Untold lives blog

In the suffocating heat and violent downpours of early August, 1866, Sir William Hunter, his wife, infant son, and a Portuguese nurse, journeyed to Midnapur in Bengal, where Hunter had been appointed Inspector of Schools for the South-Western Division.  They travelled by road in their victoria driven by Hunter himself.  The carriage and horses were crammed on a ferry by which they crossed the torrential river Damodar.  The crossing took fourteen hours, and Hunter drove on until the route was cut off by a chasm created by the floods.  Horses unhitched, the carriage was dragged down the bank to the other side of the chasm.  They reached a rest house which offered little provision.  They travelled again, until, hungry and exhausted, they finally arrived at their destination.

Sir William Hunter driving a carriage with his wife, infant son, and a Portuguese nurse, journeying to Midnapur in heat and violent downpours.  Image reproduced by the kind permission of the artist ©Argha Manna.

Hunter then left at once to survey the area as the government was anxious to learn about the effect of the Orissa famine on schools in neighbouring districts.  To his horror, he found Bishnupur, the ancient capital of Birbhum, a ‘city of paupers’, as he noted in his letter to the Director of Public Instruction.  The famine relief operations were disrupted by a cholera outbreak.  At his own expense, Hunter set up a temporary orphanage for starving children who roamed the streets, feeding on worms and snails.

The author of The Annals of Bengal - a text often mined for information on the notorious famines in Orissa (1866) and in Bengal (1769-70) - was not simply an excavator of archives.  An aspect of his life not often told seems to be epitomised by this stark physical encounter with famine-affected areas, which officers like Hunter (and their families) could not avoid.  For Hunter, writing the famous Annals was punctuated by such experiences, as he developed his comparative analytical methods, placing side by side archival findings which allowed him to reconstruct the 1770 Bengal famine, and his immediate knowledge of the Orissa famine a century later.

Portrait of Sir William Hunter. Image reproduced by the kind permission of the artist ©Argha Manna.

These two famines are infamous events in the history of British administration of the Bengal Presidency.  The first resulted in the loss of 10 million lives, and yet the East India Company’s revenue increased in that famine year; during the second, 200 million pounds of rice were exported to Britain while a million starved to death in Orissa.  Hunter’s analytical method relied on recovering local ecology, history, and demography, loosely modelled on the English annals of parishes.  As Hunter wrote to Cecil Beadon in 1868, ‘My business is with the people’ - a rather risky remark perhaps in an epistle to the former lieutenant-governor of Bengal, recently deposed for his mishandling of the Orissa famine and scant attention to the suffering of ‘the people’.  Moreover, Hunter’s approach was analogical, comparing not only past and present famines, but British and Indian models of record keeping; and, finally, it was predictive.  Hunter believed that better administration and prevention of future famines were possible through historically informed reflection on current experience ….

Portrait of Sir George Campbell.  Image reproduced by the kind permission of the artist ©Argha Manna.

For the rest of this story about Hunter’s differences with his contemporary Sir George Campbell who also shaped interpretations of the Orissa and Bengal famines; their negotiations with colonial governance; their lasting impression on archiving famine; and their publication of a little-known collaborative collection of records of the Bengal Famine of 1769-70, see the full article on the Famine Tales project blog Food Security: Past and Present.

Ayesha Mukherjee
Associate Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the Department of English and Film, College of Humanities, University of Exeter, and the Principal Investigator for the AHRC projects Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800, and Famine Tales from India and Britain.

Illustrations by Argha Manna
Graphic artist and journalist based in Calcutta, currently creating a graphic narrative of the 1770 Bengal famine for the Famine Tales from India and Britain project.

With grateful thanks to Dr Antonia Moon for drawing my attention to IOR/V/ 27/830/14 and to Professor Swapan Chakravorty for directing me to valuable sources on colonial archiving policies in India.

Charles Foulis (c.1714 – 1783) became wealthy from his maritime career with the East India Company.  For his second voyage he served as first mate under Captain Robert Jenkins on the Harrington bound for St Helena, Bombay and China.  The ship arrived at Bombay at the end of July 1742 and had an encounter with Angria’s pirate ships whilst returning from Tellicherry.

