PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES OF BRITISH INDIA

I wonder how many of you wander through the web pages or our great photo gallery? Two sets of photographs have just been put up:  one by FIBIS member Patricia Mitchell and the other by myself on behalf of my parents. Each covers a different aspect of life from those days and are truly absorbing.

The Beresford Collection

First, Patricia’s, which we are calling the Beresford Collection. The album was created by her Great Grandfather, Lt Colonel George William Beresford.

Patricia says: “His father was a popular English banker in Delhi. However, his parents and his six sisters were massacred in the Indian Mutiny at Delhi in 1857. R. E. Forrester wrote what we now call a fictionalised account of the Mutiny based on the Beresford family’s life, times and death in Delhi called “Eight Days: a Tale of the Indian Mutiny”. It is still in print.

Everything the family owned was either looted or burnt and the bank where I believed they lived “above the shop” was destroyed. The Delhi Bank features in the lithograph between pages 53 and 56 of Losty’s Delhi 360 (Mazhar Ali Khan’s View from the Lahore Bridge), published by Roli Books, and is described in item 90 on page 86 of the same book. There are many images to be found on Google of the bank before and after its destruction.

My great-grandfather and his brother, Charles Edward, survived because they were at school in England at Haileybury and Imperial Service College. George returned to India as soon as he could at age 17 years, having enlisted in the Indian Army. He spent all his working life in the army there, raising four children. He retired to Tooting and died in 1919.

I guess he was a clubbable man and enjoyed the close companionship that army life offered in India and as a meticulous person must have suggested to all those officers that they supply him with a studio photograph of each of his friends and acquaintances.

Having met up with Xandra and realised her links with India through your Society, I suggested it would be a good idea to make these photographs available online. I suspect that many of the descendants of these officers do not even know these photographs exist.

I am thrilled to know that these photos can be seen by many people and I and my family look forward to seeing them as they have been restored by your Society.

PS:  My grandfather chose to join the merchant navy, rather than the army, and lived and worked in Cherbourg, France for the first 3 decades of the 20th century until his tragic death in 1928.

As the Marine Superintendent of the White Star Line he would have waved the Titanic off on its fateful voyage. His motor launch, the Nomadic, was found and restored and is on display at the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast”.

A Few Examples

As Patricia says, Lt Col Beresford must have suggested to his officers and friends that they supply him with their photographs which now means that we can reach back, visually, to the second half of the 19^th century and see the military officers of the day as they presented themselves to the camera. Sometimes in uniform, as we see Major Dick Barker below, and sometimes in their town wear as with Capt Llewellyn Smith.

And ladies are not omitted from the collection – here we have Mrs Amesbury (wife of Dr Amesbury 1^st Bengal Cavalry 1866). The later, ubiquitous, box Brownie did not exist so these ladies and gentlemen would have visited a studio which had a wonder of the age – a photographic recording device!

This is a really wonderful collection – just browsing through them takes one back to the life as it was then!

A quick link to the collection: https://gallery.fibis.org/index.php?/category/103

The Heather and Gordon Summers Collection

The Kodak Box Brownie (for sale at five shillings each in the UK) flooded the market after 1900. Suddenly, the 20^th century history of India came alive – these cameras were simple to operate, could be used just about anywhere and the celluloid roll film was easy to carry and gave multiple images.

This brings me to my parents’ nine albums (in seven groups in the Gallery). Just a few thoughts follow here.

The first set were in my grandmother’s album (a picture of her with camera is below). The pictures are all from Cawnpore in the early 1920s and include the sugar factory where my grandfather worked along with shots of other managers. The picture of Rollo below shows the style of the time.

My mother attended All Saints’ College in Naini Tal and there are several school friends pictured – some named and others not. Perhaps there is a picture of your ancestor there? The picture below is of my father inspecting the railway lines, I think, with the help of two men who “pumped” the vehicle onwards! The full picture in the gallery shows my mother alongside!!!

As you know, schooling meant boarding school and my father’s album includes pictures of Victoria School in Darjeeling – the last picture was taken just before the school closed for the winter and the boys are holding the banner that was put on the front of the engine as it rolled into Calcutta with parents waiting on the platform. (I have to assume that they stopped the train just prior to that final; act)!!

Do enjoy browsing the Gallery. A quick link to this collection: https://gallery.fibis.org/index.php?/category/93