent, Sheffield Independent, Aberdeen Free Press, Shields Daily Gazette, Belfast Morning News, Cheltenham Looker-­On, Cheltenham Chronicle, Western Daily Press, Daily Mirror, Western Morning News, Liverpool Echo, Liverpool Daily Post, Buchan Observer, and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser, showing that ayahs were in demand throughout the British Isles. Similarly, many newspapers based in India carried advertisements from Indian women seeking employment as travelling ayahs for passages to Britain. Most frequently these advertisements were found in the Times of India, Madras Mail, and Bombay Gazette.

38  Waiting on Empire Table 2  Ships with only one travelling ayah onboard for ships travelling to Britain (1890–1940) Year

Identity of ayah (as per ship manifests)

Ship

1891 1891 1891 1891 1891 1891 1892 1892 1892 1893 1893 1893 1893 1894 1894 1894 1894 1894 1895 1895 1895 1896 1896 1896 1897 1897 1898 1899 1899 1900 1900 1900 1902 1903 1906 1907 1907 1907 1908 1908 1909 1910 1910 1911 1913 1914 1919

Mrs Middleton’s Ayah Mr Beineiy’s Ayah Mrs Palmer’s Ayah Wotin Ayah Simon Ayah Mr Peppe’s Ayah One Ayah Mrs Barter’s Ayah Marie Ayah Mrs Vane’s Ayah Mrs Couller’s Ayah Ayah Mrs Uloth’s Ayah Mrs Llyod’s Ayah Mary Ayah Mrs Grova’s Ayah Mrs Morcou’s Ayah Mrs Slaughter’s Ayah Mrs Evan’s Ayah Ayah Mrs Hunter’s Ayah Mrs Weir’s Ayah Mrs Anderson’s Ayah Ayah Mrs Connell’s Ayah Mrs Thomson’s Ayah One Ayah Mrs Stock’s Ayah Native Ayah Mrs Mill’s Ayah Ayah Native Ayah One Ayah Ondatchy Ayah One Native Ayah Ane Ayah Reverend Sandy’s Ayah Mrs Branden’s Ayah Mr Gill’s Ayah Ayah Jula Kanoo Ayah One Ayah Kumariya Ayah Madras Ayah Mrs William’s Ayah Antonia Ayah Infant George’s Ayah

Parramatta Valetta Bengal Manora Orizaba Oceana Dunera Manora Rewa Chusan Khedva Dunera Ruahine Goorkha Golconda Shannon Khedive Umfuli Ormuz Peshawar Parrametta Bengal Thames Rewa Rewa Borneo Rewa Sumatra Cheshire Valetta Golconda Lancashire Mombasa Cheshire Golconda Golconda City of York Oceana City of Calcutta Massila Umzumbi Mombasa City of Corinth Caledonia Trafford Hall Mashobra City of London

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  39 1920 1922 1925 1926 1927 1927

Mr Robt’s Ayah, accompanying infant Marianbie Ayah Lizzie Ayah Muthama Ayah E. Hunshila Ayah Kammi Ayah

City of London Frankenfels Ranpura Matiana City of Simla California

Source: Compiled from NA, UK BT26, incoming passenger records from ship manifests

above made over fifty voyages, exemplifies both the resilience of the travelling ayahs and the determination of many to persevere in the profession.61

Subaltern Journeys: Relied Upon Yet Excluded Serving the Empire through their labour of care, travelling ayahs navigated the globe in significant numbers, becoming a common sight on passenger ships between the Raj and the imperial metropole, as well as in Britain itself, by the nineteenth century. While the love, loyalty, and responsibility of the travelling ayahs were appreciated and valourized by many, as exemplified in the newspaper articles and illustrations discussed above, travelling ayahs were simultaneously subject to exclusion, neglect, and distrust from employers. Travelling ayahs were regularly reminded of their class and racial ‘belongings’ through their treatment and working conditions onboard ships—­especially when they were housed carelessly on decks and were limited in what they could and couldn’t do on the ‘floating hotels’.62 Despite the intimate reliance of colonial families on travelling ayahs, and their demanding workloads, travelling ayahs were rarely provided much comfort onboard ship and their sleeping quarters were physically distanced from those of their charges and employers. While the employing family travelled on first or sometimes second-­class tickets, travelling ayahs were almost always given deck-­class passages.63 On older ships in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were no proper beds on decks. Consequently, travelling ayahs carried mattresses onboard which they could roll out only at night, being required to keep them stowed during daytime. From the 1920s onward, there were noticeable efforts made on various passenger ships to introduce specific amenities for native servants travelling onboard. For instance, in 1927, the P&O ship Mongolia boasted of its ‘Ayahs’ Washplace’ and ‘Ayah Lavatories’ as a new addition to 61  LCM, A. C. Marshall, ‘Nurses of Our Ocean Highways’, The Quiver (1922): 104–6. 62 BNA, Madras Weekly Mail, 26 June 1902. 63  Passenger lists show that ayahs were almost always embarked as deck passengers.

40  Waiting on Empire ‘east-­going steamers, whose European passengers are frequently accompanied by native servants’.64 Similar provisions can be found on the plans of the 1925 Ranchi & Ranpura steamships and the 1924 Cathay steamship, all of which are on display at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. In 1928, the blueprint for the Viceroy of India featured a dedicated travelling ayahs’ quarter with double bunk beds on Deck E, below the space for the ship’s crew (See Fig. 13).65 While these provisions were undoubtedly an improvement, their introduction highlights the reality that for over a century previously, travelling ayahs had to share these util­ities with passengers from other classes. It is likely, therefore, that these provisions derived from a concern to maintain racial and class segregation as much as a concern for the welfare of travelling ayahs. Records from 1900s show that only when travelling ayahs travelled alone with their charges, without their adult employers, did they travel in first class alongside the children they cared for to ensure the latter’s safety. For instance, in May 1911 Syadmmah ayah travelled onboard Martaban to Liverpool, with the McIntyre children: John, Elizabeth, Robert, and Ralph, all between 1 and 12 years of age. As the only accompanying adult, she travelled in the same class of passage with them.66 Similarly, in April 1912, when Mrs Croft’s child travelled from Bombay to London aboard the P&O ship Persia, unaccompanied by her parents or relatives, the accompanying travelling ayah travelled with the child in the same class of travel.67 Sometimes racial and class segregation was enforced by shipping lines, regardless of the wishes of employers. For instance, the 1913 onboard rules of a P&O passenger ship plying between India and Britain via the Suez Canal read ‘servants and ayahs . . . are permitted to be in their masters’ or mistresses’ cabins only while performing their duties’.68 In contrast, perusal of passenger lists shows that European servants were rarely given a deck-­class passage. More strikingly, no matter how menial their job, European servants were acknowledged by having their name, and usually their age, recorded in ships’ passage records and were almost always accorded a title (Miss, Mrs, Mr). Travelling ayahs, on the other hand, rarely had any name, let alone their full name, recorded, in ship manifests, thus remaining nameless ‘servants’ or ‘ayahs’ on ships’ passage slips, denied any recognition of their individuality.69 Frequently, the travelling 64  ‘The P&O Str. Mongolia: Newest Addition to the P&O Fleet Now in Shanghai’, North China Herald, 5 March 1927, 374. 65  Heloise Finch-­Boyer, ‘Lascars through the Colonial Lens: Reconsidering Visual Sources of South Asian Sailors from the Twentieth Century’, Journal for Maritime Research 16.2 (2014): 259. 66  TNA, BT 26, P468, inward passenger list, 1911. 67  Possibly in the same cabin too. TNA, BT 26, P532, inward passenger list, 1912. 68  ‘Suez Route’, in An Official Guide to Eastern Asia: Transcontinental Connections between Europe and Asia, vol. 1, 1913, p. xxxviii. 69  Other immigration records like passports and passage slips offer more visibility into the names and other demographic information of the travelling ayahs.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  41

Fig. 13  Structural plan of a deck on Viceroy of India, 1928 (Ranchi & Ranpura, 1925, and the Cathay, 1924, had similar architectural plans) Source: Plans at display National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Credit: © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

ayahs were listed as if they were their employer’s possessions. For example, the 1893 ship’s manifest of S.S.  Peshawar recorded its onboard travelling ayahs as: ‘Mrs Cook’s Ayah’, ‘Mrs Payne’s Ayah’. The names of their employers were recorded but the personhood of the travelling ayahs themselves was not acknowledged.70 Much like the tagging of luggage on today’s passenger flights, travelling ayahs appear to have been regarded more as objects than as persons by official record-­ keepers. In some cases, travelling ayahs were recorded only in groups without any other identifying details or even their employer’s names. For instance, in 1921 the ship’s manifest of City of Benaras carelessly registered ‘3 ayahs’ in the passenger list and only mentioned that they embarked from Calcutta and were bound for London. No other details were provided.71 Such careless anonymizing of travelling ayahs was not only disrespectful but could also have had deeply damaging consequences. In case of accidents or other issues, there would be no way of knowing which travelling ayah was affected or who to inform. In 1830, Shaikh 70  TNA, BT 26, P43, I13.

71  TNA, BT 26, P698, I104.

42  Waiting on Empire Joomun Hedmutgar, the son of a travelling ayah, Hingun, wrote to the Governor General in India to enquire the whereabouts of Hingun who had travelled to Britain with Miss Marcus early in 1827. Based on the fact that the employers did not know her whereabouts, the government and Shaikh came to the conclusion that Hingun might have died.72 Did she die on her way back home? Or did she die whilst in Britain? Or did she change her name and remain in Britain? While there is no way of knowing for sure, this case exemplifies how anonymity in ship records could be detrimental especially when relatives of travelling ayahs tried to look for them or when their relatives needed to be informed on the occurrence of unfortunate events. However, there were a few rare exceptions to the trend of treating travelling ayahs as anonymous commodities. The S.S.  Golconda’s manifests of 1891 and 1901 registered the name, marital status, and in 1901 the age of every travelling ayah onboard (see Table 3). A caveat is necessary here about the way in which the names of the travelling ayahs and their employers appear in various archives, like ship manifests, ­passports, and case files in India Office Records. When these records discuss travelling ayahs, they are either anonymized the travelling ayahs or used the travelling ayahs’ forenames. In the cases where the travelling ayahs’ forenames were used, their surnames were often silenced or ‘ayah’ was imposed as their surnames. Also, in a majority of cases, the records do not have a prefix of ‘Miss/Mrs/Ms’ for the travelling ayahs. However, when the same files discuss the travelling ayahs’ employers, particularly the European people, they always use their surnames with appropriate prefixes. In the book, I was tempted to address the travelling ayahs’ names with appropriate titles and make an effort to go against the imperial hierarchies of class and race, particularly the practice of infantilizing servants and the lower classes more generally by referring to them by their forenames as if they were children. However, I decided against it as I wanted to lay bare how such hierarchies played out in archives and allow readers to experience the same. Exclusion and differential treatment of travelling ayah sometimes became more pronounced once the ships landed in Britain. In the worst cases, which were also those most visible in the archives, irresponsible employers abandoned travelling ayahs in British ports without wages or return passages to India. Such cases are the topic of the next chapter.73 Even for travelling ayahs that did not suffer such extreme exploitative treatment could face prejudice and exclusion in Britain, however. The 1864 children’s story book, Henrietta and the Ayah, explores the visible presence of travelling ayahs in Britain through the eyes of an English girl, who is instantaneously scared 72  National Archives of India (henceforth NAI), Home Department, Public Branch, OC, 29 June 1830, 70 and 71 C. 73  Several cases of ayahs that had been abandoned are available in the archives—­which becomes the soul of this book—­and are dealt with more in detail in the following chapters.

Becoming Travelling Ayahs and Supporting the Empire  43 Table 3  Details of travelling ayahs recorded in the ship’s manifests of S.S. Golconda, 1891 and 1901 Year

Ship

Ayah’s name

Marital status

Age

1891 1891 1891 1891 1891 1891 1901 1901 1901

Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda Golconda

Martha Ayah Catharine Ayah Mary Ayah Elizabeth Ayah Mary Anne Ayah Rachel Ayah Lutchoo Ayah Amy Ayah Sarah Ayah

Married Married Married Married Married Married Single Single Single

Not available Not available Not available Not available Not available Not available 26 28 30

Source: Compiled from NAUK BT 26, P16, I66 and BT 26, P183, I4

and disgusted upon seeing a travelling ayah in London and later in her neighbour’s house. In the eyes of the girl, the ayah is a ‘nasty black creature’ who is not clean and she insists that her parents should ‘send away blacky’.74 In another children’s book Cousin Johnny and his Indian Nurse, Johnny travels alone with his travelling ayah, Nooren, to his cousin’s house in England, where upon arrival, Johnny’s cousins treat Nooren with disrespect and disgust. After much coaxing from Johnny’s uncle and aunt, his cousins began to tolerate Nooren and eventually become attached to her.75 In both stories family members intervene to teach children that travelling ayahs mean no harm and rather that they protected the members of the family they served. Indeed, the second story ended on a more promising note of acceptance. The fact that such stories were being written, however, shows that this was an issue that concerned writers at the time, suggesting that suspicion, hostility, and intolerance of travelling ayahs was widespread. Such stories thus reflect the colonial gaze on counterflowing colonized bodies which were becoming increasingly visible in Britain during the nineteenth century. The travelling ayahs were thus ironically loved, suspected, and alienated sim­ul­tan­ eous­ly. The stark contrast between portrayals of travelling ayahs as almost saintly figures of trust onboard ship in the newspaper articles discussed above and as figures of suspicion, fear, or disgust once landed in Britain in these children’s stories lays bare the paradoxical nature of the colonial gaze: itself a product of the contradictions between imperial practice and imperial ideology, which made the Empire dependent upon those it denigrated and marginalized.76 74  Madame De Chatelain, The Story of Henrietta and the Ayah (London: James Hogg and Sons, 1864), 28–9. 75  Cousin Johnny and His Indian Nurse (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1860). 76 Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-­ Victorian Britain (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998); Michael Fisher, Counterflows of Colonialism: Indian Travelers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).

44  Waiting on Empire It is important to note that even though travelling ayahs were subjects of colonial prejudice and exclusion, they were generally viewed in a significantly better light than male servants and lascars from the Indian subcontinent in Britain. While travelling ayahs in Britain were sometimes viewed as unkempt or ‘dirty’, they were rarely demonized and cast as moral threats to British society. Male servants and lascars, on the other hand, were frequently associated with unruliness and immorality—­ seen as dangerous potential threats to social order. Historians like Laura Tabili, Mitra Sharafi, and Marika Sherwood have all shown that London newspapers frequently stereotyped lascars as immoral, women impregnators, alcoholics, wife-­deserters, and diseased bodies.77 Occasionally, lascars were also seen as threats to local jobs as they could provide a cheap source of labour. Travelling ayahs were never subject to such deeply hostile stereotyping. This can be attributed in part to British attitudes around gender, in which subordinate males, particularly if separated from women, such as lascars and male servants, were seen as threatening in a way that women were not. The fact that travelling ayahs also received more positive publicity, being portrayed as loyal and caring, also worked to counter the negative stereotyping that they did suffer. Ultimately, it could be suggested that the British ruling class could not afford to create or tolerate a social mindset of distrust against travelling ayahs, given that their labour of care remained essential to the functioning of imperial administrations. This chapter has laid the foundations of understanding the emergence of the profession of travelling ayahs and the range of responsibilities that they had to negotiate on their voyages. The following chapter focuses on the ways that contradictions in imperial policies on migration and employment left some travelling ayahs open to abusive treatment by employers, making their periods of waiting in Britain spaces of both stress and suffering and of agency and activism in response.

77  Laura Tabili, ‘Keeping Natives under Control: Race Segregation and the Domestic Dimensions of Empire, 1920–1939’, International Labor and Working-­Class History 44 (1993): 64–78; Marika Sherwood, ‘Race, Empire and Education: Teaching Racism’, Race and Class 42.3 (2001): 1–28; Mitra Sharafi, ‘The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain to Baroda’, Law and History Review 28.4 (2010): 979–1009; Shompa Lahiri, ‘Contested Relations: The East India Company and Lascars in London’, in Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900–1947: Gender, Performance, Embodiment, ed. H. V. Bowen and Shompa Lahiri (Springer: Basingstoke, 2010).

2

Waiting in the Heart of Empire Abandoned Travelling Ayahs and the Contradictions of a Liberal Empire

This chapter examines the experiences of travelling ayahs on arrival in Britain, paying particular attention to cases that appear in the archives due to the abandonment of travelling ayahs by irresponsible employers. The chapter explores relations between the travelling ayahs and their employers and the ways that travelling ayahs encountered the imperial administration when they found themselves in vulnerable situations. While focusing on how the Empire managed the traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain, the chapter also reveals the contractual expectations travelling ayahs had of their employers; what happened to travelling ayahs once they disembarked at a port in Britain; and how travelling ayahs made their way back to India. In the process of exploring these questions, the chapter unveils the ways the power dynamics of colonial capitalism and the contradictory migration policies of the Empire imposed periods of waiting on travelling ayahs in Britain—­sometimes finite, sometimes ­infinitely long. The chapter begins with a brief description of typical experiences of travelling ayahs once they disembarked in Britain including the kinds of problems they could encounter. Next, it turns to the roles of the East India Company (EIC) Office and later the India Office in London and of local governments in India, in managing and mismanaging the traffic of travelling ayahs, showing how such mismanagement could often result in periods of waiting for the travelling ayahs. Finally, the chapter briefly considers how travelling ayahs engaged with irresponsible employers and flawed administrative policies, which resulted in their being ‘stuck’ in Britain for weeks and sometimes months. In so doing, it sets the stage for the following chapters which focus on a range of different tactics and strategies adopted by travelling ayahs to deal with these periods of waiting and become ‘unstuck’.

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0003

46  Waiting on Empire

‘Hurry Up and Wait’: Arrival in the Metropole In some rare cases,1 travelling ayahs remained in Britain as long as their employers visited Britain and thereafter travelled back to India with the same employers within the same year or so. For instance, Basiran Ayah travelled with her employer Mrs Stanton as a travelling ayah in mid-­1935.2 About a year later in March 1936 she returned back to India with the same employer, Mrs Stanton and her 1-­ year-­ old son onboard P&O ship Viceroy of India.3 Similarly, compiling ­passport, ship manifest records, and immigration records, we can ascertain that Mrs Teressa Lawn, a travelling ayah in the employment of Mr and Mrs Smith and their three children travelled from Karachi to Liverpool onboard City of Venice, a P&O ship, on 11 May 1937.4 Later, on 25 September 1937, Mrs Lawn travelled with her employers back to Karachi from Liverpool onboard City of Sunta.5 However, in most cases, employers let their travelling ayahs go upon arrival in Britain; either immediately upon disembarkation, or a few days later, after the employers were settled at their place of residence in Britain. Ideally, such colonial families would make arrangements for their travelling ayah to be sent back to India with another travelling family. Sometimes such arrangements were made in advance—­through word of mouth or personal communications with acquaintances or, more frequently, through newspaper advertisements, which were posted by various servant-­brokering agencies including the Ayahs’ Home and travel agents such as Thomas Cook.6 For example, in November 1858, ‘A Lady’ returning from Bombay to London had used the services of Messrs Smith Elder & Co. to place an advertisement in the Daily News for its readers with the intent of alerting any interested parties scheduled to travel to India that her travelling ayah would be available for employment immediately after she disembarked in London. The advertisement read: A Lady, who is returning to England, is desirous of meeting with a Lady or family going to Bombay, either overland or via Cape, who may require the services of an AYAH; she has been accustomed to children, is an excellent servant, can be strongly recommended, and would engage herself on moderate terms.—Address, G. R. care of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., 65 Cornhill, London.7 1  I have encountered only five such cases wherein the travelling ayahs returned to India while serving the same families. Please see the Profiles section for more details. 2  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1464. 3  TNA, BT 27-­160238. 4  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1756 and TNA, BT26-­111825. 5  However, this time Mrs Lawn, Mr Smith, and Mrs Smith were accompanied by two children, Catherine Smith (1 year) and David Smith (2 years). It appears they left back one of the children in Britain. See TNA, BT27-­146273. 6 The Ayahs’ Home was a common lodging place for travelling ayahs in London. Please see Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion on the role of the Home in travelling ayahs’ waiting experiences. 7 BNA, Daily News, 17 November 1858.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  47 Even in such ideal cases in which responsible employers made provision for their travelling ayah’s return home, a period of waiting was usually inevitable. Travelling ayahs might have to wait for a passage slip or travel permission to be issued to them, or they might have to wait for the travelling season in which sea voyages could be most safely undertaken: a wait that could last several months.8 In many cases, the treatment travelling ayahs received was far from ideal. In direr cases, irresponsible employers sought to avoid paying for their travelling ayah’s return passage or taking responsibility for securing them a new employer, preferring to abandon their travelling ayahs in Britain. In such cases, travelling ayahs could find themselves in extremely vulnerable situations: sometimes begging on the street or being admitted to poorhouses, whilst attempting to find resources to travel back to India. Therefore, whilst for some travelling ayahs the wait was unproblematic, lasting a few days or weeks in reasonable conditions, for others the wait could last for months in extremely trying circumstances. A caveat is necessary here. While most travelling ayahs attempted to go back to India, there were a few who stayed in Britain. In some cases, they stayed back and breathed their final breaths in Britain. Peeran ayah died in June 1882 at the age of 50 years in Somerset.9 We cannot be sure whether the death happened while she was waiting for a passage back or if she had settled in Britain. Nonetheless, in her death, she ‘stayed back’ in Britain for eternity. Furthermore, the Census Returns of England and Wales for 1861, 1871, 1891, 1901, 1911, and 1921 all reveal at least ten travelling ayahs registered as regular servants living with their masters in Britain. There may have been more who left no trace.10 Some travelling ayahs recorded in the census reveal that they travelled with their mistresses and stayed on at least for some time.11 However how long these stays lasted is impossible to ascertain from the information available in the archives. Upon arrival in Britain, travelling ayahs, especially those on their first voyage, experienced abrupt changes in their environment, in food, and in the social make-­up of the society as well as changes in their professional role. Often, travelling ayahs recalled that immediately upon disembarkation at a port in Britain a European nurse would take charge of the lady and child that they had served throughout the journey.12 Such abrupt cessation of their employment and 8  Usually, the travelling season lasted between October and March and was usually stalled during April to September due to dangerous travel by sea conditions that ensued. See BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 9 TNA, England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837–1915, vol. 5c, p. 4. 10  It is also possible that some travelling ayahs might have changed their names and stayed on, but there is no reason to suppose that changes of name would have been widespread and if any did so they are not visible in the archives. 11 For instance, the case of Juqun  B.  Ayah, a 50-­year-­old travelling ayah had travelled with Alicia E. Brandon from India to England. Juqun stayed on with Alicia and her three infants, while Alicia’s husband, an English merchant stationed in India, remained there. But we do not know how long Juqun stayed on with Alicia. See 1861 England Census. 12 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, December 1921, 140–1.

48  Waiting on Empire sometimes outright abandonment became one of the most severe challenges facing travelling ayahs in Britain. According to the unwritten norms, verbal contracts, or abstractly written contracts agreed between the travelling ayahs and their employers, the employer was responsible for paying the travelling ayah’s wages for the period of the voyage, as well as for the travelling ayah’s upkeep until new employment was found or until she had worked long enough to save the money to buy a passage back to India. However, frequently the employers refused to meet such expectations and previously agreed-­upon contracts, which were often merely verbal agreements of which there was no legally binding evidence. In some cases, employers abandoned travelling ayahs immediately after disembarking. In 1913 Sarah Smith, a travelling ayah from Madras, arrived in England with Mrs Crisp and her infant after a voyage from India. Upon arrival, Mrs Crisp immediately disappeared without paying the return passage or even the ‘promised wages or without leaving her whereabouts’.13 Sarah was left penniless without housing or even clothing suitable for the climate in Britain. Sarah had a copy of the formal agreement between Mrs Crisp and herself but since the agreement was not stamped or signed by her employer neither the local authorities nor the India Office could force Mrs Crisp to pay the money owed to Sarah. Thereafter, Sarah found her way to a poorhouse in Middlesex where she intended to remain until she could find a family travelling back to India who required her services. The archives yield no details regarding whether she was able to find a passage and how long she waited in the poorhouse. Abandonment of travelling ayahs sometimes happened after they had spent a few days or weeks in Britain. In 1899, upon arriving in Britain and making it to their intended place of residence in London, Nasiban ayah’s employers ‘turned her out of doors without notice or wages’, nor money for a return passage to India. Subsequently, Nasiban was found wandering the streets of West London by local police, who made enquiries into her case. According to the police report on file, Nasiban claimed that she had agreed to serve as a travelling ayah for her employers on the understanding that they would arrange for her return upon arrival in Britain. However, her employers did not follow through with the agreement and abandoned her, resulting in her destitution and an indefinite period of waiting as she sought a way to return to India.14 In some cases, abandonment happened in more complex ways. Some employers, upon reaching Britain, passed on their travelling ayahs to families seeking a servant to accompany them to India. Sometimes, however, the new employers changed their travel plans or simply changed their mind about the travelling ayah and abandoned them without payment or passage home. Under such circumstances, travelling ayahs were forced into an indefinite period of

13  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1260/2966.

14  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/518/1676.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  49 waiting, which pushed them into a precarious situation without resources or allies in Britain. In May 1908, a travelling ayah, whose name is not registered in the case file, arrived in Britain from Bombay while serving Mrs Catchpole and her family.15 Mrs Catchpole, through the services of Thomas Cook & Sons, had arranged for her travelling ayah to be transferred to W. J. C. Drummond and his family to accompany them on their impending travel to India in July. The transfer of services happened during the last week of May, and the Drummonds took the travelling ayah to their home in Scotland so that she had time to adjust to the ways of the family before they travelled in July. On 24 June the family arrived at King’s Cross station in London with the travelling ayah, intending to travel to India soon after. However, upon arriving at King’s Cross, the Drummonds appear to have stealthily disappeared in the crowds, leaving the travelling ayah alone at the station with only one pound sterling in her possession. One pound was not enough to pay for a passage to India,16 nor even enough to cover her wages for the period she had served the Drummonds. Upon investigation it was found that the Drummonds had subsequently embarked on S.S. Arabia bound for India, leaving the travelling ayah in Britain. The file does not discuss whether the travelling ayah had money from her previous employment with Mrs Catchpole, which she could use to support herself while she waited. Upon being abandoned at King’s Cross station the travelling ayah made her way to Thomas Cook & Sons: whether she did this on her own or on the suggestion of people she encountered at King’s Cross is not known. However, the travelling ayah found no aid at Thomas Cook’s, as the agency washed their hands off the case by stating: We have no information at all as to conditions under which Mrs. Catchpole brought the ayah to England, the lady merely asking to find her another employer to return to India; and as Mr. Drummond had asked us to advise him of an ayah wishing to return to India we brought Mrs. Catchpole and Mrs. Drummond into communication with one another. We have no knowledge of the terms which they arranged between themselves.17

The travel agents thus sought to avoid any kind of responsibility in the case, and there was no regulation or legal requirement for them to vet the parties or ensure legally binding contracts were signed. After failing to find support from Thomas Cook & Sons, the travelling ayah went to the Ayahs’ Home, which was a known lodging and brokering service for travelling ayahs in Britain. With the help of the matron, the travelling ayah contacted the India Office in London, to see if the 15  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/881/2622. 16  Passages usually cost between eight to twelve pounds, depending on the ship, the class, and the season of travel. 17  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/881/2622.

50  Waiting on Empire administrators could help with her case. Following investigation, the India Office stated that the name ‘Drummonds’ appeared to be an alias and the claim that he was an Indian civil servant was also false. Despite this evidence of fraud, in the absence of any written document or legal agreement between the travelling ayah and either the Drummonds or Mrs Catchpole, the India Office refused to interfere in the case. In their response to the Ayahs’ Home, the India Office wrote: ‘She would appear to have no legal remedy. This office has declined to take any responsibility.’18 The case file abruptly ends with this letter from the India Office. There is no way to know what happened to the travelling ayah thereafter: whether she remained in Britain or found another passage back and if the latter, how long she waited. In the irresponsibility of the employer and the reluctance of the imperial authorities to intervene, the case was typical of many that can be found in the archives. Some were less typical and more bizarre. In 1919 Mr and Mrs Harrington arrived from India to England. Shortly after their arrival Mrs Harrington was admitted to the Paignton Cottage Hospital and the travelling ayah was ‘admitted’ to look after her. However, Mrs Harrington passed on while in the hospital receiving treatment. Immediately after his wife’s demise, Mr Harrington immediately left Paignton and abandoned the travelling ayah at the hospital and asked them to settle her case and arrange for her upkeep. Outraged at such irresponsible behaviour the hospital repeatedly asked Mr Harrington to take the travelling ayah with him and arrange for her return. After multiple communications, Mr Harrington agreed to pay only partially towards the cost of sending the travelling ayah to the Ayahs’ Home. In arranging this negotiation, Mr Harrington also repeatedly cited that the travelling ayah had some savings of her own, which she could use to repatriate herself, thus attempting to justify his irresponsible actions. Finally, the travelling ayah made her way to the Ayahs’ Home with the help of the hospital and thereafter contacted the India Office to help her case. However, the latter refused to help citing that they could not interfere in such a case.19 In another case from August 1927, Mary, an Indian travelling ayah, arrived in England whilst serving Mrs Thomas and her child. Soon after their arrival, Mrs  Thomas went off to Switzerland for several months, leaving her child with Mary at Mrs Thomas’s parental house in Fairlight. While Mary could have abandoned the child and attempted to return to India, she didn’t and couldn’t. Perhaps this was due to a sense of responsibility towards the child combined with the fact that Mrs Thomas had withheld her wages and destroyed her passport and certificates from previous employers.20

18  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/881/2622. 20  BL, IOR LPJ 6/1957/914.

19  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1579–1953.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  51 The archives show that abandonment of travelling ayahs or denial of wages earned or promised passages home were not uncommon. Table 4 provides a list of some of the more prominent cases of travelling ayahs abandoned in Britain. It is highly likely that other cases did not make their way into the archival records. Whilst this is not an exhaustive list, the cases are representative of how, over a period of many decades, travelling ayahs were frequently marooned without resources in a foreign land.

Travelling Ayahs and Regulatory Regimes To better understand why instances of abandonment or mistreatment of travelling ayahs recurred over a period of many decades, it is necessary to consider the regulatory regimes in place at the time. Abandonment or destitution of Indians associated with service industries in Britain was not uncommon: Indian seafarers, or ‘lascars’, frequently found themselves in similar situations.21 Not only were lascars able to draw upon communal networks, however, which were unavailable to travelling ayahs due to the individualized and ‘private’ character of their work, but there was a marked difference in the British government’s administrative responses towards travelling ayahs, on one hand, and male migrants such as lascars, on the other. These differences were conditioned by the spatial nature of the work that the different kinds of labourers performed and the gendered British perceptions of colonized subjects. Administratively, travelling ayahs who worked in domestic spaces were perceived as private problems, whereas lascars, working in the public spaces of commercial shipping, constituted a public problem. The Board of Trade held British merchants and shipping companies responsible for lascars who fell ill or became destitute in Britain and often charged them for repatriation.22 Raminder Saini has shown that such repatriation efforts were frequently flawed and lascars were often marooned in Britain.23 Nonetheless, in the case of the lascars, the administrators were open to conversation. Administrators were far more reluctant to intervene in the domestic workspaces of travelling ayahs. In fact, an early and largely successful regulatory scheme 21  Laura Tabili, ‘Keeping Natives under Control: Race Segregation and the Domestic Dimensions of Empire, 1920–1939’, International Labor and Working-­Class History 44 (1993): 64–78; Marika Sherwood, ‘Race, Empire and Education: Teaching Racism’, Race and Class 42.3 (2001): 1–28; Mitra Sharafi, ‘The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain to Baroda’, Law and History Review 28.4 (2010): 979–1009; Shompa Lahiri, ‘Contested Relations: The East India Company and Lascars in London’, in Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900–1947: Gender, Performance, Embodiment, ed. H. V. Bowen and Shompa Lahiri (Basingstoke: Springer, 2010). 22 Arunima Datta, ‘Responses to Traveling Indian Ayahs in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain’, Journal of Historical Geography 71 (2021): 94–103. 23  Raminder  K.  Saini, ‘ “England Failed to Do Her Duty towards Them”: The India Office and Pauper Indians in the Metropole, 1857–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46 (2018): 226–56.

52  Waiting on Empire Table 4  Examples of cases of abandonment of travelling ayahs Year

Name of the Employer listed travelling ayah on file

1831

Bebee Jaunee Ayah

1862

Begum Ayah

1876

Peerun Ayah

1878

Sobha Ayah

1885

Travelling ayah not named

1899

Nasiban Ayah

1908

Gunglabai Ayah

1908

Travelling ayah not named Mary Michael

1910

Details about discharge

Where they were discharged

J. J. Harvey of Indian Abandoned in Britain Britain—­specifics Civil Service without resources not available in the file Mr N. C. Beale Abandoned in Britain—­specifics Britain without the not available in promised wages and the file return passage ticket Amidst the Mrs Field Abandoned amidst passage upon the return journey reaching back to India, Allahabad—­the without payment of final agreed wages owed or the destination was passage money Bombay Mr W. R. Burkitt of Discharged without England—­ Indian Civil Service means of return specifics of passage—­which was location of the agreed upon before discharge not they left India mentioned in the file Employer not Discharged without Manchester named on file—­but means of return mentioned as a passage Major in the Indian army Employer not Discharged West London named on file upon arriving in London—­without passage money or wages Manchester Mr W. Mort Discharged without agreed wages and return passages; the employer took Gunglabai to a Home in Manchester and abandoned her there Mrs Drummond Abandoned without Kings Cross wages or return Station, London passage London Mr and Mrs Not abandoned or Chaudhuri* discharged—­but wages withheld and retained Mary beyond the mutually agreed period

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  53 1913

Sarah Smith

Mrs Crisp

1913

Miss Burby

Mrs G. Bradley

1914

Mary Ayah

Mr and Mrs Wilson

1919

Travelling ayah not named

Mr and Mrs Harrington

1919

Catharine Ayah Employer not named

Upon disembarking, the employer disappeared without paying promised wages and passage money Not abandoned—­but wages withheld and passage not provided as had been mutually agreed upon Not abandoned or discharged—­but forcibly detained; Mary’s testimonials and contract documents were destroyed and no wages were paid Upon the death of Mrs Harrington, Mr Harrington only paid part of the agreed wages and abandoned her at the hospital without any direction or means to return to India Not abandoned or discharged—­but wages withheld and the employer detained Catharine beyond the mutually agreed period

England—­specific place/port not mentioned in the file England—­ specifics not mentioned in the file Fairlight, Sussex

At a hospital in Paignton, Devon

Alverstoke, Hampshire

Source: Compiled from IOR files between 1830 and 1920

aimed at preventing the marooning of destitute travelling ayahs in Britain was subsequently abandoned by the imperial authorities, as detailed below, suggesting that the reluctance to regulate was not merely due to bureaucratic inertia but was a conscious choice. To understand the complexities leading to this performance of inertia, we must note that whilst the EIC, the India Office, and local colonial governments in India were theoretically all supposed to work together for the good of the Empire, in practice, they had their own interests and agendas which were different and sometimes opposed. Under EIC rule, established in 1757, the EIC’s Court of Directors in Britain were entirely responsible for governing India through an army of locally based officials. The EIC functioned unitarily and

54  Waiting on Empire autonomously with respect to India, at arm’s length from the British government. During the period of direct British rule established after the 1857 rebellion, a whole gamut of complex structures of governance appeared. In 1858, the British government created the India Office: a government department based in London, and entrusted it to supervise the administration in British India through the Viceroy and other local governmental officials. The India Office was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet, who was formally advised by the Council of India. In theory, the government of India was subordinate to the India Office, but the dual spheres of administrative authority, the complexity of the issues that arose in the local administration of British India, the distance between the two administrative centres and the varied interests of the local governments of India all made smooth functioning of the administrative designs rather difficult. Although the Secretary of State for India was only answerable to the British Parliament, he drew his salary from the revenues collected by the government of India, making the dynamics of power between the two branches of the government more complex than the formal scheme would suggest. Moreover, the India Office’s supervisory role was hampered by persistent factionalism amongst the local governments of British India, which frequently benefitted the supreme government of India in Calcutta, often enabling them to present the India Office with faits accomplis in India policy which went unchallenged.24 These complexities and conflicts often led to deadlocks in inter-­governmental interactions and delayed the enactment of legislation even when a clear need was apparent. Such administrative difficulties are evident in the repeated failures to introduce legislation to address the issue of destitute travelling ayahs in Britain. When it came to regulating the employment of travelling ayahs, these relationships were further complicated when the EIC and India Office, in turn, had to deal with conflicts between travelling ayahs and their employers, given that those employers were usually officers of the EIC or later imperial administration. Amongst the earliest surviving documentary records regarding a travelling ayah in Britain is a file from 1796 in which an EIC official, Mr Wroughton, requested, through his solicitor, a reception order from the EIC for his seven children and their travelling ayah for a passage on the ship Favourite headed to Europe.25 Such requests became frequent from the 1790s and more detailed during the 1800s.26 24  Arnold Kaminsky, The India Office 1880–1910 (London, 1986), 38–9. 25  National Archives India (henceforth NAI), Home Department, Public Branch, 2 May 1796, no. 43. From the 1730s to early 1790s many such letters are found in the Court of Directors Correspondences; however, in the files dating from this period, the term ‘ayah’ was not used. Rather the terms ‘black servant/nerf ’ were used. These could have been Indian or African servants: as there is no way to be certain I have not included such cases in this study. See BL, IOR/E/1-­30/ff 45–60v, 1740, 21–4 January. 26  In the 1800s they recorded the names of the ayah and the employer, in what capacity the ayah travelled (i.e. serving a lady or a child or both), which ship they boarded, the name of the ship’s captain, and the specific port for which the ship was destined.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  55 From the surviving records, it appears that until the early 1800s, the EIC government was only involved in granting permissions to employers and their servants to board EIC ships, without any other provisions to govern employer-­ travelling ayah relations. However, from 1822 onwards, presumably due to the increased incidence of destitute Indian servants in Britain, a system of deposits was introduced by the EIC government. This system required the employer of any Indian servant (not just travelling ayahs) travelling to England to deposit one hundred pounds (later reduced to fifty pounds) at the government treasury in India to secure the return passage of the native servants.27 Most correspondences between the EIC and the employers of travelling ayahs from 1822–44 discussed these mandatory deposits.28 The deposit system was designed to guard the EIC against any expense that it might incur in case a servant was found destitute in Britain or even during the journey, unable to maintain herself or arrange a sponsor for her travel back to India.29 Upon proving the return (or death during journey) of the travelling ayah, the deposit money was returned to employers. The required documents usually consisted of the Sub-­Treasurer’s deposit certificate, given to the employers on making the deposit, a letter from the captain of the ship on which the native servant returned to India, and proof of disembarkation in India.30 If the servant died enroute, as sometimes happened, deposits were returned upon receipt of proof of death. On 21 February 1835, Captain Horsford was granted a return of the deposit he had made to the government on account of a travelling ayah who accompanied his son to Europe on the ship Ferguson. The deposit was returned after it was certified by responsible authorities that the said travelling ayah had died at sea onboard the ship Malcolm, on her way back to India.31 In cases where employers requested the return of deposits on the grounds that they had no knowledge regarding the whereabouts of their travelling ayahs, having dismissed them upon arrival in Britain, deposits were returned only upon submission of an indemnity which declared that if the concerned travelling ayah was found in Britain and the EIC had to bear any cost for repatriating her, the said employer would reimburse the EIC. In 1835, Captain  G.  N.  C.  Campbell requested the return of a deposit he had made in 1833 on account of Peerun Ayah, who had 27  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/158/1282. 28  BL, IOR/E/4/927, 13 September 1822. Bengal Almanac for 1851, Calcutta, 1852, 159. BL, IOR/E files, NAI files, General Department, West Bengal State archives files. Almost all correspondences in these files revolved around the discussion about returning deposit money paid by employers for their travelling ayahs. A caveat to note here, whilst many factors influenced the employment of Indian women rather than white women as travelling ayahs, a significant factor was that they were cheaper to employ than white nurses. A second factor was the colonial perception of brown bodies as sturdier than white and better able to tolerate the hardships of travel. 29  Calcutta Monthly Journal(s) and General Register of Occurrences throughout the British Dominions in the East 1837 (Calcutta, 1838), 27. 30  Seen in all letters requesting the return of deposits. 31  WBSA, general proceedings (General Department), 21 February 1835, no. 28.