On 18 December 1742, Captain Jenkins died of ‘a feaver and flux’ and was buried with military honours in Bombay.  Foulis took over as captain of the Harrington and sailed for China, his first voyage east of India.

Portrait of George Anson, 1747 - Courtesy of  British Museum CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Meanwhile, Commodore George Anson (1697-1762) was continuing a voyage around the world in the Centurion, the last remaining ship of his small fleet.  When the Centurion called at Macao in November 1742, neither the Europeans nor the Chinese wanted this armed warship to approach Canton and threaten the delicate trade balance.  However, she was badly in need of repair, water and stores, and assistance was reluctantly given.  She departed on 19 April 1743, supposedly for England.  There was huge consternation when she returned nearly three months later, towing the Spanish treasure galleon Covadonga as her ‘prize’ worth about £60 million in today’s money.

Anson made his way up river towards Canton, threatening violence to the Chinese officials who tried to stop him.  When the Harrington arrived on 17 July, Captain Foulis was caught up as a pawn in the affair, torn between his respect for Anson and his responsibility to the East India Company.

Foulis went on board the Centurion to discuss the situation with Anson.  Eventually on 28-29 July the Centurion was allowed upstream and Harrington, with a local pilot aboard, guided her through the channels.  After delicate negotiations, Anson was permitted to visit Canton for a meeting with the Chinese officials.

The Centurion left China in December 1743 and the Harrington at the end of January 1744. On 4 July Anson’s magnificent procession of 32 wagons of treasure passed through the streets of London on its way to the Tower.

Introductory page of the journal and log of the Anson 1746 - IOR/L/MAR/B/549A

Foulis’s next voyage was in the 1746/7 season as captain of the Anson, under the management of David Crichton, a relative of his wife.  The Anson had a battle with the French outside Bombay but the captain got his papers and treasure landed before the ship was captured.  Foulis managed to return to England and on 2 November 1748 the East India Company Court of Directors agreed that Captain Foulis had ‘done his Duty and behaved like a Gallant and Discreet Officer and is Justly entitled to the Courts Favour’.

From 1750 to 1755 Foulis captained the Lord Anson for two uneventful voyages before retiring from the sea to manage voyages for the East India Company.  Between 1759 and his death in 1783 he managed 38 voyages made by 12 ships and was a significant figure in the shipping lobby.

The memorial erected by Captain Robert Preston to Charles Foulis in St.Mary’s church, Woodford, Essex, as a testimony of his gratitude. Foulis had managed three voyages which Preston made as captain and then worked with him in the City. In his will Foulis named Preston as his ‘residuary legatee and executor’. Author;'s photograph.

Charles Foulis had other connections with the East India Company: his sister Margaret married William George Freeman, a director in 1769, 1774-76 and 1778-81.  His wife had a sister who married Andrew Moffatt of Cranbrook House in Ilford, another Principal Managing Owner who was involved in shipping insurance.

Georgina Green
Independent scholar

Further reading:
IOR/L/MAR/B/654D Journal of the Harrington 1741-1744
IOR/L/MAR/B/549A Journal of the Anson 1746-1747
IOR/B/70 East India Company Court of Directors’ Minute Book
Sally Rousham (ed.), The Greatest Treasure - Philip Saumarez and the voyage of the Centurion (Guernsey Museum, 1994)
Glyn Williams, The Prize of all the Oceans (Harper Collins, 1999)

From its earliest days, the East India Company’s ships called at the South Atlantic island of St Helena on homeward voyages from Asia.  They gathered supplies of fresh water, citrus fruits, meat and fish. Company ships also used St Helena as a place of rendezvous.  It was safer to complete the final stage of the voyage with other vessels, especially in times of war.

Friar Rock on the island of St Helena - an immense pile of rocks rising perpendicularly eight hundred feet above the level of the sea.  Image from St. Helena: a physical, historical, and topographical description of the island ... The botanical plates from original drawings by Mrs. J. C. Melliss (London, 1875) British Library Digital Store 10096.gg.15 BL flickr

In 1658 the Company decided to fortify St Helena and establish a colony.  The first group of English settlers arrived in May 1659.  Slaves were brought from West Africa to work on the plantations.

On 4 September 1672 a set of laws was issued: ‘Laws and Constitutions Ecclesiasticall Civill and Millitary made by the Councell to be observed by all the inhabitants of the Island St Hellena’.

IOR/E/3/33 ff.153v-154 Laws to be observed by the inhabitants of St Helena 4 September 1672

The Laws were:

1 God was to be worshipped and served diligently.  The guard at Fort St John was to attend morning and evening prayers at the toll of the bell, and all inhabitants were to attend church on Sunday unless prevented by necessity.

2 Sunday was to be kept holy and all were to refrain from cursing, swearing and excessive drinking.

3 To prevent idleness, every family was to have a plantation.  They must not encroach on their neighbours’ lands or privileges.

4 Everyone was to look after their plantations, keep the ground well-fenced, ring their hogs, and improve the stock of cattle for the promotion of trade.

5 Inhabitants should endeavour to live in love and unity.  Anyone bickering, brawling, or slandering neighbours would be severely punished.

6 No-one was to take revenge over a quarrel, instead going with witnesses to the Council for redress.

7 Every man was to live honestly and maintain himself and his family by careful labour and industry.  The Council would punish anyone stealing from a neighbour.

8 Anyone found guilty of murder, burglary, buggery or any other capital crime would be shipped to England for trial and sentencing.

9 If debts were not settled on time, the Council would seize goods or cattle as payment.

10 Inhabitants were encouraged to build outside the Fort for the convenience of trade, and had permission to go on board English or friends’ ships.

11 Seamen were not to stay on the island without permission.  Anyone harbouring a sailor would be fined £5.  The sailor would be housed with the black slaves and work on the Company’s plantations until he could be returned to England,

12 Everyone capable of bearing arms was to respond to all alarms, with a 20s fine or a week’s imprisonment for each default.

13 The watch was to be observed continually and strictly when shipping approached.  Each instance of neglect would be punished by a fine of 5s or another penalty decided by the Council.

14 Everyone was to go to Fort St John four times a year to be trained in martial discipline for the safety and defence of the island.

15 Anyone raising a mutiny or causing a disturbance of orderly government would be put in irons and sent home to the Company.

16 Anyone hearing of a plot, conspiracy or mutiny was liable to the same punishment as the perpetrators if they failed to alert the Council.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/3/33 ff.153v-154 Laws to be observed by inhabitants of St Helena 4 September 1672
William Foster, ‘The Acquisition of St. Helena’, The English Historical Review July 1919, Vol. 34, No. 135, pp. 281-289.
St Helena settlers in 1667

‘Such Central Asian trade as of old [that] drew its goods from British sources has slowly drifted into the hands of Russia, which on its part has not been backward in putting in motion every engine that ingenuity could devise, and its paramount position in Central Asia afforded to popularize its Asian and Persian trade at the expense of ours.’

Drawing of a telegraph station along the Quetta-Sistan Road (Mss Eur F111/386, f.137)

Thus wrote Lieutenant Frank Webb Ware, Political Assistant at Chagai, in his first report on the trade route being opened up between Quetta, in British Indian territory, and Sistan, on the Persian frontier.  Such fears of Russian dominance in Persia were the very reason for the British plan to revive what was an ancient road.  Russian influence had been growing in Persia since the Napoleonic era and their presence felt in Sistan since at least the 1860s. Being on the doorstep of the Indian Empire, any interference in Sistan could not be tolerated by the British, and their efforts to assert their own power over the region was a part of the ‘Great Game’ between Russia and Britain for predominance in Central Asia.