56  Waiting on Empire accompanied Mrs Campbell as her lady’s maid on her journey to England onboard the ship Layton. The captain insisted that as he had not heard from the travelling ayah for two years after they arrived in England, the presumption must be that she had returned to India. The EIC returned the deposit on Campbell’s submission of an indemnity that he would cover any costs incurred by the government if Peerun Ayah had to be sent back to India at a later time.32 The deposit system worked well for about two decades. Eventually, however the EIC government came to feel burdened by the procedural complexity of the system and discontinued it in 1844. In a Legislative Council meeting in Bengal in 1844, which met to discuss the workings of the deposit system, it was argued that: ‘great confusion has sometimes arisen and difficulty as to the return of the deposit money.’33 British society soon began to witness the ill-­effects of discontinuing the deposit system which continued after EIC rule was replaced by British imperial rule in 1857. The number of destitute travelling ayahs on Britain’s roads began to grow. In 1869, having witnessed the increased number of destitute Indian servants in different localities of Britain, with as many as 900 cases in London alone during 1868, Professor Syed Abdollah of Trinity College wrote to the India Office suggesting that the British government should consider re-­introducing the system of deposit, which had been abandoned in 1844.34 The available archival records show no trace of a formal abolition of the deposit system, but innumerable correspondences in the India Office Records demonstrate that after 1844 it ceased to operate. For instance, in 1885, in a case wherein a Major refused to pay for his travelling ayah’s return passage, the travelling ayah insisted that the Major was responsible. Evidently, the travelling ayah was aware of the previous EIC rule which made the employer responsible for providing return passages for their travelling ayahs. Being confused and anxious about his legal responsibility, the Major hired a solicitor to investigate his responsibilities, who thereafter contacted the India Office in London to enquire about the said rule. Whilst discussing the case file in the India Office Council, the Secretary of State for India, the Earl of Kimberly, communicated to his subordinate officials: There is no absolute law compelling persons who bring native servants to England to serve them, but practically people bringing them are expected to send them back and ordinarily do send them back. Down to 1844, persons taking native servants to England used to have to make a deposit in the government treasury in India of about fifty pounds. . . . But the practice has long been in abeyance.35 32  WBSA, general proceedings (General Department), 15 July 1835, no. 28. 33 WBSA, Bengal Almanac 1851, 1852. 34  BL, IOR/L/PJ/2/49/0001. A similar discussion in 1890 mentioned that the deposit system had fallen into ‘disuse’ since 1844. See BL, IOR/L/PJ/276/756. 35  Bl, IOR/L/PJ/6/158/1282.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  57 Rather than being proactive, Kimberly exhibited a passive governmental response: he expected the employers of travelling ayahs to fulfil their responsibilities but remained silent on what the State would do if they did not. Such inconclusive, passive performances became a recurrent pattern. In support of his statement, Kimberly appended earlier correspondences from 1869 between the previous Secretary of State, the Duke of Argyll, and officials in the India Office, wherein the officials had alerted the Duke to the ‘necessity of adopting measures for ensuring the provision of a return passage for all natives engaged in India for service out of the country’. But, when the Duke consulted the representatives of the local governments in India, the latter had collaboratively responded, ‘The majority of the local governments and administrators agree in deprecating legislative interference as uncalled for’.36 Internal correspondence between local governments in India, which was forwarded to the India Office, reveals that local governments disagreed on the issue. The Madras government was eager to impose the deposit system, whilst the government of Bengal was of the opinion that it would be enough if relevant customs and port officers at the ports were given appropriate instructions to explain to servant passengers the expected situations they could face and possible arrangements for their return passages. Instead of acting on the visible absence of unanimity and pushing for further investigation, the Duke refrained from using the power invested in his office. Rather, he agreed to the vague proposition put forward by the Bengal government, and advised the governments of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, North-­Western Provinces, Punjab, Oudh, Central Provinces, Burmah, Mysore, Coorg, and Hyderabad to comply accordingly.37 The deposit system, came up for discussion once again in 1890, when Viscount Cross, the Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Viceroy of India, the Marquess of Lansdowne, calling the latter’s attention to several cases of travelling ayahs, along with other servants, who ‘brought by their employers to England, have been discharged there and left destitute without any arrangement to secure them return passage’.38 Cross asked Lansdowne if it was possible to adopt any ‘special measures which will ensure the provision of a passage back to India for menial servants . . .’. Dismissing Cross’s request, Lansdowne commented that he believed and had witnessed that Indian servants were particularly careful to stipulate their return passages when they made their engagements to go to England. The government of India, thus rejected India Office’s attempt to push it into taking action on the issue, rather laying responsibility for servants’ well-­being squarely on the shoulders of travelling ayahs themselves. To add weight to his response, Lansdowne reminded Cross of the earlier correspondence (1869) between the India Office and the government of India and emphasized that the latter had already clarified 36  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/158/1282. 38  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1057/144.

37  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/158/1282.

58  Waiting on Empire that all local authorities had agreed that the deposit system was unnecessary. Lansdowne cunningly passed the responsibility to perform on to the British government, presumably hoping that the latter would stop pursuing the case. He wrote: We have no doubt that in England much could be done by such associations as the Stranger’s Home for Asiatics, or in the case of officials by your Lordship to compel employers to fulfil their obligations and if need be then the government should consider enacting an Indian Vagrancy Act on the lines of the European Vagrancy Act of 1874.39

Reaching yet another deadlock in the dialogues with the Government of India and simultaneously receiving constant reports of destitute travelling ayahs in Britain, the India Office finally appointed a Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects in 1910, to investigate how best to address the problem of Indian destitutes in Britain, of which travelling ayahs constituted a considerable number. After investigations, the committee proposed making it compulsory for employers to guarantee money for the return of Indian servants to India through indemnity or deposit.40 The findings were presented to both Houses of the British Parliament and approved by the Secretary of State. The new Secretary of State, the Earl of Crewe, duly approached the new Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, with the findings of the Committee, seeking the latter’s views on the deposit system. Again, the Government of India responded with an intransigent refusal to implement the legislation. Curzon justified his refusal to perform as expected by arguing that: the benefit to be derived from the proposal would be insignificant but the inconvenience great . . . laying down such a legislation would certainly cause much inconvenience to the employer and would probably deter most people from engaging ayahs at all for the voyage to England.41

To ensure his audience, the British India Office, understood his performance in its intended manner, Curzon laid bare the reasons why the British government should re-­ consider its stance regarding the deposit system: ‘It must be remembered further that the majority of those who engage Indians for domestic service out of India belong to the official classes and are unlikely to treat their servants unfairly . . . and that the Government of India would strongly object to

39  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1057/144. The European Vagrancy act held the employer of European vagrants in India, or the ship on which they came to India, liable for all expenses incurred by the government to repatriate the vagrant to Europe. 40  BL, Cd. 5133, Cd. 5134. 41  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1057/144.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  59 such legislation which will then have to be applied to servants taken to England by Chiefs and Indian Magistrates.’42 Crewe did not challenge Curzon, but opened consultation with the governments of other Crown Colonies and Protectorates from which servants had been employed by European officials. In 1915, upon receiving replies from all concerned governments, the Under Secretary of the State compiled all the reports and informed the Colonial Office and Parliament that ‘the proposal has not been carried into effect, and the question has been dropped’ as the majority of governments shared the opinion expressed by the government of India in 1910 and stated in their correspondence that: ‘such an agreement would cause no small amount of inconvenience to the employers and thereby prejudice the employment.’43 Local governments by refusal to perform as expected, influenced the Secretary of State to refrain from using his authority even after the British Parliament had shown its support. The consequent failure to provide any clear and specific guidance meant that the Empire’s intentions remained opaque not only to its civilian subjects but frequently to its own officials.44 The contradiction which led to this impasse was located in Curzon’s assertion that ‘the official classes . . . are unlikely to treat their servants unfairly’. If the India Office accepted the official image of British colonial administrators as well-­ meaning and responsible servants of the imperial ‘civilizing mission’, on which the justification for the existence of the Empire largely rested, this assertion could not be challenged, despite the fact that it was demonstrably untrue. In fact, the statistics of abandoned travelling ayahs clearly showed that the official classes were indeed likely to treat their servants unfairly. Yet, since Crewe could not challenge Curzon’s false assertion without undermining the entire rationale for the existence of the Empire, he fell into line with Curzon’s position, despite the fact that Curzon was theoretically subordinate to Crewe. Consequently, while these high-­level discussions were taking place, the India Office’s administrative council offices continued to be flooded by cases of travelling ayahs abandoned on the streets of Britain. Eventually, certain members of the India Office Council began to pay attention to the problem and urged the council to collectively take action to stop such irresponsible behaviour by employers. To a large extent, this initiative came from educated Indians who had gained some titular political positions in Britain, particularly Syed Hussain Bilgrami and Sir Krishna Govinda Gupta, who were appointed as members of the India Council in London.

42  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1057/144. 43  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1057/144. 44  As Poole and Das have noted, in the case of modern states, laws and administrative rules often become illegible to the governments themselves. See Veena Das and Deborah Poole, Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2004).

60  Waiting on Empire In 1908, the case of Drummond’s travelling ayah appeared on the desk of one such aggrieved India Office administrator, Syed Hussain Bilgrami. While the India Office adopted its customary position of refusal to get involved in the case or to give any definite ruling on the responsibilities of the employer, the case sparked heated discussions behind closed doors, which were initiated by Syed Hussain Bilgrami. In expressing his discontent with the way the case and other similar cases were handled at the India Office he commented: It is nothing short of grossly criminal conduct on part of their European employers to entice them (I can find no other word) into travelling with them from India and look after their women and children during the voyage and then abandon them on arrival here and they think they are unaccountable. I think some of these people ought to be prosecuted by the State and punished as severely as the law will allow. Unless a matter is made of one or two of these dishonest and cruel employers of Indian servants. Cases of the present kind will always be cropping up.45

Refusing to accept the routine inertia of the India Office, Bilgrami went on to assert: ‘As a British Indian subject I just refuse to believe that this Government cannot step in to prevent exploitation and robbery of this kind . . . unless something is done to address the concerns of the ayahs in Britain, it would spark problems in India.’46 Thus, whilst the higher-­ranking officials and the India Office as a unit refused to deal with the issue of destitute travelling ayahs, largely due to the resistance of British colonial administrators in India, this refusal sparked frustration amongst their own administrators, particularly those of Indian origin. What is striking about Bilgrami’s caution to the India Office is his suggestion that a continued refusal to confront the irresponsibility of the colonial ruling class could potentially threaten imperial rule itself. In 1910 another case came before the India Office Council, which was addressed by Sir Krishna Govinda Gupta. Mary Michael, a travelling ayah, had not been abandoned but alleged mistreatment at the hands of her employers, an Indian couple named Mr and Mrs Chauduri. Mary claimed to have been brought to England by Mr and Mrs Chaudhuri, who allegedly assaulted her, overworked her, and detained her in England for a longer period than initially agreed upon. However, the Chaudhuris, their other European servants in the household, and their neighbours placed an entirely different complexion on the course of events and claimed that Mary was treated well and that her wages were being kept with Mr Chaudhuri on Mary’s request. In this case, Gupta’s response was strikingly different to that of Bilgrami in relation to the Drummonds’ ayah. He made no 45  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/881/2622.

46  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/881/2622.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  61 attempt to question the Chauduri’s narrative and found Mary at fault for causing disruption and misbehaving towards her employers.47 Possibly this was because the employers were Indians of a similar class to Gupta himself.48 In addressing the case, however, Gupta did acknowledge the mistreatment of travelling ayahs by their European employers in Britain. This case suggests that whilst Western-­ educated Indians who had achieved privileged positions in the administration appeared happy to moralize on the unethical and irresponsible behaviour of British employers, they may have been less prepared to challenge members of their own class and community who behaved in similar ways. In this respect, the attitude of elite Indians in Britain seems to mirror that of the British administrators in India who justified lack of action to protect travelling ayahs on the grounds that their own class were unlikely to treat their employees unfairly. The case studies above illuminate the internal contradictions which emerged as Britain attempted to sustain its self-­image as a liberal democracy and force for civilization whilst maintaining an exploitative empire based on racial hierarchies. During the nineteenth century, British governments introduced a series of Factory Acts49 to protect the British industrial working class from excessive exploitation, but simultaneously refused to offer analogous protection to immigrant workers from the colonies. Destitute travelling ayahs on the streets of London offered a visible reproach to Britain’s ‘civilizing mission’ and educated Indians within the British administration were active in pointing this out, but there is some evidence that their responses too were conditioned by ethnic and class solidarities similar to those amongst the British ruling class which had produced these contradictions in the first place. Nevertheless, the visible presence of colonized subjects such as the travelling ayahs in the metropolis opened the Empire’s race-­based differential treatment of its subjects to scrutiny, not least by travelling ayahs themselves. In theory, all individuals within the Empire, regardless of their ‘race’, were British subjects and enjoyed rights as such. In practice, there were hierarchies of race and class within the Empire which allowed the powerful to secure their own interests at the expense of the less powerful. This contradiction was what made the issue of protecting travelling ayahs so intractable, particularly because mid-­ level bureaucrats in London were powerless to enforce their liberal ideals of Empire on the European administrative bodies in India. But if bureaucrats were constrained by their own class loyalties and accountabilities, travelling ayahs themselves were not, and many actively deployed imperial discourses to challenge 47  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801. 48  Gupta, was an Indian Civil Servant employed by the British administrators in Britain. He hailed from a Western-­educated Bengali zamindari family. Mr Chaudhuri belonged to the same community as Gupta: Western-­educated, upper-­class, upper-­caste, and part of a small and close-­knit community of overseas elite Indians in early twentieth-­century Britain. 49 Richard Whately Cooke-­ Taylor, The Factory System and Factory Acts (London: Kessinger Publishing LLC, 1894).

62  Waiting on Empire their mistreatment and make claims on the Empire. Some used appeals to humanitarian sentiment whilst others used legal codes to secure wages owed and return to India. In most cases, the government maintained a stance of official passivity, refusing to clarify its legal position or explicitly support either travelling ayahs or their employers. Nevertheless, travelling ayahs appeals repeatedly exposed the contradictions at the heart of the imperial project, to the evident discomfort of the administration.

Travelling Ayahs Asserting Rights: Waiting as a Space of Action Amidst all the narratives of employers abandoning their travelling ayahs and the India Office and governments of India refusing to interfere, it is easy to assume that the travelling ayahs themselves were passive subjects in the theatre of waiting, at the mercy of those who had imposed waiting upon them. How the travelling ayahs felt about the administrative policies or the irresponsibility of their employers is impossible to determine with any certainty since they did not leave written accounts. But there is ample evidence that they were far from passive in their responses to the difficult situations in which they found themselves. Rather, they showed determination and resilience and constantly made efforts to facilitate self-­repatriation when administrators failed. The most striking example of success in such efforts was the case of Mary, the travelling ayah who engaged in a dispute with her employer, Mrs Thomas, who had left for Switzerland, leaving Mary to care for her child, and subsequently sought to retain Mary’s services by refusing to pay the wages she was owed. Mrs Thomas also refused to return Mary’s passport. Mary did not suffer this treatment passively. On occasions when she left her employer’s house, she regularly interacted with people she came across to enquire about available options, to seek aid and find a way back to India. Eventually she encountered Mr  W.  D.  Seton Brown, who had spent some time in India and harboured a liking for Indians. Mary successfully communicated her grievances to Mr Brown, who then personally involved himself in helping her. Brown initially contacted the local police but finding no aid from them he directly contacted the India Office seeking help to get Mary out of her employer’s house and send her back to India. Surprisingly, the India Office agreed to help and made arrangements to repatriate Mary.50 This was a unique case as the India Office, as a matter of policy, usually refused to interfere in any such disputes between travelling ayahs and their employers. Did Mr Brown have connections in the India Office which helped the case of Mary? Or was Mary just lucky in terms of who handled her case? It is impossible to know. What is

50  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1957/914.

Waiting in the Heart of Empire  63 clear, however, is that Mary did not surrender to her fate. She attempted to seek justice by calling attention to the wrongs committed against her by her employer, sought and eventually found support, and used that support to negotiate a return back to India. Another case in which a travelling ayah successfully achieved her aims, albeit by a very different route, is that of Peerun, who arrived in Britain in 1876. This case has similarities with the later (1908) case of the Drummonds’ ayah discussed above in that problems arose with the transfer of a travelling ayah from one employer to another in Britain. Peerun had contracted with Mrs Cutliffe to accompany her from India to England, in return for which Mrs Cutliffe was to pay Peerun a certain sum for her services, pay for her maintenance for six weeks in England and find her a free passage back to India. Upon arriving in England, Mrs Cutliffe heard about Mrs Field who had plans to travel back with her child to India and was looking for the services of a travelling ayah. Mrs Cutliffe appears to have facilitated a contract between Mrs Field and Peerun, whereby Mrs Field would pay for Peerun’s passage to India and pay her five pounds for her services during the voyage. Unlike Peerun’s contract with Mrs Cutliffe, however, there was no written agreement and who was responsible for paying Peerun’s passage to India became uncertain. Before embarking on their passage, a heated discussion seemed to have ensued between Mrs Field and Peerun. However, neither wanted to delay their passage or wait in England so they planned to resolve the issue upon arrival in India. Peerun paid eleven pounds for her return passage, on the understanding that she would be reimbursed for the same by Mrs Cutliffe or Mrs Field later. On arrival in Allahabad, Mrs Field refused to pay for Peerun’s passage or to pay her wages and abandoned her before reaching Bombay, the mutually agreed destination. Peerun thereafter pursued a long legal case against Mrs Field, which at one point led to Peerun’s imprisonment for a short period. Ultimately, however, she was released and received damages along with the money that was owed to her by Mrs Field. Peerun’s case is indeed a promising one. The fact that she was able to pay for her return passage to India and fight her case on arrival gave her an advantage not enjoyed by the many travelling ayahs, such as Nasiban or the Drummonds’ travelling ayah, who were stranded in Britain where they had no resources or support networks on which to draw.51 Mary and Peerun were unusual in the degree of success they achieved, but typical of other stranded travelling ayahs in vigorously asserting their rights as honest workers and British imperial subjects. Passivity was no part of their repertoire and surrendering to ‘stuckedness’ was not an option they appear to have contemplated. It is clear that they had a solid understanding of the moral universe of Empire and a determination to secure what was due to them.

51  BL, IOR V/27/142/21.

64  Waiting on Empire Moreover, they were able to make claims in ways which made sense to imperial administrators and courts.

Attachment to a Transient Work-­Life Uncertainties about return or future employment did not reduce the traffic of travelling ayahs between India and Britain. While the voyage to Britain may have been daunting, for first-­time travellers in particular, it is clear that many women became accustomed to travel as a way of life, gained an understanding of imperial policies and moral norms and learned to engage with them successfully to secure their rights. The advertisements placed in British newspapers by travelling ayahs show that many were taking advantage of the opportunities created by Empire to actively pursue this career, despite being aware of the danger of destitution and the difficulties of finding a return passage.52 Mrs Antony Pareira, discussed in Chapter 1, was one such resilient travelling ayah who made the journey on fifty-­ four occasions and often spent time at the Ayah’s Home, a shelter for travelling ayahs in London (discussed in detail in Chapter  5), while awaiting her next employment. Whilst Mrs Pareira was a well-­known name amongst travelling ayahs and a favourite amongst travelling families with excellent references, this status did not guarantee her instant employment on a return voyage, nor did it entirely protect her from mistreatment, or else she would not have repeatedly arrived at the Ayahs’ Home, sometimes in a condition of destitution.53 The constant efforts of travelling ayahs to return to India, frequently to start travelling again, serves as evidence that they chose to be sojourners and had no desire to migrate permanently to Britain and that the experience of waiting did not dampen their eagerness to travel. This hints towards a possibility that travelling ayahs saw themselves as ‘belonging’ in transient rather than fixed spaces and especially not in Britain. Nonetheless, waiting was a reality for travelling ayahs once they arrived in Britain. The following chapters investigate the different ways in which travelling ayahs experienced and navigated their waiting experiences.

52  All British newspapers regularly carried advertisements from travelling ayahs seeking employment with families headed to India. Newspapers also carried advertisements from families looking for ayahs to travel with them to India. 53  LCM, A. C. Marshall, ‘Nurses of Our Ocean Highways’, The Quiver (1922): 104–6.

3 Creative Resilience in Crisis Making Arguments and Evoking Sympathy

Given the determination of the British authorities in London and India to avoid responsibility for the plight of travelling ayahs who found themselves in difficulty in the metropolis, travelling ayahs usually realized quickly that passively waiting would provide no resolution to their situations nor would it result in their re­pat­ ri­ation to India. Accordingly, they made the space of waiting a space of activity rather than passivity, finding creative ways to negotiate with and make demands upon those who held power over them, including both employers and government. Since legalistic appeals to government by travelling ayahs almost always resulted in a governmental refusal to engage, travelling ayahs found other ways to force their grievances into the awareness of administrators. Christopher Cordner has argued that waiting is often associated with the gaining of attention. Cordner uses the case of religious devotees ‘waiting on God’ in the hope that their prayers are answered through God’s ‘loving attention’.1 Travelling ayahs waited on very human overlords, but they also sought to gain attention through appeals to com­ passion. A significant way in which they achieved this was by the exertion of emotional agency: seeking to stir the sympathy of both administrators and the broader British public, in order to apply pressure on government to act to redress their complaints. Some travelling ayahs used emotion directly by visibly and explicitly expressing the emotions they felt. Such expressions may have been spontaneous, with no conscious aim in mind. Yet their acts of emotional expression may have carried agential powers which generated a positive reaction from their audience as a result of its obvious sincerity. At other times, travelling ayahs used emotion indirectly: cultivating allies by building emotional bonds, or seeking to evoke emotions of fear or anxiety in their employers to persuade them to fulfil their promises. Such appeals to emotion could be crafted rationally in a calculated manner. This chapter focuses on the various kinds of creative agency that travelling ayahs exhibited whilst waiting. First, the chapter introduces emotion as a lens through which it examines the archives, allowing travelling ayahs to become vis­ ible as human beings who demonstrated agency in precarious situations. Next, it 1  Christopher Cordner, ‘Waiting, Patience and Love’, in Waiting, ed. Ghassan Hage (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press: 2009), 169–83.

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0004

66  Waiting on Empire focuses on various cases wherein travelling ayahs used emotions explicitly revolving around home, family, and motherhood to negotiate social and administrative aid in their attempts to find a way home to India. Thereafter, it looks at cases wherein the travelling ayahs used other emotional strategies to attain their goals. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the evident busyness of travelling ayahs in waiting as they engaged in planning, emotional appeals, and carefully crafted actions in order to achieve their goals and end their period of waiting.

Emotions in the Archives: Travelling Ayahs Crafting Emotional Agency The literature on emotion is broad and complex, and spans disciplines ranging from philosophy to cognitive science. In this chapter, I draw on the foundational work of historians including Jane Lydon, Nicole Eustace, Monique Scheer, and Gerd Althoff who have shown that emotions are not mere displays of feelings, but can also be conscious or unconscious communicative tools used by individuals to move their audiences to action.2 Historians of emotion like Barbara Rosenwein, Ricardo Cristiani, and others have argued that by carefully examining source materials and creating a dialogue between the archives and the context in which those source materials were created, reading emotion in the archives as an act of agency is possible, albeit sometimes difficult.3 The case studies used in this chapter reveal that emotion-­laden utterances are visible in documentary archival sources providing evidence that travelling ayahs often used their emotions to creatively connect with their audience, which sometimes resulted in their successful repatriation to India. To say that emotional displays can be crafted in a calculated manner is not to deny that these emotions were actually felt by travelling ayahs. Rather, what I am suggesting here is that traveling ayahs used their emotional responses to their difficult situations as resources to draw upon in seeking escape from those situations.

2  Jane Lydon, Imperial Emotions: The Politics of Empathy across the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51.2 (2012): 193–220; Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Gerd Althoff, ‘Empörung, Tränen, Zerknirschung. “Emotionen” in der öffentlichen Kommunikation des Mittelalters’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 30 (1996): 60–79. 3  Barbara  H.  Rosenwein and Riccardo Cristiani, What Is the History of Emotions? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018); Lydon, Imperial Emotions; Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice’; Eustace, Passion Is the Gale. Rosenwein and Cristiani have in particular made the case that whilst historians ‘can’t scan the brains of their subjects and search for authenticity of emotions . . . they can search for the context and interrogate it’ to make sense of the real feelings that drove the subjects to their emotive acts (see Rosenwein and Cristiani, What Is the History of Emotions?, 122).

Creative Resilience in Crisis  67 Faced with the irresponsibility of employers and the impassivity of the im­per­ial administration, travelling ayahs sought to find allies by reaching out to a broad variety of people they encountered. Despite the potential hindrances of ‘racial’ and linguistic boundaries, travelling ayahs sought to build emotional connections with those they met which might motivate them to offer help. As Robert Plutchik has shown there are certain emotions that are shared across all human societies, irrespective of culture, religion, gender, or class, which enable humans to relate to one another even when they have nothing else in common.4 The archives offer fleeting glimpses into the ways that travelling ayahs creatively crafted their pleas for help in a manner that not only captured people’s attention but also motivated them to provide assistance. Table 5 provides a lexicon of emotional terms compiled from archival records pertaining to travelling ayahs from 1850–1930. The examples in the table focus on cases brought by the travelling ayahs or their advocates to local magistrate’s offices or to India Office administrators in Britain. Whilst the list is not ex­haust­ ive, it represents a robust enough sample to show how certain words were used to communicate and evoke the eight basic human emotions: anger, fear, anticipa­ tion, trust, surprise, sadness, joy, and disgust.5 In so doing, travelling ayahs and their advocates evidently aimed to communicate the urgency and legitimacy of their cases to their audience in the hope of getting help. The table includes how these emotions were recorded in official and personal correspondence; the emo­ tions these words sought to evoke; and the contextual situations associated with the respective cases, that is, the causal connection between the emotions felt and expressed by the travelling ayahs and the context or actions of others that caused such emotions. Whilst the exact words used by travelling ayahs sometimes remain unknowable, especially because in many cases letters to the authorities were not written by them, but were written on their behalf by allies, it can be argued that travelling ayahs, through expression of their emotions, motivated the individuals who wrote the letters to emphathize with their feelings and take action to help them. Furthermore, it should be noted that some of the words used were not explicitly emotional, but were used to convey emotional as well as physical states, for example, by focusing on shared ideas about home, family, and other intimate bonds or on experiences of cold and hunger. By making waiting a space not only of physical activity but also emotional activity, travelling ayahs sought to craft emotional connections with strangers which would motivate them too to become active on travelling ayahs’ behalf.

4 Robert Plutchik, Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution (Washington: American Psychological Association, 2002). 5 Saif Mohammad and Peter Turney, ‘Crowdsourcing a Word-­ Emotion Association Lexicon’, Computational Intelligence 29.3 (2013): 436–65; Plutchik, Emotions and Life.

68  Waiting on Empire Table 5  Emotions and emotional lexicons captured in various archival records concerning travelling ayahs in Britain Year Ayah’s name

Emotion (as recorded in archives)

Emotional Contextual situation lexicon targets

1850 Caroline Periera

Cheated

Anger, disgust, trust

1852 Indian Ayah (anonymized in the archives) 1856 Indian Ayah

Pitiful state, misses home, hungry, cheated

Anger, disgust, sadness, trust

Missing home and children, unacquainted with Britain, destitute Crying, friendless, deceived Missing home, sadness, suffering great affliction

Sadness, fear

1862 Begum Ayah 1878 Sobha Ayah 1892 Minnie Green

Assaulted, disturbed

1895 Angelina Ayah

Misses home and husband

1899 Nasiban Ayah

Longing for home, sad, anxious Abandoned, alone

1908 Gunglabai 1908 Drummond’s Ayah 1909 Sarah Smith

Abandoned

1910 Mary Michael Ayah

Discomfort, cheated, anxious, overworked

1913 Sarah Smith

Cold, Sick, Anxious, Cheated, Enticed Unfairly treated, abandoned Afraid, Troubled, Cold, Anxious Longing wife, Helpless

1919 Ayah 1919 Catharine Ayah 1920 Mary Anne

Ill-­treated, abandoned

Sadness, trust, fear Sadness

Fraud—­co-­passengers stole her possessions leaving her penniless in Britain Abandoned and cheated by employer Abandoned by employer

Abandoned by employer Discharged and abandoned by employer Anger, sadness, Ill-­treated and disgust abused by employer Sadness, trust Failed to get a passage back home on time Sadness, trust, Abandoned by fear employer Sadness, trust Abandoned by employer Trust Abandoned by employer Disgust, anger Abused and threatened by employer Anger, disgust, Overworked and sadness, fear abused, irresponsible employer Trust, Anger Abandoned by employer Trust, Anger Abandoned by employer Fear, Sadness Irresponsible and abusive employer Sadness Employer penniless and unable to pay for her return passage

Creative Resilience in Crisis  69 1928 Catharine Ayah 1928 Mary Ayah

Crying, unhappy, ill-­treated Ill-­treated, afraid, helpless, suicidal

Sadness, disgust, trust Sadness, fear

Held hostage by employer Abandoned by employer and certificates and passport destroyed

Source: Compiled from BL, IOR files, and British newspapers (1850–1930)

The cases in the following two sections offer detailed discussions of the ways that travelling ayahs and their allies strategically deployed emotional acts, il­lu­ min­at­ing fleeting moments of agency and self-­representation. These cases dem­ onstrate a repeated refusal of stranded travelling ayahs to lapse into passivity and a determination to communicate effectively with those who had the power to help them. Whilst emotional behaviour, especially in women, has often been read as lack of agency or self-­control, these cases show that emotions became the very tools through which travelling ayahs attempted to negotiate some control over their experience of waiting.

Home, Family, and Shared Moralities: Emotional Appeals by Travelling Ayahs In October 1852, Mrs Kelly’s ayah (the records do not allow us access to her name) found herself stuck in Britain and could foresee an indefinite period of waiting before she was able to secure a passage back to India. She had travelled with Mrs Kelly from Calcutta to Suffolk on the understanding that upon reaching Britain, Mrs Kelly would pay wages due to her as well as her return passage to India. Instead, Mrs Kelly abandoned her travelling ayah upon arrival in Britain without paying either. Thereafter, the travelling ayah went to the EIC and appealed to the administrators for help in securing a passage back to India. When the EIC proved unresponsive, the travelling ayah deliberately staged a public demonstra­ tion. She stood in front of the EIC building, holding a placard which read:6 Poor Ayah. No rice no milk. Poor baby in Calcutta. No husband here to love poor Ayah, he want me, I want him, he cant (sic) get here brought here by bad bad woman—­wont (sic) send me to Calcutta. Pity Pity! 6 BNA, The Globe, 22 October 1852. The case was widely reported in other British dailies including the Wells Journal, Herts Guardian, and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper and in Irish newspapers including the Downpatrick Recorder, Sligo Champion, and New Telegraph.

70  Waiting on Empire By the following day, she had caught the attention of the local authorities. A police constable arrested her for begging and causing nuisance and brought her before the London Mayor’s Court. Though no passing audience came to her aid when she was demonstrating in front of the EIC, her deliberately crafted emotional appeal appears to have had an effect upon the court. Upon hearing her case, the magistrate established that she had been wronged by her employer and that the EIC Office should do the needful to repatriate her and reunite her with her family. Subsequently, the EIC Office reluctantly complied. The travelling ayah, very un­usual­ly, achieved repatriation at the expense of the British authorities. Her success can be attributed to three factors. First she drew attention to her case by demonstrating at a strategically chosen location outside the institution that she held responsible for her plight and which she knew had the resources to remedy it. Secondly, she made an emotional appeal by displaying her placard, its wording carefully crafted to appeal to family values which were as central to Victorian Britain as they to India during the same period. Finally, her demeanour in court convinced the magistrate that her emotional appeal for repatriation was justified by a moral framework that both the travelling ayah and the magistrate shared. In a similar case, ten years later in 1862, Begum Ayah, who was abandoned by her irresponsible employers, took recourse to emotional appeals to a sequence of audiences in efforts to qualify for their help.7 In 1861 she had entered into employment as a travelling ayah for Mr N. C. Beale and his family from Calcutta to London. On arrival in London, the Beale family abandoned her without resources for her to return to India. Begum Ayah had wandered the streets in hope of finding help and finally found refuge at the Kensington workhouse. Whilst presenting her case to Mr Blackwell, the master of the workhouse, she tearfully narrated that she was a widow who cared for her elderly mother and two children in India. She also emphasized that she would never have left India if she had known that her employer would not arrange for her return.8 Begum Ayah had in her possession a signed contract between her and Mr Beale which she presented to Mr Blackwell to show how she had been deceived. Her emotional state, the effective way in which she communicated her sense of responsibility towards the family she had left behind and her documents, made her a strong candidate for the workhouse’s sympathy and aid. Blackwell not only offered her immediate shelter in the workhouse but decided to present her case to the Kensington Board of Guardians to explore ways in which she could be repatriated. Upon hearing the details, the Kensington Board of Guardians unanimously agreed that Begum Ayah ‘was deceived’ and agreed to take steps ‘to see that justice is done to her’.9 After critical investigation, the Chairman of the Board of Guardians decided that 7 BNA, West London Observer, 4 January 1862; BNA, West London Observer, 26 April 1862. 8 BNA, West London Observer, 4 January 1862. 9 BNA, West London Observer, 4 January 1862.

Creative Resilience in Crisis  71 the case ‘amounted to desertion’ and asked for the employer to be contacted as ‘it was most unjust to the rate-­payers as well as cruel to the poor Indian, that she should at last be left friendless and destitute and chargeable to the parish’. The Chairman, in his concluding remarks during the discussion of the case, stated that ‘Her (Begum Ayah’s) appearance and manner elicited the deepest sympathy’.10 It is clear from these comments that Begum Ayah’s emotional appeals were successful in conveying her trauma, sense of injustice, love for her family, and longing for home, which were effective in evoking sympathy in her audience and ultimately, in motivating them to help to get her repatriated. There is no reason to doubt that Begum Ayah’s emotions were spontaneous and genuine given the extremely vulnerable situation in which she found herself. At the same time, the fact that she was emotional does not mean that she was weak and irrational. Some amount of thought, if not strategizing, went into the way she presented herself and her case to the guardians of the workhouse. In her cries to return to her family—­mother and children, Begum Ayah had struck notes of home, duty, motherhood, and courage, all prized in Victorian Britain. In fact, her performance of her emotional state was an entirely rational means of communi­ cating with her audiences which we can see, from the comments of the au­thor­ities, was far more effective than any purely legalistic appeal. Eventually, the attempts of the Board of Guardians to contact and coerce her employers to pay for her repatriation were unsuccessful. However, the emotive appeals of Begum Ayah had made such an impact on Mr Blackwell that he remained invested in trying to find a way to arrange for her return to India to reunite with her family. He finally succeeded in raising between thirty to forty pounds to pay for her return to her home in Calcutta. Blackwell arranged a passage to India on 3 May 1862 for Begum Ayah, after several months waiting in London, onboard the ship Louisa.11 On learning of his act, the Board of Guardians and the local newspapers expressed appreciation for his efforts in going ‘to a great deal of trouble and expense in attending to her case’ and ‘for exerting himself to such an extent on her behalf ’. The Board ‘eulogized Blackwell for his kind and Christian-­like conduct to the poor woman’.12 Mr Blackwell’s act of kindness was undoubtedly praiseworthy especially when compared to the apparently callous inaction of British administrators in such cases. Yet it is clear that Blackwell was motivated to act by Begum Ayah’s performance of emotion, which struck notes of familial attachment and justice in which Blackwell and the Board of Guardians were strongly invested. 10 BNA, West Middlesex Advert, 4 January 1862. 11 BNA, West London Observer, 26 April 1862. Passenger lists are not available for Louisa for this exact date, so we cannot be certain that Begum Ayah embarked on the journey, but later census reports do not show her name and no further reports by newspapers or the Board of Guardian discuss her case, so it is likely that she indeed returned to India. 12 BNA, West London Observer, 26 April 1862.

72  Waiting on Empire In another case, in 1878, Sobha, a travelling ayah who was abandoned by her employers in England had been found in an ‘anxious’ and ‘distressed’ state by a fellow country man, Prof. Mir Aulad Ali, a professor of oriental languages at Trinity College, Dublin. The archival records for this case do not offer us clear details of how the encounter took place and how Prof. Ali met Sobha in England. Nonetheless, the available records reveal that Prof. Ali was emotionally moved by learning about Sobha’s condition. In his letter to the India Office he wrote: ‘The unfortunate woman is in great affliction, being most anxious to return to her home and family in India, but is without the means of doing so and she therefore begs the merciful consideration of the Government to her sad case.’13 According to Sobha, she was brought to Britain by her employers—­Mr and Mrs Burkitt. Mr Burkitt had served as an Indian civil servant in India and whilst returning to Britain had employed Sobha on the understanding that they would release her and send her back to India once the family reached Britain. Instead, the Burkitts dismissed and abandoned her ‘destitute of means of reaching home’. Initially, Prof. Ali had attempted to communicate with Mr and Mrs Burkitt to negotiate a way to arrange for Sobha’s return home. However, Mr Burkitt unapolo­ getically responded stating, ‘Mr Burkitt acknowledges receipt of Prof. Aulad Ali’s letter of the 9th inst and must decline entering into any correspondence with him on the subject thereof ’. Frustrated in his approach to Burkitt, Prof. Ali wrote to the India Office, noting that: ‘she (Sobha) has served him faithfully’ and that she ‘begs the merciful consideration of the Government to her sad (emphasis added) case’. In his attempt to communicate to the India Office the emotions that Sobha felt being far away from home, Prof. Ali also wove in his emotions about the irre­ sponsible and immoral behaviour of civil servants, some of whom had been his students. The record ends abruptly, disallowing us knowledge about Sobha’s ul­tim­ate fate. It is evident in this case that Sobha, like Begum Ayah and Mrs Kelly’s ayah, had effectively communicated her desperation and anxiety to her audience, in the person of Prof. Ali, who was motivated to personally invest time and resources to help her. It is also a telling example of cases where emotions expressed by the travelling ayahs carried their own agential promise. In his efforts to communicate Sobha’s situation, Prof. Ali clearly wove in his emotions of dis­ gust, frustration and anger towards civil servants in general, which most likely was not Sobha’s intent when she expressed her emotions to him. In 1895, travelling ayah Angelina Mc Barnett found herself waiting for a return passage back to India. Nowhere in the case file is it mentioned that she was ‘aban­ doned’, so it would appear that her employers had not agreed to pay for her return passage. From the records, it appears that she had attempted to find new employ­ ment from Britain to India, but whilst waiting for a job to materialize, had used

13  BL, IOR MSS EUR F 119/24 (1878–91), Mir Aulad Ali’s letter, 1878.

Creative Resilience in Crisis  73 up all her resources and ultimately became destitute. In April 1895, she arrived at the Manchester Guardians of the Poor Home and expressed her desperation and sadness at being away from home and her husband at Kurrachee. Interestingly, the authorities of the Home readily connected with her case and made prompt arrangements to send her home using the available funds at their disposal.14 Were they aware that the India Office would not help? Or were they so moved by the emotions displayed by Angelina that they felt it necessary to help her immedi­ ately? Or was it because Angelina was a Christian and hence earned the sympathy of the Home easily? We will never know the answers from the records that survived. Nonetheless, it is clear that the emotions Angelina expressed in her inter­action with the Manchester Poor Home motivated the Guardians to invest funds in repatriating her as soon as possible. Some travelling ayahs, such as Mrs Kelly’s ayah discussed above, focused on communicating directly with state authorities rather than relying on charitable Homes or other intermediaries. But other travelling ayahs preferred the latter. In 1899, travelling ayah Nasiban was forced into a precarious state of waiting when her employer abandoned her without wages or a passage home immediately upon arrival in London.15 After wandering the streets of London looking for help, she made her way to the West London Police Court at Bow Street where she pre­ sented her case in front of John Rose, the Metropolitan Police Magistrate. Rather than waiting passively to be found by the police or seeking assistance from pass­ ers-­by, she independently approached the local authorities to seek help. Nasiban adopted a similar discursive strategy to other travelling ayahs discussed above, emphasizing that she had been deceived by her employer and that she was eager to return to her home and her husband. Like Mrs Kelly’s travelling ayah, Nasiban used terms with particular connotations in the Victorian emotional lexicon to communicate basic emotions of anxiety, fear, and sadness stemming from her longing for home and for reunification with her husband and children. As in pre­ vious cases, the emphasis on home and family sought to evoke shared values and emotional responses in her British ruling-­class audience which would transcend the divisions of race and class between them. Scholars such as Jan Plamper, Susan Broomhall, Lila Abu-­ lughod, and others have demonstrated that emotional ex­peri­ences can define, reproduce, and reinforce social and political categories.16 In the case of travelling ayahs, it becomes evident that they had learned what mattered to the Victorian sense of morality and used this knowledge to build common emotional ground with those who had the power to help them. The magistrate appeared to have been moved by Nasiban’s appeal and called on the India Office to help. In the meantime, he put Nasiban into a workhouse so 14  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/395/0001. 15  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/518, file 1676 (1899). 16 Jan Plamper, The History of Emotion: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Susan Broomhall (ed.), Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2016).