Photograph of the ‘Mil-i-Nadir, or Pillar of Nadir’, probably taken by H A Armstrong, Assistant Superintendent, Indian Telegraph Department (Mss Eur F111/377, f.46)

To counter Russian activities in Sistan, Webb Ware was appointed at Chagai and tasked by the Government of India to establish wells, guard houses, and levy posts along the new route from Quetta.  Trade was seen as an important way of gaining influence and protecting British interests.  After travelling the route himself in the early part of the year, Webb Ware submitted his first report on the subject in the summer of 1897, remarking that he was ‘disagreeably astonished’ at the ascendancy that Russia had already gained in Sistan.

Photograph of the landscape near the trade route, close to Dehbakri, Iran, probably taken by H A Armstrong (Mss Eur F111/377, f.30)

In the following years more reports would be submitted and progress made on the development of the route.  Recommendations were made to extend the railway from Quetta along the same road, largely for military purposes.  The project was of such significance that Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India at the time, kept copies of all the relative documents.  It is from his papers that these images are taken.

Drawing of the landscape near Kirtaka, Pakistan (Mss Eur F111/386, f.141)

Military intelligence was gathered and a telegraph line proposed.  The resulting surveys produced photographs and sketches of a region little-known to the British.  The line drawings are reminiscent of those of the Lake District by Alfred Wainwright, albeit they were made for very different purposes.  These, along with Webb Ware’s reports, are being digitised as part of the Qatar Foundation-British Library Partnership Programme and are available on the Qatar Digital Library. 

John Hayhurst
Gulf History Specialist

Further reading:
'Report on the Baluch-Persian Caravan Route and Nushki, Chagai and Western Sinjerani Districts' - Mss Eur F111/362, f.10 and f.11 

'Report of Khan Bahadur Maula Bakhsh, Attaché to the Agent to the Governor General of India and Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General for Khurasan and Sistan, on His Journey from Meshed to Quetta via Turbat-i-Haidari, Kain, Sistan, Kuh-i-Malik Siah and Nushki (7th April to 28th July 1898)' - Mss Eur F111/363 

'Report on the Nushki, Chagai and Western Sinjerani Districts for the year 1897-98 and on the Development of The Quetta-Seistan [Sistan] Trade Route' - Mss Eur F111/364 

'Report on the Development of the Baluch-Persian Caravan Route and on the Nushki, Chagai and Western Sinjerani Districts, for the year 1899-1900' - Mss Eur F111/374 

'Military Report on Persian Seistan' - Mss Eur F111/378 

'Notes on Persian Seistan' - Mss Eur F111/382 

In 1793 the London Foundling Hospital received a petition from ‘Black Peggy’, a native of Bengal.

‘Being a poor unfortunate girl just arrived at the age of fourteen was on my voyage to England with Mrs Harding, unhappily seduced by my fellow servant James Murray by a false promise of marriage, but on our arrival at Ostend he knowing of my pregnancy left me friendless and unprotected.  Nothing but the kind humanity of my mistress could have supported me through this scene of misery and repentance and who is still inclin’d to be my friend could I conceal my disgrace by your benevolence.  This gentleman urges me in the most supplicating manner to entreat and solicit your generous aid and protection to the unhappy infant of your very humble petitioner.’

Peggy’s mistress, Mrs Elizabeth Harding of 2 Buckingham Street, recommended acceptance of the child because of the girl’s penitence and past good conduct.  On 4 May 1793 Peggy’s two-month-old daughter was admitted to the Hospital as Foundling No.18142.  She was baptised with the name Jane Williams and sent as a nurse child to Dorking.  Sadly Jane died a year later and was buried at St Martin’s Church in Dorking on 11 May 1794.

Foundling Hospital Chapel – British Library Crach.1.Tab.4.b.3.

It is not clear whether Peggy was of Asian or African descent.  African slaves were brought to Bengal in the 18th century.

I believe that Peggy’s mistress was the wife of Thomas Harding an officer in the East India Company’s Bengal Army.  In May 1794 Elizabeth Harding was granted permission by the East India Company Court of Directors to return to her husband in India.  At the same time Thomas Parry Esq, (the Company director?), was authorised to return a black servant named Peggy to Bengal on the Royal Admiral with no expense to be incurred by the Company.