74  Waiting on Empire that she would have accommodation until she could find a way home to India. In his letter to the India Office, the magistrate mentioned that ‘she speaks English with difficulty’, which made Nasiban’s expression of her emotions all the more affective and impressive. Nasiban was not paralysed by the difficulties and in­just­ices she faced: rather she was motivated to find a solution. In line with the government’s officially unarticulated but long-­established informal policy,17 the India Office refused to interfere in the case by aiding Nasiban or attempting to find the employer and force her to pay for Nasiban’s repatriation. However, Nasiban’s emotive actions made such an impression on the magistrate that he personally worked with the poorhouse to find Nasiban an employer who would pay her passage on the condition that she worked as a travelling ayah on her way home. Whilst justice was not delivered to Nasiban, as she did not obtain the wages she was owed or the passage home that she was promised, her effective communications did indeed earn her a way home despite the fact that both her employer and the imperial authorities had shied away from their responsibilities. It is interesting to note in this context that when men from India were stranded in Britain, their choice of words to attract the attention of colonial administrators was markedly different from that used by women. Between 1899 and 1910, stranded Indian men who ranged from tourists to destitute oculists or abandoned performers pled to the British Consul and India Office for repatriation.18 Like travelling ayahs, male migrants actively asserted their needs, complained of in­just­ices and sought remedies for them. However, their means of attracting administrative attention were different. For instance, in 1906, a group of Indian male performers, brought by their employers to tour Europe, were suddenly abandoned in Marseilles. In their pleas for help, the stranded men cited their dire economic situation and the fact that they had been cheated by British nationals, but made no mention of home or family.19 Evidently, there were gendered ­perceptions behind the different choice of vocabulary by men and women in similar situations. Whilst the women highlighted the urgency of their need for repatriation through ideas of home, family, children, and spouse, men primarily highlighted their economic difficulties using less emotionally evocative language. Underlying this difference are likely to have been ideas about masculinity as inde­ pendent, emotionally restrained, and stoic in adversity: the imperial stereotype or archetype of the ‘stiff upper lip’, which may have been shared by both British and Indian men. The care with which these appeals were crafted by those who were made to wait shows that they were constantly aware of the judgmental gaze of their audience,

17  See Chapter 2 for more details. 18 Compiled from BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­ 1280; BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801; BL, IOR L/ PJ/6/545-­1446; BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1118-­4159. 19  BL, IOR/L/PJ/6/741-­3827.

Creative Resilience in Crisis  75 assessing the genuineness and legitimacy of their cries for help. But it is crucial to also note that, as the cases above show, judgement was seldom entirely unidirec­ tional. The travelling ayahs evidently judged the space they occupied and the audience with whom they interacted before they presented their stories. These assessments influenced the kinds of stories that they told.

Other Forms of Emotional Agency: Appealing for Sympathy in Hardship, Seeking Redress for Injustice, and Exerting Emotional Pressure There were also travelling ayahs who used emotional agency but did not necessarily employ the usual ideas of family, home, duty, and mothering responsibilities to legitimize their pleas for help from the British administration. Rather, they relied on their ability to appeal for sympathy or exert emotional pressure on various parties in other ways. As Botond Koszegi has argued, when an individual attempts to attract the attention of a target audience, both the individual and the intended audience usually need to bond over a common interest or feeling. According to Koszegi, this is usually achieved by controlling and appropriately presenting information to the audience with the intention of evoking particular emotional reactions.20 In the cases discussed above, most emotional connections were established via discussions of family and home. In the following cases, travelling ayahs used other methods to establish emotional connections. In 1919, Mrs G. McWatters, a British civilian who had lived in India for some time but was then residing in Hampshire, became acquainted with Catharine, a travelling ayah, on her jaunts around town. After meeting Catharine on several occasions, Catharine had disclosed to Mrs McWatters that she had travelled from Bombay to Britain with her employer on the understanding that within a few days of their arrival in Britain, her employer would arrange for her return to India. However, six months had passed and Catharine’s employer was showing no inclination to send her back. Moreover, she complained that he paid her only five pounds sterling a week for food. Catharine told Mrs McWatters that she felt hungry, cold, and helpless. Rather than deploying the gendered ideas of home, family, and belonging frequently used by other travelling ayahs in such contexts, Catharine sought to evoke sympathy for the harshness of her conditions and the injustice of the way she had been treated. Catharine’s communications with Mrs McWatters were evidently convincing and arousing, because within a few weeks, Mrs McWatters wrote to the India Office on Catharine’s behalf explaining her case and calling upon the India Office

20  Botond Koszegi, ‘Emotional Agency’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 121.1 (2006): 121–55.

76  Waiting on Empire to help. To convince them of the legitimacy of the case, Mrs Mcwatters wrote, ‘If I was not a widow myself with very limited means I would pay for her keep . . . till she could get to India. Do please try and help her.’21 In line with their usual practice, the India Office responded stating, ‘. . . the information given therein does not appear to call for any intervention by this office between the ayah referred to and her mistress’.22 The letter explained that as the travelling ayah was in receipt of food, wages, and was under no formal agreement with her employer there was no cause for the India Office to take any action. Whether Mrs McWatters continued to help Catharine, either by offering her emotional support or by helping her explore other channels, is not known. Nonetheless, the case shows that the travelling ayah was able to establish a supportive relationship, build an emotional connection across boundaries of race and class and motivate her new friend to offer help. From the discussions in the letters, it also appears that Catharine was aware of the existence of the Ayahs’ Home in London and understood how they could be used to attract potential employers as well as to communicate with the India Office. This knowledge may have been based on previous experience or it may have derived from knowledge-­sharing amongst networks of travelling ayahs. In either case, it is clear that the travelling ayah was actively using both practical knowledge and emotional agency to create options to improve her situation. A similar case in 1928 involved Mary Ayah who arrived in England with Mrs Thomas whilst serving as a travelling ayah to Mrs Thomas and her child. According to their agreement, Mary was to travel back home to India shortly after Mrs Thomas and the child were settled in England. However, Mrs Thomas abruptly changed her plans and went off to Switzerland leaving Mary with her child (Mrs Thomas’s infant) at Mrs Thomas’s parents’ (the Wilsons) house in Fairlight Cove. Feeling the moral pressure of taking care of the child and not having resources to travel back to India, Mary clearly felt stuck. However, she remained active in her waiting. During her daily walks with the infant, she would regularly talk to neighbours in Fairlight Cove, which comprised of seventy bungalows. On every occasion she actively expressed her anxiety and frustration, and cried about her resource-­lessness as the Wilsons withheld her wages and passage money. Mary had also mentioned that all her previous character and service certificates and her passport was destroyed by Mrs Wilson to ensure Mary wouldn’t run away. On some occasions, neighbours even reported that Mary had explicitly ‘spoken about committing suicide’.23 Such pleas for help and expression of her emotions led to some well-­intentioned neighbours reporting her case to the local police. However, the local police and the India Office advised the neighbours that they wouldn’t be 21  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1631/6640. 23  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1957, file 914.

22  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1631/6640.

Creative Resilience in Crisis  77 able to help. Frustrated at this response, the neighbours, particularly Mrs Seeton Brown, wrote to inform the police and the India Office that she would take the matter into her hands and find employment for Mary and in the meantime extract Mary from her employers’ house and pay for her admittance in the Ayahs’ Home where she could wait till her future employment was arranged. Learning about Mrs Seeton Brown’s motives, the police suggested that she could get herself into trouble with the employers. To this, Mrs Seeton Brown courageously responded, ‘I am influenced solely by humane motives. It cannot be contended that I am depriving her employer of her services; on the contrary it seems that if her employer prevents her from leaving of her own free will, it is my duty to invoke the protection of the police.’24 On receiving this letter the police contacted the Indian High Commissioner to UK, Atul Chatterjee, to explore if his office could help. The High Commissioner’s office passed the case to the Home Office and asked the police to make discreet enquiries into the case. Interestingly, the inves­ tigation proved to be in favour of Mary, however in light of the complications the case could cause the government, the Home Office advised the police to not take any actions or involve the government in the case. From the available records it cannot be concluded if Mrs Seeton Brown continued helping Mary and if she was able to arrange Mary’s passage back. However, the case is a testament to how Mary had worked through hope and hopelessness in waiting. She was able to use her emotional agency to engage with her audience and move them emotionally to the extent that they took serious actions and reminded the police and other gov­ ernmental administrators about their duties. Mary Michael’s case was quite similar. Mary Michael was a travelling ayah hired by Mr and Mrs Chauduri, briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, who arrived in London from India in 1910. The contract of employment between Mary and the Chaudharis was based on the understanding that Mary would travel from India with the family, would serve them as a travelling ayah in resi­ dence during their stay in England, and would return with them once their planned visit was completed. Upon arrival in England, however, Mary found the work expected from her as a travelling ayah in residence to be more burdensome than she had anticipated and attempted to terminate her service by giving her notice. Her employers had refused to accept this, and withheld her due wages and payment for her return passage, citing the employment conditions in the contract.25 The fact that the Chauduris were an Indian family suggests that ‘race’ may have had little impact on class-­relations between travelling ayahs and their employers.26

24  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1957, file 914. 25  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801. 26  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801. This was one of the only cases against an Indian employer I found in the archives. Not to suggest Indian employers were not irresponsible, but clearly the records suggest they were rare.

78  Waiting on Empire Desperate to end her service with the Chaudharis’s and return home to India, Mary left her employers and sought accommodation in the Ayahs’ Home. Because her wages had been withheld, Mary was unable to pay for her accommodation, but she carried with her the ‘excellent references’ she had received as a travelling ayah from previous employers. Using these references and her previous experi­ ence as a travelling ayah in Britain, Mary negotiated a temporary living arrange­ ment at the Ayahs’ Home whilst she directly appealed to the India Office to require her employer to pay her wages and pay for her return passage. To bolster her case that the Chaudaris were unreasonable employers, Mary Michael cited the cases of several English servants who had been employed by them but had left within days because they found Mrs Chaudhuri a difficult mistress for whom to work. Mary added that Mrs Chaudhuri had misled her about the work that she would be required to do in England and the length of time she would have to spend away from India. Finally, Mary expressed her hope that the India Office would contact Mrs Chaudhuri since this ‘would frighten that lady into paying the money due’ to her. Like Catharine, Mary Michael made no direct references to the themes of home or family used by many other travelling ayahs in distress. Why not, we cannot know, but it is perfectly possible that some women may have taken work as travelling ayahs precisely to escape oppressive family relationships or arranged marriages. In such cases, it would be unsurprising if discourses of family were far from their minds. Rather than focusing on family and home, Mary Michael appealed for sympathy on the basis of the unreasonable behaviour of her employer. Her citation of English servants who had left the Chauduris’s employ may be seen as showing that Mary was not alone in her dissatisfaction. Finally, her hope that the India Office would ‘frighten’ Mrs Chauduri into paying her what she was owed suggests a desire to put emotional pressure on the Chauduris by creating fear of official consequences for non-­payment. In fact, Mary Michael’s appeals were unsuccessful. Despite a detailed investiga­ tion by the India Office, which involved interviewing the neighbours of the Chaudhuris, their friends, as well as other servants employed in their household, the India Office found that Mary had been well treated by her employers and in a letter to Mary and the Ayahs’ Home wrote that: ‘the Secretary of State sees no reason to interfere on her behalf.’27 No evidence was found in the surviving records as to what happened to Mary Michael thereafter, so we cannot know whether she returned to her employer or waited in the Ayahs’ Home until she could secure new employment on a passage back to India, but it is clear that she was both proactive and resourceful in extricating herself from a situation in which she was unhappy and seeking alternative ways to return home.

27  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801.

Creative Resilience in Crisis  79 Mary Michael was not the only travelling ayah who sought to secure better treatment from their employers by putting them under emotional pressure through creating fear of official consequences. This strategy may have been one that was easiest for experienced travelling ayahs who had made several voyages and understood how the economic and bureaucratic systems worked in practice. Frequently, the travelling ayahs are likely to have been considerably more experi­ enced than their employers in handling such relationships. In 1885, a travelling ayah (like many others, her name is not registered in the records) in the employ­ ment of a Major in the British Indian army arrived in London.28 During her voy­ age from Calcutta to London, she had refused to perform some duties that she did not consider to be a part of her work. This enraged her employer who had threatened that he would not pay her return passage to India upon arrival in London. It appears such threats had little impact on the travelling ayah as, upon arrival in London, when the Major refused to pay for her passage, she confidently informed him that it was his duty to send her back to India and that he was legally bound to do so. The travelling ayah’s arguments were so compelling that the Major seemed convinced and anxiously hired a solicitor in London to enquire with the India Office if there indeed was a legal obligation for the employers of travelling ayahs to send their travelling ayahs back. As noted in Chapter  2, the India Office returned an inconclusive answer. There are no further records regarding this case. Whether this means that, in the absence of any reassurance from the India Office, the Major accepted his travelling ayah’s confident assertions and paid for her pas­ sage back to India or whether he refused to pay and she found another way home is impossible to know. The fact that she found no need to appeal to the authorities for help, however, suggests that in either case, the assertive travelling ayah was confident that she could take care of herself without the help of the government. There were also cases wherein travelling ayahs successfully fought against their employers in court and won. In a notable case from 1892, a travelling ayah named, Minnie Green, was physically abused by her employers upon arriving in London from Bangalore. According to the police reports, Minnie Green’s employers, Harold Denton and his wife Grace Denton, had often quarrelled and physically abused Minnie Green, both during the voyage and after arriving at London. But on the day of the incident in London, as witnessed by others on the street, the Dentons ‘struck her (Minnie Green) on the face’ after being drunk.29 During the course of the trial it was also maintained that the Dentons owed three pounds in wages to Minnie Green. In her depositions, Minnie Green had successfully con­ nected with the administrators by finding effective ways to communicate the physical and emotional hurt she experienced in the hands of her irresponsible 28  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/158, file 1282. 29 BNA, Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 4 September 1892.

80  Waiting on Empire and violent employers, who were frequently drunk. Simultaneously, Minnie Green had also emphasized her interest to go back to her husband in India soon. Whilst the case concluded with the Dentons being discharged and being com­ pelled to pay the due charges, other ‘moved’ parties in the audience came to aid Minnie Green. An audience member in the trial, Mr Weedon, the Church of England’s temperance missionary, took on himself the task of arranging Minnie Green’s return passage to reunite her with her husband and family in India. Mr Weedon could have been moved by the sympathy he felt for Minnie Green or it could be a way to promote his temperance work given the case involved drunk individuals. Nonetheless, Minnie Green had successfully crafted her evidence in court to allow people to become invested in her case. Minnie Green, who was well-­versed in English, thanked the Bench in the Court during the conclusion of the trial saying, ‘I have much to thank you for—­you gentlemen’.30 This is remark­ able because this is one of the rare incidents when we get access to the words of the travelling ayahs and not how they were interpreted. Finally, we can conclude from the discharge records of the Salvation Army’s Rescue Home in Hackney that Minnie Green sailed home to India with her new employers Mr and Mrs Rose on 16 November 1892.31 In the cases described in this section, travelling ayahs did not resort to dis­ courses of home and family to secure help from the authorities. Rather, they sought to evoke sympathy in allies and officials through narratives of physical hardship and unfair treatment, in order to evoke sympathy for themselves and righteous anger against their employers. Arguably, these discourses were still gen­ dered, portraying travelling ayahs as vulnerable women dependent on British society and British administrators for protection. At the same time, two of these travelling ayahs deliberately set out to evoke the emotions of fear or anxiety in their employers by threatening them with legal consequences for their perceived poor treatment, assuming stances that were active and assertive rather than vulnerable.

Agency in Crafting Emotional Bridges The desire to escape unpleasant working conditions, seek redress for unjust treat­ ment and ultimately, in most cases, to return to India, motivated travelling ayahs to make the waiting to which they were subjected a space of creative activity 30  NAI, CRIM 10/83, session 1–12, volume 117–18, date: 1892–3; CRIM 10/84, session: 1–12, vol­ ume 119–20, date: 1893–4. 31  Salvation Army’s Rescue Home in Hackney Annual record, November 1892, 35 (girl’s statement and final statement). I have also confirmed their sailing back to India from the ship manifests of that date. As per the ship manifest record, they departed from England for Bombay onboard Mirzapore. See TNA, BT27, November 1892 (piece number was not available for this record).

Creative Resilience in Crisis  81 rather than merely passive trauma. Even when travelling ayahs felt helpless, they consciously used their helpless condition to appeal for sympathy and assistance. In the cases we encounter in this chapter, we witness the power and voice of travelling ayahs whose agency became visible and audible in the expressions of grief, pain, fear, and sometimes outrage through which they appealed to audiences that had the power to help them. The recording of these emotive acts allows something of the personalities of the travelling ayahs, usually hidden in the abstract figures of ships’ manifests and census reports, to emerge from the archives. In making themselves visible through their emotional appeals and sometimes demands, the travelling ayahs thus made history whilst waiting. Subaltern, they undoubtedly were. Subordinate, they refused to be. Words of emotion in archival records have sometimes been skipped over by historians, or assumed to have transparent meanings. But a closer reading and contextual analysis of the language used, in conjunction with the space and time wherein the emotions were expressed, can reveal a range of meanings and voices that are otherwise neither audible nor visible. Whilst travelling ayahs may have expressed emotions spontaneously, it is clear that the language in which they did so was used strategically. For example, in Victorian Britain home, motherhood, and spousal fidelity were cherished and a number of travelling ayahs focused on these values, shared between British and Indian societies, in their appeals for help. It is important to remember that although our historical evidence comes from the pages of written records, emotions are not only communicated in words but also through tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, and expressive acts ranging from begging to mounting a public demonstration or instituting a legal case. The Chairman of the Board of Guardians who heard the case of Begum Ayah, for example, was moved not only by her words but by her ‘appearance and manner’.32 Emotions are an important element of the archives, because it is only through the expression of emotion that travelling ayahs emerge from those archives as persons and not merely as anonymous statistics. Even when imperial authorities neglected to record their names, their words and actions allow us to understand something about the kind of people they were.33 Sara Ahmed has argued that emotions in archives are best examined, by asking not what they are, but what they do.34 Therefore, when examining the way travel­ ling ayahs expressed their emotions through words and actions it is important for historians to bear in mind what they were seeking to achieve. In the case of the

32 BNA, West London Observer, 4 January 1862. 33  As A. Bain has argued in a hierarchical situation the expression of emotions is never without intellect, as emotions are used as tools to open up communications and allows observers with power to understand and relate to the concerns of the ‘power-­less’. See A.  Bain, Emotions and the Will (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1859), 14–15, 28. 34 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions (New York: Routledge, 2004); Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Postcoloniality (London: Routledge, 2000).

82  Waiting on Empire travelling ayah who demonstrated in front of the EIC Office and the cases of Begum Ayah, Sobha Ayah, and Nasiban Ayah, the women expressed their genuine desire to return to their homes and families in ways calculated to appeal to their audiences: both physical audiences, in the person of police officers, workhouse guardians and magistrates, amongst others, and textual audiences: administrators who read about their cases and whom they sought to move to make decisions on their behalf. The refusal of the EIC and, later, the India Office to clarify the law or take posi­ tive action to protect travelling ayahs from abuse left those who were mistreated by their employers in highly vulnerable situations far from their homes and sup­ port networks. Lacking legal support, it was through emotional appeals that trav­ elling ayahs reached out to build new networks in the environments in which they found themselves, establishing bridges of connection between themselves and British society at a moment when they were faced with social exclusion, abandonment, and economic vulnerability. Gerd Althoff has argued that the use of emotions and emotional gestures allow individuals to communicate with target audiences with whom communication would not otherwise be possible,35 whilst Rosenwein and Cristiani have shown that, in a world divided, the use of emotions allows relations to form across barriers.36 It was the evocation of shared emotions which enabled waiting travelling ayahs to form human connections which transcended the barriers of ‘race’, class, religious, and linguistic difference which sep­ar­ated them from those with the power to help them.

35  Gerd Althoff, ‘Outrage, Tears, Contrition. “Emotions” in Public Communication in the Middle Ages’, Early Medieval Studies 30.1 (1996): 60–79. 36  Rosenwein and Cristiani, What Is the History of Emotions?.

4 Capitalizing on Waiting Creative Use of Time by Travelling Ayahs

The preceding chapter explored the lives and experiences of travelling ayahs while they waited in the metropole. A significant part of this experience was unpredictable periods of waiting imposed by others, over which travelling ayahs had little or no control. The uncertain duration of such periods of waiting could constitute a problem for travelling ayahs who could find themselves cast adrift in a strange society and environment and which, in the most severe cases, could push them into destitution. In the previous chapter, I explored the creative ways that travelling ayahs faced with unexpected challenges engaged with British society and the imperial administration to shorten their periods of waiting and secure passages back to India. I showed how travelling ayahs deployed emotional agency to evoke sympathy and motivate assistance by appeal to colonial understandings of morality and responsibility, conditioned, as they were, by stereotypes of race and gender. In this chapter, I move to look at the ways some travelling ayahs, often those more experienced in the trade, used periods of waiting creatively to improve their situation in material or symbolic ways, by increasing their wealth or status. In particular, it focuses on those travelling ayahs who capitalized on entrepreneurial and other socio-­cultural opportunities that waiting in the imperial metropolis offered them. This chapter reminds us that travelling ayahs were not slaves, traded into servitude, but women who had chosen to enter the extraordinary profession of travelling ayah, which placed them in a unique social situation. Travelling ayahs were part of both British and Indian societies. In some ways, they were marginal to both, yet they constituted a vital link between the two. Crucially, at least some women entered this profession in the hope and expectation of bettering themselves in ways that may not have been available to them had they stayed at home. I found the travelling ayahs in this chapter particularly interesting and inspiring because they had come to understand how the waiting which was an unavoidable and potentially threatening part of their professional experience could be turned into a space of opportunity which they could use to realize their aspirations. In so doing, travelling ayahs interrupted the colonial gaze with their own colonized gaze on the metropole, where they saw opportunities that they could exploit for their advantage. This is not to suggest that travelling ayahs were the ideal entrepreneurs of recent neoliberal ideology. They remained marginalized and racialized subalterns and their schemes were often confronted with Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0005

84  Waiting on Empire challenges from the hegemonic power of an empire that saw them as inferior subjects as a result of both their skin colour and their gender. The fact that they were prepared to navigate such challenges without losing faith in themselves or their future, I suggest, should render them all the more admirable to those of us from later generations. The pages that follow interrogate how the travelling ayahs capitalized on their waiting in Britain, and explore what case studies like theirs can tell us about colonial migration networks and the situational agencies they offered to labour migrants from the colonies.1 Hovering beneath the surface of this narrative is a recognition of the importance of non-­theatrical, everyday, fleeting, and episodic signs of agency exhibited by subalterns in the writing of subaltern history. Since travelling ayahs usually only came to the attention of the imperial authorities, whether the police—the India Office—or workhouse guardians—when they were in distress, the records of these institutions tend to present a partial picture of travelling ayahs as victims. Such portrayals can carry overtones of irresponsibility or, at least, naivete or gullibility. Some travelling ayahs, particularly those new to the profession, may indeed have been naive in regard to the trustworthiness of their employers or the challenges they were likely to face. But the stories in this chapter show that to stereotype all travelling ayahs as victims is a distortion of reality which merely perpetuates colonial attitudes. In most of the cases discussed here, travelling ayahs had become accustomed to waiting and had learned to use the time they spent in the metropole as a resource. Their acts of adjustment, engagement, and negotiation are far from the concept of waiting as a state of passivity or even paralysis which has often dominated historical writing on migration.2 Some used their period of waiting to engage in small business ventures, some explored new professional opportunities, some sought opportunities to increase their earnings by serving other families on return voyages, and some used their waiting to engage in various socio-­cultural activities that they found useful or attractive for their personal taste or future employability. Their stories thus help us look beyond the conventional associations of waiting with passivity, inactivity, or stuckedness. Indeed, they waited. But they waited as conscious subjects with a goal and purpose.

1  Arunima Datta, Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 2 Shahram Kosravi, Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Inka Stock, Time, Migration and Forced Immobility: Sub-­Saharan African Migrants in Morocco (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2019); Souad Osseiran, Migration, Waiting and Uncertainty at the Borders of Europe (London: University of London Press, 2017); Delphine Mercier, Kamel Doraï, Michel Peraldi, Mustapha El Miri, and Víctor Zúñiga, Experiencing Ruptures in Migration—­The Ordinary and Unexpected Journeys of Global Migrants (London: Transnational Press London, 2021); Donatella Schmidt and Giovanna Palutan, ‘Thick Leisure: Waiting Time in a Migratory Context’, in Leisure and Forced Migration Lives Lived in Asylum Systems, ed. Jayne Caudwell and Nicola De Martini Ugolotti (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2021).

Capitalizing on Waiting  85

Waiting for Business: Entrepreneurial Activities by Travelling Ayahs Many travelling ayahs who had experienced waiting on their regular trips to Britain sought to make this time productive by engaging in entrepreneurial activities while they waited. In his ethnography of students in contemporary India, Craig Jeffrey suggests that young lower-­middle-­class men find themselves ‘just waiting’ aimlessly and purposelessly in a given time and space.3 Travelling ayahs avoided any such sense of aimlessness by actively engaging with the ­temporal horizons of waiting, turning this period of time from a cost to a potentially profitable opportunity. Caroline Periera, a travelling ayah of Roman Catholic faith, frequently travelled from South Asia to Britain and back between the1820s and the 1850s. We know of her life from the records of a court case in which she was involved in 1850, which will be discussed below. Caroline was a native of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where she had served in the house of Sir Edward Barnes, the then Governor, for approximately twelve years. While in Barnes’s service, Caroline travelled to Britain and later returned to India in the late 1820s. Thereafter, she served at least seven families as their child’s nurse or travelling ayah between 1827 and 1850, during which she travelled to Britain multiple times. Caroline’s brother was a jewellery merchant who had branches of his business in Madras and Ceylon. On most of her travels to Britain Caroline carried silver and gold earrings and necklaces, jewel-­studded brooches, diamonds, ruby stones, silk scarfs, and pashmina shawls to sell at a profitable rate in Britain. Some of her regular customers in Britain included London shops and several of her previous employers, who sometimes placed orders with Caroline or her brother for custom-­made jewellery before she sailed from India.4 While serving as a travelling ayah, Caroline thus actively partnered with her brother in their entrepreneurial ventures. With the profit she made from selling the luxury items in Britain, she bought ‘English clothes, glasses, knives, forks and other fancy things’, which, on returning to India, she sold at a profitable rate to ‘make money’.5 Caroline, and also her brother through her, thus capitalized on the inevitable temporal phase of waiting to create opportunities for profit-­making. Indeed, waiting, for her, was not necessarily a restrictive experience. Rather, for Caroline, waiting was a rewarding and, perhaps in some ways, liberating experience: potentially liberating as it allowed Caroline, a subordinated servant for much of her working life, to become, at least transiently, a businesswoman in 3 Craig Jeffrey, Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 4  Old Bailey Records, Smith theft case, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, 10 June 1850, reference no. t18500610-­1040. 5  Smith theft case, June 1850.

86  Waiting on Empire her own right. Caroline’s case shows that waiting, for a travelling ayah, could become a transnational and transcultural space of trade benefitting both the travelling ayah and her patrons. We know from the court records that Caroline was not the only travelling ayah engaging in such entrepreneurial acts: others were also known to have travelled with exotic Indian goods to sell to shops in Britain.6 In such cases, economic activities undertaken whilst waiting not only benefitted travelling ayahs but also traders and individual clients who gained easy access to the valuable goods of India through a personal delivery service. Even for a successful entrepreneur such as Caroline, things did not always go as planned. In 1849, in her mid-­thirties, Caroline travelled onboard the ship Wellesley from Madras to London, in the service of Dr Darwood, a British surgeon based in Madras, and his wife and their five children. As on all her previous travels, Caroline carried jewellery as gifts to her previous employers settled in Britain and other items including a diamond brooch, ruby stones, four pairs of earrings, and other precious stones and silks which she intended to sell to shops or clients in London. From the beginning of the journey, Caroline’s working relationship with her master soured, leading to the development of mistrust between them. At the same time, Caroline became friendly with two English deck passengers: Patrick and Sarah Smith. The Smiths told Caroline that Patrick was a lieutenant in the military. In reality, they were impoverished music teachers who were returning to Britain after a failed attempt to find employment in India. In their conversations, Caroline divulged to the Smiths that she was carrying jewels to Britain and planned to visit Lady Barnes, a widow since the passing of Edward Barnes in 1838, at Beech Hill Park. The Smiths convinced Caroline that her valuables would be safe with them and that, as they were British, they could easily ‘smuggle’ the goods into London without paying taxes, something that would be impossible for Caroline herself to do. They even invited Caroline to stay with them at their house on Halsey Street, Chelsea. When they disembarked, the Smiths assured Caroline that they would clear her baggage from the customs hold and deliver the box to her previous employer, Lady Barnes, at Beech Hill Park. Having been persuaded to part with her valuables, it appears that Caroline had some doubts and waited for the Smiths to disembark. Amidst the chaos of disembarkation, however, she was unable to find them and also lost contact with her employer Dr Darwood, who left for Scotland immediately without paying her return fare or wages. From the docks Caroline went straight to her former employer, Lady Barnes, at Beech Hill Park. The Smiths never appeared with her

6  Smith theft case, June 1850. Whilst the records do not provide names or other identifying information, a witness in Caroline Ayah’s case asserted that this was common practice at the time.

Capitalizing on Waiting  87 property and Caroline realized that she had been robbed by her supposed friends as well as swindled by her employer, leaving her almost without means.7 Caroline then went to Mrs Parry’s lodging house in London, one of a small number of institutions which offered accommodation for travelling ayahs in Britain, where she set about trying to recover her stolen property. Later, with the help of Lady Barnes’s butler and Sir Edward Barnes’s brother, she travelled to Chelsea and found Halsey Street, where she encountered Sarah Smith on the street and confronted her about the missing jewellery. Smith, however, claimed that Caroline had gifted her the jewellery and refused to return it. Within a few days of the confrontation with Sarah Smith, Caroline, with the help of Mr Barnes, lodged a case against the Smiths at the Central Criminal Court, London.8 During the long drawn-­out trial, various witnesses, including other passengers and servants on the Wellesley as well as customs agents, were called upon to provide their depositions. The statements of these witnesses seemed to support Caroline’s claim that she had been robbed and it emerged during the course of the trial that the Smiths had sold some of Caroline’s possessions and retained others. Caroline, however, was unable to prove that she had not given her property to the Smiths as they claimed. Caroline’s employer, Dr Darwood, made a deposition which changed the direction of the trial, claiming that some of the Darwood’s belongings had gone missing during the voyage and that they suspected Caroline of stealing them. The trial thus broadened to include two tracks: Caroline’s claim against the Smiths and Dr Darwood’s claim against Caroline. Defending herself against Darwood’s claim, Caroline pointed out that the Darwoods had limited resources and had not paid her due wages or the cost of the return passage which they were obligated to provide. Caroline was clearly undaunted by the accusations against her and presented convincing arguments to counter the claims made by the Smiths and Darwoods.9 In fact, Caroline’s arguments forced Darwood to admit that he had never paid Caroline her due wages or her return passage and in court he was forced to promise to pay Caroline the money due to her after the trial. Caroline was acquitted of theft from the Darwoods due to their failure to provide convincing evidence, but the Smiths were also acquitted of theft from Caroline because the court was not prepared to take her word that she had not given away her possessions.10 What really happened is very difficult to ascertain. It is possible that the Smiths partnered with the Darwoods to share the profits from the sale of Caroline’s jewels, but perhaps it is more likely that Darwood simply took advantage of the trial to attempt to discredit a determined woman to whom he owed money. At the same time, it is possible that Caroline, realizing that the Darwoods were not going 7  Smith theft case, June 1850. 8  Smith theft case, June 1850. 9 BNA, Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 June 1850; BNA, Northern Star, 15 June 1850. 10  Smith theft case, June 1850.

88  Waiting on Empire to pay her what she was owed after regular confrontations onboard, really did commit some petty theft against them. Yet the confidence and determination with which Caroline pursued her rights suggests that she felt she had nothing to hide. Clearly, Caroline was an intelligent and articulate woman from a comparatively prosperous and well-­educated class of Indian society and she seems to have humiliated Darwood in court. Not only were his accusations rejected but he was forced to undertake to pay Caroline what he owed her. At the same time, the Smiths were acquitted because the court was simply not prepared to accept the word of a native servant that she had been robbed by a white, middle-­class British couple: even a couple with marginal status and a highly unlikely story. It seems virtually certain that racism played a role in this verdict. Even though the court recognized the convincing character of Caroline’s story, to find a ‘respectable’ white British couple guilty of theft from a native servant would have challenged the imperial ideology of racial superiority in a way too shocking for the court to contemplate. With the ending of the court case, Caroline disappears from the archives. Presumably, she returned to India at Darwood’s expense, but whether she resumed her career as a travelling ayah and salesperson we have no way of knowing. The court case in which she was involved, however, not only offers insights into the disputes themselves but into the lifeworld of Caroline and other travelling ayahs like her. The mobile lifestyle of travelling ayahs, unusual for any women of the time, regardless of ethnic origin, allowed them to build networks including high-­ranking members of society and to capitalize on their mobility by buying and selling merchandise when travelling in both directions. The kind of mishaps which befell Caroline Periera in 1850 had left numerous other travelling ayahs in dire straits, as described in previous chapters. Caroline, however, was able to draw upon her prestigious contacts who not only ensured that she did not end up on the streets or in the workhouse but helped her to challenge her mistreatment in court and win at least a partial victory. In good times and bad, Caroline’s approach to periods of waiting was anything but passive. Rather, she actively engaged with the infrastructure of Empire, both commercial and when necessary, judicial, with the aim not merely of surviving but of thriving in her chosen way of life. This conclusion resonates with those of scholars such as Paul Corrigan, William Whyte, Jane Cowan, and others who, in studies of men waiting in a broad variety of contexts, observe that even in periods of enforced idleness, men were active participants in processes through which they sought to achieve desired ends.11 Caroline’s mental resilience, access to material resources through 11  Paul Corrigan, ‘Doing Nothing’, in Resistance through Rituals: Youth SubCultures in Post-­War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (London: Routledge Kegan and Paul, 1979), 103–5; William F. Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Jane K. Cowan, ‘Going Out for a Coffee? Contesting the Grounds of Gendered Pleasures in Everyday Sociability’, in Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, ed. Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); M. Vale de Almeida, The Hegemonic Male: Masculinity in a Portuguese Town (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1996).

Capitalizing on Waiting  89 her brother, and ability to craft solidarities across class and racial divides enabled her to navigate serious challenges when she encountered them as well as to use every voyage to better her economic situation. The inevitable period of waiting in Britain which most travelling ayahs experienced could also be turned to advantage in other ways. For instance, in 1937, an Anglo-­Indian travelling ayah, whose name was not recorded, arrived in Britain having accompanied a family from India. Upon arrival, she obtained admission to a commercial school where she sought to acquire professional skills,12 for which she paid a significant sum of money. Thereafter, she found accommodation at the Ayahs’ Home in Hackney until she obtained a new engagement as a travelling ayah on the voyage back to India. In this case, a travelling ayah used her time in Britain to improve her employability, something on which she was prepared to spend a substantial portion of her wages, before  replenishing her funds through a new engagement on the voyage home.  Again, waiting became an opportunity rather than a limiting or ­paralysing event. There were also travelling ayahs who came to Britain with an understanding that they were to remain in Britain with their employers for a brief period before returning to India with the same family. In such cases, travelling ayahs usually agreed to spend a fixed period in Britain based on the understanding that they would be paid for their time and work in the country. Many found this a lucrative option. To illustrate this, I once again return to the 1910 case of Mary Michael, the travelling ayah discussed briefly in Chapter 3. Mary Michael came to Britain in the service of Mr A. Chaudhuri, a barrister from India visiting Britain.13 The case reached the India Office administrators after Mary arrived at the Ayahs’ Home, claiming that she had left the Chaudhuris because she was overworked and badly treated. She also claimed that she had given her notice to Mrs Chaudhuri as she wanted to terminate the engagement and seek different employment to work her passage back to India. Mrs Chaudhuri refused to release Mary or to pay her wages until she returned with the Chauduri family to India. Mary in her request to the Ayahs’ Home and later to the administrators in the India Office asked the India Office to write to Mrs Chaudhuri with the aim of pressuring them into paying the wages due. Following these requests, the India Office launched an investigation into the matter and on interviewing Mrs Chaudhuri, her neighbours, and other servants in the household, the investigation concluded that Mary had been well treated 12  Unfortunately, the records do not state what specific skills. 13  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801. As mentioned in earlier chapters, this is one of the very few archival traces of an Indian travelling ayah being employed by an Indian family. Although this is likely to have been common practice amongst elite Indian families travelling between Asia and Britain, the numbers of such families may not have been large, which would explain the limited presence in the archives. This case also reveals that class tensions were not necessarily mitigated by common Indian origins.

90  Waiting on Empire and that she had requested Mrs Chaudhuri to hold her wages until she returned to India. In the meantime, Mary had persuaded another servant, Perumal, of the Chaudhuri household to flee with her by ‘promising him to find him work at higher wages’.14 This plan having failed, the male servant, Perumal returned in a few days to the Chaudhuri household asking for forgiveness and requested the Chaudhuris to take him back. Based on these details, the case was dropped and the India Office informed the Ayahs’ Home that ‘enquiries have been made regarding her statements and the Secretary of State sees no reason to interfere on her behalf ’. Consequently, the Ayahs’ Home was left to decide on how they wanted to deal with Mary. The archival sources give us no further information on what happened to Mary Michael. The most likely outcome, based on the outcomes of similar cases, is that she secured an engagement for the return voyage to India through the Ayahs’ Home and paid the Home for her accommodation from her advance but the possibility that she sought and found employment in Britain cannot be ruled out. In this case, it appears that Mary Michael had originally planned to serve the Chauduris during their time in Britain, but that on finding her working conditions unsatisfactory, she was prepared to make a radical change and seek alternative work and accommodation. The fact that Mary told the male servant that she could find him better paid employment suggests that she was attempting to find a new life and job opportunities that would allow her to live in Britain.15 It emerged during the investigation that Mary had a tense relationship with her husband in India, whom she claimed carelessly spent the money that she earned, so she may well have had an incentive to seek a new life far away from him. Moreover, Mary was an experienced travelling ayah, having made three voyages between 1906 and 1909, so is likely to have been well aware of the kind of opportunities that might arise whilst waiting in Britain. Understanding how travelling ayahs navigated and crafted their waiting experiences is important for making sense of their life stories as well as for drawing out aspects of waiting beyond the established ideas of passivity and stuckedness. All the cases discussed so far in this chapter demonstrate that whilst waiting could indeed be a zone of challenge and vulnerability for travelling ayahs, it could also present opportunities, social, economic, and professional, which travelling ayahs grasped in a variety of ways. Rather than a place of stasis, the time that travelling ayahs spent waiting in the heart of the Empire could be a space of growth in which potential could be realized.

14  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023, file 2801. 15  This is based on the deposition the male servant and other servants of the household provided to the India Office. However, this shows Mary’s enterprising nature while she dealt with waiting.

Capitalizing on Waiting  91

Waiting for a Situation: Securing Employment on Return Passages Perhaps the most frequent form of waiting documented in the archives for travelling ayahs was waiting for employment on return passages to India. Even when travelling ayahs held return tickets paid for by their employers during the initial voyage from India, they usually sought to double their earnings by securing employment on the voyage home. Such arrangements not only benefitted travelling ayahs but could also offer benefits for both past and future employers. New employers headed to India were often keen to find a travelling ayah who already held a pre-­paid return ticket, since this meant that they only had to pay the travelling ayah’s wages and did not need to pay for her passage. In some instances, past and future employers would agree to share the cost of the travelling ayah’s passage back to India, thereby bringing down the cost for both parties. For travelling ayahs in such circumstances, waiting was a period of enterprise during which they sought the best opportunities to make money during the voyage home. Some travelling ayahs were fortunate to have employers who provided them with accommodation until such time as they found employment on a return voyage to India. Moreover, sometimes employers aided their travelling ayahs by placing advertisements on their behalf. For instance, in 1847, Mr George of Gough Square, London, advertised in the Morning Post: To FAMILIES about SAILING for the EAST—­Wanted, by a native of Madras, a SITUATION as AYAH or Companion to a Lady and Child; has sailed nine times from India. Every information can be gained by applying to C.R., Care of Mr George, 5, Pemberton-­row Goughsquare, Fleet Street.16

Similarly, on 1 July 1869, Major Wilson placed an advertisement for his travelling ayah in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette and other papers, which read: An Ayah, good character, home twice lately, never sea sick, wishes to return to India with a Lady (with or without children) who would take her at half-­rate by any P&O steamer until 31 July. Apply: Major Wilson, Alvaston Green, Alvaston, Near Thornbury, Gloucestershire.17

In these cases, the travelling ayahs’ employers became equally invested in their entrepreneurial waiting because if they were successful in finding their travelling ayah another employer, Mr George and Major Wilson would have to spend significantly less to facilitate their travelling ayah’s return home. Hence, in the 16 BNA, Morning Post, 1 December 1847.