IOR/B/119 p.93 East India Company Court of Directors' Minutes 7 May 1794 

In the passenger list for the Royal Admiral, Peggy is recorded as the servant to Mrs Anna Maria Freeman who was returning to her husband in Bengal.  The ship sailed from Plymouth in August 1794 and the two women landed at Calcutta in February 1795.

The homeward passenger list for the Royal Admiral shows Anna Maria Freeman and her black servant, now named as Peggy Harding.  This link to her previous mistress surely confirms that this is the Foundling Hospital’s ‘Black Peggy’?  What had happened to cause Mrs Freeman to leave again for England on the Royal Admiral in August 1795?  Did she discover that her husband had died in her absence?  Frustratingly I have been unable to identify with any certainty who her husband was.

IOR/L/MAR/B/338G Passenger list homeward of ship Royal Admiral 1795

Mrs Freeman and Peggy left the ship in the Bristol Channel on 8 January 1796.  Less than a month later Anna Maria Freeman, described as a widow, married William Fairfax in Bristol.  Fairfax had been first mate in the Royal Admiral on the 1794-1796 voyage to India and back.

For now, the story of Peggy ends here.   Perhaps she is the black female servant called Peggy who sailed on the Houghton to Bengal in the spring of 1797?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/MAR/B/338G Journal of Royal Admiral for 1794-1796 voyage with passenger lists.

London Metropolitan Archives Foundling Hospital records - Petition of 'Black Peggy' is in A/FH/A08/001/001/018 Petitions admitted to ballot 1792-1793.

Forgotten Foundlings: black lives and the eighteenth-century Foundling Hospital.

On 17 September 1740, the East India Company’s Court of Directors in London received word that a man had returned from the dead.  That man, John Dean, miraculously survived the shipwreck of the Sussex, an East India Company ship that sank, along with its cargo, off the coast of Madagascar in March 1738.  It took Dean 16 months, most of which was spent walking across Madagascar, to find a European ship to rescue him.  That ship transported him from Madagascar to Bombay, where his story was transcribed, then sent on to the East India Company in London.

By the time Dean reached London in September 1741, a year had passed since the Company’s Court of Directors had learned of his survival, and his story had been published at least twice as a 22 page booklet.  Soon after his return, a risqué mezzotint portrait of a shirtless John Dean was also published in London, showing him standing on a rocky shoreline, holding a spear, with the Sussex sinking in the background.  This rugged image of Dean most likely increased his celebrity, and parallels were made between his story and Daniel Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe.

Mezzotint of John Dean, c.1743 © The Trustees of the British Museum  1364161001 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) (Another copy -British Library P553)

What is most interesting about John Dean’s story is that the East India Company controlled it.  On 19 September 1740, two days after the Court of Directors first received Dean’s account from Bombay, the Company’s Committee of Lawsuits put forward that 'a Bill be filed at Chancery against the Captain of the Sussex'.   John Dean’s survival had enormous value to the East India Company because Francis Gostling, the captain of the Sussex, who had also survived the shipwreck, had given a different version of events when he returned to London a few months after the Sussex sank, in the summer of 1738.  As punishment for the deaths at sea of sixteen men from his crew (one of whom was John Dean), Gostling was removed from the Company’s service, but he was absolved of losing the Sussex’s valuable cargo.  However, Dean’s account described Gostling’s actions on board the sinking ship as dishonourable, and made him out as directly contributing to the deaths of the abandoned crew.

Armed with John Dean’s story, the East India Company ruined Francis Gostling by ordering £25,000 in compensation for the Sussex’s lost cargo.  After their success at the King’s Bench in May 1743, the Company commissioned Willem Verelst on 16 June 1743 to paint not one, but three portraits of John Dean.  Two of these portraits still exist, and show a happy, healthy man, respectfully dressed in smart working class attire, carrying a hat and a walking stick in one hand and a letter of reference in the other.  They contrast with the mezzotint portrait from 1741 by showing a man who had comfortably returned to civilization.  In 1744 Dean was appointed as an elder porter at the East India Company’s Drug Warehouse, and in December 1747 he died, probably when he was in his early 40s.