17 BNA, Western Daily Press, 12 June 1869.

92  Waiting on Empire second case, Major Wilson’s insistence on the date and steamship line almost certainly results from the fact that he had already purchased a ticket for the travelling ayah with P&O which would expire on that date. Whilst in these cases, travelling ayahs appear to have relied primarily on their existing employers to find them new employment, thus saving them the effort, in other cases, active engagement with waiting and the elements of voice and choice became more important. In August 1897, a travelling ayah who had just arrived in Britain and had been relieved of her duties by her employer went to one of the Ayahs’ Homes in London to rent a lodging space while she waited to find the next suitable employment.18 The travelling ayah had planned ahead and had brought enough savings to live on whilst also being in possession of her passage money provided by her previous employer. In this case she had actively planned ahead and chosen to wait for suitable employment.19 What we witness here is that repetitive waiting experiences for travelling ayahs produced a familiarity with the system and a level of comfort with waiting which allowed them to seek ways to add to the wages they had received from their incoming passages into Britain. Moreover, some travelling ayahs were selective about the kind of employment they were willing to accept. In November 1891, a travelling ayah who was actively waiting in the Ayahs’ Home to find employment placed an advertisement specifying that she was willing to take charge of one or two children on her return voyage: A nurse, wishing to return to India is willing to take charge of one or two children. Good sailor and can always be recommended by her last Lady she came home with. Willing to give her service passage out to India.—Address: Ayahs’ Home C/O Messrs. Henry S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill, London, E.C.20

This case exhibits a few key points: first, that she had means to wait in the Ayahs’ Home which was not a place of charity and would not take in travelling ayahs if they had no means to pay.21 Second, that her passage had been paid by her previous employer or that she had enough savings to pay for her own passage. The advertisement reveals the travelling ayah’s confidence in her reputation and ability to secure a position since she was clear about her expectations regarding her employment. In many instances, as discussed in Chapter 2, travelling ayahs were forced to take charge of a large number of children onboard. In her advertisement, this travelling ayah made it clear that she would take charge of one

18  By this time multiple ayahs’ homes had mushroomed in Britain. For more discussion, please see Chapter 5. 19 NAI, CRIM 10/87, session 1–12, volume 125–6. Also BNA, Evening Standard, 18 August 1897, p. 6. 20 BNA, Homeward Mail, 21 November 1891. 21  See detailed discussion in Chapter 5.

Capitalizing on Waiting  93 or at the most two children. In this aspect, this travelling ayah’s advertisement was similar to that placed by Major Wilson, which specified that his travelling ayah would travel with a Lady with or without children, thus eliminating job offers which would require her to travel alone with children.22 Here, although the advertisement was placed by the former employer, its form was clearly arrived at as a result of dialogue with the travelling ayah concerned. It is likely that these travelling ayahs’ confidence in waiting to find the right employment came from security in terms of money and accommodation, confidence in their references, and previous experience on the job. In both these examples, travelling ayahs waited, not only actively but also confidently, which contradicts the perception that waiting is always precarious and that those who wait act out of fear or uncertainty. Some travelling ayahs became familiar faces at local institutions as they would frequently wait in the same place, most often, the Ayahs’ Home in Hackney, and place advertisements using the same advertising agencies. Mrs Anthony Pereira, whose career we have already discussed, completed the same journey fifty-­four times and became extremely familiar with the voyage and the circle of people with whom she frequently interacted in Britain. On most of her travels, when she landed in Britain, she chose to wait at the Ayahs’ Home until she found employment on the voyage back to India.23 Thus, throughout her repeated periods of waiting, she built relationships in Britain which could make waiting more predictable and less stressful and could contribute to finding future employment. The archives do not reveal what happened to travelling ayahs who did not find employment to their liking. It is likely that some had to compromise on their desired conditions and accept less satisfactory engagements just to get home. Experienced travelling ayahs, however, would have had a learned understanding of how long they could afford to wait before the costs of waiting began to exceed the potential rewards. Even such compromises, then, would have been conscious choices deliberately taken by travelling ayahs exercising agency. Waiting probably always involved an element of insecurity. The case of Caroline Periera, discussed above, shows how even a travelling ayah with a degree of material affluence and an extensive network of contacts could find herself in difficulty in certain circumstances. In most cases, however, travelling ayahs refused to allow anxiety about such possibilities to force them into paralysis or stuckedness. Rather, they focused on using the waiting period to further their various ambitions and enterprises.

22 BNA, Western Daily Press, 12 June 1869; also repeated: BNA, Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 8 July 1869. 23 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August, 1922, p. 104.

94  Waiting on Empire

Waiting for Non-­materialistic Gains: Religion and Relationships Whilst the normal pattern of life for a travelling ayah was to arrive in the imperial metropole, wait for a period of weeks or months, and then return to India, some inevitably engaged with the socio-­cultural spaces in which they found themselves, formed attachments of various kinds in Britain, and sometimes found life in Britain more attractive than a return to India. Since there were no legal restrictions on imperial subjects migrating to Britain, there was nothing to stop travelling ayahs from remaining indefinitely if they were able to support themselves. Because such cases only appear in the archives when some problem had arisen which drew them to the attention of the authorities, it is hard to know how often this happened, but two cases that do appear in the archives suggest the kinds of motivations that may have led ayahs to turn waiting into staying. In 1937, Suzanne, a 12-­year-­old travelling child ayah from Burma, then a province of British India, arrived in London with her employers, who paid for her lodging and upkeep at the Ayahs’ Home whilst they tried to find her a passage home to Burma. During her time at the Ayahs’ Home, Suzanne, who was already literate and fluent in English, took the opportunity to attend the Sunday School instituted by the London City Mission. According to the Ayahs’ Home reports, she enjoyed the religious instruction and the choruses and hymns that were practised in the chapel of the London City Mission. In 1938, the Ayahs’ Home finally found her an employer who would pay for her passage and wages, thereby enabling her to return home. However, Suzanne showed little interest in returning to her parents in Burma and resisted leaving London, where she had come to enjoy life at the Ayahs’ Home, pleading not to be sent away. Nevertheless, Suzanne was embarked on a ship for Burma with her new employers. Subsequently, Ayahs’ Home records report that after arriving home in Burma, Suzanne stayed in touch with the Home by mail, often expressing how much she missed her friends there.24 As a minor, Suzanne’s agency was limited. We cannot know why her parents chose to let her undertake such an extensive voyage at such a young age, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was their decision as much as hers which led her to travel halfway across the world. In London, Suzanne appears to have found that the Ayahs’ Home really was a ‘home’ for her. Ultimately, however, the decision that she would return to Burma was again made by others, not by her. Nevertheless, it is clear that Suzanne did exercise such agency as was available to her in strongly expressing her desire to extend the temporal phase of waiting to a more permanent experience. Suzanne, in attempting to prolong her waiting, engaged in a conscious act of protest against her return. Human geographer Craig

24 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1938, p. 144.

Capitalizing on Waiting  95 Jeffery has shown in his important work that young men in Meerut often wait without doing anything to resist corruption, educational mismanagement, and governmental harassment of students and ‘an accepted way of life’ that they did not accept.25 Here on the contrary, instead of being passive in her waiting, Suzanne’s attempts to extend her period of waiting constitute an agential act of resistance whilst in waiting, albeit a fleeting and ultimately unsuccessful one. Another case from 1937, which appears in the archives because it became problematic, was that of a Eurasian woman (name unknown) from India who travelled to Britain on an ‘Englishman’s promise to marry her’. The Englishman subsequently deserted her and she almost immediately found herself penniless on the streets of London. The Eurasian woman found her way to the Ayahs’ Home from where she found local employment in London.26 Eventually, the Ayah’s Home found her employment as a travelling ayah with a family travelling to India. Even in the difficult circumstances in which she found herself, it is clear that this Eurasian woman was exercising agency. Having secured accommodation at the Ayahs’ Home, she did not immediately seek to return to India but sought and found local employment. We cannot know why she did this: whether in hopes of rekindling her broken romance; because she wanted to spend more time in London; or because she wanted the freedom to choose what engagement to accept on the voyage back to India, rather than being forced to take the first available. Whatever the reason, the Eurasian woman actively engaged with the waiting period that was forced upon her by her paramour’s desertion.27 Suzanne’s case only appears in the archives because she was a minor, whilst we only know of the Eurasian woman because her relationship went catastrophically wrong. Yet it seems likely that these recorded cases may be representative of others that never came to the attention of the authorities. We have already noted the high proportion of Christian women who became travelling ayahs. It is possible that some of these women were accepted into local Christian congregations and found employment as servants in Britain. Michael Fisher notes that Indians had been accepted into Christian congregations in Britain from the sixteenth ­century onwards and that Indians were working as servants in Britain from the seventeenth century onwards.28 Similarly, given that large numbers of single women were travelling from India and spending weeks or months in Britain over a period of more than two centuries, it is highly likely that some of them formed romantic relationships which may have led to marriage whilst they were there, either with European men or, more likely given the social norms of the time, with 25 Jeffery, Youth, Class and Politics of Waiting. 26 Unfortunately, it is not clear from the available records whether she came to Britain as a travelling ayah or only turned to working as a travelling ayah in order to get home. 27 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, 1937, p. 146. 28 Michael Fisher, Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).

96  Waiting on Empire other colonial subjects. Fisher notes that by the mid-­nineteenth century, there were probably about 40,000 Indians resident in the UK, including soldiers, seafarers, scholars, students, merchants, and diplomats. Most of these would have been male and many would have lived in the imperial metropole of London, already a highly diverse city and the primary destination at which travelling ayahs arrived. Cases in which travelling ayahs settled in Britain and lived happily ever after (or even unhappily ever after) would simply never have come to the attention of the authorities. Yet, given the large numbers involved and the long periods of waiting that they experienced, it is highly likely that travelling ayahs arriving in Britain were building various kinds of relationships and sometimes making life-­changing decisions which may have ended both their travels and their waiting and led them to become part of the growing British-­Indian population. Both Suzanne and the Eurasian travelling ayah actively engaged with their social environments in London and built relationships and solidarities within the context of the imperial metropole that crossed the racial and ethnic boundaries which the Empire sought to define. In exerting agency, they also conferred agency upon those with whom they interacted in reciprocal relationships. For example, Suzanne’s embrace of Christianity was facilitated by the fact that the Ayahs’ Home deliberately engaged in missionary activity towards the colonized subjects whom they accommodated. While the different actors in such spaces made their own decisions within the constraints that faced them, their waiting was related and, in that way, mutually negotiated. The presence of travelling ayahs initiate a relation, a situation which invited others to act on their waiting.

(Re)visioning Waiting as an Act with Purpose Waiting, as noted above, is frequently understood as ‘wasted’ time, time that is unproductive, time of inactivity, or at the worst, a time of paralysis involving an inability to act or a lack of agency.29 Much of the literature on waiting tends to suggest that an individual waits only when compelled to by others. Sometimes this is indeed the situation and we examined such cases in the previous chapter. Sometimes, however, waiting can be a choice or can facilitate choices. In a number of the cases explored in this chapter, travelling ayahs actively decided to wait, delaying their return to India because it suited their interests. We have also seen how travelling ayahs used the space of waiting to creatively engage with the social environment in which they found themselves, making the time of waiting a positive, productive period of growth, rather than a space of ‘stuckedness’. Rather 29 B.  Schwatz, ‘Waiting, Exchange and Power: The Distribution of Time in Social Systems’, American Journal of Sociology 79 (1974): 841–70; H.  Schweizer, ‘On Waiting’, University of Toronto Quarterly 74.3 (2005): 778–91.

Capitalizing on Waiting  97 than resigning themselves to a period of unproductive stagnation, travelling ayahs used the time available to them constructively to refashion their skills, relationships, and identities through the exercise of agency, even if this was sometimes what I have described in a previous work as ‘fleeting agency’.30 Studying these cases reveals that experiences and perceptions of waiting differed significantly from one travelling ayah to another. Travelling ayahs were diverse in age and background as well as in their hopes and aspirations. In their times of waiting, travelling ayahs found access to opportunities in business, education, spiritual community, and relationships of various kinds, beyond the wages which were the formal reward for their work and travel. When we consider waiting in relation to travelling ayahs, it presents itself not as stultifying period of nothingness, but as a fertile temporal moment infused with possibilities which travelling ayahs attempted to seize in a variety of ways. Sometimes, their efforts met with disappointment or heartbreak, yet there is little evidence of travelling ayahs succumbing to paralysis or becoming ‘stuck’. Rather, they drew upon their own capacities and upon the relationships they had built to continue to move their lives forward, even when the odds appeared stacked against them. Many of the stories explored in this chapter took place, in part or in full, in the context of the Ayahs’ Home in Hackney. The following chapter will examine the role played by this and similar institutions in greater detail.

30 Datta, Fleeting Agencies.

5 Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs’ Homes Humanitarianism, Evangelism, and Profit

This chapter turns our attention to ayahs’ homes: institutions which emerged in Britain in response to the needs of travelling ayahs as they waited in the imperial heartland to secure employment that would enable them to return to India. The chapter shows how this space of waiting became a site of activity not only for travelling ayahs, but also for British people who engaged with them in the name of humanitarianism, Christianity, and indeed profit. In colonial discourses, private social welfare often played a significant role in the Empire’s ‘civilizing mission’. The politics of providing such welfare within a capitalist society required the definition of who was and who was not legitimately needy and thus qualified to receive welfare. Consequently, welfare was never monolithic, but was motivated by a variety of religious or socio-­political agendas including capitalist enterprise itself. This chapter explores how the operators of ayahs’ homes furthered their various agendas by providing for the needs of travelling ayahs and how travelling ayahs themselves engaged with these institutions. Whilst there were many ayahs’ homes or lodging houses in Britain, some of which we have already encountered in previous chapters, the archives only provide extensive information about one, which was based in east London and known simply as the ‘Ayahs’ Home’. This chapter, therefore, focuses primarily on this London institution, but makes reference to other ayahs’ homes where information is available. The chapter begins with a brief description of how the Ayahs’ Home came into being and the way it operated. The chapter then turns to investigate how the Ayahs’ Home capitalized on the waiting of travelling ayahs in Britain to serve a variety of agendas from entrepreneurship to Christian evangelism. The chapter then moves its focus to travelling ayahs themselves, exploring the ways that they negotiated with the Ayahs’ Home in limited ways during the periods that they stayed there. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the power dynamics between the Ayahs’ Home and the travelling ayahs who availed of its services.

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0006

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  99

The Ayahs’ Home By the nineteenth century, the presence of the Empire at home had become a customary sight in Britain.1 Indian travelling ayahs were one of many diverse groups of Asians in Britain, the majority of whom stayed only temporarily,2 but the figure of the travelling ayah had become an iconic representation in nineteenth- and twentieth-­century Britain, appearing in pictures (Figure  14),

Fig. 14  Ayahs on streets of Glasgow in 1925 Source: Photographer collection of Paul Popper (www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2013/nov/06/ asian-­britain-­photographic-­history-­immigration)

1 Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose (eds), At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and Imperial World (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 2  See Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press,1986). Although ayahs feature in the title of this book, only a couple of pages are devoted to them. Michael H. Fisher, ‘Working across the Seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in India, Britain, and in Between, 1600–1857’, International Review of Social History 51.S14 (2006): 21–45; Sumita Mukherjee, ‘ “A Warning against Quack Doctors”: The Old Bailey Trial of Indian Oculists, 1893’, Historical Research 86.231 (2013): 76–91; Sumita Mukherjee and E. Boehmer, ‘Re-­making Britishness: Indian Contributions to Oxford University, c.1860–1930’, in Britishness, Identity and Citizenship, ed. Catherine McGlynn, Andrew Mycock, and James McAuley (Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, and Vienna: Peter Lang, 2011); Michael Fisher, Counterflows of Colonialism: Indian Travelers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).

100  Waiting on Empire postcards (Figure 15), paintings (Figure 16), and even as characters in theatrical plays and children’s story books.3 As discussed in Chapters  2 and  3, abandoned and destitute travelling ayahs were sometimes found wandering on Britain’s streets, many of whom were forced to take shelter in various lodging houses, poorhouses or workhouses. In an article in the London City Mission Magazine, Joseph Salter, a missionary who focused on evangelical activities amongst lascars in London’s East End, while commenting on the everyday sights at the docks, reported that he regularly saw ‘female nurses, natives of various parts of India, who live by attending ladies and their children to

Fig. 15  Nineteenth-­century postcard with an Indian ayah at Edinburgh with her ‘charges’ Photographer: J. Jameson Source: Public Domain Image 3  Theatre: in 1898 a popular theatrical performance entitled, A House of Mystery, by Mr Frank Harvey, staged in various theatres across London, included an important character called Aya Minga (played by Ada Neilson). See BNA, The Era, 14 May 1898; BNA, The Era, 25 June 1898. Another theatrical play that figured frequently in London was The Indian Ayah’s Revenge. Painting: George Earl in his painting, Going North, King’s Cross Station (National Railway Museum), painted an ayah with a European family, attending to the children.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  101

Fig. 16  Painting of a travelling ayah named Nasiban (1895) Source/credit: National Army Museum, UK

and from India’.4 Salter continued that in one of the houses (most likely referring to a poorhouse) he found at least twenty-­eight travelling ayahs who were waiting to return home in low and squalid conditions. He further noted that travelling ayahs in such homes frequently engaged in drunken rioting. While concluding the report he stated that in 1857 alone he had encountered 140 travelling ayahs in such dire situations in the East End of London.5 Over three decades earlier, at some point between 1820 and 1825,6 Mr and Mrs Rogers, witnessing the increased number of destitute travelling ayahs in London, had established the Ayahs’ Home at 8 Duke Street, Aldgate. Certain publications discussing the Ayahs’ Home asserted that Mr Rogers, who had served as an official of the EIC in India, established the Ayahs’ Home out of sympathy for destitute travelling ayahs, having been saddened to see their situation following

4 LCM, Joseph Salter, ‘Asiatic Missionary’, London City Mission Magazine, November 1858, pp. 277–308. 5  LCM, Joseph Salter, ‘Asiatic Missionary’. 6  The exact date is uncertain; some newspaper reports claim the Home was established in 1820 whilst others date it to 1825.

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Fig. 17  Ayahs’ Home sitting room with ayahs (1910) Source: Hackney Archives

his return to Britain.7 However, what such reports do not necessarily emphasize is that from its inception, Rogers emphasized that the Ayahs’ Home was not an institute of charity, and travelling ayahs or their employers who availed of the Home’s services were expected to pay for them.8 Rogers may well have felt sympathy for destitute travelling ayahs, but he also spotted a gap in the market and established the Ayah’s home as a business, rather than a charity. The Rogers’s Ayahs’ Home provided two essential services for travelling ayahs waiting in London. The first was accommodation. The Ayahs’s Home (Fig. 17) provided beds in shared rooms, socializing spaces with space and hygiene superior to the ‘squalid conditions’ of the lodging houses, poorhouses, and workhouses observed by Salter. This accommodation was charged at the rate of twelve to fourteen shillings per week.9 Travelling ayahs had the option to either pay the Home from their savings at hand or pay on receipt of an advance from a future employer. The total costs of accommodation usually varied from ten to twelve pounds, depending on the length of stay.10 The fact that Mr and Mrs Rogers had the confidence to extend credit to destitute travelling ayahs until they could find employment resulted from the second service that the Ayahs’ Home provided, 7 BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 8 BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886; BNA, Homeward Mail, 2 March 1886. 9 BNA, Homeward Mail, 20 July, 1903; BNA, Homeward Mail, 28 October 1905. 10 BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  103 which was employment brokering, specializing in connecting travelling ayahs seeking return passages to India with families travelling east who required a travelling ayah.11 An interview with the matron of the Ayahs’ Home, published in the newspaper The Sketch in 1895, confirms that the motivations of Mr and Mrs Rogers were more entrepreneurial than charitable. The matron, who managed the everyday affairs of the Ayahs’ Home, claimed that Mr and Mrs Rogers established the Ayahs’ Home with the prime aim of using it as a paid hostel, which would cater to employers as much as to travelling ayahs. The matron’s account confirms that the Ayahs’ Home may best be understood as an entrepreneurial experiment which fused hostel services and labour-­brokering services within the context of an available market for travelling servants. The matron explained the social need for the Ayahs’ Home by stating that European employers of travelling ayahs were often eager to dispose of their ayahs upon reaching Britain, as they ‘did not want to take them to their English homes’. She further explained: That is one of the uses of this Home. Many ladies bring them here and pay me to keep them until I can find them a return engagement. In return for the convenience, they sometimes give all the ayahs an outing to some place of amusement. I have only just had an invitation for them to go to the Exhibition.12

Advertisements placed by the Ayahs’ Home emphasized this service to employers. The text of an advert published in 1902 in the Homeward Mail, for example, read ‘Ayahs met at any Dock or Railway Station in London. Experienced, well-­ recommended ayahs taken entirely off Ladies’ hands for a certain payment.’13 The matron’s account and the advertisement show that the Ayahs’ Home provided a ‘friend in need’ to both the travelling ayahs themselves and to their employers past and potentially future, for a monetary reward. During the same time period, there were several other Homes in London that catered for destitute Asians, primarily seafarers, including the Strangers’ Home and the Home for Asiatics amongst others of private or semi-­public character. These Homes were strictly based on Victorian workhouse ideals in which different sexes were not housed together. Consequently, none of these Homes accepted needy travelling ayahs, leaving a gendered gap in the market of which the Rogers took advantage. In their marketing through local newspaper advertisements, the Rogers constantly emphasized that the Ayahs’ Home was a ‘self-­supporting’ institution and was run ‘neither in connection with nor opposition to the Home 11  The Ayahs’ Home was often also referred to as the ‘Rogers’s Home’ or the ‘Rogers’s Home for Ayahs’. See BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886. 12 BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 13 BNA, Homeward Mail, 5 August 1902.

104  Waiting on Empire for Asiatics in Limehouse, where no women are received’.14 This form of advertising communicated two key points to employers. The first was that they could not ‘dispose’ off their travelling ayahs cost-­free by leaving them at a charitable institution since these did not accept women. The second was that as a ‘self-­supporting’ institution, the Ayahs’ Home required payment. From available records it appears that Mr and Mrs Rogers were not the only people with such enterprising ideas. In 1838 advertisements appeared in both British and Indian newspaper for Agency House, conveniently located in Leadenhall Street close to East India House in London. In these advertisements, the managers of the house offered both temporary furnished accommodations for colonial families arriving in London and immediate lodging and brokering services for their travelling ayahs.15 Agency House sought to offer employers a one-­ stop shop which would make their arrival in London as stress-­ free as possible. In the 1850s Mrs Parry’s Lodging House offered accommodation and brokering services for travelling ayahs in London.16 Later, during the mid-­1890s, advertisements placed by Mr and Mrs Rogers in British newspapers emphasized that their institution was the ‘Original Ayahs’ Home’, suggesting that they were facing competition from more recent entrants to the market.17 Such competition may have come from another ‘Ayahs’ Home’, which is referred to in London newspapers, founded and managed by George Miles in Clapham in the 1890s. The available records, however, give the impression that the Clapham home did not survive long as it was subject to legal suits claiming wrongful detention or theft, brought against Miles by travelling ayahs who after short stays there had chosen to move to the Rogers’s Home.18 Mentions of the Clapham House had disappeared from newspapers by the late 1890s. Mr and Mrs Rogers continued to own the Ayahs’ Home until their deaths in the 1880s. Thereafter, their relatives, Mr and Mrs Hanson, took up the task of administering the Ayahs’ Home. By 1886, the Hansons, citing infirm health, declared their intention to close the Ayahs’ Home. However, Mrs Hanson also stated that she would be willing to act as a matron of the Ayahs’ Home, ‘if any other institution was to be established of this character or if any committee or society decided to run the Home’.19 This statement hints that infirm health may not have been the only reason the couple were considering closure of the institution. The Ayahs’ Home also appears to have been struggling financially. Such an interpretation is given more weight by a report published in 1900 in the

14 BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895; BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886. 15 BNA, Bombay Gazette, 2 July 1838. 16  Old Bailey Records, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, June 1850, Ref no. tf8500610-­1040. 17  See BNA, Homeward Mail, 22 November 1897. 18  See BNA, London Evening Standard, 18 August 1897; TNA, CRIM 10/87, session 1–12, volume 125–6, 1897. 19 BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  105 London City Mission Magazine, which discussed the importance of the Ayahs’ Home and the reasons leading to its threatened closure: The value of such an institution is manifest and as Mr and Mrs Rogers (sic) found the expenses connected with it more than they could raise, they approached the committee (of the London City Mission) and offered, whilst handling over to them, to continue to manage it under their guidance and control on the same lines as heretofore. It is hoped that . . . those ladies and gentlemen who benefit by the institution, will do something to support (sic).20

The prospect of the Ayahs’ Home’s closure stirred considerable debate, prompting meetings amongst concerned individuals and institutions across London.21 In many such meetings, members of the London City Mission (LCM), stated that the ‘Ayahs’ Home was an encouraging field of evangelistic labour’ and that there was a need to make some new arrangements for carrying on this work of offering ‘refuge’ to helpless and unprotected Indian travelling ayahs.22 The LCM was a cross-­denominational organization of evangelical Protestants founded in 1835 with the aim of bringing the Christian gospel to London’s working-­classes.23 It still pursues the same mission today.24 Best known for its ‘Ragged Schools’, it was also associated with the Strangers’ Home, which provided accommodation for destitute foreigners in the capital, primarily Indian and Chinese seafarers. Whilst the LCM voiced their interest in supporting the cause of the Ayahs’ Home, they invited ‘others’ interested in India to come forward and help the establishment of such a home.25 However, with no definite decisions being arrived at, the Ayahs’ Home was closed for a few months in late 1886, only to be reopened in 1887, under the same matron, Mrs Hanson, but with financial support from the Foreigners’ Branch of the LCM, at a new address at 6 Jewry Street, Aldgate, just five minutes’ walk from the former location and still very close to India House.26 The Ayahs’ Home remained at this address for another thirteen years before moving to 26 King Edward Road, Hackney, in 1900.27 The reasons for this

20 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1900, pp. 173–4. The reference to Mr and Mrs Rogers is an error probably resulting from their long association with the Home. In fact, the Hansons had taken over the running of the Home by this time. 21 BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886; BNA, Homeward Mail, 2 March 1886. 22 BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886; BNA, Homeward Mail, 2 March 1886. 23 Donald Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-­ Class London 1828–1860 (Paternoster Press: Milton Keynes, 2001). The organization is still to date active. 24  See https://www.lcm.org.uk 25 BNA, Homeward Mail, 2 March 1886. 26 BNA, Homeward Mail, 21 March 1898. Whilst there are no available records to suggest where the ayahs were housed during the closure of the Home, it is likely (based on instances found in other related archival records) that if they were unable to procure accommodation in another Home or lodging house, they were sent to local workhouses. See BNA, The Sketch, 28 August 1895. 27 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, December 1921, p. 140.

106  Waiting on Empire relocation are unknown but rising rents in central London may have prompted the move east. Under the LCM, the travelling ayahs’ shared rooms were ‘ticketed’ as ‘Indians’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Javanese’, ‘Malay States’, and others, to facilitate housing of travelling ayahs of similar backgrounds together.28 The division of travelling ayahs in this way may have been motivated by desire to ease the travelling ayahs’ stay by housing them with others of similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds and the matron took pride in this arrangement which she suggested demonstrated that the Ayahs’ Home had become a ‘Home of Nations’. It could, perhaps, also be interpreted as reflecting a colonial and orientalist gaze towards Asian ‘visitors’. At the same time, the matron’s use of the word ‘ticketed’ emphasized the temporary and transactional nature of the Home, much like a ship or a train. The Ayahs’ Home therefore blurred the distinction between ‘home’, in the Victorian and Edwardian sense of a place of refuge and sanctuary away from the commercial world, and ‘public space’ as a place for transactions, by fusing the two into one. Interestingly, all the advertisements for the Ayahs’ Home prior to 1886 highlighted its status as a self-­supporting institution. After the re-­opening in 1887, however, the phrase ‘self-­supporting institution’ was dropped although all other wording in advertisements remained the same.29 The change in wording suggests that the Ayahs’ Home received a considerable amount of financial support from the LCM (see Figs 18–19). The work of the Ayahs’ Home reached its peak during early twentieth century under LCM influence, with hundreds of travelling ayahs passing through its doors in any given year.30 With increased numbers of travelling ayahs lodging at

Fig. 18  Advertisement for the Ayahs’ Home claiming it was self-­supporting Source: The Homeward Mail, 13 October 1885 Credit: Newspaper image © The British Library Board, with thanks to the British Newspaper Archive

28 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, pp. 104–6. 29  This change was apparent in all local London newspapers in which the Ayahs’ Home frequently published advertisements. But, interestingly, much later in 1895, in a personal interview with a reporter from the Sketch, the matron of the Home once again mentioned that the Home was a self-­ supporting institution. The financial state of the Home and how much funding it actually received from the LCM may never be ascertained for certain, but LCM records make it clear that the organization was funding the Home from 1898 onwards, so it would appear that any return to self-­sufficient status was temporary. 30 BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886. The article notes that the matron seemed to have claimed multiple times that hundreds of travelling ayahs ‘come and go’ in the Ayahs’ Home every year.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  107

Fig. 19  Advertisement for the Ayahs’ Home in the same newspaper as Fig. 18 without the phrase ‘self-­supporting’ Source: The Homeward Mail, 17 October 1887 Credit: Newspaper image © The British Library Board, with thanks to the British Newspaper Archive

the Ayahs’ Home, space availability became a concern for the Home. The Ayahs’ Home at 26 King Edward Road had space for only thirty travelling ayahs, which soon appeared to be insufficient. Consequently, it relocated to a new and larger premises on the same street in 1921 at 4 King Edward Road (see Figs 20–3), where it remained until the Second World War, when the Ayahs’ Home was closed to provide accommodation for bombed-­out families associated with the LCM church.31 Records indicate that the new premises of the Ayahs’ Home at King Edward Road could house over a hundred women at any given time. The Ayahs’ Home had gained a reputation which extended beyond Britain, to other parts of Europe and also India.32 However, such a stellar repute was not always without concerns or troubles. In 1902, when Mrs Hanson died at the age of 55 years in Hackney, it was discovered that the superintendent of the Ayahs’ Home, Mr Arthur Challis, had dismissed her a few weeks before her death on charges of not maintaining sobriety and for being repeatedly and helplessly drunk while at work.33 It appeared that she had been given several opportunities to improve but she failed to keep her word in her signed pledge of sobriety to the committee, which finally led to her dismissal.34 Finally after a trial it was ascertained that Mrs Hanson had died of drunkenness and alcoholism and that she had also misappropriated funds from the Ayahs’ Home to fund her regular alcohol consumption. It was revealed that she spent at least five pounds per week on brandy.35 Such incidents raise questions about the ‘proper’ workings of the Ayahs’ Home and where the money that the travelling

31 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, pp. 104–6; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1941. This incident is explored in detail below. 32  For instance, in 1939, there was a case of an Indian ayah attached to a British family becoming destitute in Marseilles. The individuals associated with the case corresponded with the Home to explore ways in which the ayah could be ‘helped’. See BL, IOR L/PJ/7/2995. The LCMM in one of its issues boasted that a leading newspaper in India, The Statesman, had mentioned the Home and praised the work it did for Indian women in Britain. See LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1923, p. 109. 33 BNA, Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, 22 August 1902. Also see BNA, London Evening Standard, 23 August 1902; BNA, Globe, 23 August 1902. 34 BNA, Salisbury Times, 29 August 1902. 35 BNA, Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser, 29 August 1902; also BNA, Worcestershire Chronicle, 30 August 1902.

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Fig. 20  Ayahs’ Home at 26 King Edward Road, London (1900) Source: London City Mission Magazine

ayahs deposited went. Nonetheless, it appears that such incidents did little to lessen the attraction of the institution to travelling ayahs. While the Ayahs’ Home changed its address, management, and ownership over the years,36 its popularity amongst travelling ayahs and their employers remained constant. In fact, while the Ayahs’ Home was initially set up with the intention of offering shelter and other services to Indian travelling ayahs, it soon attracted travelling ayahs of other Asian origins, including ayahs and amahs from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaya, and Ceylon.37 Moreover, highlighting the 36  Names and period of service of the matrons were: Mrs Rogers: 1820 to the mid-­1880s; Mrs Hanson: 1880s to 1900; Mrs J Challis: 1901–4; Mrs S. Dunn: 1903–14; Mrs Fletcher: 1914–40. These were compiled from newspaper articles listing the matrons and the London City Mission Magazine annual reports. 37  One of the reports even refers it as ‘Home of Nations’. See LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, pp. 104–6. Although the Ayahs’ Home was set up primarily to cater for Indian ayahs, East Asian and Southeast Asian ayahs and amahs (East Asian equivalents of Indian ayahs) were later also housed at the Home. However, at any given time, Indian ayahs housed at the Home outnumbered all other Asian ayahs or amahs. See LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, pp. 104–6; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, December 1925, pp. 183–4; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1925, pp. 117–19; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1938, pp.  143–4; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1927, pp. 77–8; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1937, pp. 146–7.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  109

Fig. 21  The same building (as in Fig. 20) in 2017, having been converted into council flats Source: Photograph by author

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Fig. 22  Ayahs’ Home at 4 King Edward Road (1921) Source: London City Mission Magazine

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  111

Fig. 23  The same building (as in Fig. 22) in 2016, having been converted into council flats Source: Photograph by author

112  Waiting on Empire importance of the Ayahs’ Home, one of the matrons, in her deposition to a government commission of enquiry into destitution in London, claimed that the Ayahs’ Home was ‘the only Ayahs’ Home in the wide world’ and asserted that travelling ayahs who were stranded or in need of help finding future engagements would always come to the Ayahs’ Home.38

Welfare as Self-­Care: Evangelism and Fundraising at the Ayahs’ Home Whilst the Ayahs’ Home tended to emphasize the humanitarian motivations of its work, there was always more to its objectives than this. As Michael Barnett and others have shown, humanitarianism and welfare activities are frequently justified by an ethic of care, but this ethic includes ‘care for the self ’ alongside care for the ‘other’, that is the designated beneficiary of care.39 The welfare activities which gave the Ayahs’ Home its raison d’etre facilitated a range of other agendas which are explored in this section of the chapter.

Christian Evangelism in the Ayahs’ Home During the period that the Ayahs’ Home was managed by Mr and Mrs Rogers, Christian evangelism does not appear to have been any part of its activities. When it came under the control of the LCM in the late 1880s, this changed. The primary function of the LCM was Christian evangelism and it not only saw this as an important aspect of its work in the Ayahs’ Home but was keen to publicize its evangelistic work. During this period, one of the central objectives of the Ayahs’ Home became to bring residents under Christian influence. Mary Louise Pratt notes that the tropics had been perceived as contact zones ripe for evangelical work with the colonized.40 The presence of the Ayahs’ Home in the imperial metropole provided a convenient contact zone in which evangelism towards colonized subjects could be undertaken without the logistical difficulties and costs of work in India itself. The LCM was not involved in overseas missionary work but its evangelism in the Ayahs’ Home was a logical extension of its previous work in working-­class London neighbourhoods and particularly with destitute lascars in the Strangers’ Home. The travelling ayahs resident in the Home were 38  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1002, file 1443: April 1910, Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects; Minutes of Evidence and Appendices. 39 Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011). 40  Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York and London: Routledge, 2007).

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  113 effectively a captive audience. The operation of these Homes provided an opportunity for the LCM to expand its established method of combining welfare with evangelism. While housed at the Ayahs’ Home, the travelling ayahs were subject to a Christian daily routine involving prayers, listening to readings from the Bible, Sunday church services, and outings with the matron to various churches in the area around the Home.41 The LCM and the matron of the Ayahs’ Home often boasted of the Ayahs’ Home’s success in evangelistic work. In 1922, the LCM reported: From the point of religion, there are among the ayahs many converts to Christ’s teaching . . . . Almost all attend daily the purely optional Christian service that is held at the Home and which must be the means eventually of spreading our beliefs among the heathen.42

On a similar note, in 1924, the matron reported that travelling ayahs from different faiths loved singing Christian Hymns the Ayahs’ Home had taught them and how some did not stop at singing and eventually converted to become devoted followers of the Lord.43 Indicating subtly that no coercion was used in such conversions, the matron was often recorded stating ‘We are not sure which makes the deeper impression, the informal services or the quiet witness of Christian living. The personal chats in bedrooms after evening meal are certainly productive of much good.’44 The matron here implies that the Christian way of living was, in itself, influential in drawing women to conversion: something very much in line with the evangelical doctrine that Christians should, through their everyday conduct, be ‘a light unto the nations’.45 Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke observe that Christian missionaries in India sought to bind potential converts into a web of gratitude, appreciation, and loyalty.46 The LCM could be understood as seeking to achieve similar results through the exemplary Christian conduct of those who ran the Ayahs’ Home. Considered in this light, it is apparent that Mrs Hanson’s alcoholism, referenced above, was more than just a practical problem. In order to further their welfare and evangelistic work, wealthy contributors to the LCM often hosted a ‘Foreigners Fete’ (Fig. 24) in their elaborate private 41 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, March 1934, p. 42. 42 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, pp. 104–6. 43 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, December 1924, p. 191. 44 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, March 1934, p. 42. 45  See Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness. This element of evangelical doctrine is derived from a range of biblical verses including Daniel 12:3, Proverbs 4:18, Isaiah 42:6, Isaiah 49:6, Isaiah 60:1, and Mathew 5:16 and 13–15. 46 Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke (eds), Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations, and Meanings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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Fig. 24  Travelling ayahs with their matron at the Foreigners’ Fete (date not listed in the source) Source and Credit: Hackney Archives

gardens, to which the travelling ayahs resident in the home would be escorted. Initially such events were hosted by William Leaf and later by Robert Barclays.47 Such fetes served as a stage to showcase the work of the LCM and attract ­contributions from their audience to their cause. Such encounters were complicated by the fact that whilst the Ayahs’ Home sought to maintain the principle of religious tolerance, the primary purpose of the LCM was Christian evangelism and its welfare work, although important in its own right, was nevertheless seen largely as a means to that end. At the same time, because the LCM was a pioneer in employing full-­time salaried lay-­workers it not only made welfare a profession48 but a means to generate other professions, rather than just a charitable or humanitarian initiative. The Ayahs’ Home not only used the period travelling ayahs spent waiting in Britain to find work for them but also created paid work for evangelists. Under Mr and Mrs Rogers’ management, the Ayahs’ Home had been run explicitly as a business. Under the LCM, its welfare provision served spiritual ends, but nevertheless, it continued to 47 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1883, p. 180; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1872, p. 196; LCM, London City Mission Magazine, November 1898, p. 257. 48 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  115 have significant economic implications, as the donations of wealthy supporters not only assisted travelling ayahs to return to India but provided paid employment for missionaries and welfare workers. It could be argued, therefore, that the LCM’s employees at the Ayahs’ Home were as dependent upon the travelling ayahs as the travelling ayahs were on them.

Labour-­Brokering, Tours, and Donations Irrespective of the motives behind welfare work, whether they stemmed from humanitarian sentiment, evangelistic goals, or simply business, funding was essential to the Ayahs’ Home, especially as there was no financial aid from the government to support their activities. To meet its funding requirements, as ­discussed above, the Ayahs’ Home functioned as a labour-­brokering agency. Mr and Mrs Rogers clearly stated that much of their funding came from labour-­ brokering services. The extent to which these services simply covered costs or generated significant profits for Mr and Mrs Rogers was never made explicit, but we may surmise from the fact that the Home survived for sixty years under their management as a self-­ sustaining institution that it must have generated an adequate living for them. Yet the fact that Mr and Mrs Rogers eventually got into financial difficulty suggests that margins could be tight. Even after the Ayahs’ Home came under the control of the LCM, which provided it with significant financial aid, brokering services remained a central source of funding for the Home. The Ayahs’ Home instituted its brokering services through a complex, but well-­ managed network. First, in cases in which employers admitted their travelling ayahs at the Ayahs’ Home, the employers would surrender the return ticket of the concerned travelling ayah to the matron of the Ayahs’ Home. Once admitted, the Ayahs’ Home would list the travelling ayah in their register of incoming travelling ayahs, which also recorded their respective skills and character certificates they had received from previous employers. Thereafter, the Ayahs’ Home would advertise on behalf of the travelling ayahs to interested employers, who were in search of a travelling ayah for their journey to India. Once a match was made, the Ayahs’ Home usually ‘sold’ the travelling ayah’s return ticket (deposited by the first employer) to their new employer. The price at which the ticket was sold to the new employer was determined by the Ayahs’ Home depending on the length of the travelling ayah’s stay at the Home, her experience, and other factors. The money obtained from this transaction would at least cover the costs incurred by the Ayahs’ Home in lodging the ayah and supplying brokering services.49 49  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1002, file 1443: April 1910, Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects; Minutes of Evidence and Appendices; BPP, no. 5134 (22), Qs 1327–39.