Oil painting of John Dean by Willem Verelst, commissioned 1743. British Library F19  BL - Images Online 

It seems to me that the portraits of John Dean say more about the East India Company than they do about the man shown in the painting.  Do you agree?

Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia

Further reading:
'History of John Dean', The Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1807, p.606.
A True and Genuine Narrative of the whole affair relating to the Ship Sussex as sent to the Directors of the Honourable East India Company; From the Time she was deserted by the Officers, and greatest part of the Crew, till she was unfortunately wreck’d on the Bassas De India... By John Dean, The only surviving person of them all (London, 1740)
Account of John Dean’s story, dated Bombay December 1739, being read at East India House, 17 September 1740, BL – IOR/B/66, f.84.
Account of a bill being filed against Captain Francis Gostling, 19 September 1740, BL – IOR/B/66, f.151.
Account of John Dean’s first appearance before the Court of Directors on 2 September 1741, BL - IOR/B/66, f.366.
John Dean’s appointment as an Elder Porter, Friday 15 March, 1744, BL – IOR/B/68, f.243.
“Warrant be made out to Mr. William Verelst for Fifty Guineas for painting two originals and one copy of John Deane late belonging to the Ship Sussex...” , 17 June 1743, BL - IOR/B/67, f.333.

In these times of lockdown and social distancing, unable to visit friends and family, many of us have become used to keeping in touch in other novel ways.  In somewhat of the same manner, digitised India Office Records shed light on a method in the 18th century by which families separated from each other by the vast distances of a growing empire kept in touch: the portrait miniature.  As the East India Company established its domains in India and increasing numbers of families were residing there for long periods of time, a demand grew for miniature portraits which could be easily sent back to loved ones in Britain.

To meet this demand required the skills and expertise of portrait painters in India to undertake commissions from those wealthy enough to afford them.  These painters, like anyone else, had to be given permission to proceed to India by the Court of the East India Company.  Two such painters were Diana Hill and George Carter.

On 14 September 1785 the Court ordered that George Carter be ‘permitted to proceed to India to practice as a Portrait Painter’ and seven days later the same order was issued for Diana Hill.

Minutes of East India Company Court of Directors, 14 September 1785, giving George Carter permission to travel - IOR/B/101 p.396

Minutes of East India Company Court of Directors,, 21 September 1785, giving Diana Hill permission to travel - IOR/B/101 p.416

Their passage to India took them to Bushire on the Persian coast where they required further clearance.  A letter in 1786 from Rawson Hart Boddam, Robert Sparks, and Richard Church of the Public Department at Bombay Castle to Edward Galley, the Resident at Bushire, records that ‘Mr George Carter and Mrs Diana Hill Portrait Painters have our leave to proceed to India to practice their profession’.

Extract from letter sent in 1786 from Bombay to the Resident at Bushire about George Carter and Diana Hill - IOR/R/15/1/4, f 61

Once in India, they were commissioned to paint many miniature portraits – examples of Diana Hill’s are held at the V&A Museum and George Carter’s at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Portrait miniature of an unknown girl, watercolour on ivory, painted by Mrs Diana Hill (1760?-1844). British School, painted in India, ca. 1785-1790. Image courtesy of V&A Museum.

With museums and galleries opening again we can appreciate at first hand the skills of such painters who helped families separated by thousands of miles keep in touch in the late 18th century.

Dr Francis Owtram
Gulf History Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture 1770-1825 (Sotheby’s Publications, 1979).
These snippets of George Carter and Diana Hill’s passage to India are contained in the British Library, India Office Records and Private Papers.  The Minutes of the Court of Directors in IOR/B have been digitised as part of Adam Matthew Digital’s East India Company resource (free access in British Library Reading Rooms).   IOR/R/15/1/4 is available on the Qatar Digital Library.