116  Waiting on Empire The Ayahs’ Home thus functioned as a brokering institution which was contacted by both employers and travelling ayahs. In order to attract the attention of potential employers, the Ayahs’ Home partnered with several local daily newspapers in which they published regular advertisements. It is interesting to note that the main newspaper with which the Ayahs’ Home established ties was the Homeward Mail from India, China and the East, the primary source in Britain for news regarding India and other Asian colonies of the Empire, in which the shipping companies offering passenger services to Asia also advertised. Readers of this newspaper were likely to be associated with Asia in some way and were therefore likely to include potential clients for the Ayahs’ Home’s labour-­brokering services. Whilst some advertisements were brief and publicized the general availability of experienced travelling ayahs at the Ayahs’ Home (see Fig. 25),50 some advertisements were more detailed selling the employability of a particular travelling ayah, for example: An ayah, who speaks English and is well recommended, wishes to obtain an engagement as servant to a Lady, with or without children, during her return voyage to India by P&O Steamer.51

In advertisements such as the one noted above, the Ayahs’ Home normally used the newspaper agency as a contact point for the interested parties rather than the Ayahs’ Home itself. This may have been because the Ayahs’ Home wished to avoid being seen as promoting or being partial towards any particular travelling ayah or steamer company. At times, the Ayahs’ Home also highlighted the quality of the travelling ayahs they provided to prospective employers, emphasizing the quality of their references and the fact that previous families who had employed them had found them thoroughly competent and trustworthy.52

Fig. 25  Ayahs’ Home advertisement Source: The Homeward Mail, 3 November 1890 Credit: Newspaper image © The British Library Board, with thanks to the British Newspaper Archive

50 BNA, Homeward Mail, 3 November 1890. 51 BNA, Homeward Mail, 13 January 1881. 52 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1927, p. 78.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  117 In their advertisements, the Ayahs’ Home also sought to expand their business by attracting clients who were interested in ‘disposing’ off their travelling ayahs. Often the Ayahs’ Home merged their different brokering roles into one advertisement, thus attracting the attention of different kinds of clients through a single source: Ayahs met at any dock or railway station in London, lodged and carefully ­re-­shipped on moderate charges. Experienced, well-­recommended ayahs taken entirely off Ladies hands for a certain payment, which differs according to time of the year. Ladies proceeding to India or China requiring an ayah can generally obtain one by applying to the matron.53

The above advertisement is interesting in many ways and is exemplary of the transactions in which the Ayahs’ Home involved itself. In particular, the choice of words such as ‘re-­shipped’ or ‘taken off Ladies hands’ suggest that travelling ayahs were equated to circulating commodities within the global marketplace of the Empire. Upon examining the variety of advertising modes that were adopted, it is evident that the Ayahs’ Home tried to cover all its bases in its efforts to uphold its reputation and maintain its turnover, thus ensuring a constant cash flow. The advertisements are particularly illuminating in revealing, first, the Ayahs’ Home’s role as a middle-­man in the market for migrant labour services and, second, the rich networks and connections that it had cultivated. It is also clear from these advertisements that labour-­ brokering was an integral and essential part of providing welfare for the travelling ayahs. Nevertheless, under the LCM, the financial position of the Ayahs’ Home appears to have remained marginal partly because it was subject to severe seasonal fluctuations in income. During the off-­season, when due to weather and sea conditions most families avoided sea travel, a few travelling ayahs remained in the Ayahs’ Home and as transactions were rare the opportunity to meet the costs incurred by the Ayahs’ Home were also rare. Whenever such situations occurred, the Ayahs’ Home usually depended on donations. In their advertisements requesting donations, the Ayahs’ Home sought to attract the attention of those who might harbour sympathetic feelings for the travelling ayahs and the Ayahs’ Home which catered for them. Such advertisements often included lines like, ‘It is hoped that Christian friends and those ladies and gentlemen who thus benefit by the institution, will do something for its support’.54 The Ayahs’ Home also frequently offered tours to attract donations from interested parties. One such advertisement read: 53 BNA, Homeward Mail, 15 April 1899; BNA, Homeward Mail, 20 July 1903. 54 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1900, p. 173.

118  Waiting on Empire The Home for Ayahs may be visited any day by arrangement with the Matron in charge (’Phone, Dalston, 2927) (sic). . . . Possibly some of our Readers, especially those with Asiatic connections, may be disposed to send a gift?55

whilst another stated: The Society’s supporters and all persons interested in such institutions are heartily invited to visit the Home any day of the week (except Sunday) when the Matron will gladly show them over the premises.56

Offering tours of the Ayahs’ Home resonated with the social behaviour of London elites during the period. Social historians of Victorian Britain have shown how the upper classes frequently engaged in tours of slums, workhouses, and poorer areas, particularly in the East End of London, known for being a particularly deprived part of the city. Motivation for involvement in such tours could range from idle curiosity to social or political concern or a desire to take practical action to improve living conditions.57 The Ayahs’ Home also often placed advertisements inviting donations of spare rugs and blankets for the use of travelling ayahs.58 Interestingly, the matron, in her witness deposition to the British government regarding the Ayahs’ Home’s sources of funding, stated that while the Ayahs’ Home was able to rely on its own modes of generating funds, they had ‘one Lady’ who made up any deficit they faced at the end of the year.59 Thus, the phase of waiting experienced by travelling ayahs in Britain built a bridge which served as a space of negotiation between the travelling ayahs and Londoners with agendas ranging from profit-­making to humanitarian concern and Christian evangelism. The Ayahs’ Home provided brokering services to travelling ayahs from which it also sought to generate income to sustain its activities. The Ayahs’ Home was invested in generating economic, religious, and cultural capital through its everyday transactions involving the travelling ayahs. From an economic view, the LCM benefited from the fees and commissions employers and travelling ayahs paid them, whilst they could achieve their spiritual goals and build cultural capital through Christian evangelism and particularly, through successful conversions to Christianity.60

55 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, August 1922, p. 106. 56 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1900, pp. 173–4. 57  Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 58 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, July 1927, pp. 77–8. 59 BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1002, file 1443: April 1910, Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects; Minutes of Evidence and Appendices. 60  From available records we do not know how many travelling ayahs converted because of LCM, but that was undoubtedly one of the aims of the LCM.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  119 The Ayahs’ Home established itself as an effective intermediary institution between travelling ayahs and their employers, whilst indirectly serving the imperial state by keeping destitute travelling ayahs off the streets where they could constitute a visible embarrassment to the Empire. In so doing, the Home’s operators established their own worth, enabling them to claim recognition and authority in British society. This allowed them, to some extent, to take control of the waiting experience of travelling ayahs in Britain as well as that of their employers. As brokers they promised to satisfy the employers’ wants and the travelling ayahs’ needs. The Ayahs’ Home achieved this by simultaneously humanizing and objectifying the travelling ayahs. On one hand, they recognized that these women needed help and support, whilst on the other, they used those needs to create opportunities for themselves. At the same time, this was always a process of negotiation with women who, as we have seen in previous chapters, were themselves active agents seeking to further their own interests. Given the absence of government provision for the needs of travelling ayahs, the Ayahs’ Home fulfilled an important role for many, who sought to use it in ways most beneficial to themselves.

A Process of Negotiation: How Travelling Ayahs Engaged with the Ayahs’ Home In the absence of state provision, the Ayahs’ Home was able to establish itself as a significant institution which was regularly referred to and consulted by employers of travelling ayahs, police officers, administrators, and others, whenever questions around the repatriation of travelling ayahs arose. However, whilst travelling ayahs could often find themselves passed around administrative circles before being ‘picked up’ by the Ayahs’ Home, travelling ayahs did not act as passive objects waiting for welfare and repatriation. Rather, they found ways to engage actively with the Ayahs’ Home and make the most of the institutional opportunities it provided them during their periods of waiting.

Playing the Market: Taking Advantage of Competition between Ayahs’ Homes As indicated above, by the late 1890s, the Ayahs’ Home run by Mr and Mrs Rogers was not the only home for travelling ayahs in London. A competitor that came to the attention of the press was an ayahs’ home run by George Miles in Clapham, south of the River Thames, about five miles from the Rogers’s Home in Aldgate. The competition offered travelling ayahs the opportunity to compare the services of the two facilities. The records seem to suggest that this was a battle comprehensively won by the Rogers’s Ayahs’ Home.

120  Waiting on Empire In 1897, a travelling ayah had obtained accommodation at the Clapham Ayahs’ Home and paid for her lodging there for a number of days. The available records suggest that, like many other travelling ayahs, she was waiting in London to find an employment opportunity on a return passage to India. After staying a few days, she concluded that the quality of service and lodging she received at the Clapham Ayahs’ Home was not worth the price and that the Rogers’s Ayahs’ Home at Aldgate would be a better option. After learning of her intention to move out of the Ayahs’ Home in Clapham, George Miles, the manager, forcefully detained her personal box which contained her clothes and testimonials from her previous engagements. Miles demanded that the travelling ayah either remain at the Clapham Home or pay him three pounds for the return of her belongings. The travelling ayah immediately went to the Ayahs’ Home in Aldgate where she sought help from Mr and Mrs Rogers. She then went to the local police with whom she filed a complaint against Miles for the illegal appropriation of her belongings. During the trial that followed, the magistrate ruled in favour of the travelling ayah and compelled Miles to return her belongings.61 During the trial, it was mentioned that there had been a previous case in which a travelling ayah had moved between homes as a result of dissatisfaction with the accommodation provided. The case shows that travelling ayahs had a good understanding of the situational agency they could exercise in the context of competition between the two Ayahs’ Homes. Travelling ayahs were prepared to try out the new business but were not prepared to accept what they regarded as sub-­standard service, since they knew that there was a reliable alternative available. The travelling ayah whose belongings were detained was not browbeaten or intimidated by Miles, but immediately took action to improve her conditions and recover her property by moving to the Rogers’s Home and initiating a successful legal case.

Using the Ayahs’ Home to Escape from Unsatisfactory Employment As the popularity and reputation of the Ayahs’ Home grew, a number of travelling ayahs who were dissatisfied with their working conditions left their employers’ homes to seek refuge at the Home. For instance, in the case of Mary Michael (1910), discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, Mary voluntarily left her employer’s house to seek shelter at Ayahs’ Home until she could find another engagement on a return voyage to India.62 Mary, was not abandoned by her employers, rather, she chose to leave them because she was unhappy with the way she was treated. As an 61 BNA, London Evening Standard, 18 August 1897. The legal case details: TNA, CRIM 10/87, session 1–12, volume 125–6, August 1897. 62  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023/2801.

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  121 experienced ayah who had made several previous voyages, Mary was aware of the Ayahs’ Home and the services that it offered and availed of its presence to leave the Chauduris’ house. The Ayahs’ Home, which did not want to become involved in disputes between travelling ayahs and their employers, attempted to persuade Mary to return to the Chauduris.63 So far as we can tell from the records, however, Mary did not succumb to their arguments and remained at the Home whilst she sought alternative employment. In another case in 1913, a Eurasian travelling ayah, Miss Burby, was brought to Britain by her employer, Mrs Bradley, with the understanding that Burby would return to India with her employers after a brief stay in England. Following their arrival in England, the Bradleys’ plans changed and Burby was asked to seek lodging elsewhere until the Bradleys decided when they would return to India. While waiting in England, Burby was paid a daily wage but this was completely consumed by the cost of her lodging. Restless to return, Burby urged her employer to write to the Ayahs’ Home to explore any lodging options and to put her name on the books for any forthcoming employment opportunities. Burby, in another letter directly to the Ayahs’ Home, urged the matron of the Ayahs’ Home to write to the India Office authorities to explore any options they could offer to her to escape the unfavourable situation in which she found herself. Burby was not destitute: she had accommodation, but she was clearly frustrated that she was not able to earn any money over and above the costs of her lodging and was therefore wasting her time in Britain. The records show that Mrs Bradley made arrangements with the Ayahs’ Home to put Burby on the books for employment.64 The record ends without offering any insight into what happened to Burby. Nonetheless, the fact that Burby was aware of the services offered by the Ayahs’ Home and of its connection to the India Office suggest that she was an experienced travelling ayah. In this case, Burby’s knowledge of the Ayahs’ Home offered her a form of leverage which she did not hesitate to use to pressure her employer into taking action to remedy a situation with which she was dissatisfied.

Using Ayahs’ Home to Get Favourable Treatment in Future Employment Allocations The Ayahs’ Home, under the direction of the LCM, made disseminating Christianity amongst travelling ayahs a central part of its role. As described above, travelling ayahs were frequently taken to churches, taught hymns, and encouraged to learn a Christian way of life. It is impossible to know how many travelling

63  See BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1023/2801; BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1631/6640. 64  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1225/867.

122  Waiting on Empire ayahs actually converted, or, for those who did so, what their motivations were.65 It is possible that conversion may have offered material or symbolic benefits that went beyond the spiritual realm, for example, status within the Ayahs’ Home or favours in regard to brokerage. This might have been particularly true for those who regularly served as travelling ayahs and frequently returned to the Ayahs’ Home while awaiting their next engagement. In 1938, the Ayahs’ Home reported how one of the travelling ayahs who was housed there in 1936 and found an engagement thereafter had been heavily influenced by Christianity. On her return to the Ayahs’ Home following another passage two years later in 1938, the travelling ayah had apparently told the matron that although she was not Christian she missed the Christian services and Bible readings that were held at the Ayahs’ Home. The matron also reported that immediately upon her arrival the travelling ayah had requested the matron to sing Jesus Knocking at the Door for her. What is more interesting is that upon arriving at the Ayahs’ Home for the second time, the travelling ayah was also reported to have said that the Ayahs’ Home contained ‘the only people who would and could help her get to her home in a safe and happy way’.66 In India, converts to Christianity are reported to have been motivated by a range of factors including enjoyment of Christian ritual, escape from an oppressive caste system, and opportunities for education or employment.67 In this case, the records suggest that this travelling ayah was attracted to Christian ritual and Christian music-­making and that she liked, respected, and admired the Christians with whom she interacted at the Ayahs’ Home. Nevertheless, it does not appear that she converted to Christianity. This seems to suggest that the LCM’s missionary work at the Ayahs’ Home may have had very limited success.

Recognizing Negotiations in ‘Humanitarianism’ and ‘Welfare’ This chapter has showed that periods of waiting in Britain did not just impact the lives of travelling ayahs, but also those with whom they engaged in the imperial metropole. Processes of negotiation between the two shaped the opportunities

65  It indeed is surprising that the LCM didn’t record this. This may suggest that there were not very many. In fact, since they specifically mentioned an ayah who was influenced by Christianity but none who actually converted, one might wonder if the number during this period was zero! This certainly suggests that the travelling ayahs were not easily swayed from their established beliefs and communities. 66 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, September 1938, pp. 143–4. 67 Eliza  F.  Kent, Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Christopher Harding, Religious Transformation in South Asia: The Meanings of Conversion in Colonial Punjab (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke (eds), Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations, and Meanings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Travelling Ayahs and Ayahs ’ Homes  123 available to both. That negotiation, however, did not occur on the basis of equality. Like most ‘humanitarian’ and ‘welfare’ organizations, the Ayahs’ Home claimed to be in solidarity with the subjects of their compassion and empathy, yet the relation between the Ayahs’ Home and the travelling ayahs was formed within the context of an empire structured by inequalities of class, race, and gender and marked by the power dynamics that Mauss observed always place the giver in a position of dominance over the recipient.68 Michael Barnett suggests that the hallmark of humanitarianism is the willingness of the ‘humanitarian’ to intervene in a particular way without asking or seeking to know the preferences of those receiving the aid. Thus, humanitarianism can often be seen as a paternalistic enterprise.69 This certainly seems to be true in the case of the Ayahs’ Home, particularly when it was under the control of the LCM during which the Home whilst catering for the material needs of travelling ayahs simultaneously attempted to bring them into the spiritual care of the Christian church and thereby provided their carers (associated with the LCM) not only with employment but also with a claim to status within imperial society. At the same time, the Ayahs’ Home really did provide travelling ayahs with valuable services, not only offering them shelter when they were destitute and the imperial authorities refused to intervene but also helping them find new employment and, perhaps unintentionally, providing a resource which enabled some travelling ayahs to negotiate better treatment from employers or escape from employment conditions that they found unacceptable. Furthermore, the Ayahs’ Home provided a space in which travelling ayahs who were otherwise isolated in a foreign city could network, share experiences, and build friendships. The reluctance of Suzanne, the Burmese child ayah discussed in Chapter  4, to leave the Ayahs’ Home and the fact that she stayed in touch for years afterwards as well as the pleasure taken by the travelling ayah described above in Christian ritual and hymn-­singing and the affection expressed for the staff suggest that, even if these accounts were somewhat exaggerated by the LCM, the Ayah’s Home really may have had attributes of a home away from home for some women. Yet, even if the travelling ayahs were grateful for the help that they received, neither did they allow themselves to become passive recipients of aid nor did they allow the Ayahs’ Home to take their gratitude for granted. The cases discussed in this chapter show that travelling ayahs constantly negotiated their engagements with the Ayahs’ Home on their own terms. They capitalized on competition between different ayahs’ homes to secure the best accommodation; they used the presence of the Ayahs’ Home as leverage against their employers; and, although

68 Marcel Maus, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 2002; originally 1925). 69 Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, 34–5.

124  Waiting on Empire many were happy to engage in Christian ritual and communal hymn-­singing,70 there is little evidence that many who were not already Christian actually ­converted to Christianity. Consequently, the character of the Ayahs’ Home can be seen as being shaped as much by the travelling ayahs who lived there, often on multiple occasions over a period of years, as it was by the entrepreneurs and missionaries who established and managed the institution.

70  The psychological benefits and pro-­social effects of communal singing have been the subject of much literature. See, e.g., Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005); Karen Ahlquist, Chorus and Community (Chicago: University of Illinois, 2006); Heather Gridley, Jill Astbury, Jenny Sharples, and Carolina Aguirre, Benefits of Group Singing for Community Health and Wellbeing: Survey and Literature Review (Melbourne: Victoria University Press, 2011).

6 Travellers’ Tales Negotiating Waiting in Wars and ‘Exotic’ Spaces

Travellers’ tales,1 from Marco Polo onwards, were a genre of literature through which European elites learned to relate to ‘exotic others’ in a world which they were setting out to colonize.2 In the imperial world, however, it was not only European elites who undertook daring voyages, faced daunting challenges, and encountered ‘exotic others’. The tales told in this chapter were not written down by their protagonists for posterity but have been unearthed from the archives long after their heroes had passed from this earth. Travelling ayahs negotiated waiting in a myriad number of spaces and conditions. Previous chapters focused on their experiences within the British Empire in times of peace, in which their presence was accepted as normal, structures existed to support them even if these structures were often inadequate, and most had enough command of English to negotiate their needs. This chapter considers travelling ayahs in more ‘exotic’ spaces—­European countries outside Britain (whose cases were ultimately routed through Britain)—and more dangerous times resulting from world wars. While waiting in such situations, travelling ayahs had to navigate added levels of precarity, insecurity, and danger and of political and cultural complexity as they negotiated their positions with different and unfamiliar national authorities and other actors. The travellers’ tales presented below suggest that in pursuing their objectives, overcoming difficulties, and ultimately seeking to return to India better off than they had been when they left it, these adventurers showed all the courage, determination, and ingenuity of any colonial hero. The chapter is divided into two main sections. The first explores the experiences of travelling ayahs during the two world wars, which disrupted travel and made waiting not only uncertain but often extremely dangerous for travelling ayahs. The second section examines the experiences of travelling ayahs who found themselves waiting in various countries in continental Europe, noting the ways that those experiences differed from those of travelling ayahs waiting in 1  My article ‘Stranded: How Travelling Indian Ayahs Negotiated War and Abandonment in Europe’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 30.1 (2023) was an earlier and modified version of this chapter. 2 See Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545–1625 (Clarendon: Oxford, 2007); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd edn (Routledge: London, 2007).

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0007

126  Waiting on Empire Britain and how Britain got involved in cases of travelling ayahs waiting in European countries. Much excellent research has been conducted on relations between Britain and other European countries in peace and war.3 This chapter does not seek to add to this work but uses it as the context within which the stories told play out.

Negotiating Waiting during the Great War A range of literature has shown that British colonies and the colonized subjects of  the British Empire played a crucial part in the First World War, supplying ­hundreds of thousands of soldiers and labourers as well as a range of essential resources.4 The wars had a profound impact on the economy, resources, morale, and lives of the colonies. It also had a massive impact on the lives of individual civil subjects, not least on the lives of travelling ayahs who found that as seaborne travel was disrupted, they were stranded in Britain for indefinite periods. Exploring the fragmentary historical sources that shed light on the experiences of the travelling ayahs trapped in Britain during World War I and subsequently World War II, this section reveals the dangers and challenges they faced in war and the ways that they responded to those challenges. When the travelling ayahs embarked on their journeys, they understood they would have to straddle two places and two worlds. The war however, had marooned them in just one. During World War I, Britain prohibited women and children from travelling overseas. This prohibition applied as much to British nationals as to colonized subjects. Consequently, travelling ayahs who had arrived in Britain on the cusp of war found themselves stuck in Britain till the war was over.5 Once travelling ayahs were informed that they could not return to India during the war, they tried similar strategies of emotive appeal to those discussed in Chapter 3, in attempts to convince the authorities to allow them to return to their families. While it is likely that not all cases find expression in the available records, three nameless cases were reported in a 1917 letter from the Ayah’s Home (via London City Mission) to the India Office, wherein the Secretary of the Foreign Branch in London City Mission (writing in the capacity of a representative for the Ayahs’ Home) explained that whilst there were many travelling ayahs 3 N.  J.  Crowson, Britain and Europe: A Political History since 1918 (London and New York: Routledge, 2011); David  G.  Williamson, The British in Interwar Germany: The Reluctant Occupiers, 1918–30 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017); Nicholas Doumanis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 4  John Connor, Someone Else’s War: Fighting for the British Empire in World War I (London and New York: I.B. Taurius & Co. Ltd, 2019); Kate Imy, Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); Ashley Jackson (ed.), The British Empire and the First World War (Oxon and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2017). 5  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1482/1552.

Travellers ’ Tales  127 stuck in the Ayah’s Home due to the war, three, in particular, were in great distress and were desperate to return to India.6 The letter does not reveal why these three travelling ayahs were more desperate to return home than others or why the Ayahs’ Home was prepared to take special action on their behalf: whether out of sympathy for their distress, because their behaviour was disruptive to the Home, or whether the LCM was seeking to suggest that without intervention, such issues might become a greater problem in the future. Like many other subaltern subjects, the travelling ayahs in this case appear in the archives momentarily, only to disappear without leaving any trace of names or any clue as to their eventual fate. What is clear from the letter, however, is that these travelling ayahs, whose waiting had been extended indefinitely by events far beyond their control, were not prepared to accept their situation passively but rather took action to make their dissatisfaction known. The Ayahs’ Home used the case of these three travelling ayahs to capture the attention of the India Office regarding the increased number of boarders ‘stuck’ at the Ayahs’ Home during the war. The travel ban for women and children not only put the careers of travelling ayahs on hold for an extended period but also severely undermined the business model of the Ayahs’ Home, which depended largely upon labour brokering for its income. The Ayahs’ Home therefore appealed for financial support from the government during the period of war. Records reveal that some Ayahs’ Homes continued to run at a loss during the war out of concern for the boarders.7 Whilst the fate of the three travelling ayahs mentioned above is not known, it is apparent from an examination of shipping manifests and passenger records that there were a few exceptional cases in which travelling ayahs successfully travelled home to India during World War I.8 Outward passenger lists between 1914 and 1919 show the following cases: Mrs Posam Ayah, aged 30, left England from the port of London on a second-­class ticket on the ship Arabia bound for Bombay on 19 December 1914.9 Sukia Ayah embarked on the ship City of Poona with a first-­ class ticket from Glasgow to Calcutta on 6 January 1917.10 Mrs Chaning Pearce’s ayah, whose identity or age was not recorded in the ship’s manifest, travelled back  home from Liverpool on a third-­class ticket on the ship Warwickshire on 30 October 1916.11

6  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1482/1552. 7  BL, IOR L/PJ?6/1952/71; BNA, Homeward Mail, 9 February 1886. 8  There may have been more, but the available shipping records present to us only three names. 9  TNA, UK outwards passenger lists, BT27-­105587. From the available incoming passenger list, I was unable to determine when she arrived in England. As mentioned in the Introduction, travelling ayahs were often unnamed in passenger lists so she could have been any of the un-­named travelling ayahs who came into Britain during or prior to 1914. 10  TNA, UK outwards passenger lists, BT27-­131423. 11  TNA, UK outwards passenger lists, BT27-­115258.

128  Waiting on Empire The above cases show that a few travelling ayahs did succeed in securing t­ ransport back to India during the war, despite governmental restrictions on the mobility of women and children. One even secured a first-­class ticket. We have no way of knowing why exceptions were made for these travelling ayahs. It is possible that they were travelling with the families of people considered to be essential personnel whose movement was vital to the war effort. There were also cases during World War I, particularly in 1915, when we find travelling ayahs journeying from India to Britain with their employers. These British families had clearly secured exemptions from the ban on women and children travelling, which included their travelling ayahs. Again, it is likely that this is because their travel was considered important to the war effort. On 2 April 1915, Alinnie Ayah, 35 years of age, arrived in London from India while serving her employer and two infants on the ship City of London. She, like most of her contemporaries, had intended to return to Calcutta soon after arriving in Britain.12 In April 1915, Mary Ayah, aged 30, travelled with Mrs  T.  Mackenzie and her infant Elizabeth Mackenzie on a first-­class ticket to London.13 Like Alinnie Ayah, Mary Ayah too had arrived in London with the intention of returning to India soon after.14 Gurnia Ayah and Ayah Carol, aged 28 and 32 respectively, arrived at Liverpool and London, respectively, with the intent of going home as soon as possible.15 We cannot know if the travelling ayahs were fully aware of the impending dangers of being stranded in Britain during the war, but it is clear that, given their intention of returning and the ongoing travel bans, it is likely that they faced an uncertain period of waiting in Britain. Whilst it is possible that they could have secured return passages with vital imperial personnel, their names do not appear in any manifests, so they may well have had to remain in Britain until the war’s end, whether at the homes of their employers or amongst the many more at ayahs’ homes. During wartime, there were greater dangers than being stranded in Britain. Mary Fernandez, a 30-­year-­old ayah serving Mrs Bird, Mrs McGinn’s ayah (age and name not listed), and Mrs Mand’s ayah (age and name not listed) all drowned on their way to Britain. They were onboard on S.S. Persia, a P&O passenger liner, which was torpedoed and sunk without warning in 1915 by the German U-­boat, U-­38. The incident killed 343 out of a total of 519 passengers.16 From the available ship manifests it appears that they had all intended to return home as soon as 12  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed on 2 April 1915. As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 ship’s manifests included a column in which ayahs and their employers had to state whether the travelling ayah was to stay on in Britain for some time or not. From these documents, we find that four out of the five travelling ayahs who travelled with colonial families during World War I had intended to return to India. 13  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed on 2 May 1915. 14  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed on 2 May 1915. 15  Gurnia Ayah: TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P610, landed on 18 October 1915; Ayah Carol: TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed on 2 April 1915. 16  TNA, UK, inwards passenger lists, BT 99-­3112-­25G.

Travellers ’ Tales  129 possible, as their ‘intended permanent’ or ‘long-­term residence’ was listed as India. In fact, they never saw their homes again. Moreover, there was a disturbing disparity in the way the deaths of the travelling ayahs were dealt with compared to those of other passengers. The available records from the ship manifests and follow-­up death certificate issuance records show that immediate communications were made with relatives of deceased British nationals and their death certificates were issued when requested. The family of the travelling ayah, Mary Fernandez, whose full name was listed on the manifest, was also informed.17 But in the cases of the other two travelling ayahs, listed only as Mrs McGinn’s ayah and Mrs Mand’s ayah, the records show no efforts to communicate with their re­la­tives, which would have been difficult given that no identifying information was recorded. In these cases, administrative indifference towards travelling ayahs which rendered them officially deindividualized and therefore dehumanized (see Chapter 1), effectively reducing them to the status of a commodity, had tragic consequences for their families, for whom they simply disappeared without trace. Some travelling ayahs survived such disasters. Three travelling ayahs in 1915 were victims in a shipwreck, all resulting from ‘enemy action’ on their ships, and were eventually saved by rescue liners, and all three landed in Ayahs’ Home in London. One of the travelling ayahs had come prepared to stay on in Britain for some time while the war lasted. Reportedly she had travelled with her ‘life’s savings stitched beneath her corsage’ and even during the shipwreck she did not lose even ‘an anna’.18 There were also travelling ayahs who were prepared to face the risks of travelling during wartime because they saw possibilities to improve their lives by long-­ term or even permanent residence in Britain.19 In May 1915, a 28-­year-­old travelling ayah accompanied Mrs Crantell and her 2-­year-­old infant on a first-­ class ticket on the ship Leicestershire, from India to England. Mrs Crantell’s ayah intended to stay on and serve her employer in England.20 We know this from the ship manifest which records Mrs Crantell’s ayah’s intended permanent residence as ‘England’. Whilst there is always a possibility of a mistake in the record, this seems unlikely since travelling ayahs who intended to return were always marked as ‘visitors’ and their permanent residences were recorded as their country of origin. Like Mrs Crantell’s ayah, Miss Jeanie’s ayah, aged 30, also arrived in Britain with the intention of staying. She had travelled from India to Wales on a first-­class ticket on the ship Martaban, arriving on 22 July 1915 with Miss Jeanie and her

17  In the record there is only one fleeting mention of ‘next of kin informed’ but it is hard to know whether the communication reached her relatives and what happened thereafter. 18 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, vol. 87, August 1922, pp. 104–6. 19  Under the column of intended long-­term residence on the ship manifests, the ayahs discussed in this part of the chapter all had England or Wales listed, suggesting that they intended to remain in Britain for a longer period of time. 20  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed on 28 May 1915.

130  Waiting on Empire 6-­month-­old infant.21 Two other travelling ayahs with similar intentions, Jiya Ayah and Katharine Fernandez, arrived at London on 8 May 1915 on second-­ class tickets on the ship Kaisar I Hind.22 Striking in all these cases is the fact that these travelling ayahs must have been aware of the risks of submarine attack as well as of a prolonged period of waiting and an uncertain future in Britain. Nevertheless, they saw opportunities to improve their lives, whether in purely economic or other terms (see Chapter 4), that made them willing to accept these risks. Intrepid travellers indeed.

Negotiating Waiting during World War II During World War II, travelling ayahs waiting in Britain once again faced stranding issues. Non-­essential travel by civilians was strongly discouraged and, after the deaths of eighty-­one children during the sinking of the S.S. Banares by a U-­boat in September 1940, the evacuation of children from the country was e­ nded.23 Once again, travelling ayahs found themselves unable to do their job. Travelling ayahs appear much less in the archives of World War II than in the previous conflict. This may be because there were significantly fewer of them. From World War I onwards, the middle classes increasingly learned to manage their lives without the aid of servants and the decline of domestic service may have extended to the employment of travelling ayahs.24 The travelling ayahs who were in Britain, and particularly in London, however, had to face a new and terrifying danger in the form of ‘the Blitz’, as the German campaign of bombing against British cities was known. In London, the bombing focused primarily on the docks and the surrounding areas of the East End,25 precisely where many travelling ayahs were located, in the Ayahs’ Home and other cheap accommodations. Between September 1940 and May 1941, nearly 20,000 civilians were killed in London, with many more injured.26 Over a million homes were destroyed resulting in 16% of the city’s population being made homeless.27 A turning point for travelling ayahs came in September 1941, when the LCM closed the Ayah’s

21  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P608, landed on 22 July 1915. 22  TNA, UK inwards passenger lists, BT 26, P614, landed 8 May 1915. 23 See Marina Mackay, ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary? Going Nowhere in Late Modernist London’, PMLA 124.5 (2009): 1600–13; Ralph Barker, Children of the Banares: A War Crime and Its Victims, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1990). 24  See Lucy Lethbridge, Servants: A Downstairs View of 20th Century Britain (London: Bloomsbury 2013). 25 E. R. Hooton, The Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe (London: Arms & Armour, 1997). 26  UK Parliament: The Fallen. https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympicbritain/crime-and-defence/the-fallen/. 27  Britannica: The Blitz. https://www.britannica.com/event/the-­Blitz.

Travellers ’ Tales  131 Home and converted the building into accommodation for bombed-­out East End families. This sudden transition was announced in the LCM’s magazine: The Ayahs’ Home has been temporarily closed. By a happy arrangement with the Rev. Geoffrey King of East London Tabernacle, the Home has become a hostel for bombed out families associated with this church and district.28

The timing of this announcement is interesting. The East End had indeed been devastated by the German bombing campaign. The Blitz, however, is generally regarded as having ended between March and May 1941 when Hitler switched his attention and his air force towards the invasion of the Soviet Union.29 The use of the Ayah’s Home to house Blitz victims four months later, then, was not an emergency response to bombing raids, which had largely ceased by this time, but a deliberate decision to prioritize the needs of families associated with a local church over the care of travelling ayahs. No information is given in the LCM report about what happened to any travelling ayahs residing in the Home. It is possible that after two years of war, the numbers still resident in the Home may have been small and that since single women would have been considerably easier to house than families, that they were taken in by local families as happened to many Blitz victims. It is also possible that they were forced to accept less salubrious accommodation. It is possible that by the time the Ayahs’ Home was closed, the travelling ayahs had already spent several months sleeping in air-­raid shelters or in Bethnal Green Underground Station, twenty minutes’ walk from the Home, to escape the bombing alongside up to 7,000 others.30 Given the LCM’s Christian mission and the government’s concern with social order, it is probably safe to assume that travelling ayahs were not simply turned out on the street. But it is also clear that they were no longer the LCM’s top priority. Although the closure of the Ayahs’ Home was described as temporary, it never re-­opened. During World War II, travelling ayahs were part of a significant Indian population in London. The Imperial War Museum holds a propaganda poster of the time (See Figure 26), Number 3 of a series designated ‘On War Work in Britain’. The poster is entitled ‘Indians in Civil Defence’. It features a photograph of two Indian women, aged in their 20s or 30s, dressed in saris, wearing steel helmets emblazoned with the legend ‘Ambulance’, wearing khaki haversacks over their 28 LCM, London City Mission Magazine, Vol. CVI, September 1941. The East London Tabernacle was located on Burdett Road, Mile End. The original building was destroyed by a bomb in 1944, but a  replacement building was built on the same site in 1954. Today, the church is proud of its ­multinational congregation. See https://www.eltbaptistchurch.org/about/our-­history/. 29  London was subjected to a second phase of bombardment by V1 Flying Bombs and V2 Rockets from 1944–5. 30  George Vale, Bethnal Green’s Ordeal 1939–45 (London: Council of the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green, n.d.). Excepts available at: https://alondoninheritance.com/thebombedcity/bethnal-­ greens-­ordeal-­and-­the-­underground-­shelter-­disaster/.

132  Waiting on Empire

Fig. 26  British propaganda poster, World War II Indians in Civil Defence Source: Imperial War Museum

shoulders, and holding the gas-­masks normally carried in those haversacks in front of them. They also wear armbands carrying the word, ‘Ambulance’. The text of the poster reads as follows: Mr. Dorai Ross, one-­ time merchant and rubber-­ planter in the Straits Settlements, was in London when the war broke out. Immediately he set about

Travellers ’ Tales  133 forming an Ambulance Service composed of Indians living in London. One hundred Indians of various religions and castes, and of different callings, including doctors and barristers, joined the unit. During the London Blitz, Auxiliary Ambulance Station 50, Indian Section, proved itself to be one of the most efficient units in Great Britain. Below are two Indian ladies of this unit, dressed for immediate action.

There are a number of interesting aspects of this poster. The founder of the unit, the merchant and planter Dorai Ross, carried an Indian forename and a British surname, suggesting that he may have been of mixed heritage. The choice to represent the unit with a picture of Indian women is in keeping with the overall message which is one of unity not only between Britons and Indians in London but also between Indians of different religions, castes, genders, and callings. Might those callings have included the profession of travelling ayah? The evidence does not allow us to determine this, but a number of circumstantial factors suggest that it is possible. The ages of the ambulance women in the poster match the ages of many travelling ayahs. Most travelling ayahs in London during the Blitz are likely to have been resident in the East End, where the bombing was most severe, either in the Ayahs’ Home or in other low-­cost accommodation close to the docks. Since travelling ayahs in London had no family responsibilities, they would have been free to take up roles such as Civil Defence. Many other Indian women in London, such as the wives of the doctors and barristers mentioned in the poster, are likely to have been kept from such roles due to the gendered expectation that they needed to care for their own children. Moreover, the role of ambulance crew during the Blitz was extremely dangerous and demanding. Ambulances went into bombed areas to rescue survivors, often whilst streets burned and bombing continued. Over 2,300 Civil Defence workers lost their lives as a result of enemy action and over 4,500 were injured.31 It is likely that women already experienced in global travel, accustomed to being self-­reliant in a range of demanding conditions whilst still being able to care for others, would have been better able to cope with such conditions than women who had led more sheltered lives. Moreover, travelling ayahs, caught by an accident of history in the frightening conditions of the Blitz, may have been motivated to volunteer for such service which would have given them a role, a purpose, and a degree of status which could have made their waiting meaningful, rather than being a disempowering experience of meaningless terror. Whether the women in the poster were travelling ayahs, we cannot know. Whether they survived the war, we also cannot know. But we can be sure that, as Indian women in a city under ferocious attack, they were not prepared to accept passive gendered roles or to observe the Blitz as helpless victims caught up in 31  Tim Essex-­Lopestri, A Brief History of Civil Defence (Matlock: Civil Defence Association, 2005), 33.

134  Waiting on Empire somebody else’s war. Rather, like other women who joined Civil Defence units, they were determined to play a role in defending the city in which they found themselves.32 Arguably, their actions not only played a role in the defence of London but also in the future independence of India. Having published extensive propaganda lauding the roles of Indians in the war effort and having declared the Indian ambulance section to be ‘one of the most efficient units in Great Britain’, the British government after the war was in no position to continue to maintain that Indians were unfit or unready to govern their own country.

Negotiating Waiting in ‘Exotic’ Places Whilst the primary routes followed by travelling ayahs were between India and Britain, they were also sometimes employed by British families travelling from India to other parts of Europe. Consequently, it was not only in Britain that travelling ayahs could find themselves abandoned or stranded.33 Such cases were less common than those in Britain, probably because fewer people were travelling these routes, but perhaps also because British families would have been easier to monitor in other European countries where British embassies and Consulates kept careful records and local authorities would have been keen to ensure that foreign visitors did not behave in ways that incurred costs for the host country. Britain was a foreign land for all travelling ayahs—­in terms of culture, food, climate, and, for some, in terms of language too. Yet, even if travelling ayahs did not know Britain, they did have some experience of the British. Moreover, in Britain, their presence was understood and accepted and there was an infrastructure available to support them, even if it was far from adequate. The accounts examined in previous chapters show that travelling ayahs soon learned how to navigate this infrastructure and build networks of support. In other European countries, such opportunities were more limited. Yet travelling ayahs who got into difficulty in Europe (sometimes even facing abandonment enroute to Britain) enjoyed an unexpected advantage compared to those who were abandoned or left destitute in the imperial motherland. Whilst imperial administrators in Britain were consistently averse to spending any government money on helping or repatriating stranded travelling ayahs, the attitude of the British authorities in other European countries was wholly different.34 As early as 1888, the British Foreign Office, after consultation with the Secretary of State for India, communicated via a circular to embassies and Consulates abroad that Indians in distress in foreign

32  See Lucy Noakes, ‘Serve to Save: Gender, Citizenship and Civil Defence in Britain 1937–41’, Journal of Contemporary History 47.4 (2012): 734–53. 33  Whenever such cases appeared, they were always routed to India Office in Britain. 34  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607. See Minutes of India Office, 21 June 1924.

Travellers ’ Tales  135 nations should be repatriated at the earliest possible opportunity.35 The waiting for the stranded travelling ayahs was ultimately routed via Britain, through India Office and the High Commissioner, and sometimes the travelling ayahs were sent to Britain before the final repatriation to India. While this was a welcome relief for travelling ayahs who found themselves in difficulties in Europe, it soon led to multiple misunderstandings between different British imperial governments regarding who was financially responsible for the process. In most cases, the Government of India had to bear the majority of the costs. As a result, on 12 June 1893, the Foreign Office issued a new circular which clearly stated that ‘these instructions were not intended to authorize the repatriation of Indian subjects at the expense of Indian revenues, without previous reference to India Office of the Government of India’. The circular also made it clear that liberal usage of the aid to destitute Indians in foreign countries should be avoided to ‘discourage the arrival in Europe of impecunious natives of India’. The circular also clarified that once the legitimacy of the Indian subject had been established by the Foreign Office and the Secretary of State, the expenditure incurred by the British embassy in the foreign country would be ‘defrayed out of the revenues of India’. Following frequent usage of this policy and the strain it put on the Indian revenues, this circular was updated once again in 1911, stating that wherever possible the concerned native or his/her relative should sign an undertaking that the whole or possible portions of the cost of the repatriation will be returned to the Government of India at a later date.36 This willingness of British administrators to aid destitute Indians in foreign lands, reluctant though it was, extended to almost all Indians irrespective of their class. For instance, in 1897, an Indian subject employed as a domestic servant claimed, upon arrival in Marseilles, France, that all his wages and savings had been stolen from him at the arrival port. The British Consul immediately contacted the Foreign Office and received swift authorization to arrange his re­pat­ri­ ation to India.37 As seen in earlier chapters, travelling ayahs stranded in Britain in similar situations almost never received such swift and positive responses. Some administrators acknowledged the marked difference in responding to such appeals based on the spatial location of the Indian subjects. In 1897, Sir Philip Hutchins of the Imperial Legislative Council of India, frustrated at the ease with which an Indian destitute in Marseilles had secured repatriation, commented, ‘it is very unsatisfactory, and inconsistent with our practice with reference to natives in England . . .’ .38 In 1899, an Indian oculist named Balochi Dagar requested aid 35  The circular from the Foreign Office to different European nations also clarified that by ‘British Indian subjects’ the government referred to Indians who were from India or any other territory that was directly governed by the Government of India and thereby excluded Ceylon, Straits Settlements, and Mauritius. 36  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1118-­4159. 37  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­1280. 38  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­1280.

136  Waiting on Empire from the British Consul in Constantinople, having become destitute and being without means to return home to India. The British administrators responded promptly and paid for his repatriation to India.39 In 1902, a similar case arose in Dusseldorf, Germany, when a destitute Indian received immediate assistance from the British Consul and was repatriated to India.40 Between 1902 and 1903, a tourist named Ibrahim Ashraf, who upon arrival at Bilbao, Spain, claimed that he had been robbed by fellow tourists, was provided with immediate repatriation to India.41 Even a troupe of Indian performers, who, in 1910, were brought by their employers to tour Europe and then abandoned in Marseilles, were offered immediate assistance upon reporting the case to the Consul General in the city.42 The reasons why British administrators adopted much more generous policies outside Britain than within the country are not made clear in the documentation. However, factors that are likely to have influenced their stance are, firstly, a desire to avoid friction with other European governments who would have been likely to object to being burdened with destitute British subjects; secondly, a desire to uphold the reputation of the British Empire in the eyes of its rivals; and, finally, the fact that other European countries did not have an infrastructure including institutions such as the Ayahs’ Home, the Strangers’ Home, or the Home for Asiatics onto which responsibility for caring for destitute Indians could be shifted. Dealing with destitute and stranded Indian subjects in various parts of the world was thus a regular issue with which British administrators dealt. Rehana Ahmed and Sumita Mukherjee note, that by the turn of the twentieth century ‘tens of thousands of South Asians’, mainly lascars, were stranded in British port cities across the world.43 In such desperate situations, stranded and destitute ­lascars did not wait passively to receive British help. Laura Tabili explains that these lascars often established their own networks and, understanding the criteria by which British administrators judged the acceptability of providing aid, they actively claimed their rights in negotiation with the various hierarchies they encountered.44 Sometimes these claims were sufficiently eventful to attract official attention and be recorded in archives, whilst at other times they were negotiated quietly and made no appearance in the record. Tabili reminds us that in either event, these negotiations need to be recognized to help us better understand the complex relation between the Empire and the lascars.45 In earlier chapters we have seen that networks of travelling ayahs were far less expansive or connected 39  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­1280. 40  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­1280. 41  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1001-­1280. 42  BL, IOR JP 4673-­4/11. 43 Rehana Ahmed and Sumita Mukherjee (eds), South Asian Resistances in Britain 1858–1947 (London and New York: Continuum, 2012). 44  Laura Tabili, ‘Ghulam Rasul’s Travels: Migration, Recolonization and Resistance in Inter-­War Britain’, in South Asian Resistances in Britain 1858–1947 (London and New York: Continuum, 2012), 54–69; Laura Tabili, ‘We Ask for British Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 45 Tabili, ‘We Ask for British Justice’.

Travellers ’ Tales  137 than those of lascars, but the following case studies show how, even in these more difficult circumstances, travelling ayahs proved no less resourceful than lascars in negotiating their rights when stranded in ‘exotic’ locations. In August 1919, a travelling ayah named Mary Anne journeyed with Mrs Irene Trapman from India to Italy. On arrival in Italy, Mary Anne requested her employer to arrange her return passage. Initially Mrs Trapman delayed addressing the request, but as time went on, Mary Anne’s requests to be sent back to India so that she could be re-­united with her husband, Jogi, in Bombay, became regular and insistent. Finally, in September 1920, more than a year after they arrived in Italy, Mrs Trapman informed Mary Anne that she had no resources to pay for a return passage to India and would therefore contact the British Consul in Italy for assistance. In her letter to the British Foreign Office in Leghorn, Mrs Trapman explained that her journey from India to Italy and the employment of Mary Anne was arranged and paid for by her fiancé Mr Alexander Tucker, a wealthy businessman in India. He had also promised the travelling ayah that he would pay her wages and return passage back to India. However, Mrs Trapman claimed that since her arrival at Italy she had telegrammed Mr Tucker several times without reply. She further explained that since she was limited in her own resources, and that Mr Tucker had agreed to pay the travelling ayah’s expenses, she would pay for neither the travelling ayah’s wages nor her return passage and requested the British Consul to help Mary Anne to return to India. Upon receiving the appeal, the Consul in Leghorn, Mr Carmichael, promptly wrote to the Foreign Office and the India Office requesting some direction as to how to address the case. Carmichael observed that he had come across some similar pleas in the past but that this one was unique in that the appellant appeared to have some resources but nevertheless refused to pay for the travelling ayah’s passage back to India. He added that, ‘I fear that this native may eventually be stranded here, and I venture to suggest that inquiry should be made in Bombay as to the truth of the above story and possibly that Mr. Tucker might be approached in the matter . . .’ .46 Within ten days of receiving the appeal, the India Office wrote back to the Consul in Leghorn advising him to arrange for the immediate repatriation of the travelling ayah to Bombay ‘in the event of becoming destitute’ and that the cost for the same would be paid by the India Office.47 The speed and clarity of communication and the speed with which repatriation was approved is impressive when compared to  similar cases of travelling ayahs stranded in Britain, where the India Office always refused to take responsibility, and refused to pay for such repatriation even when the travelling ayahs appealing for help were destitute. The case of Mary Anne is one of a number of cases that shows that the India Office was

46  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1705/6436.

47  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1705/6436.

138  Waiting on Empire significantly more concerned to help destitute Indians in ‘foreign’ European countries than in Britain. Mary Anne appears to have been a victim of a broken romance between Mrs Trapman and Mr Tucker. When Mrs Trapman eventually realized that Mr Tucker was not going to reply to her communications, she responded to Mary Anne’s insistent appeals to be reunited with her husband by contacting the British administration, which dealt with the issue promptly and efficiently. Yet again we witness a case wherein the travelling ayah effectively used emotive words and actions that expressed her desire to go home and be reunited with her family. Mary Anne therefore was active in her waiting and the pressure she put on Mrs  Trapman eventually resulted in her repatriation at the expense of the Indian government. Anthropologist Ghassan Hage has shown that even in the most paralysing situations, when individuals actively and purposefully engage with the forces that keep them waiting, their endurance, intent, and resilience constitutes a sign of agency.48 Mary Anne demonstrated a fleeting, episodic, and nontheatrical agency through her repeated appeals for repatriation, couched in a language designed to apply moral and emotional pressure to her employer. The next case I examine concerns a travelling ayah who, although stranded much like Mary Anne, was clearly well informed about the choices open to her and whose agency went well beyond applying emotional pressure to an employer for a passage home which would leave her no better off than she had been when she departed India. Miss Martha Tirky was a travelling ayah who had arrived with her employers in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924, after a voyage from Calcutta. Upon arrival in Germany, she was paid her due wages and dismissed. Despite the fact that she had some money, she immediately approached the British Consul to request that the British administration provide her with a return passage to India. This suggests that Martha was an experienced travelling ayah who was well aware that the British government was prepared to repatriate British Indian subjects in European countries at public expense. Upon receiving her plea, the Consul contacted the India Office, noting that Martha was neither destitute nor distressed but that it was highly unlikely that she would be able to find employment for the passage home since traffic between Germany and India was not always common. During the discussion of her case, members of the India Office agreed that the Consul should explore whether Martha had enough resources at her disposal to return to India, or if she was effectively destitute, in that the wages she had earned were insufficient to cover her passage. The India Office highlighted that, ‘the general principle is that we do not repatriate Indians from this country (referring to Britain) but do so from other countries if shown to be destitute’. In their reply to the Consul in Germany,

48  Ghassan Hage, Waiting (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2009).

Travellers ’ Tales  139 the India Office expressed some scepticism towards Martha’s appeal, stating that, ‘this woman has apparently been sitting in Germany for no more than to see can her repatriation be done at the cost of the Government expense’.49 The Consul confirmed to the India Office that Martha claimed that her resources were insufficient to pay for a return passage. No details are given of any attempt to verify Martha’s claim, which seems to have been taken at face value. Upon receiving this information, the India Office and the Consul in Germany began exploring the options to return Martha to India as cheaply as possible. The British Consul found that a direct passage from Hamburg to Calcutta would cost the India Office a minimum of £58. A cheaper option was to send her to Britain, from which there were regular services to India at considerably cheaper prices. Moreover, it was likely that, with the assistance of the Ayahs’ Home, Martha would have been able to find employment on the voyage to India, allowing the administration to avoid all costs beyond the passage from Hamburg to London. The Secretary of State emphasized that since Martha was a Christian, he was sure that the Ayahs’ Home would be more than willing to help. This indeed proved to be the case. Upon receiving a communication from the India Office about Martha, the Ayahs’ Home immediately offered to accommodate her and confirmed, ‘if the Ayah can be got to this Home between now (August) and the middle of September we should be able to get her a return situation to India. Passage (deck) paid and a small wage for her services onboard the steamer.’50 At this point, just when all appeared to be going smoothly, the thought processes of India Office staff took a more bizarre turn. Martha’s case had arisen in Germany, recently defeated in the bloodiest conflict in history to date and still regarded as a potential enemy. It also arose in a context in which the imperial administration in India was becoming increasingly concerned by the growth of an Indian nationalist movement. Administrators at the India Office expressed concern that Martha might be a secret agent of the German government and that ‘she may on her return act as agent for German propaganda’.51 The idea that Martha might be a German agent seeking to stir dissent on her return to India may have unsettled the India Office, but nevertheless they seem to have seen no alternative to sending her home via Britain. By mid-­ August 1924, Martha’s journey from Hamburg to London was arranged by the Consul and an advance for the travel costs from Hamburg to London were sent to Martha. Seven months later, on 10 March 1925, the Consul in Hamburg alerted the India Office to the fact that Martha had never boarded the ship to London and, 49  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607. 50  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607. 51  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607. This was not unique to Martha’s case, as Tammy Proctor in her crucial study has shown us how ‘alien’ women in particular were perceived as national security threats during the First World War and hence the British government had shown commitment to repatriate and deport foreign women from Britain. See Tammy Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (New York and London: New York University Press, 2003).

140  Waiting on Empire moreover, that she had not returned the advance that had been paid to her. Upon further investigation, the Consul discovered that Martha had taken up residence in the house of a German missionary, Reverend Szallies in Kreuznach. On being contacted, Martha claimed that, as she was 40 years old, she was unable to travel alone. Clearly this was a dubious claim since Martha had previously explored the option of travelling alone to India from Hamburg. It appears that Martha was seizing whatever opportunities came her way whilst attempting to keep as many options open as possible. In so doing, she disrupted the imperial administration, prompting a series of communications between the India Office and the Hamburg Consulate regarding how the money paid to Martha might be recovered. This communication petered out with the apparent realization that the money was gone and the chances of Martha repaying it were slim. Over a year later, on 3 November 1926, Martha’s case resurfaced in the archives, this time in correspondence between the British Consul General in Cologne and the India Office in London. The Kreuznach Social Welfare Department had ­contacted the British Consul in Cologne alerting them to the fact that following the destitution of the German missionary with whom she was staying, Martha had also become destitute and was ‘a charge on the public funds’. The Cologne Consulate claimed Martha had explained to them that there was an offer made by the India Office to her for her return to India in 1924 and that she would like to explore if that offer was still valid. The India Office was understandably irritated by the re-­appearance of Martha’s files on their desks, since she had absconded with the money they had previously paid her. Nevertheless, they agreed to help Martha and once again arranged for her passage to London and thereafter an admission to the Ayahs’ Home. It seems likely that it was the desire to avoid conflict with the German authorities which prompted such a tolerant reaction from the India Office. Martha was forwarded a ticket and arrangements were made for her smooth transition into the Ayahs’ Home on 28 December 1926. Once again, however, Martha never boarded the ship. She subsequently explained, in a de­pos­ ition to the Consul, that she had been ill with influenza and hence had not felt comfortable travelling.52 The Consulate had no way of verifying this story and, consequently, records don’t reveal whether it was true or whether Martha was buying time to explore various avenues open to her which she had not revealed to the Consulate. However, given both previous and subsequent events, the latter appears more likely. Between December 1926 and late March 1927, Martha made no efforts to contact the Consul in Cologne nor the India Office nor the Ayahs’ Home in London, which had secured and reserved a place for her in December. But, in early April 1927 Martha wrote to the Consul to enquire if they could extend the previous 52  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607.

Travellers ’ Tales  141 offer once again. This time, whilst the India Office and the Consul were still ­willing to extend the same offer, the Ayahs’ Home was full and they asked Martha not to arrive before September 1927, when they expected opportunities for her. Martha did not respond and there were no further communications until September 1927, when the Ayahs’ Home reached out to the India Office alerting them that there was an opportunity available for Martha to secure employment on a voyage from London to India and that if interested, she should arrive in London at once. The Consul in Cologne wrote to Martha with the warning that this would be the very last opportunity for her to take advantage of their generous offer to repatriate her. Martha, however, had other plans. In the period between April and September, she had found company with a member of a German missionary society known as Gossnersche Missionsgsellschaft and she was planning to travel with them directly from Germany to India. However, upon learning from Martha that the British administrators were willing to pay for her passage to India, the missionary wrote to the Consul in Cologne on 30 October 1927, to enquire if the British government would defray the cost of her passage. Frustrated and furious at such an audacious request, the Consul explained Martha’s history to the missionary and firmly stated that under no circumstances would they pay for her passage.53 With that communication, Martha Tirky disappears from the record, presumably to return to India at the expense of the Gossnersche Missionsgsellschaft, having led British bureaucrats in London, Hamburg, and Cologne on a merry dance over a period of three years. Martha Tirky was clearly intelligent, resourceful, and personable and exhibited a confidence in dealing with bureaucracies which was probably the result of years of experience as a traveller. She not only showed an ability to get British administrators to dance to her tune, despite their suspicion and expressed frustration over a long period of time, but also an ability to form support networks in a strange country whose language, at least when she arrived, she is unlikely to have spoken. The fact that she was able to secure accommodation with two different missionaries and eventually transport back to India at a mission society’s expense shows that Martha fully understood the potential of her Christian faith to serve as a social resource within an imperial world which claimed allegiance, in name at least, to a religion of humility. Martha Tirky was an extraordinary character: an opportunist who missed no chance to exert fleeting agency,54 a subaltern who was able to bend the powerful to her will. It is impossible not to take pleasure in Martha’s story: its emergence from the archives is a joy. Nevertheless, the existence of such an extraordinary character should not distract from the reality of the hierarchies and power relations that kept most of her class, ‘race’, and gender firmly subordinated. 53  BL, IOR LPJ/6/1882/2607.

54 Datta, Fleeting Agencies.

142  Waiting on Empire In this chapter, I have examined the stories of travelling ayahs facing challenges in wars and ‘exotic’ locations. Our final example brings the two together. In late 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, Lieutenant J. Hesse and his wife travelled from India to France for a brief holiday, accompanied by a travelling ayah that they had employed. Upon arrival in France, Mrs Hesse wrote to the British Consul General in Paris, explaining that they did not have enough money to pay the travelling ayah her wages or a return passage back to India. Whereas, in other cases, Consuls had done their best to offer help, in this case, the Consul referred Mrs Hesse directly to the India Office in London. Mrs Hesse followed the Consul’s advice and wrote to the India Office, suggesting that the travelling ayah ‘could work her passage back as a child’s nurse—­she came as a deck passenger and could return as such’. She further appealed, ‘I would be most grateful if you could help in taking charge of my ayah and sending her back to her home’.55 The India Office was also less cooperative than in most such cases and refrained from getting directly involved. They responded suggesting three different options: first, that due to wartime travel conditions the India Office strongly encouraged the family to retain and support the travelling ayah for some time, until they could find another family prepared to risk travel during war. Second, if the first option became too inconvenient for Mrs Hesse, then she should ‘communicate with the British Consul in Marseilles’ as cheaper passages to India were often available from that port. Third, the India Office could suggest to the Ayahs’ Home in London that they should register the name of Mrs Hesse’s ayah and inform her ‘anytime should they hear of a family travelling overland and wanting to pick up an ayah at Marseilles’. This would mean that the Hesses would have to pay the travelling ayah’s passage only as far as Marseilles.56 Understanding that no help was to be expected from the India Office, Mrs Hesse responded that she had found a surprisingly cheap passage for the travelling ayah from Paris and that the  travelling ayah had already sailed and would arrive at Simla by the end of November 1939. There are a number of strange elements to this story. Immediately after the ­outbreak of war seems a strange time for a military officer to take a holiday, ­particularly in a belligerent nation which faced the threat of German invasion. Nevertheless, it is possible that the tickets had been booked and perhaps the ship had even set sail before the outbreak of war and the Hesses, like most at the time, may well have had a misguided faith in the Maginot Line to protect France. Since no children are mentioned, it seems surprising that the Hesses needed a travelling ayah, which could reasonably be viewed as an extravagance on a lieutenant’s pay, and the Hesses’ claim that they only realized after arrival in France that they could not afford to pay the travelling ayah stretches credibility. It seems likely that both 55  BL, IOR L/PJ/7/2995.

56  BL, IOR L/PJ/7/2995.

Travellers ’ Tales  143 the British Consul and the India Office were sceptical of Hesses story, hence their unusual reluctance to offer help. The Hesses’ subsequent claim that they had found a cheap passage from Paris to Simla is also surprising, particularly given that Simla is not a seaport and is over 750 miles from the coast. Was the travelling ayah the victim of a particularly naive and irresponsible employer? Did the travelling ayah conspire with her employers to defraud the government of India? Did the travelling ayah really sail for India? Did she remain with her employers or was she abandoned in France? We may hope, for her sake, that she had left France before the German invasion of May 1940, since she is unlikely to have fared well under Nazi occupation. It is impossible for us to know what was really going on here, but we may perhaps share the suspicion of British administrators that the Hesses were not telling the whole story. Regardless of our doubts about this particular incident, this was by no means the only travelling ayah who planned to travel to European countries between 1939 and 1945. At least twenty-­six travelling ayahs acquired passage permissions or visas to visit various European countries during this period.57 Whether they actually made use of those permissions is not known from the available ship manifests and immigration records. But the fact that they were willing to take the risk of waiting in uncertain times, under uncertain circumstances, is telling of their intent.

Remembering the Tales of Subaltern Adventures This chapter was framed within the paradigm of the ‘travellers’ tales’ through which (overwhelmingly male) colonial adventurers communicated their perceptions of the ‘exotic’ lands to which they had journeyed, the dangers that they had faced, and the challenges that they had overcome. The chapter has shown that the subaltern women who took up employment as travelling ayahs faced dangers as great as any encountered by the upper-­class men who created the literary genre of travellers’ tales and that they were no less courageous and resourceful in overcoming the challenges they faced. Unlike upper-­class colonialists, however, they had no opportunity to communicate their experiences in memoirs or novels. Rather these stories have had to be painstakingly excavated from the archives, which reveal fascinating glimpses of the lives of ordinary and extraordinary women whose adventures brought them briefly to the attention of the imperial authorities, before they disappear again from view. The stories that emerge in the first part of the chapter show that travelling ayahs were no less intrepid travellers than any male colonialist. They traversed the

57  Gathered from passports in the IOR L/PJ duplicate passports folder.

144  Waiting on Empire seven seas, escaped U-­boat attacks and Luftwaffe bombing raids, and, inevitably, some died tragically alongside those they served. In London, they formed part of an Indian community whose contribution to Civil Defence through the formation of an ambulance unit not only saved lives in the terrifying maelstrom of the Blitz but prompted public acknowledgement from the British government, which made the colonialist discourses on which the subordination of India was based seem increasingly anachronistic. The second part of the chapter has considered the experiences of travelling ayahs in lands which must have been as strange and ‘exotic’ to them as the tropics were to any colonialist. Bursting out of the archives in this section emerged the figure of Martha Tirky, an adventurer whose style, panache, and resourcefulness was on a par with those of the heroes of any Edwardian novel or, indeed, Hollywood movie. As Martha fades from view, on a steamer to India in the company of German missionaries, it is worthwhile to consider the fact that there was no usual tradition of German missionary work in India, where Germany had never had a colonial presence. Was the German mission to India entirely Martha Tirky’s idea? We certainly couldn’t put it past her. The fact that the adventure stories of European colonialists have been widely told, whereas those of subaltern adventurers such as travelling ayahs were not valued enough to be recorded, is, of course, a function of the hierarchies of class, ‘race’, and gender by which the imperial order was justified. This chapter sought to redress the balance by bringing to light the adventures of some of the intrepid subaltern travellers of the imperial era.

  Conclusion The central task of this book has been to bring forth the crucial and previously hidden labours of travelling ayahs by unearthing their stories from the archives so that we can become aware of their experience and simultaneously subject it to critical analysis. Conceptually, the book approached travelling ayahs’ stories through the lens of waiting, showing the myriad ways in which waiting was a negotiated process, a relationship, and even an opportunity in some instances, thereby reflecting on the complex ways waiting can be understood and positioned within the context of colonial migration networks and experiences. In this concluding chapter, I want to draw together the main themes from the book and reflect on concerns regarding the liminal belonging of migrant South Asians in both South Asian history and British history. The chapter begins by emphasizing these migrant women’s self-­determination, survival strategies, and active engagement with the process of waiting. In so doing, it draws attention to the insights available to us from studying the travelling ayahs’ relationship with the Empire and their upper-­class employers and shows how these insights are relevant to historicizing the present-­day experiences of migrant domestic and care workers. Finally, the chapter sums up the discussion by reflecting on the ways this book invites historians to consider the importance of the everyday experiences of South Asian migrant women workers as citizens of the British Empire and simultaneously as citizens of South Asia.

(Re)visioning Waiting in Migration Histories In thinking about waiting as an active state of being and a zone full of possibilities, engagements, and busyness, this book has broadened the understanding of the way the term has been perceived in migration studies.1 As noted in the Introduction of this book, waiting is a verb and yet, when considering an individual who is waiting, we often link them to lack of action. The cases here break that assumption by revealing that travelling ayahs were active participants and conscious actors during the time they spent in waiting. The preceding chapters in this book have provided extensive evidence of the ways that travelling 1  1As discussed earlier in the Introduction chapter migration studies scholars have frequently associated waiting with stuckedness and a sense of waiting in a limbo or a sense of failure.

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Arunima Datta, Oxford University Press. © Arunima Datta 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848239.003.0008

146  Waiting on Empire ayahs actively engaged with waiting and the ways they deployed the fleeting agencies available to them. This evidence was gleaned from their case files in India Office records, their interviews with missionaries, their passage records, their stories in newspapers, their advertisements, and many more archival sources. Together, these chapters reveal a wide spectrum of ways to navigate waiting crafted by travelling ayahs. For those who experienced waiting as a time of insecurity and anxiety, often as a result of their employers’ behaviour and the refusal of the government to regulate it effectively, these ranged from formal letters to the India Office to emotional demonstrations in front of strategic locations and audiences; whilst for others in more secure situations, agency could mean capitalizing on waiting in a range of ways, from securing new employment opportunities to running import-­export businesses. Some travelling ayahs engaged with waiting reluctantly, fearfully, and anxiously whilst others enthusiastically embraced it. Yet all were active in their waiting: active in their efforts, active in their communications, as well as active in exhibiting their emotions. For travelling ayahs, waiting was an active process and not a temporal phase of passivity or helplessness. Consequently, we repeatedly see action and busyness in their waiting, based on a belief that they would be able to transcend the waiting. In repositioning waiting as a verb, a ‘doing’ word, this study feeds into current interest in understanding how waiting can be understood in more nuanced ways—­especially in the lives of migrants with fewer or no resources.

Positioning the Familiar Stranger in British History Following landmark studies by Antoinette Burton, Michael Fisher, Laura Tabili, Rozina Visram, Sumita Mukherjee, and others, this study continues to shatter the  myth of Britain’s insularity from its own Empire.2 Waiting on Empire has examined the intersections of colonial mobility and colonial distress resulting from the everyday functioning of the Empire in Britain through the experience of travelling ayahs. This book abandons the skyscraper view that makes certain elite caste and class migrants from South Asia in Britain visible. Instead, it takes a street-­level view that allows access into the everyday lives of ‘ordinary’ migrants from South Asia in Britain, whose names remain often unknown. The ordinary lives and extraordinary

2 Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-­ Victorian Britain (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998); Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes (London: Pluto Press, 1986); Michael Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers to Britain 1600–1857 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004); Sumita Mukherjee and Rehana Ahmed (eds), South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858–1947 (London and New York: Continuum, 2012); Laura Tabili, Global Migrants, Local Culture: Natives and Newcomers in Provincial England, 1841–1939 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Conclusion  147 circumstances of colonized working-­class migrants’ in the metropole are made visible through the stories and experiences of the travelling ayahs. Their histories of interaction with imperial administrators, employers, and civil society infrastructures reveal much about the logics and contradictions of imperialism as they worked themselves out through the ways that the Empire dealt with colonized and marginalized subjects in the metropole. Travelling ayahs’ letters, photographs, passage slips, passports, and more not only offer insights into the experiences of migrant colonized workers within the Empire but they also offer us a valuable opportunity to understand the real-­life manifestations of contradictions between the rhetoric and the practice of Empire. The experiences and stories of the travelling ayahs are important histories about how colonized women negotiated the intersections of their status as migrants, foreigners, women, imperial subjects, and disposable units of labour. The ways that they did this are revealing. None of the travelling ayahs in this book were revolutionaries. None of them railed against discrimination, demanded liberation from British rule, or called for the overthrow of the Empire. None of them questioned the Empire’s claims that its existence benefitted its colonial subjects. On the contrary, they took the Empire at its word. They accepted their status as imperial subjects. All they asked was that the Empire act in accordance with its rhetoric and treat them as British subjects ought to be treated. The fact that, over a period of three centuries, the Empire proved so reluctant to comply, despite the relatively small expenditures involved, is what reveals the gap between the rhetoric and reality of ‘the white man’s burden’. The fact that there were numerous occasions when travelling ayahs were able to persuade the Empire to accede to their requests shows that imperial administrators were well aware of the vulnerability of the Empire should this gap be exposed. The depth of this vulnerability was revealed in a single extraordinary moment discussed in Chapter 6, when imperial bureaucrats at the India Office were struck by paranoid fears that Martha Tirky, a working woman trying to find her way home, might be a German agent who would cause unrest in India. Travelling ayahs should not, then, be derided for their lack of revolutionary activism as women workers often have been. When Martin Luther King made his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963, challenging racial discrimination and oppression in the USA, he did not call for the destruction of the state. Rather, he called for the state to ‘live up to the true meaning of its creed’. Travelling ayahs stranded in Britain and elsewhere adopted precisely the same strategy, and enacted it in more modest and less theatrical ways. Consequently, this study locates the significance of colonized migrant experience not just in spectacular moments such as riots or rebellions, but in the everyday stories of those who ‘waited to wait on the Empire’. The examination of the experiences of travelling ayahs as mobile care givers in the service of the Empire reveals much about the intersections of class, ‘race’, and gender in the imperial structure. As a consequence of the dynamics of ‘race’, even well-­educated Indians could find themselves

148  Waiting on Empire consigned to working-­class roles as servants. Yet it was the Indians who the British themselves had educated who made them the most nervous, and whose movements they were most concerned to control. To return on one final occasion to the case of the Christian-­educated Martha Tirky, it appears to have been precisely her confident ability to communicate that imperial bureaucrats were worried about. At the same time that travelling ayahs were marginalized by their ‘race’, they were valued for their gender, which was seen to provide them with a ‘natural’ propensity for caring. This made them both central and marginal to the travelling colonial family unit. A travelling ayah could be seen as an intimate stranger in the colonial family unit at sea—­thanks to their gendered role, almost a family member, expected to love and be loved by children, yet, as a result of their ‘race’ and class, an eternal outsider who could be disposed of as soon as the voyage was completed.

Bringing Global South Asian Women’s Labour History to the Fore I now move to the question, what does focusing on the lives of travelling ayahs offer to our understanding of South Asian history? This book has shown that mobile South Asian labourers in Britain are simultaneously a part of South Asian history, British history, and British Empire histories. South Asian History as a field has grappled with the theme of silenced histories since its inception. In particular, one area in which the field still struggles is the history of mobile South Asians. The field of South Asian History tends to accept the strict territorial boundaries of the region almost as a given one. The reality is that these boundaries are not given, but were socially constructed, very largely in the processes of imperialism which many South Asian Historians are investigating. Studies in the labour history of South Asian women have predominantly engaged with women’s labour within the geographical boundaries of South Asia. As historians, we are constantly encouraged to be intellectually agile but the conventions of regional history have discouraged attention to topics which transcend those regional boundaries. Consequently, the field has tended to overlook histories of South Asian labourers in other parts of the world, particularly the histories of South Asian citizens in motion. In recent years, the focus has broadened to include migrant women labourers on plantations and my previous work on Indian coolie women in British Malaya has been part of this trend,3 but little has been done to investigate the history of South Asian migrant women workers in the caregiving industry, especially those 3  Arunima Datta, Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Conclusion  149 involved in circular migrations. In this book, while maintaining attention to themes of mobility and agency which characterized the previous book, I have sought to expand the boundaries of South Asian History further, by emphasizing that the histories of a nation or a region are not only made within its imagined boundaries but also across and beyond them. Studying the history of global South Asians such as through the lens of travelling ayahs not only allows historians of South Asia to acknowledge the important contributions that South Asians have made across the world but, even more importantly, it allows access to an untapped potential for studying world history from below through the South Asian lens. Such an approach can work effectively to de-­colonize the kind of world history that has privileged the Atlantic outlook.

The Past in the Present Examining the past experiences of travelling ayahs as done in this book illuminates connections and entanglements between past and present histories. Before I close this volume, I take a pause for a brief excursion into the present-­day experiences of migrant caregivers and domestic workers, suggesting how certain trends in treatment of migrant workers, particularly in the industry of disposable labour, remains hauntingly similar to the issues I have documented from the imperial era. In 2013, Devyani Khobragade, who at that time served as Deputy Consul General of India in New York City, was arrested by American law enforcement for falsifying statements on a visa application for Sangeeta Richard, and for not complying with US minimum wage requirements.4 Frustrated with the burden of  work and non-­ payment of previously agreed-­ upon wages, Richard left Khobragade’s house and sought refuge at a local non-­profit organization, through the help of neighbours and a Sikh temple. Whilst she waited at the non-­profit organization, she sought the help of legal authorities and law enforcement in the US to secure a passage home to India and receive the wages due to her.5 Now, let us take a flashback to 1919, almost a century earlier, and refer to the case of Catharine Ayah as discussed in Chapter 3. In this case, Catharine had travelled from Bombay to Britain with her employer on the understanding that, within a few days of their arrival in Britain, her employer would arrange for her return to India and pay for her wages. However, six months after her arrival, Catharine’s employer showed no inclination to send her back or pay her due wages. Catharine 4  ‘Who is Devyani Khobragade?’, Times of India, 20 December 2013. 5  ‘Timeline of Devyani Khobragade Case’, Times of India, 18 December 2013. Also see ‘U.S.  to Review Indian Diplomat’s Arrest and Strip Search after New Delhi Backlash’, Time, 18 December 2013.

150  Waiting on Empire sought refuge with a neighbour, Mrs Watters, who attempted to negotiate a return passage for Catharine.6 The two cases bear haunting similarities. Even though they are many years removed from each other, the experience of these migrant caregivers from the South Asian subcontinent barely seems to differ. Despite the fact that, in 2013, the employer was herself a South Asian woman and that the case happened in the USA rather than the UK, the treatment meted out to the migrant worker remained very comparable.7 Richard’s case is sadly not the only one, nor it is unusual except in the high public profile of the employer. Several notable and important studies looking at present-­day migrant care have highlighted the multifarious challenges faced by care and domestic workers at the hands of immigration systems, the power relations of the industry, and their employers.8 In their seminal collection, Eileen Boris and Rhacel Parrenas have chronicled the complex connection between care and economy by exploring the history of intimate labour in light of the politics of ‘welfare’ states. The volume has shown how the labour of migrant workers becomes commodified along with their emotions in a globalized world and how migrant care work can be used as a lens to understand complex power relations within larger global economic transformations.9 The past of the travelling ayahs thus becomes the present of today’s migrant care and domestic workers. It seems clear that there are structural factors which connect past to present and, therefore, that failing to acknowledge the past whilst we engage with present issues will only make us prisoners of the present. Addressing present-­day issues of migrant care and domestic workers cannot be  wholistically done without attending to the colonial crafting of migration processes and definitions of domestic and care work, as they continue to animate the ways that lower-­class migrant workers from the global South are treated today. Hence, it is important to consider the connections between past and present in terms of how the roles of migrant domestic workers are framed by employers and by the agencies that supply them, and how those workers are treated by states. Only by studying both past and present can we raise the issue of how pathological

6  BL, IOR L/PJ/6/1631/6640. 7  The 1910 case in which travelling ayah Mary Michael sought refuge from the Chauduris (also discussed in Chapter 3) shows that, even a century ago, ayahs could not rely on any solidarity of ‘race’ to overcome the divisions of class. 8 Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021); Nicole Constable, Migrant Workers in Asia: Distant Divides, Intimate Connections (London and New York: Routledge, 2010); Olivia Killias, Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2018); Maria Platt, ‘Importing Nannies Is Not the Right Solution for Australia’s Child-­Care Services’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 2014. 9  Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies and the Politics of Care (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Shu-­Ju Ada Cheng, ‘Contextual Politics of Difference in Transnational Care: The Rhetoric of Filipino Domestics’ Employers in Taiwan’, Feminist Review 77.1 (2004): 46–64.

Conclusion  151 connections, such as that linking the case of Catharine Ayah to Sangeeta Richard, can be ruptured in order to stop history from repeating.

An Invitation To conclude, the questions this study has posed, and the answers it has found, constitute an invitation to create a more nuanced analysis of waiting amongst migrant labourers and of the place of migrant labour histories in regional and colonial histories. Such analysis helps move beyond essentialized representations of categories and identities to reveal the real ways in which individuals seek to survive and even prosper in challenging circumstances. As I finish writing this final chapter, I read in the news that the building that housed the Ayahs’ Home in London during the first half of the twentieth century is to receive a blue plaque.10 This is a welcome step in acknowledging the contribution of South Asian women workers to British life spanning over centuries. We must hope and work to ensure that it is only the first step in making the history of these extraordinary women more visible. We know from the archives that travelling ayahs regarded themselves as citizens of both Britain and of South Asia and they are important to the history of both. Although more about the lives of travelling ayahs has been covered and uncovered in this book than in previous works, there can be no denying that this is only a fragment of their many roles and shades of experience which could be relevant to local, national, regional, trans-­ regional, and global histories. Nonetheless, Waiting on Empire has shown that piecing together fractured and sometimes isolated accounts of the experience of travelling ayahs allows us to reconstruct the relation they developed with the Empire at the metropole. These relations are marked by tensions, anxieties, ambiguities, and complexities played out in negotiations, defeats, and victories, the details of which can often become a key to unlocking multiple histories of gender, class, race, power, and migration in the colonial and indeed postcolonial contexts. The work has sought to transcend the silencing of migrant subaltern voices and reveal their agential engagements even in the most vulnerable situations. Waiting on Empire finishes by inviting others to take further steps toward recording histories of ordinary yet exceptional women, who linked India and Britain, colony and metropole, through their disposable but crucially intimate labour, to whom both South Asian history and British history and social memory have yet to do justice. 10  Times of India, 23 February 2022, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/raj-­era-­london-­ home-­for-­indian-­ayahs-­to-­get-­blue-­plaque/articleshow/89705647.cms. Note: a blue plaque is a permanent sign, serving as a historical marker, installed in a public place in the United Kingdom by the charity, English Heritage, to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs This closing constituent of the book explores 124 cases of travelling ayahs who journeyed between India and Britain during the twentieth century. The profiles are primarily constructed from the travelling ayahs’ passport or duplicate passports held in the India Office Records, British Library. Whilst the profiles only range in date from 1932–40, the fact that there are 124 surviving passports from this eight-­year period is an indication of how large the actual traffic of travelling ayahs would have been, not only during these years but also in earlier decades before passports became a requirement. Some profiles are more detailed than others because I was able to uncover more details about the respective travelling ayahs’ voyages from ship manifests. Whilst more such profiles could be created from ship manifests, I refrained from doing so, because, compared to passports, ship manifests provide much more limited biographical information, with even names frequently not being recorded. Passports enable us to see names, faces, and other personal details which reveal them as individual human beings, not merely as statistics or human commodities. The personal connections that I felt on viewing these old documents inspired this section of the book. At the same time, viewing these passports together allows us to see historical changes. For example, the impacts of the Spanish Civil War and, later, World War II are visible in the permissions granted and sometimes explicitly denied. An underlying goal of this section is to advance the recovery of travel documents by examining their meanings and exploring the value they have for historians in providing links to both individual lives and to the contexts in which these documents were produced.1 While the passports do allow some humanization of travelling ayahs and give us access to their names and other details, they are not without limitations. Whilst, unlike many shipping manifests, they always give us names, these names are not always reliably recorded. In many cases, colonized women’s family names were replaced by their trade: Ayah. This practice denied recognition to a significant element of their identity, instead making that identity inseparable from their servitude. Moreover, the use of prefixes such as ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’, or ‘Mst’ was random. Some were prefixed, while others were not, showing that there was no uniform practice amongst passport administrators at 1  For more discussion on passports and travelling ayahs’ self-­representations in these documents of governmental surveillance, see Arunima Datta, ‘Becoming Visible: Travel Documents and Travelling Ayahs in the British Empire’, South Asian Studies (August, 2022), DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2022.2111087.

154  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs this time. This was probably because in different states, different authorities were responsible for issuing passports. In some cases, it was the British Resident’s Office, in others, the Governor General’s Office or the local Police Commissioner. Some British Indian passports (unlike modern Indian passports) included a category of ‘caste’. It seems likely that the category of ‘caste’ was added to the passports because senior officials felt that it would help them to assess and identify what community of people they were engaging with. It appears, however, that the junior officials who administered the system lacked the cultural and perhaps linguistic knowledge to ascertain the caste identity of travellers. When we look at the passports of travelling ayahs considered here, we see that in not a single case is the category ‘caste’ followed by a genuine caste identity. Rather, officials, who probably had little understanding of caste, used the category to list something that they could understand, most frequently a religious label such as ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’, or ‘Indian Christian’ or less frequently, an ethnic label such as ‘Telugu’ or ‘Khasi’. The professions of all the women documented here were listed as ‘ayah’ unless otherwise specified in their respective profiles. In some cases, profession was listed as servant, maid, nurse, or private service, yet ‘Ayah’ was still used as a surname. Some passports included employers’ names, some did not. The presence of employers’ names can be seen as analogous to modern work-­visas and made it  easier to discover further information through ship manifests and other documents. Permissions for travel recorded on passports are comparable to present-­day visa stamps. Whilst in most cases, permissions were to intended destinations including refuelling stops, additional permissions sometimes catered for planned future employment. For instance, a travelling ayah travelling to the UK with additional passage permissions to China had likely already had her next employment from the UK to China confirmed, possibly with the same employer. It is clear that some of the travelling ayahs recorded below were expecting to engage in a great deal of travel including European tours, voyages around East Asia, and in a number of cases global circumnavigation. While all travelling ayahs were recorded as British subjects born in India, their passports included passage permissions to India, showing that a British passport did not guarantee a return to their own place of birth without additional documentation. What follows below are the stories and profiles of 124 travelling ayahs whose  lives and contributions to the creation of modern Britain are yet to be acknowledged.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  155 (1) MRS MARY AYAH was born on 15 January 1895 in Madras, India. From the passport issued to her in the capacity of a travelling ayah in 1933 at Fort St. George, Madras, it appears that at the time of the passport issuance she was 38 years old. She was described as a 5ft 5in.-tall woman with brown eyes and dark hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She was to accompany Major P. Verdon I. M. S. as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to England and India.2

Fig. 27  Mary passport image

2  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/2/634.

156  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (2) MRS SARAH AYAH was born in 1891 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 10 October 1933 in Calcutta and recorded her age as 42 years. She was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. The passport recorded that she was the widow of Joe Selbum. Like many others, her profession was also listed as her last name, although her husband’s surname is given. Sarah’s residential address in India at the time of the passport issuance was recorded as: 16 Mayfair, Ballygunge, Calcutta. She was to accompany Mr K. H. Forbes in the capacity of a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to Ceylon, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium, suggesting that her employer was planning a European tour.3

Fig. 28  Sarah passport image

3  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/2/2095.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  157 (3) MRS BRIL AYAH was born in 1911 in Cherrapunje, India. Her passport, issued on 16 February 1934 in Shillong, described her as a 4ft 7½in.-tall woman with black hair and black eyes with a brown tinge. She was a widow, but her late husband’s name was not recorded. At the time of the passport issuance she intended to serve as a travelling ayah for Mrs Weston and had permission to travel to the British Empire, Italy, Switzerland, and France, suggesting significant European travel was planned.4

Fig. 29  Bril passport image

4  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/3/262.

158  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (4) MRS ANTHONY AYAH was born in 1893 in Nilgiris, India. Her passport, issued on 16 June 1934 in Ootacamund by the government of Madras, described her as a 5ft 4in.-tall woman with black eyes and black hair. She was a widow. The name of her late husband was not recorded, but the fact that her forename was given as Anthony, a male Christian name, suggests that it may have been her husband’s. Like many others, her profession was also listed as her last name; her ‘caste’ was recorded as Indian Christian. She was employed by Mrs R. L. B. Gall, with whom she was to travel to the United Kingdom in the capacity of a travelling ayah. Anthony Ayah had permissions to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Palestine, Egypt, and India.5 These may have been stops on a journey to Britain via the Suez Canal.