In a letter from Charles Canning, Governor General and Viceroy of India to Lord Elgin, dated 2 October 1861, he writes that Lady Canning has set out on a trip to Darjeeling and that she talks of going into Sikkim to see the highest mountain in the world – ‘Deodunga or Mount Everest as the Surveyors have barbarously christened it’.

Guarinsankar, or Mount Everest, in the Himalaya of Nepal from Results of a Scientific Mission to India and High Asia, undertaken between the years 1854 and 1858, by order of the Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company, by H., A. and R. de Schlagintweit Shelfmark1899.a.8  BL - Images Online 

How did ’Mount Everest’ get its name?

The surveying of Everest was carried out under the auspices of Major General Sir Andrew Scott Waugh, Sir George Everest’s successor as both Surveyor General of India, and Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.  Waugh was born into an Indian military family in 1810. He was appointed a cadet in the East India Company in 1827, and joined the Bengal Engineers.  He was assigned to the GTS in 1832.

Page from Andrew Scott Waugh's East India Company cadet application papers - a glowing report from his schoolmaster IOR/L/MIL/9/166 f.239

The Trigonometrical Survey had been instituted in 1802 by the East India Company to survey scientifically the entire Indian subcontinent.  Initially it was thought that India could be surveyed in five years: in reality, it was to take seventy.  From 1823, the GTS was under the superintendence of George Everest, and he appointed Waugh to the service.  When Everest retired in 1843, he nominated his protégé to succeed him.

By the late 1830s, the Great Trigonometrical Survey reached the Himalayan region.  Foreigners were not allowed to enter Nepal, so observations were taken from Terai.  By 1847, Waugh and his team had noted that a mountain known as ‘Peak B’ appeared higher than Kangchenjunga, the then ‘highest mountain in the world’.  Calculations and observations continued, with the mountain rechristened ‘Peak XV’.  By 1852, the GTS’s talented mathematician or ‘Chief Computer’ Radhanath Sikdar established beyond doubt that the peak was indeed the highest mountain.  It was normal for the GTS to use local names as far as possible when naming peaks.  In this instance, Waugh stated “But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, or whose native appellation, if it have any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepaul and to approach close to this stupendous snowy mass”.  He went on to suggest ‘Mount Everest’ as a suitable epithet, a name that was finally confirmed by the Royal Geographical Society in 1865.

Photograph of Sir George Everest by Camille Silvy, 28 July 1862. NPG Ax60654 © National Portrait Gallery, London

So, was the mountain ‘nameless’?  It is true that it was difficult to establish a definitive local name.  However, its Tibetan name Qomolangma (or Chomolungma) had been recorded in 18th century maps.  In Darjeeling, it was called Deodungha, meaning Holy Mountain, a name championed by Brian Houghton Hodgson, the naturalist and previous Resident to Nepal.  Even Sir George Everest made objections.  He had never seen the mountain, was not involved in its discovery, and pointed out that his name was difficult to pronounce in Hindi.  Interestingly, he appears to have pronounced his name ‘E-vrest’ rather than ‘Ever-est’.

Portrait of Andrew Scott Waugh by William Glynn c. 1857 British Library Photo 139/1(3)

Andrew Scott Waugh received the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal in 1856, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1858.  He retired in 1861, having been promoted to Major General and knighted in the same year.  He died in South Kensington in 1877.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further Reading:
Mss Eur F699 Papers of Charles Canning and Charlotte Canning, Earl and Countess Canning:
Mss Eur F699/1/3/2/53, item 2623 - correspondence from Sir Andrew Scott Waugh, including his memorials, and letters in praise of Sir George Everest; Mss Eur F699/1/1/2/1, letter 31 - Charles Canning to Lord Elgin, 2 October 1861.
IOR/L/MIL/9/166/232-39: Cadet papers of Andrew Scott Waugh.
Paper read by Andrew Scott Waugh to the Royal Geographical Society on 12 May 1857, reported in Illustrated London News, 15 August 1857, p.170.
John Keay, The Great ARC: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named (2000).
General J. T. Walker, ‘A Last Note on Mont Everest’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol. 8, No. 4 (April 1886), pp. 257-263.