Fig. 30  Anthony passport image

5  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/3/1314.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  159 (5) MRS RUTH AYAH was born in 1907 in Madras, India. Her passport, issued on 18 October 1934 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal, described her as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and visibly distinguishing smallpox marks on her face. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Ruth was employed by Mrs G. Morgan to travel with her as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and India. This was a case of a travelling ayah whose travels did not take her to Britain or Europe, at least on this voyage.6

Fig. 31  Ruth passport image

6  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/3/1595.

160  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (6) MRS JESSIAH AYAH was born in 1888 in Madras, South India. Her passport, issued on 17 April 1934 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal, described her as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and ‘pox marks’ as visible distinguishing marks. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. Jessiah was in the employment of Mrs M. S. Waterstone, with whom she was set to travel as a child’s ayah. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, India, and France.7

Fig. 32  Jessiah passport image

7  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/3/2820.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  161 (7) MRS ELIZABETH ANDREWS was born as Elizabeth Phillip on 1 July 1887 in Travancore, India. Her passport, issued on 25 February 1935 in Trivandrum by the Agent to the Governor-­General of Madras States, recorded her age as 48 years and described her as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a round birthmark on her right cheek. She was a widow whose late husband’s name was not recorded, but her father’s name was listed as ‘Philip’. Comparing her maiden name with the name listed in the passport, we can confidently assume that her husband’s name was Andrews as it was the custom in many South Indian communities for women to take their husband’s or father’s name as part of their names. Her address at the time of the passport issuance was recorded as Vayalil Purayedam, West of the Traveller’s Bungalow, Quilon, Trivandrum. As in other cases, we cannot definitively say whether this was the address of her employer, but it is likely that it was a temporary residence since it was associated with a traveller’s bungalow which would usually only have allowed temporary accommodation. Elizabeth’s ‘caste’ was recorded as Roman Catholic Christian. Elizabeth had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.8

Fig. 33  Elizabeth passport image 8  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/280.

162  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (8) BYRHUI TARIANG was born on 25 June 1893 in Cherrapunji, India. Her passport, issued on 15 February 1935 in Shillong by the government of Assam, described her as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not listed. Byrhui was set to accompany Mrs B. U. A. Grant as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and India, suggesting that a significant European tour was planned.9

Fig. 34  Byrhui passport image

9  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/292.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  163 (9) MRS BHAGIRAMIBAI PAWAR was born on 5 October 1904 in Khatamba, Gujarat, India. Her passport, issued on 4 March 1935 in Indore by the Central Indian Agency of Indore, described her as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a mole on her chin. The passport listed her profession as a ‘domestics servant’ and gave her permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, the United States of America, and Japan. However, the document specifies that Bhagiramibai could only travel to the United States of America and Japan if she possessed visas from the consular offices concerned with each country.10 These permissions suggest that Bhagiramibai was setting out with her employers on a global tour which would effectively mean circumnavigation of the Earth.

Fig. 35  Bhagiramibai passport image

10  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/400.

164  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (10) MRS AMARAVATHUN was born in 1886 in Mylapore, Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 15 March 1935 at Fort St. George by the Deputy Secretary to the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 49 years old. She is described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, grey hair, and a mole. She was a widow, but her late husband’s name was not documented. Her profession was listed as ‘ayah’ accompanying Mrs Gadahn. She had permission to travel to Great Britain and France.11

Fig. 36  Amaravathun passport image

11  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/644.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  165 (11) MST. HARI KALA was born on 15 August 1901 in Dehradun, India. Her passport was issued on 25 March 1935 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 34 years of age. She was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks on her left hand. Hari Kala was the widow of Kirhan Singh. She had permission to travel to France, Egypt, Belgium, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, suggesting a voyage via the Suez Canal involving significant European travel.12

Fig. 37  Hari Kala passport image

12  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/907.

166  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (12) MRS MAGDALINE was born in 1889 in Howrah, Calcutta, India. Her passport was issued on 14 March 1935 in Lahore, though she lived in Jullundur. At the time of her passport issuance, she was 46 years of age. She was the widow of Jacob, whose last name was not recorded. Her ‘caste’ was recorded as ‘Indian Christian’. She had permission to travel to England, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and the British Empire, suggesting extensive travel was contemplated.13

Fig. 38  Magdaline passport image

13  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/949.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  167 (13) MRS KAJULI GOMES was born in 1898 in Dacca, Bengal. Her passport was issued on 6 April 1935 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Kajuli was 35 years old, described as a 5ft 5in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was the widow of Monusustha Gomes. Her address was recorded as the Sheves Hotel in Calcutta. She was to serve as a travelling ayah in the employment of Mrs  N.  V.  Johnston and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, China, Japan, Shanghai, Philippines, United States of America, and India suggesting that a circumnavigation of the planet was planned.14

Fig. 39  Kajuli passport image

14  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1030.

168  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (14) MRS HALIMAN AYAH was born on 1 May 1906 in Marooi Gaya, India. Her passport was issued on 16 June 1934 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 28 years of age and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was recorded as the widow of Munshi Mian. The passport listed her address as 1, Balai Dutt Street, Calcutta. The passport further recorded her religion as Muslim and in the place of the passport image the passport noted that there was no photograph available as the holder was a ‘purdahnashin lady’ or veiled lady. The religious sensitivity displayed by the administrator in 1906 would not be found in contemporary Britain, where refusal of a full-­facial photograph would result in denial of a passport. Haliman had permission to travel to Persia, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and India, suggesting that she was setting out on a significant overland voyage in the Middle East.15

Fig. 40  Haliman passport image

15 BL, IOR L/PJ/11/3/1248. For more discussion on how ‘purdahnashin’ travelling ayahs were recorded in passport documents, see Datta, ‘Becoming Visible’ (2022).

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  169 (15) MRS SABASTIAMALL was born in 1894 in Trichy, India. Her passport was issued on 12 April 1935 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 41 years old and was described as a 5ft 11½in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, a scar under her left upper arm, and ­tattoo marks on both forearms. She was married but her husband’s name was not  recorded. She was to serve as a travelling ayah in the employment of Mrs G. F. Lazenby and had permission to travel to England and India.16

Fig. 41  Sabastiamall passport image

16  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1085.

170  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (16) SANTHAMAM MARY was born on 1 July 1890 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 17 April 1935 in Trivandrum by the Agent to the Governor General of the Madras States. At the time of issuance, her age was 45 years and she was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, two moles on her forehead, and tattoo marks on both hands. She was the widow of Anokiasaramy Harry. Her father’s name, Lazarus, was also recorded in the document. Her ‘caste’ was listed as Roman Catholic Christian. Her residential address shows that she was living with Lt. B. E. A. Imnell McDowell, at Nagar Bregade, Trivandrum, Travancore. It is most likely that McDowell was her employer and Santhamam was serving as a live-­in ayah.17 She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, United States of America, and Japan (both with further visa allowances from government officials), China, Palestine, Egypt, and India suggesting that a global circumnavigation was planned.18

Fig. 42  Santhamam Mary passport image

17  It is not clear if the McDowells were employing her as a travelling ayah or she was applying for a passport in the capacity of a travelling ayah for another employer. 18  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1166.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  171 (17) MRS BASIRAN was born in 1885 in Gorakhpore, India. Her passport was issued on 12 July 1935 in Calcutta by the Government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 50 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was the widow of Sikh Rajab.19 The passport recorded her religion as Muslim. Basiran was to accompany Mrs Stanton as a travelling ayah and had travel permissions to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Egypt, and India.20 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Mrs Basiran travelled with her employer Mrs Harrison Stanton (21 years old) and her son Christopher Stanton (1 year old) from London to Bombay onboard Viceroy of India, a P&O ship, on 14 March 1936. The listed accommodation for Mrs Basiran was the employer’s address, suggesting that she would have stayed with her employer before leaving Britain. The permissions suggest that a significant European tour was contemplated before returning to India via Suez.21

Fig. 43  Basiran passport image 19  Although the name suggests the person was Sikh, the religion is recorded as Muslim. Whilst this could be a case of conversion, it could very well be a case of administrative ignorance and unreliability in capturing proper identities of colonized subjects on paper. 20  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1464. 21  NA, BT 27-­160238.

172  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (18) KUNSHI AYAH was born in 1909 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 23 March 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, her age was 29 years and she was described as a 4ft 8in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married to Lal Singh. She was to sail with Mrs  D.  Wilson as the latter’s travelling ayah, with permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.22

Fig. 44  Kunshi passport image

22  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1486.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  173 (19) MRS TERESA JOHNSON (nee Roland) was born on 23 April 1896 in Karachi, present-­day Pakistan. At the time of issuance, 7 June 1935, in Calcutta by the government of Bengal, she was 39 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with dark eyes, black hair, and a deep mark on her cheek. She was a widow. Her late husband’s name was not documented, but given that her surname was Johnson, whilst her maiden name was Roland, it is most likely that her husband’s forename or surname would have been Johnson. She was to travel with Mr Archibald as a child’s travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.23 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry about Mrs Teresa Johnson’s voyages during 1935 it appears that after completing her travel with Archibald, she travelled back from Liverpool to Bombay onboard California, an Anchor Line ship on 3 October 1935. The accommodation for Mrs Teresa Johnson whilst in the UK was listed as Hamilton Lodge in Scotland. It is unclear if that is where she arrived with her employers or where she stayed whilst she waited for her passage back to India. From the record, it seems she travelled back as an independent passenger and not in service as a travelling ayah to any employer.24

Fig. 45  Teresa Johnson passport image 23  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1650.

24  NA, BT 27-­147871.

174  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (20) NIAZAN was born in 1875 in Mohammadi, Kheri, India. Her passport was issued on 30 April 1935 in Naini by the Deputy Secretary to government of United Provinces. At the time of her passport issuance, she was 60 years old and was described as a 5ft 5in.-tall woman with black eyes and black and white hair. Her father’s name was recorded as Mir Badumah. Her ‘caste’ was recorded as Muslim. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.25

Fig. 46  Niazan passport image

25  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1684.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  175 (21) ANNAMAH was born in 1890 in Trimulgherry, India. Her passport was issued on 19 June 1935 in Hyderabad by the Hyderabad Residency. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks on her arms. Her marital status was not recorded. The passport reported that she was to serve Capt. and Mrs J. R. Colt as their travelling ayah and that she had permissions to travel to the British Empire, China, and Japan, suggesting that she was employed for a voyage in East Asia.26

Fig. 47  Annamah passport image

26  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1756.

176  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (22) SARIBON AYAH was born in 1894 in Cherapongee, Assam, India. Her passport was issued on 10 June 1935 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, she was 41 years and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on the left side of her upper lip. She was a widow, but her late husband’s name was not documented. She was to serve as a travelling ayah in the employment of Mrs  E.  M.  Henderson of Baghmari Tea Estate, Assam, and had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland.27

Fig. 48  Saribon passport image

27  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/1761.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  177 (23) MRS ARICA MARY was born in 1911 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 22 July 1935 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Arica was 24 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes, dark hair, with black marks on both sides of her face and neck. She was married to Maribula. Arica was to travel with Mrs F. Carl Seager as a travelling ayah with permissions to travel to the United Kingdom and India.28

Fig. 49  Arica Mary passport image

28  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2075.

178  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (24) MRS HAJRA BEGUM was born in December 1910 in Madhupur, India. Her passport was issued on 15 October 1935 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 34 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a wart under her right eye. She was married to Abu Mohd. She had permission to travel to China, Japan, and the British Empire suggesting a voyage in East Asia was contemplated.29

Fig. 50  Hajra Begum passport image

29  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2368.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  179 (25) MRS BHAGWANTI NATHA SINGH was born in February 1895 in Patiala State, India. Her passport was issued on 6 September 1935 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 39 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a birthmark on her nose. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. Her profession was listed as ‘maid servant’, suggesting that terms such as maids, servants, and ayahs were interchangeable in everyday language. She had permission to travel to England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, the United States of America, and the British Empire, suggesting that a significant global voyage was contemplated.30

Fig. 51  Bhagwanti Natha Singh passport image

30  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2564.

180  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (26) MISS YEDDU RAMANNAH was born in 1892 in Rajahmundry, India. Her passport was issued on 9 May 1935 in Madras by the Madras Commissioner of Police. At the time of issuance, her age was 43 years and she was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with dark eyes, black hair, and a small tooth in the middle of her front teeth. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.31 Whilst Yeddu’s travels in 1935 were not found, her name re-­appears in an Ancestry record from almost twenty years later.32 In August 1955 she travelled from Bombay to London onboard S.S. Carthage, a P&O ship. On the ship manifest, her accommodation whilst in London was listed as ℅ Tucker, Elmgrove Lodge, Kingsclere, Nr. Newbury Bucks., probably her employer’s address, where she would have stayed whilst she waited to return to Bombay.33 This voyage suggests that Yeddu had a long career and was one of the few travelling ayahs still practising her profession in the 1950s after Indian independence.

Fig. 52  Yeddu Ramannah passport image 31  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2643. 32  We can conclude that it was the same person based on the name, age, and marital status listed on the immigration records which match her earlier passport details. 33  TNA, BT26-­1339122.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  181 (27) MRS RADHABAI GOVIND PARAB was born on 5 March 1895 in the Achara District, Ratnagiri, India. Her passport was issued on 12 December 1935 in Kolhapur, Deccan, by the Agent to the Governor General for the Deccan States and Resident at Kolhapur. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 4ft 7in.-tall woman with brown eyes, grey hair, and small-­pox marks on her face. She was a widow whose late husband’s name was not recorded. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, Italy, and Austria.34

Fig. 53  Radhabai Govind Parab passport image

34  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2733.

182  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (28) ANASTASIA was born in 1884 in Nagpur, India. Her passport was issued on 27 July 1935 in Karachi by the Commissioner of Sind. At the time of issuance, she was 51 years old and was described as a 4ft 8in.-tall woman with black eyes, black and grey hair, and tattoo marks on her forearms. She was the widow of Maslamanis. She had permission to travel to England via France and back to India.35

Fig. 54  Anastasia passport image

35  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/2872.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  183 (29) DUNAMMA was born on 10 January 1905 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 24 September 1935 in Trivandrum by the Agent to the Governor General of Madras States. At the time of issuance, she was 30 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a green caste mark on her forehead. She was married but the name of her husband was not recorded, although her father’s name was listed as Gungadurram. Her address at the time was recorded as 10 Buckingham Gardens, Perambur Barracks, Madras. Her ‘caste’ was listed as Hindu. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.36

Fig. 55  Dunamma passport image

36  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/3041.

184  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (30) MRS IMELDA EMMA was born on 6 July 1881 in Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 27 November 1935 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Imelda was 54 years old and was described as a 4ft 9½in.tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and no teeth. She was the widow of Marcus Mihan. She was to travel with Mrs Haines as a travelling ‘child’s ayah’ and had permissions to travel to the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and India.37

Fig. 56  Imelda Emma passport image

37  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/3324.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  185 (31) JETHI LIPCHANY was born in 1900 in Lebong, India. Her passport was issued on 23 November 1935 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 4ft 8in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and seven blue spots on her right hand. She was the  wife of Burjaman Singh. Jethi was set to accompany Mrs  J.  M.  Gibson as a  travelling ayah, and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.38 Based on compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry about Jethi Lipchany’s voyage it appears that she travelled from Bombay to London with her employer onboard Viceroy of India, a P&O ship, on 9 March 1936. The accommodation for Jethi Pilchany whilst in the UK was listed as 21, Wyndham Road, Arobeg, Rothesay, Isle of Bute.39 It seems likely that this quite remote location in western Scotland was her employer’s address.

Fig. 57  Jethi Lipchany passport image

38  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/4/3362.

39  TNA, BT26-­1095155.

186  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (32) MRS RUTH FRANCIS (nee Kanikkam) was born on 15 January 1881 in Bangalore, India. Her passport was issued on 4 January 1936 in Bangalore. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 54 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.tall woman with black eyes, grey hair, and tattoo marks on her right arm. Whilst her marital status was not recorded, we can assume from the prefix Mrs that she was married and from her change in surname that Francis was her husband’s name. Ruth’s ‘caste’ was recorded as Indian Christian. Ruth was employed as a travelling ayah in the service of Mrs Finlinson and had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland.40

Fig. 58  Ruth Fancis passport image

40  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/62.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  187 (33) PASANG DOLMA AYAH was born in 1899 in Kalimpong, India. Her passport was issued on 4 January 1936 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, her age was 37 years and she was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was the widow of Samak Sang Lama. Her residential address was recorded as 411 Raja Santosh Road, Alipore, 24 Parganas, Bengal. Pasang was to travel as a travelling child’s ayah in the employment of Mrs A. N. Baldwin. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.41

Fig. 59  Pasang Dolma passport image

41  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/79.

188  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (34) MRS ELIZABETH MUNISOMEY was born on 24 January 1900 in Ootacamund, India. Her passport was issued on 23 January 1936 in Calcutta by the Government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft 4in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a small scar on her right foot. Elizabeth was married to Joseph Munisomey. She was employed by Mr  R.  L.  B.  Gall as a travelling ayah and had travel permissions to the United Kingdom, Egypt, Palestine, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and India, suggesting that a voyage via the Suez Canal including significant European travel was intended.42

Fig. 60  Elizabeth Munisomey passport image

42  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/99.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  189 (35) MRS MERCY PANJUL (nee Bendigo) was born in 1886 in Nagpur, ­central India. Her passport was issued on 25 January 1936 in Calcutta by the ­government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 50 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a small mole on the left side of her neck. She was the widow of Walter Panjul. Mercy’s religion was listed as ‘Indian Christian’. Mercy was to accompany Mrs J. N. Banerjee in the capacity of a travelling ayah and had travel permissions to the Straits Settlements, China, Japan, and India.43 This appears to be a less common but not unique case of a travelling ayah serving an Indian family, in this case, on a voyage in East Asia.

Fig. 61  Mercy Panjul passport image

43  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/103.

190  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (36) ADIL AYAH was born in 1896 in Amravati, India. Her passport was issued on 17 January 1936 in Indore by the Central Agency of Indore. At the time when her passport was issued she was 40 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes, grey hair, and tattoos on her forehead. The passport listed her profession as ‘private service’ and yet ‘Ayah’ was used as her surname. Adil’s passport shows that she had permission to travel to England, France, and India.44

Fig. 62  Adil passport image

44  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/111.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  191 (37) ANTHONY ANMALL (MARY) was born in 1906 in Secunderabad, India. Her passport was issued on 4 February 1936 in Hyderabad by the Hyderabad Residency. At the time of issuance, her age was 30 years and she was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on her right arm. She was a widow. Although the name of her deceased husband was not ­documented, it seems likely that ‘Anthony’ was her husband’s name. Anmall was to be employed by Mrs Irene Beard as a travelling ayah on a voyage to the UK. Anmall had permission to travel to the British Empire, China, and Japan, suggesting that travel in East Asia was also contemplated.45 Upon scavenging all relevant immigration and passenger records from 1936, it becomes apparent that whilst Irene may have planned to employ Anthony Anmall as her travelling ayah, she did not in fact do so. The ship manifests show that Irene travelled onboard Strathmore with her three children Joan (8½ years), Clive (4½ years), and Lorna (3½ years) in October 1936. There was only one travelling ayah onboard that ship, Jadhav Laxminibai, who was 33 years old and travelled on a deck ticket. Laxminibai may have been Irene’s travelling ayah or Irene may have travelled without an ayah whilst Laxminibai served another passenger.46

Fig. 63  Anthony Anmall passport image 45  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/165. 46  TNA, BT26-­1101110. Mentions of names of travelling ayahs on ship passenger lists and manifests were irregular and rare. Most often they were recorded as nameless ayahs. For more on this see Introduction and Chapter 1. Also see Datta, ‘Becoming Visible’ (2022).

192  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (38) UMA BAI was born in 1980 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 26 February 1936 at Fort St. George. At the time of her passport issuance, she was 56 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a scar on her forehead. Uma was married but the name of her husband was not recorded. She had permission to travel to Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden suggesting that a significant tour of Europe was envisioned.47

Fig. 64  Uma Bai passport image

47  BL, IOR L/PJ/11//5/228.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  193 (39) MRS MARY ANTHONY was born in 1884 in Ootacamund, India. Her passport was issued on 9 March 1936 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 52 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black and grey hair, and a cut on her right cheek. Mary was married but the name of her husband was not recorded. Mary was to be employed by Mrs E. Hurrell in the capacity of a travelling ayah and had permissions to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.48

Fig. 65  Mary Anthony passport image

48  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/265.

194  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (40) MAILI AYAH was born in 1901 in Sikkim, India. Her passport was issued on 11 March 1936 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married woman but the name of her husband was not recorded. Maili was to accompany Mrs Quine as her travelling ayah and had permissions to travel to the United Kingdom, Ceylon, and India.49

Fig. 66  Maili passport image

49  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/267.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  195 (41) KA PLISIMAI KHARKONGOR was born on 29 December 1908 in Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 14 March 1936 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, Plisimai was 27 years of age and was described as a 4ft 9in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and two moles on the left side of her neck. Plisimai was married but the name of her husband was not recorded. Plisimai was to accompany Mrs D. C. Hodson and her children as their travelling ayah and she had acquired travel permissions to the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland.50

Fig. 67  Ka Plisimai Kharkongor passport image

50  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/388.

196  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (42) JOSEPHINE AYAH was born in Madras and her passport was issued on 19 March 1936 in Jodhpur by the Resident Western Rajputana States. Whilst her birth year was not recorded, the passport officer recorded her age at the time of passport issuance as approximately 35 years which would suggest her birth year was about 1901. She was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. Her marital status was not recorded. She was to be employed by Mrs K. R. Rees as a travelling ayah on a voyage to England.51

Fig. 68  Josephine passport image

51  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/396.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  197 (43) MISS RUTH was born on 18 May 1896 in Diddapur, Mysore, India. Her passport was issued on 16 March 1936 by the Secretary to the Resident in Mysore and Chief Commissioner of Coorg. At the time of issuance, her age was 39 years and she was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and three small moles above her left elbow. Her marital status was not recorded. Ruth was employed by Mrs Edmonds as her travelling ayah to accompany her to the United Kingdom.52

Fig. 69  Ruth passport image

52  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/416.

198  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (44) JATAN BAI AYAH was born on 10 October 1886 in Palampur, India. Her passport was issued on 31 March 1936 in Mount Abu by the Chief Commissioner of Ajmer-­Merwara. At the time of issuance, Jatan Bai was 49 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with black eyes, black and white hair, and an operation mark on her nose. Jatan Bai was a widow whose deceased husband’s name was not recorded. Whilst the passport recorded her profession as ‘maid servant’ her name was listed as Ayah and she was to accompany Mr S. F. Bett in that capacity with permissions to travel to the British Empire, Egypt, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany.53

Fig. 70  Jatan Bai passport image

53  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/505.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  199 (45) MRS LACHHI was born in 1896 in Bakloh, Northwest India (present-­day Pakistan). Her passport was issued on 13 March 1936 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 5ft 4½in.-tall woman with black eyes and black hair. She was the wife of Paran Suijh. She had permission to travel to Greece and the British Empire.54 Further research showed that this was not Lacchi’s first passage as a travelling ayah. It appears that in 1920, Lacchi had accompanied Mrs Christie and her 6-­months-­old infant from London to Bombay, whilst in 1935, Lacchi travelled onboard Viceroy of India from Bombay to London while serving as a travelling ayah for the Marshall family’s children, when they visited Surrey for the summer. It appears from the records that she served the Marshall family until the end of summer and in autumn returned with two of the four Marshall’s children and their mother from Liverpool to Calcutta. Whilst we cannot ascertain how many other journeys Lacchi might have made between India and Britain, it is likely that there may have been many more.55

Fig. 71  Lachhi passport image 54  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/584. 55 BL, Parliamentary Papers, 1910, Cm. 5134, Q.  1316, evidence of Mrs Dunn, Ayahs’ Home, Hackney.

200  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (46) MRS ANTREE was born in 1910 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 25 March 1936 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Antree was 26 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a big mole on her right cheek. She was the wife of Govind Singh and her residential address was listed as 5 Ashoka Road, Alipore.56 She was to be employed as a travelling ayah by Mrs D. S. May and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.57

Fig. 72  Antree passport image

56  Today, 5 Ashoka Road, Alipore, is a popular wedding venue in Kolkata. 57  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/647.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  201 (47) MISS MARY ABARANAM was born on 18 May 1900 in Madras, South India. Her passport was issued on 24 April 1936 in Madras by the Commissioner of Police. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a scar on her chin. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.58

Fig. 73  Mary Abaranam passport image

58  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/654.

202  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (48) BAGUBHAI was born in 1901 in Poona, India. Her passport was issued on 8 April 1936 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with dark eyes, grey hair, and a mole near her cheek. She was the wife of Saram. Bagubhai’s ‘caste’ was listed as Hindu. Her address was listed as: Panel Howard, Poona. She had travel permissions to the United Kingdom and India.59

Fig. 74  Bagubhai passport image

59  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/755.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  203 (49) MRS DANAMAH was born on 2 February 1911 in Bangalore, India. Her  passport was issued on 6 April 1936 by the Secretary to the Resident in Mysore and Chief Commissioner of Coorg. At the time of her passport issuance, she was 25 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on her right cheek. She was a widow whose late husband’s name was not recorded. Danamah’s father’s name was listed as Dharmalingum and her ‘caste’ was listed as Hindu. Danamah was to serve Mrs Sherman as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the British Empire.60

Fig. 75  Danamah passport image

60  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/761.

204  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (50) KANTI was born on 25 February 1913 in Sahpura, Rajputana, India. Her passport was issued on 4 May 1936 in Ranchi by the Secretary to the Agent to the Governor General of the Eastern States. At the time of her passport issuance, she was 23 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a small scar mark in the middle of her forehead. Amongst all the passports in the collection, Kanti appears to be the youngest travelling ayah although as noted in Chapter 1, younger travelling ayahs are referred to in ship manifests. Kanti had travel permissions to the British Empire, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy suggesting that significant European travel was envisaged.61

Fig. 76  Kanti passport image

61  BL, IOR L/PJ/L/11/5/797.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  205 (51) GRACIE AYAH was born in 1888 in Pattambi, South India. Her passport was issued on 19 March 1936 at Fort St. George by the Deputy Secretary to the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 48 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She had permission to travel to Great Britain and India.62

Fig. 77  Gracie passport image

62  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/970.

206  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (52) MRS MUTHUSWAMI CHINASWAMI RUTH was born in 1909 in Vellai, India. Her passport was issued on 8 April 1936 at Fort St. George by the Under Secretary to the government at Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 27 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and two deformed fingers on her left hand. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. Ruth had permission to travel to Great Britain and France.63

Fig. 78  Muthuswami Chinaswami Ruth passport image

63  BL, IOR L/PJ/5/1026.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  207 (53) POCHAMMAL (also known as Mary) was born in 1901 in Hyderabad, India. Her passport was issued on 16 April 1936 in Hyderabad by the Hyderabad Residency. At the time of the passport issuance, Pochammal was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, a flat oval scar on her left elbow, and a tattoo mark on her right arm. She was married but her husband’s name was not listed. She had permissions to travel to the British Empire, China, and Japan, suggesting a voyage in East Asia was contemplated.64

Fig. 79  Pochammal passport image

64  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1125.

208  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (54) SAEMA AYAH was born on 18 April 1895 in Mhow, India. Her passport was issued on 11 May 1936 in Indore by the Central Indian Agency at Indore. At the time of issuance, she was 41 years old and residing in Bhopal. The passport describes her physical appearance as a 5ft 2½in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes  and dark brown hair. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Yugoslavia, and France suggesting that significant European travel was planned.65

Fig. 80  Saema passport image

65  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1183.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  209 (55) MST. YELLAMAH was born in 1874 in Kamptee, India. Her passport was issued on 9 May 1936 in Pachmarhi, by the government of Central Provinces. At the time of issuance, her age was recorded as 62, making her one of the oldest travelling ayahs in the available passport records. She was described as a 5ft 5in.-tall woman with black eyes, white hair, and a vertical tattoo mark on the centre of her forehead. Her father’s name was recorded as the late K.  Assana. Her ‘caste’ was listed as Telugu, actually an ethnic designation. Yellamah was to travel with Mrs Singh as her travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the British Empire, Spain, Italy, France, and Switzerland.66 This appears to be another case in which a travelling ayah was hired by an Indian family planning significant travels in Europe.

Fig. 81  Yellamah passport image

66  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1261.

210  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (56) KA KRISIBON was born on 14 March 1898 in Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 13 February 1936 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, Krisibon was 37 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Krisibon was set to serve Mrs E. M. Carmack as her travelling ayah and she had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland.67

Fig. 82  Ka Krisibon passport image

67  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1338.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  211 (57) VALLIAMMA was born in 1900 in Ootacamund, India. Her passport was issued on 12 February 1936 at Fort St. George by the Deputy Secretary to the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 36 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a scar on her forehead. She was a married but her husband’s name was not documented. She had permission to travel to England and India.68

Fig. 83  Valliamma passport image

68  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1449.

212  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (58) LOORTHUMARIE was born in 1901 in Ootacamund, South India. Her passport was issued on 14 February 1936 at Fort St. George by the Deputy Secretary to the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, Loorthumarie was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft 3½in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a tattoo on her right wrist. She had permission to travel to England and India.69

Fig. 84  Loorthumarie passport image

69  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1453.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  213 (59) MRS MEENAKSHI was born on 10 February 1905 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 21 May 1936 in Madras by the Commissioner of Police. At the time of issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a mole on the left side of her forehead. She was married but her husband’s identity is not recorded. She had permission to travel to the British Empire.70

Fig. 85  Meenakshi passport image

70  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/1704.

214  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (60) MRS MARGARET ERNEST was born on 22 March 1903 in Cochin, India. Her passport was issued on 25 May 1936 in Madras by the Commissioner of Police. At the time of issuance, Margaret was 33 years old and was described as a 4ft 8½in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.71 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry about Margaret Ernest’s voyages it appears that after travelling to Britain early in 1936, she returned to India from Liverpool onboard the Worcestershire on 23 October 1936. The accommodation for Margaret Ernest whilst in the UK was listed as Craigie Home Farm, Dundee, likely to have been her employers’ address.72

Fig. 86  Margaret Ernest passport image

71  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/2139.

72  TNA, BT27-­162334.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  215 (61) MRS LOUISA THOMAS was born on 15 July 1887 in Bellary, India. Her passport was issued on 6 October 1936 at Fort St. George by the Deputy Secretary to the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, Louisa was 49 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was a widow but her deceased husband’s name was not documented. She had permission to travel to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the United States of America suggesting that extensive global travel was contemplated.73 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Mrs Louisa Thomas travelled with her employer Mrs Bridge (27 years old) from Liverpool to Bombay onboard City of Calcutta, a P&O ship on 30 April 1920. Whilst this passage is from many years prior to the date on which her passport was issued, Mrs Louisa Thomas’s name and age on the immigration record (33  years) correspond to the information on the passport, and we can deduce they are the same person. Mrs Louisa Thomas had therefore travelled to Great Britain and back to India in the capacity of a travelling ayah at least once before 1936 and it is likely that she was an experienced travelling ayah.74

Fig. 87  Louisa Thomas passport image 73  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/2285.

74  TNA, BT27-­115759.

216  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (62) MISA ARPUDAMARI was born on 22 October 1906 in Vellore, India. Her passport was issued on 10 October 1936 in Bangalore. At the time of issuance, she was 29 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a black dot on her nose. Her father’s name was recorded as Manikiam. Misa’s ‘caste’ was recorded as Indian Christian. She was to serve Mrs F. G. Sharp as her travelling ayah and had travel permissions to the British Empire and France.75

Fig. 88  Arpudamari passport image

75  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/5/2778.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  217 (63) RADHABAI was born in 1892 in Deccan, India. Her passport was issued on 3 March 1937 in Karachi by the government of Sind. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black and grey hair, and a scar on her right leg below the knee. She was the widow of Ital. Radhabai was employed by Mrs D. N. O. Sullivan and had permission to travel to England and India.76

Fig. 89  Radhabai passport image

76  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/43.

218  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (64) MRS THOMAS BAPPOO THRESYA was born on 10 January 1892 in Cochin, India. Her passport was issued on 27 April 1937 in Trivandrum. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 4ft 9in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a scar on her right temple. She was a widow whose deceased husband’s name was not recorded. Her father’s name was A. Vasthian Cooper and her ‘caste’ was listed as Indian Christian. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.77 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry about Mrs Thomas Bappoo Thresya’s voyage in 1937 it appears that she travelled with her employer Mrs Phyllis Slowan (27 years) and the latter’s two children Diane (5 years) and David (6 years) from Cochin to Plymouth onboard M.  V.  Staffordshire, a P&O ship, on 21 June 1937. The listed accommodation for Mrs Thomas Bappoo Thresya in the UK was the employer’s address, suggesting she would have stayed with her employer until she secured a further passage.78

Fig. 90  Thomas Bappoo Thresya passport image

77  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/54.

78  TNA, BT26-­112639.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  219 (65) MST. BHIMMAI KHASIA was born in 1907 in Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 29 May 1937 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, Bhimmai was 30 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a black mole just below the knee on her right leg. Her marital status was recorded as ‘widow’ but the name of her deceased husband was not recorded. Her father’s name was listed as Elington Khasia. Her ‘race’ and ‘caste’ were recorded as Khasi, actually an ethnic identity. Bhimmai was to travel with Mr and Mrs W. H. B. Jacks as their travelling ayah with permissions for the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland; permission to land in Spain was specifically excluded, probably due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936.79 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that  Mrs Bhimmai Khasia travelled with her employer Mrs Gwendoline Jacks (39 years) and her daughter Diedre V. Jacks (1 year old) from Bombay to London onboard Naldera, a P&O ship, on 30 July 1937. The listed accommodation for Mrs Bhimmai Khasia in the UK was the employer’s address.80

Fig. 91  Bhimmai Khasia passport image 79  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/296.

80  TNA, BT26-­1126164.

220  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (66) MST. SHAIK MURAM BI was born in 1897 in Udgiri, India. Her passport was issued on 26 May 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Muram Bi was 40 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a raised mole on her left nostril. She was a widow, but no information about her deceased husband is recorded. Interestingly, her passport stated that she was a bona fide returned emigrant from British Guiana and that she had permission to travel to British Guiana and India.81

Fig. 92  Shaik Muram Bi passport image

81  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/329.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  221 (67) ADELINE PREM GURDIAL (nee Rashid) was born on 13 July 1910 in Quetta, present-­day Pakistan. Her passport was issued on 16 April 1937 in Karachi by the Government of Sind. At the time of issuance, Adeline was 26 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but no information about her husband was listed. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.82 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Adeline P. Gurdial travelled with her employer Miss A. D. Fox-­Grant (70 years) from Karachi to Plymouth aboard the City of Venice, a P&O ship, on 11 May 1937. The listed accommodation for Adeline P. Gurdial in the UK was the employer’s address, suggesting that she would have stayed with her employer before returning to India or any other destination.83

Fig. 93  Adeline Prem Gurdial passport image

82  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/355.

83  TNA, BT26-­111825.

222  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (68) MRS MANOO was born in 1902 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 13 April 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 4ft 8¾in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks on the back of both her hands. She was married but no information about her husband was listed. Manoo was set to accompany Capt. R. Trumble as a traveling ayah with travel permissions to China, Japan, Burma, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, and India, suggesting that extensive voyaging in East Asia was expected.84

Fig. 94  Manoo passport image

84  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/400.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  223 (69) MST BALI was born on 1 January 1907 in Coimbatore, India. Her passport was issued on 12 April 1937 in Lucknow by the government of United Provinces. At the time of issuance, Bali was 30 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks between her eyebrows. She was married but the name of her husband was not recorded. Her father’s name was listed as Selwan. Bali’s ‘caste’ was listed as Indian Christian. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, the Irish Free State, and France.85

Fig. 95  Bali passport image

85  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/531.

224  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (70) MUSSAMAT NAGESHAR MARIYAM KESHO NARAIN was born on 1 May 1901 in Seoni Malwa, India. Her passport was issued on 31 March 1937 in Nagpur by the government of Central Provinces. At the time of issuance, Mariyam was 35 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a cut mark on the right side of her upper lip. Her father’s name was recorded as Kesho Narain. Her ‘caste’ was recorded as Christian. Her address at the time was recorded as a Swedish Mission, Chhindwara C. P. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy.86 It seems likely that she was accompanying missionaries on an extensive European trip.

Fig. 96  Mussamat Nageshar Mariyam Kesho Narain passport image

86  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/671.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  225 (71) PALLIYAM was born in 1900 in Trimulgherry, India. Her passport was issued on 15 April 1937 in Hyderabad by the Hyderabad Residency. At the time of issuance, she was 37 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks on her forehead. Her father, Peddi Tambi, served as Head Butler to the Royal Artillery Officer’s Mess, Royal Artillery, Trimulgherry. She was set to accompany Captain T. R. Wall of the Indian Army as a travelling ayah with permission to travel to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Colombo, Singapore, Japan, and India suggesting that extensive Asian voyaging was expected.87

Fig. 97  Palliyam passport image

87  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/678.

226  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (72) SUKHMON was born in 1887 in Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 8 February 1937 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, Sukhmon was 50 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and white hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She was set to accompany Mr and Mrs T. L. M. Hibbs in the capacity of a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the British Empire, Italy, Switzerland, and France.88

Fig. 98  Sukhmon passport image

88  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/860.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  227 (73) MISS AROCKIAMARY was born in 1911 in Oorgaum, Mysore, India. Her passport was issued on 10 February 1937 in Bangalore. At the time of issuance, she was 26 years old and was described as a 4ft 6in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and two flowers and a double parrot tattooed on her right hand. Her father’s name was documented as Arunam. She was to accompany Mr H. Freeman as a travelling ayah with permission to travel to the British Empire, France, and Egypt, suggesting a voyage via the Suez Canal.89

Fig. 99  Arockiamary passport image

89  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/896.

228  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (74) MRS GLADYS SHILLA AYAH was born in 1906 in Towai, Assam, India. Her passport was issued on 8 January 1937 by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 4ft 10½in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and perforated earlobes. Her name includes the professional name ‘Ayah’ and in the details of passage it is listed that she was to accompany Mrs Fletcher as her travelling ayah. However, in the profession section, her profession is listed as ‘nurse’. Whether Gladys Shilla was a professional nurse or whether the official was using the term to mean nursemaid, as in child-­ carer, is not clear. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, Italy, Switzerland, and France.90

Fig. 100  Gladys Shilla passport image

90  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/897.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  229 (75) MRS AGNES DOWMONY JOSEPH (nee Daniel) was born in 1906 in Rangoon, Burma. Her passport was issued on 11 February 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. Agnes was a widow but the name of her deceased husband was not recorded. She was to serve as a travelling child’s ayah in the employment of Mrs Macpher (possibly a shortening of Macpherson). She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, and Germany.91

Fig. 101  Agnes Dowmony passport image

91  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/975.

230  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (76) MRS BASANTI was born on 20 November 1911 in Korhi Jamun, India. Her passport was issued on 11 February 1937 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 25 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a scar on her left leg. Her marital status was recorded as wife of L. Bhagah Rams. She had permission to travel to Japan, England, Germany, Shanghai, Canada, United States of America, Italy, Switzerland, France, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Czechoslovakia, the British Empire, Hong Kong, China, and Egypt, suggesting that a global circumnavigation was contemplated.92

Fig. 102  Basanti passport image

92  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1149.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  231 (77) MST NADRAN BIBI was born on 1 April 1897 in Jhelum, present-­day Pakistan. Her passport was issued on 2 March 1937 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 39 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on her left cheek. Nadran was documented as the widow of Sultan. She had permission to travel to England, Italy, Switzerland, France, and the British Empire.93

Fig. 103  Nadran Bibi passport image

93  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1360.

232  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (78) KANICKAMARY was born on 14 June 1899 in Bangalore, India. Her passport was issued on 9 February 1937 at Fort St. George. At the time of issuance, she was 37 years old and was described as a 5ft 4¼in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. Her father’s name was recorded as Mr G. A. Joseph. She had permission to travel to Great Britain and India.94

Fig. 104  Kanickamary passport image

94  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1532.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  233 (79) BAKIAM MARI was born on 2 October 1904 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 3 March 1937 at Fort St. George. At the time of issuance, she was 32 years old and was described as a 5ft ½in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and with tattoo marks on the back of her hands and on her arms. She was the widow of Mr M. Lazanes. She had permission to travel to Great Britain (England), India, and France.95

Fig. 105  Bakiam Mari passport image

95  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1549.

234  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (80) YESSAMMA was born on 16 November 1892 in Calcutta, India. Her passport was issued on 26 February 1937 at Fort St. George. At the time of issuance, she was 44 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. Yessamma was a widow, but the name of her deceased husband was not documented. She had permission to travel to England and India.96

Fig. 106  Yessamma passport image

96  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1607.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  235 (81) MRS TERESA LAWN was born on 2 February 1912 in Cochin, India. Her passport was issued on 16 April 1937 in Karachi by the government of Sind. At the time of issuance, she was 25 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. Teresa was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.97 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Mrs Teresa Lawn travelled with her employers Mr  J.  Smith (43 years) and Mrs  J.  Smith (40 years), and their three children Master  R.  Smith (5 years), Master D. Smith (2 years), and Miss C. Smith (1 year) from Karachi to Liverpool aboard the City of Venice, a P&O ship, on 11 May 1937. The listed accommodation for Mrs Teresa Lawn in Britain was the employer’s address.98 Further immigration reports from Ancestry show that Mrs Teresa Lawn travelled with her employers back to Karachi from Liverpool onboard City of Sunta on 25 September 1937. This time Teresa and the Smiths were accompanied by two children, Catherine Smith (1 year) and David Smith (2 years), suggesting that the oldest child remained in Britain.99

Fig. 107  Teresa Lawn passport image 97  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/1756.

98  TNA, BT26-­111825.

99  TNA, BT27-­146273.

236  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (82) SONIYA was born in 1902 in Barla Aligarh, India. Her passport was issued on 8 October 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a tattoo on her forearm. Soniya was the widow of Chuni Lall. She was set to serve as a travelling ayah for Mr and Mrs Draw with permission to travel to the Straits Settlements, South Africa, and India, suggesting a return voyage to South Africa via the Straits Settlements was planned.100

Fig. 108  Soniya passport image

100  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/2553.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  237 (83) KURMAMA AYAH was born in 1907 in Balasore, India. Her passport was issued on 24 September 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was thirty years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a defective right eye. Her marital status is recorded as ‘widow’ but the name of her late husband was not documented. Her address was listed as ℅ Shaik Habib, 31 Marden Street, Calcutta. She was to serve as a travelling ayah in the employment of Mrs I. I. Cox with permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and India.101

Fig. 109  Kurmama passport image

101  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/2724.

238  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (84) SITA AYAH was born in 1888 in Poona, India. Her passport was issued on 17 April 1937 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 49 years old. The passport documented that Sita was a widow of Saupanna. She was physically described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, the Irish Free State, Egypt, Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Turkey, and the British Empire suggesting that a voyage via the Suez Canal including extensive European travel was visualized.102

Fig. 110  Sita passport image

102  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/6/4231.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  239 (85) ELLY was born on 1 April 1905 in Maulin, Burma. Her passport was issued on 26 February 1937 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with  brown eyes and black hair. She was to serve as a travelling ayah for Mrs M. L. Beadon and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and India.103

Fig. 111  Elly passport image

103  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/12.

240  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (86) MRS S. M. ARULDAS was born in January 1912 in Wellington, India. Her passport was issued on 20 February 1938 at Fort St. George, Madras, by the government of Madras. At the time of issuance, she was 26 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Albania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, and Estonia, suggesting that a very extensive European tour was planned. Interestingly, this is the only passport in the collection, wherein the passport image includes the travelling ayah and her charge in the photograph. All other passport images had a portrait of the passport holder and no one else in the same frame.104

Fig. 112  S. M. Aruldas passport image

104  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/158.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  241 (87) MRS AMMONIE CHINNEN AYER (nee Ammonie Chinnen Achimaya) was born in 1887 in Malabar, India. Her passport was issued on 8 March 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 51 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was a widow but the name of her deceased husband was not recorded. She was to accompany Mrs Fitchet as a travelling ayah, and she had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.105

Fig. 113  Ammonie Chinnen Ayer passport image

105  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/201.

242  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (88) LACKHI was born in 1898 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 2 February 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not recorded. Lackhi had two children: Philippa Thomas born 26 June 1934 and Paulina Thomas born 21 April 1936. They were 3 and 1 years old, respectively, when the passport was issued. Interestingly, based on the surnames of the children, it could be that Lackhi had an intimate relation with her employer and the two children took their father’s name. The other possibility could be that the passport officer mis-­documented her charges as her children, although this is highly unlikely. Lackhi was to accompany Mrs P. J. P. Thomas as a children’s travelling ayah, with permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and India.106

Fig. 114  Lackhi passport image

106  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/457.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  243 (89) AYSUK KENCHI AYAH was born in 1898 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 18 January 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 4ft 7in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was married to Bisna Lall. Her ‘caste’ was recorded as Hindu, Nepali. Her residential address was recorded as 4, Calcutta Mansion, Calcutta.107 She was to accompany Mrs W. H. Bemrose as a travelling ayah,108 with permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.109

Fig. 115  Aysuk Kenchi passport image

107  Which was clearly the employer’s residence as historically the house was owned by a Jewish businessman, David Ezra, in Kolkata. The Ezra family lived in the building until well after WWII. 108  Due to the absence of records, we can only speculate how the Ezra family met Mrs Bemrose and passed on Aysuk as an employee—­as we know that Aysuk was residing or at least serving the Ezra family home at the time of the passport issuance as her passport records the Ezra family home as her residential address. 109  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/467.

244  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (90) NAKKI AYAH was born in 1900 in Sai Kong, most likely referring to Hong Kong. Her passport was issued on 18 January 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 38 years old and was described as a 5ft 1⅓in.-tall woman with black hair and black eyes. She was the wife of Trinle Lama and her ‘race’ was recorded as Lama. She was to serve Mrs Bailey as a travelling ayah in 1938 and had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia.110 Trinle is a Tibetan name and the use of the term Lama also suggests that Nakki and her husband may have had Tibetan connections.111

Fig. 116  Nakki passport image

110  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/469. 111  Trinle Gyatso was the name of the 12th Dalai Lama, who served from 1857 until his death from a mysterious illness in 1875 (Khetsun Samgpo Rinpoche, ‘Life and Times of the Eighth to Twelfth Dalai Lamas’, The Tibet Journal 7.1–2 (1982): 54).

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  245 (91) MRS JIVI BAI was born in May 1903 in Kotla Sangani, India. Her passport was issued on 3 May 1938 in Mount Abu by the Resident of Rajputana. At the time of issuance, she was 35 years old and was described as a 5ft 1½in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and a scar on her right forearm. She was a widow whose deceased husband’s name was not recorded. She was to accompany Her Highness the Maharani of Jhalawar as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.112 This appears to be another example of a travelling ayah accompanying an upper-­class Indian family on European travels.

Fig. 117  Jivi Bai passport image

112  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/707.

246  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (92) HUNGOO NAPALNI was born on 20 December 1912 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 11 April 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 26 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of  her husband was not documented. She was to serve as a travelling ayah for Mrs  Baldwin and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India.113

Fig. 118  Hungoon Napalni passport image

113  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/874.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  247 (93) MRS NIMA SARBANI was born in 1898 in Nepal. Her passport was issued on 14 February 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on her right cheek. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She was to serve as a travelling ayah for Mrs G. E. Henderson and her child and she had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and India.114 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Nima Sarbani travelled with her employers Mr Guy Eskine Henderson (36 years) and Mrs Catherine Henderson (37 years), and their daughter Sally Henderson (4 years) to the UK in early 1938 and later travelled back from London to Bombay onboard the Mooltan on 14 October 1938. The listed accommodation for Nima Sarbani in Britain was the employer’s address, suggesting that she would have stayed at her employer’s address whilst awaiting a return passage to Bombay.115

Fig. 119  Nima Sarbani passport image

114  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/916.

115  TNA, BT27-­145435.

248  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (94) MRS ELIZABETH BERNARD was born on 22 February 1900 in Ranipet, Arcot, India. Her passport was issued on 5 April 1938 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 38 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with black eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She had permission to travel within the British Empire.116

Fig. 120  Elizabeth Bernard passport image

116  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/954.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  249 (95) MRS GAMBOO MADRIA (nee Pannoosawmy) was born in 1893 in Bangalore, India. Her passport was issued on 14 April 1938 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name was not recorded. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.117 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Gamboo Madria travelled with her employer Ethel S. Collins (34 years) and her son Michael D. Collins (1 year) from Madras to London onboard the Mashobra on 21 May 1938. The listed accommodation for Gamboo Madria was the employer’s address, suggesting that she would have stayed with her employer before she sailed back to India or on to any other destination.118

Fig. 121  Gamboo Madria passport image

117  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/968.

118  TNA, BT26-­115330.

250  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (96) MRS MARY SAMUEL (nee Arogyam Mary) was born on 7 March 1899 in Kodaikanal, India. Her passport was issued on 16 March 1938 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 39 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name is not documented. However, it was probably Samuel since in South India, women customarily adopted their husband’s name as a surname. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.119

Fig. 122  Mary Samuel passport image

119  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/981.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  251 (97) MRS GRACIE WILLIAMS (nee Solomon) was born on 24 June 1905 in Coonoor, India. Her passport was issued on 6 April 1938 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 32 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and tattoo marks on each forearm. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. However, interestingly it was documented that his nationality was not established, which could indicate he was not a British subject. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and return to India.120 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Gracie Williams travelled with her employer Mrs M. R. Boarfella (37 years), her son John Boarfella (5 years), and her daughter Christine Boarfella (5 years) from Cochin to Plymouth onboard the Worcestershire on 5 May 1938. The listed accommodation for Gracie Williams was the employer’s address, suggesting that she stayed with her employer’s address before returning to India or another destination.121

Fig. 123  Gracie Williams passport image

120  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/987.

121  TNA, BT26-­1152168.

252  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (98) MRS LUSAI JOSEPH (nee Susai) was born in 1897 in Trichinopoly, India. Her passport was issued on 7 April 1938 in Karachi by the government of Sind. At the time of issuance, Lusai was 41 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with dark eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India but not Spain, probably due to the ongoing Spanish Civil War.122

Fig. 124  Lusai Joseph passport image

122  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/1039.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  253 (99) MRS ROSIE PAUL (nee Philips) was born on 30 April 1897 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 26 March 1938 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 4ft 9in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair turning grey, and ear and nose piercings for wearing rings. She was married. The name of her husband was not documented, but was probably Paul. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.123

Fig. 125  Rosie Pail passport image

123  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/1616.

254  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (100) AYAH JATAN BAI was born in 1897 in Palampur, India. Her passport was issued on 23 June 1938 in Mount Abu by the Resident at Rajputana. At the time of issuance, Jatan Bai was 41 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes, grey hair, and tattoo marks on her right forearm and her left forearm and hand. She was a widow, but the name of her deceased husband was not documented. She was to accompany Mrs M. H. D. Rich as a travelling ayah, and had permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland.124 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that Jatan Bai travelled with her employer Marie Rich (22 years) and her daughter Valerie Rich (9 months old) from India to Britain early in 1938 and within a few months, on 11 November 1938, once returned from London to Bombay onboard the Narkunda, a P&O ship. The listed accommodation for Jatan Bai was the employer’s address in Surrey, suggesting that she stayed with her employer until she secured a return passage to Bombay.125

Fig. 126  Jatan Bai passport image

124  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/1853.

125  TNA, BT27-­143496.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  255 (101) MISS ROSA AYAH was born in April 1907 in Kandy, Ceylon. Her ­passport was issued on 4 August 1938 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was to accompany Mrs M. Marling as a travelling child’s ayah and she had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.126

Fig. 127  Rosa passport image

126  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/2051.

256  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (102) MST ZAINAB BIBI was born in 1893 in Monghyr, India. Her passport was issued on 20 May 1938 in Lahore. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes, black and grey hair, and a scar on her forehead. Zainab was the wife of Nabi Hussain. His particulars were listed as Indian Zamindar (autonomous landowner), which is particularly interesting as it suggests that women from various walks of life were drawn to the profession of travelling ayah. Zainab had permission to travel to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, Germany, Holland, and the British Empire, but not Spain or the Spanish zone of Morocco, probably as a consequence of the ongoing Spanish Civil War.127

Fig. 128  Zainab Bibi passport image

127  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/7/2512.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  257 (103) MRS KATEY AMMAL was born on 25 May 1900 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 24 January 1939 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, she was 38 years old and was described as a 4ft 11½in.-tall woman with very dark brown eyes, black hair, and piercings for ears and nose ornaments. She was married woman but her husband’s name was not recorded. Her father’s name was listed as Abraham. In this case, Katey’s deceased father was listed rather than her husband. The passport further recorded Katey’s ‘race’ and ‘caste’ as Indian Christian, respectively. Katey had permission to travel within the British Empire.128

Fig. 129  Katey Ammal passport image

128  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/128.

258  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (104) JOSEPHINE CHINCH (nee Francis) was born in 1890 in Bangalore, India. Her passport was issued on 21 January 1939 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 49 years old and was described as a 4ft 9in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and nose and ear piercings. Josephine was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Josephine was to accompany Mrs D. S. O’Leary as a travelling ayah and she had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.129

Fig. 130  Josephine Chinch passport image

129  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/174.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  259 (105) LAKHI AYAH was born in 1901 in Calcutta, India. Her passport was issued on 22 February 1939 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 38 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a dimple on her head. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Lakhi was to accompany Mrs G. Geoghegan as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and India.130

Fig. 131  Lakhi passport image

130  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/234.

260  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (106) PRANPATHI LIZIE was born in 1908 in Chapra, India. Her passport was issued on 20 February 1939 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 31 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with black eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. She was to accompany Mrs T. M. Shirgess as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom and India.131

Fig. 132  Pranpathi Lizie passport image

131  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/265.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  261 (107) MRS GRACIE VIOLET BURKINSON (nee Lazarus) was born on 9 November 1901 in Ootacamund, India. Her passport was issued on 10 March 1939 in Trivandrum. At the time of issuance, Gracie was 37 years old and was described as a 4ft 10¼in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and no visible distinguishing marks. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Her deceased father’s name was recorded as Lazarus. The passport recorded Gracie’s ‘race’ and ‘caste’ as Roman Catholic. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and France but not Spain or the Spanish zone of Morocco, probably due to the ongoing Spanish Civil War.132

Fig. 133  Gracie Violet Burkinson passport image

132  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/406.

262  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (108) MRS GANGUBAI RAMCHANDRA BHAND was born in 1908 in Indore, India. Her passport was issued on 20 March 1939 at Indore. At the time of issuance, Gangubai was 31 years old and was described as a 5ft 2in.-tall woman with black eyes, black hair, and tattoos on both hands between elbows and wrist. Her father’s name was recorded as Sambhaji Sagat (deceased). The passport recorded her ‘caste’ and ‘race’ as Hindu. She had travel permissions to the British Empire, France, Germany, and Switzerland.133 From an investigation of Mrs Gangubai Ramchandra’s voyages on Ancestry it appears that she travelled in a diplomatic capacity with her employer Ma Saheb Holkar of Indore Chandrawati (49 years), his maids Shewanti Bai Ghatole (22 years) and Taibai Oak (41), and his secretary Clement Boodrie Sahgon (57) from Le Havre, France, to New York City onboard Ile de France on 9 September 1939. Further records indicate that ten months later, Mrs Gangubai Ramchandra travelled with her employers Sir Yeshwant Holkar (32 years) and Lady Margaret Holkar (36 years), from San Francisco to Honolulu onboard California Clipper on 18 July 1940.134 Gangubai had therefore transferred between different employers of the same aristocratic Indian family and travelled around the world as a caregiver.

Fig. 134  Gangubai Ramchandra Bhand passport image 133  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/407.

134  TNA, T715-­18971957.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  263 (109) MRS KOCHUPARAMPIL ANNA OOTHUPAN (nee Anna) was born on 12 October 1899 in Kottayam, India. Her passport was issued on 7 March 1939 in Trivandrum. At the time of issuance, she was 39 years old and was described as a 5ft 3in.-tall woman with brown eyes, black hair, and no distinguishing marks. She was a widow but the name of her deceased husband was not recorded. Her deceased father’s name was listed as Kochuparampil Varughese Ipe. Anna’s ‘race’ and ‘caste’ were recorded as Syrian Christian. She had permission to travel to the British Empire and India but not Spain or the Spanish zone of Morocco, probably due to the ongoing Spanish Civil War.135

Fig. 135  Kochuparampil Anna Oothupan passport image

135  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/538.

264  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (110) MRS PHULMAYA was born in 1896 in Calcutta, India. Her passport was issued on 4 March 1939 in Calcutta by the Government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Phulmaya was 43 years old and was described as a 4ft 6in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was married but her husband’s name was not documented. Phulmaya was to accompany Mrs S. M. S. Anderson as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and India.136

Fig. 136  Phulmaya passport image

136  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/546.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  265 (111) MRS MARGARET ALIAS MARRY was born in 1894 in Madras, India. Her passport was issued on 28 February 1939 at Fort St. George by the government of Madras Home Department. At the time of issuance, Margaret was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft 8in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black and grey hair. She was a widow but the name of her deceased husband was not recorded. Her deceased father’s name was listed as Jesndoss. Her ‘caste’ was listed as Indian Christian. She had permission to travel within the British Empire.137

Fig. 137  Margaret passport image

137  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/740.

266  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (112) ELIZABETH AYAH was born in 1893 in Raliya, Cherrapunji, India. Her passport was issued on 26 April 1939 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, she was 46 years old and was described as a 4ft 11in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was the wife of Khedro. Her ‘caste’ was listed as Christian. She was to accompany Mrs Jas. Wyllie as a travelling ayah and was granted permission to travel to the British Empire, France, Italy, and Switzerland.138

Fig. 138  Elizabeth passport image

138  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/975.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  267 (113) MAHARAJI AYAH was born in May 1894 in Solapur, India. Her passport was issued on 23 May 1939 in Patna by the government of Bihar. At the time of issuance, she was 45 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. She was the wife of Mohan Mistry. Her ‘race’ and ‘caste’ were listed as Hindu Mehtarani. She was to be employed as a travelling ‘Child’s Nurse’ with Miss Stella Lereise and had permission to travel to the British Empire and France.139

Fig. 139  Maharaji passport image

139  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/1085.

268  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (114) MISS SUZANA ROCHA was born on 10 October 1906 in Karachi, ­present-­day Pakistan. Her passport was issued on 28 April 1939 in Karachi by the government of Sind. At the time of issuance, she was 32 years old and was described as a 5ft 4in.-tall woman with brown eyes and black hair. Suzana was to accompany Mr Ralph Arthur Basil Himbrey as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, and India but not Spain, probably due to the ongoing Spanish Civil War.140

Fig. 140  Suzana Rocha passport image

140  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/1272.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  269 (115) MRS MIRANDA PEDRO SEQUEIRA (nee Fernandes) was born on 5 July 1882 in Ratnagiri, India. Her passport was issued on 17 April 1939 in Karachi by the government of Sind. At the time of issuance, she was 56 years old and was described as a 4ft 9in.-tall woman with black eyes, grey hair, and no distinguishing marks. She was married, and whilst her husband’s name was not explicitly recorded, we can assume from her change in surname that it was Pedro Sequeira. The passport listed her profession as ‘Domestic Servant (Ayah)’ who was to accompany Dr  B.  F.  Khamhatta. She had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Australia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands Indies, Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, and India but not Spain.141 The exclusion from Spain was probably a consequence of the ongoing Spanish Civil War and it is questionable how much of this ambitious travel plan actually came to pass given the outbreak of WWII in September 1939.

Fig. 141  Miranda Pedro Sequeira passport image

141  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/1273.

270  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (116) KA LISBON KHARSING was born on 18 May 1902 in the Maharam Hills District, India. Her passport was issued on 29 June 1939 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, she was 37 years old and was described as a 4ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, a mole on her upper left cheek, and another mole on her left ear. She was married, and whilst the name of her husband was not recorded, her father’s name was listed as Rev. Khraw Singh. The passport recorded that Ka Lisbon’s ‘race’ and ‘caste’ were Khasi Christian. She was to accompany Mrs T. E. Rogers as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, and India, but not Spain or the Spanish zone of Morocco, probably due to the ongoing Spanish Civil War.142

Fig. 142  Ka Lisbon Kharsing passport image

142  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/1569.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  271 (117) MRS MINI PHEMALU (nee Minimah) was born in 1889 in Nagpur, India. Her passport was issued on 31 August 1939 in Bombay. At the time of the passport issuance, she was 49 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black greying hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. Mini was to accompany Major C. S. Vernon-­ Cooks as a travelling ayah and had travel permissions to Australia and India.143

Fig. 143  Mini Phemalu passport image

143  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/8/2837.

272  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (118) DHAN MAYA was born in 1905 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 21 March 1940 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Dhan Maya was 35 years old and was described as a 4ft 10in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was married but the name of her husband was not documented. She was to travel with O. J. Roy as a travelling ayah and she had travel permissions to Australia, New Zealand, Burma, the Straits Settlements, the Netherlands Indies, French Indochina, and India.144 By this time, the Empire was at war with Germany (but not yet Japan which did not invade French Indochina until September 1940) and Dhan Maya’s travel was limited to Asia and Australasia.

Fig. 144  Dhan Maya passport image

144  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/9/208.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  273 (119) MAILI was born on 3 January 1902 in Darjeeling, India. Her passport was issued on 28 March 1940 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, she was 38 years old and was described as a 5ft 1in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. Maili was married to Budi Lal. She was to serve as a travelling ayah for MacLure and had permission to travel to the British Empire and Portuguese East Africa.145 From compiled passage and immigration reports from Ancestry it appears that prior to the 1940 voyage Maili had travelled with a different employer, Mrs Rita Quine (31 years), and her two children, Susan (14 years) and William (5 years), from Colombo to Plymouth aboard the Derbyshire, a P&O ship, on 24 April 1936. The listed accommodation for Maili was the employer’s address, suggesting that she stayed with her employer until setting sail back to India or any other destination.146

Fig. 145  Maili passport image

145  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/9/209.

146  TNA, BT26-­1096157.

274  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (120) MRS SAKINABAI AHMED HUSAIN (nee Sakinabai Usman Babamiya) was born on 25 July 1900 in Bombay, India. Her passport was issued on 26 August 1940 in Bombay. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and was described as a 5ft 4in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. She was married and whilst her husband’s name was not explicitly recorded, we can assume from her change in surname that her husband’s name was Ahmed Husain. Her residential address was also recorded in the passport as: ℅ H.  A.  Husain, Sulaimani Building, Balaram Street, Bombay. She was to accompany Mr Mugbil Fulehally as a travelling ayah and she had travel permissions to the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, Shanghai, China, Japan, and India.147 Again, travel appears to have been limited to Asia by wartime conditions.

Fig. 146  Sakinabai Ahmed Husain passport image

147  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/9/657.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  275 (121) KA DERISSAMON was born in 1890 in Mawphlang, Shillong, India. Her passport was issued on 18 October 1940 in Shillong by the government of Assam. At the time of issuance, she was 40 years old and described as a 5ft 1¼in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes and black hair. Her father’s name was listed as Ishon Singh. She was to accompany Mrs D. Robertson as a travelling ayah and had permission to travel to the British Empire but not Aden or the British territories bordering on the Italian colonies of Africa.148 These prohibitions may be seen as a result of the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and Italy in North Africa.

Fig. 147  Ka Derissamon passport image

148  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/9/772.

276  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (122) MRS GANGABAI MAKAN MISA (nee Gangabai Sanya) was born in 1905 in Bombay, India. Her passport was issued on 22 January 1941 in Bombay. At the time of issuance, Gangabai was 36 and was described as a 5ft ½in.-tall woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and a mole on her left cheek. She was married and whilst her husband’s name was not explicitly recorded, we can assume from her change in surname that her husband’s name was Makan Misa. Gangabai was to serve Mrs Nazar Futehally of Bombay as her travelling ayah with travel permissions to Burma, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, Shanghai, China, Japan, and India.149 Again, wartime conditions appear to have limited travel to Asia.

Fig. 148  Gangabai Makan Misa passport image

149  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/10/112.

Profiles of Travelling Ayahs  277 (123) MRS SIVBAI NARAYAN SHINDE (nee Sivbai Maruti) was born in 1895 in Lonavla, India. Her passport was issued on 6 February 1941 in Bombay. At the time of issuance, she was 46 years old and was described as a 5ft ½in.-tall woman with dark eyes, dark hair, and tattoo marks on both arms. She was married and whilst her husband’s name was not explicitly recorded, we can assume from her change in surname that it was Narayan Shinde. Sivbai was to accompany Mrs R. V. Taylor of Bombay as her travelling ayah with permission to travel to the Netherlands Indies, the Straits Settlements, and India.150 Again, wartime travel appears limited to Asia.

Fig. 149  Sivbai Narayan Shinde passport image

150  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/10/197.

278  Profiles of Travelling Ayahs (124) RAJPATI was born in 1905 in British Guinea. Her passport was issued on 9 October 1941 in Calcutta by the government of Bengal. At the time of issuance, Rajpati was recorded as 36 years old and was described as a 5ft-­tall woman with dark brown eyes, black and grey hair, and tattoos on both hands. She was the widow of Bachkoo Singh and had a son named Hannman Prasad born in 1930, aged 11 when the passport was issued. She had permission to travel to British Guiana on the north coast of South America: a long and dangerous voyage in wartime conditions.151 There is no evidence as to whether she actually set out or ever arrived. Rajpati’s is the last passport in the collection to be issued. On 7 December 1941, Japan launched coordinated attacks on US, Dutch, and British territories in the Pacific region, including Malaya and Hong Kong. This probably resulted in minimal further travel by civilians, as documented in Chapter 6.

Fig. 150  Rajpati passport image

151  BL, IOR L/PJ/11/10/653.

Bibliography Archives and abbreviations used India National Archives India, New Delhi (NAI) National Library India, Kolkata West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata (WBSA)

Britain British Library (BL) British Library, India Office Records (IOR) British Newspaper Archives (BNA) Hackney Archives Imperial War Museum London City Mission (LCM) National Archives of United Kingdom at Kew (TNA) National Army Museum National Maritime Museum National Railway Museum

Malaysia Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur

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Dissertations Sinha Roy, Ishita. Nation, Native, Narrative: The Fetish and Imagined Community in India. Unpublished PhD thesis (University of Southern California, 1999).

Index Note: Figures and tables are indicated by an italic “f ”, “t”, respectively, following the page numbers. abandonment  47–48, 50, 59, 62, 69, 72 enroute 134 occultists 74 Abdollah, Syed  56 advertising  1–2, 18, 31–3, 46, 64, 91–3, 103–4, 106, 116–18 age 27f, 28, 43t, 97 agency  69, 75–80, 138 Ali, Mir Aulad  72 anonymity  24, 42, 81 archives  4–5, 10–15, 20–1, 35, 42, 66–9, 81, 94–5 arrest 70 ayah childless  25–7, 29 children of  25, 36 Christian  27, 35, 73, 95 confronting precarity  9 definition  1, 19 demographics  25–30, 153–4 desired characteristics  1, 17, 32, 33 distress, in  78 duties  33, 34, 35 essential funding for  33 length of stay  47 locating experiences  5–6 marital status  25 networking  67, 117 recruitment in India  23 reduced requirement for  130 religious affiliation of  27–8 transactions 118 treatment of  9, 39, 51, 61, 75, 79, 82 (in)visibility  18, 20, 21, 40, 61 voice 81 ayahs (by name) Abaranam, Mary  201 Amaravathun, Mrs  164 Ammal, Katey  257 Anastasia 182 Andrews, Elizabeth  161 Anmall, Anthony (Mary)  191 Annamah 175

Anthony, Mary  193 Antree, Mrs  200 Arockiamary, Miss  227 Arpudamari, Misa  216 Aruldas, Mrs S.M.  240 Ayah, Adil  190 Ayah, Anthony  158 Ayah, Aysuk Kenchi  243 Ayah, Begum  70–1, 81, 82, 178 Ayah, Bril  157 Ayah, Catharine  149–50 Ayah, Choonee  35 Ayah, Elizabeth  266 Ayah, Gladys Shilla  228 Ayah, Gracie  205 Ayah, Haliman  168 Ayah, Jatan Bai  198 Ayah, Jessiah  160 Ayah, Jiya  130 Ayah, Josephine  196 Ayah, Kunshi  172 Ayah, Kurmama  237 Ayah, Lakhi  259 Ayah, Maharaji  267 Ayah, Maili  194 Ayah, Mary  35, 76, 155 Ayah, Mary Anne  137–8 Ayah, Nakki  244 Ayah, Nasiban  82 Ayah, Pasang Dolma  187 Ayah, Posam  127 Ayah, Rosa  255 Ayah, Ruth  159 Ayah, Saema  208 Ayah, Sarah  156 Ayah, Saribon  176 Ayah, Sita  238 Ayah, Sobha  82 Ayah, Sukia  127 Ayer, Ammonie Chinnen  23, 241 Bagubhai 202 Bai, Ayah Jatan  254 Bai, Jivi  245

288 Index ayahs (by name) (cont.) Bai, Uma  192 Bali, Mst.  223 Barnett, Angelina Mc  72–3 Basanti, Mrs  230 Basiran, Mrs  171 Bernard, Elizabeth  248 Bhand, Gangubai Ramchandra  262 Bi, Shaik Muram  220 Bibi, Mst Nadran  231 Bibi, Zainab  23, 256 Burkinson, Gracie Violet  261 Chinch, Josephine  258 Danamah, Mrs  203 Derissamon, Ka  275 Dunamma 183 Elly 239 Emma, Imelda  184 Ernest, Margaret  214 Fernandez, Katharine  130 Fernandez, Mary  36, 128–9 Francis, Ruth  186 Gomes, Domingas  34–5 Gomes, Kajuli  167 Green, Minnie  79–80 Gurdial, Adeline Prem  221 Husain, Sakinabai Ahmed  274 Johnson, Teresa  173 Joseph, Agnes Dowmony  229 Joseph, Lusai  252 Kala, Hari  165 Kanickamary 232 Kanti 204 Kharkongor, Ka Plisimai  195 Kharsing, Ka Lisbon  270 Khasia, Bhimmai  219 Krisibon, Ka  210 Lachhi, Mrs  199 Lackhi 242 Lamingo, Isobell  19 Lawn, Teresa  235 Lipchany, Jethi  185 Lizie, Pranpathi  260 Loorthumarie 212 Madria, Gamboo  249 Magdaline, Mrs  166 Maili 273 Manoo, Mrs  22 Mari, Bakiam  233 Marry, Margaret Alias  265 Mary, Africa  177 Mary, Santhamam  170 Maya, Dhan  272 Meenakshi, Mrs  213 Michael, Mary  60, 77–9, 89, 120

Misa, Gangabai Makan  276 Munisomey, Elizabeth  188 Napalni, Hungoo  246 Narain, Mussamat Nageshar Mariyam Kesho 224 Niazan 174 Oothupan, Kochuparampil Anna  263 Palliyam 225 Panjul, Merch  189 Parab, Radhabai Govind  181 Pareira, Mrs Antony  20–1, 64, 93 Paul, Rosie  253 Pawar, Bhagiramibai  163 Periera, Caroline  85–6, 88, 93 Phemalu, Mini  271 Phulmaya, Mrs  264 Pochammal 207 Radhabai 217 Rajpati 278 Ramannah, Yeddu  180 Rocha, Suzana  268 Ruth, Miss  197 Ruth, Muthuswami, Chinaswami  206 Sabastiamall, Mrs  169 Samuel, Mary  250 Sarbani, Nima  247 Sequeira, Miranda Pedro  269 Shinde, Sivbai Narayan  277 Singh, Bhagwanti Natha  179 Smith, Sarah  48 Soniya 236 Sukhmon 226 Tariang, Byrhui  162 Thomas, Louisa  215 Thresya, Thomas Bappoo  218 Tirky, Martha  138–41, 147, 148 Valliamma 211 Williams, Gracie  251 Yellamah, Mst.  209 Yessamma 234 Ayahs’ Homes  46, 49, 64, 77 Agency House  104 blue plaque  151 capacity 107 Clapham House  104, 119 competition 120 daily routine  113 definition of  103, 106 funding  106, 115, 127 Hackney  89, 93, 97 Hanson administration  104 missionary activity  96 nationalities of residents  108 Rogers’ Home  101–2, 104, 114, 119 wartime usage  131

Index  289 Barclays, Robert  114 Barnes, Edward  85, 87 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 91 Bethnal Green Underground Station  131 Bilgrami, Syed Hussain  59–60 Board of Trade  51 Bow Street Rose, John  73 Britain  4–5, 20–1, 64, 68t, 85–7, 89–90, 94–6, 134–5 See also destitution arrival in  46–51, 55 history 146–8 opportunities in  9 port cities  2 reception in  42–3, 44 self-image 61 service industry  51 weather 33 British Consul  74, 135 Constantinople 136 Germany  138, 140 Italy 137 Paris 142 British Empire administrators 2 establishment in India  17, 54 expansion of  2 soldiers 2 British Raj  18 brokering 115–19 brokering agency  2, 33, 49 Carlyle and Company Servants Agency, Messrs 31 Domestic Servants’ Agency  31 Servants’ Agency Office  31 Wheatley, Geo. W. & Co.  31 bureaucrats  9, 61, 141, 147, 148 care  1, 3, 18, 62, 76, 133, 150 giver  1, 2, 12, 34, 149, 150 labour of care  39, 44, 149 self 112 spiritual 123 caste 23 census  47, 81 Central Criminal Court (London)  87 Ceylon 85 Challis, Arthur  107 charity  10, 92, 102 Chatterjee, Atul  77 child ayah  28–9, 94, 123 child servants  18, 29 children  3, 18, 32 34–5, 68t, 92–3 care of  1–2, 19, 37, 40, 133 deaths at sea  130

playmates for  29 wartime travel ban  126, 127–8 choice  92, 96, 138 Christian 122–4 Christian evangelism  98, 112–5 citizen  3, 145, 151 Civil and Military Gazette 32 civil defence  131, 133, 134, 144 civil servant  50, 72 class (economic)  3, 9, 23, 39, 42, 61, 85, 88 intersections  6, 147 privileged  5, 15, 118, 143, 145 relations 77 ruling  44, 59, 60, 73 working  105, 112, 147, 148 class (travel)  39–40, 127–8, 129–30 colonial gaze  14, 43, 83 colonial subjects  9, 96, 147 Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects 58 See also destitution contract  31, 53t, 63, 70, 77 court action  79 Cousin Johnny and his Indian Nurse 43 Crew, Lord  58–9 Cross, Viscount  57 Curzon, Lord  58–9 Dagar, Balochi  135 deposit system  55, 56, 57 resistance toward  58 deposition  79, 87, 112, 118, 140 destitution  51, 56, 61, 100, 103, 119, 123, 136 See also Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects See also Britain docks  86, 100, 130, 133 domestic service  58, 130 space  3, 51 workers  1–2, 5, 15, 18, 31, 135, 145, 149, 150 East End (London)  100, 101, 118, 130–1, 133 East India Company  33, 45, 54–6, 69, 70, 82, 101 Court of Directors  53 establishment of  18 London office  19, 82 emotional agency  66–9, 77 emotions  66, 67, 68–9t, 81 employment  17, 27, 33, 64, 77, 92, 95, 98, 115 availability for  46 cessation of  47 opportunities  5, 18, 31–2, 146 regulation  54, 130 waiting for  48, 91–3, 120–2 entrepreneurs  14, 83, 124 everyday (histories)  3, 4, 6, 10, 33–5, 145

290 Index exclusion  39, 42, 44, 82, 269 exotic  86, 125, 134, 137, 142, 143, 144 exploitation 36 Factory Acts  61 first-class travel  40 First World War  126–30 stranded ayahs  126–7, 128 fleeting (agency)  69, 84, 95, 97, 138, 141, 146 gender  6, 8, 9, 13, 14, 44, 67, 148 burdens of  27, 133 dynamics 3 visibility  5, 84 work 2 Germany  136, 138–9, 141, 144 good sailor  1, 32–3, 92 grievance  36, 62, 65 Gossnersche Missionsgsellschaft 141 Gupta, Krishna Govinda  59, 60 Henrietta and the Ayah 42 Home for Asiatics  103, 104 Homeward Mail  103, 116 hostel see Ayahs’ Home humanitarian  14, 98, 112, 122–3 Hutchins, Philip  135 immigration records  21, 35, 46, 143 Imperial Legislative Council of India  135 imperial subjecthood  4, 9, 11, 12, 63, 94, 147 Imperial War Museum  131 India, Government of  135 India Office London  33, 53 administrators 67 Council  56, 59, 60 structure 54 India Office Records  19, 42, 56 Indian Statesmen 31 isolation 37 justice  5, 74 against employers  63, 70–1 kala pani 27 Khobragade, Devyani  149 King, Martin Luther  147 Lansdowne, Marquess of  57 lascars  44, 51, 100, 112, 136–7 See also seafarers Leaf, William  114 lexicon  67, 68t, 73 London City Mission  94, 105, 112 Foreigners Fete  113 Magazine 100 London Mayor’s Court  70

Madras Weekly Mail 34 male traveling ayah  29, 30t Manchester Guardians of the Poor Home  73 marital status  25, 27, 28f, 30t, 42, 43t masculinity 74 matron  49, 103, 104, 105–6, 112, 113, 115, 118, 122 metropole  3, 4, 5, 9–10, 14, 46, 83, 94, 96, 147 traffic with colonies  12, 17 migrants  10, 23, 146–7, 150 historiography  2, 4 labour  3, 117, 151 male  51, 74 networks  13, 84, 145 processes 150 relations of  6 temporary 9 Miles, George  104, 120 missionary  80, 96, 100, 112, 122, 140, 141, 144 mobile servants  17 mobility  17, 31, 88, 128, 146, 149 morality  13, 44, 73, 83 National Maritime Museum (Greenwich)  40 native servants  19, 39, 40, 55, 56 negotiation  2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 33–9, 65, 69, 84 opportunity  14, 31, 83, 89, 94, 120, 145 paralysis  8, 84, 93, 96, 97 passage  8–9, 19–20, 47–9, 52–3t, 56–7, 63, 69–72 records  24, 25, 35, 40 return  91–3, 137–9, 142 passenger ship Arabia  49, 127 Asiatic 19 Banares 130 Blenheim 36 California 173 California Clipper 262 Cathay 40 City of Benaras 41 City of Calcutta 215 City of London 128 City of Poona 127 City of Sunta  46, 235 City of Venice  46, 221, 235 Derbyshire 273 Favorite 34 Ferguson 55 Golconda  37, 42 Ile de France 262 Kaisar I Hind 130 Layton 56 Leicestershire 129

Index  291 Louisa 71 Ludhiana 21 Malcolm 55 manifests  10, 17, 21, 24, 29, 36–7, 38–9t, 42, 81, 128, 153 Martaban  40, 129 Mongolia 39 Mooltan 247 Narkunda 254 Peninsula 37 Persia  36, 40, 128 Peshawar 41 Plantagency 20 Ranchi 40 Ranpura 40 Strathmore 191 Theresa 36 Viceroy of India  40, 46, 171, 185, 199 Violette 35 Warwickshire 127 Wellesley  86, 87 Worcestershire 251 passivity  7, 8, 62, 63, 65, 69, 84, 90, 146 passports  25, 76, 153–54 permission letters  10, 17, 19–20, 24 plantation  2, 148 police  48, 62, 70, 73, 76, 77, 79, 119, 154 precarity  5, 8, 9, 13, 49, 65, 73, 93, 125 pregnancy 36–7 promise 95 public works  2 race  39, 61, 73, 123, 147–8 barriers/boundaries  76, 82 debates around  6 dynamics of  3 hierarchies  42, 144 references  32–3, 64, 78, 93, 116 religion  94–6, 122, 154 repatriation  51, 65, 66, 119, 138 cost  71, 74, 135–7 self  62, 70 resistance 95 return fare  86 return passage  20, 42, 52t, 68t, 69, 91–4, 103 payment  19, 47–8, 55, 56–7, 63, 72, 80 refusal to fund  77, 79, 87, 137 Richard, Sangeeta  149, 151 Ross, Dorai  133–4 Salter, Joseph  100–1 Salvation Army Rescue Home  80 seafarers  4, 5, 36, 37, 51, 96, 103, 105 See also lascars seasickness 32 Second World War  107, 130–4, 153

invasion of France  143 outbreak  142, 269 sexuality 8 shipwreck  6, 129 silence  11, 42, 148 Sketch, The 103 Smith Elder & Co., Messrs  46 Spanish Civil War  153, 252 stereotype  44, 74, 83, 84 Stranger’s Home for Asiatics  58, 103 subaltern  3, 11–2, 14, 39–44, 81, 83, 84, 127, 143–4 Suez Canal  18, 40, 158, 165, 188, 227, 238 temporal  2, 3, 27, 85, 94, 97, 146 Thomas Cook & Sons  46, 49 Times of India  31, 32 traffic  12–3, 17, 18–23, 37, 45, 64, 138, 153 trial  79, 80, 87, 107, 120 transient  11, 12, 64 transnational  2, 11, 15, 86 travel conditions during wartime  142 journey time  18 means of escape  78 way of life  64 U-boats  36, 128, 130, 144 Vagrancy Act (1874)  58 Victorian  73, 106 baby 23f Britain  15, 70, 71, 81, 118 metropole 4 nanny 24f values 81 workhouse ideals  103 voyages casualties 36 challenges of  37 length/s 21 living conditions  39 routes  21, 35, 36, 37, 46, 79, 86, 127, 139, 143 segregation 40 vulnerability  9, 13, 82, 90, 147 wages  33–4, 126–30 waiting  6–10, 46–51, 62–3, 62–4, 85–90, 91–3, 94, 94–6 during wartime  126–130 insecurity of  146 invisibility of  9 migration policies  45 used to advantage  89, 97 workhouse  73, 82, 84, 88, 100, 103, 118 Kensington 70–1