All writing © 2009-2015 by Colin Salter unless indicated otherwise. All rights reserved.
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Saturday 22 February 2014

MARGARET FRANCES WHEELER (b. 1837) AND THE SOWAR OF THE SATICHAURA GHAT




In 1907, an elderly Muslim woman in northern India made a deathbed confession to a Roman Catholic priest. She was, she claimed, Ulrica, daughter of General Wheeler of Cawnpore. 

General Hugh Massy Wheeler (1789-1857)

I’ve written here before now of the Cawnpore Massacre. In 1857 all but four of the 900-strong European population of the Cawnpore garrison in northern India were killed in one of the early atrocities of the Indian Mutiny. My cousin Captain Robert Jenkins was among the dead, as was another cousin, General Hugh Massy Wheeler who commanded the garrison. 

General Wheeler’s wife Frances was also killed, and Eliza one of his daughters, and a son Godfrey who was serving in the Bengal Army alongside him. Another daughter, Margaret, was with the family as her father led the garrison to the Satichaura Ghat, the steps at the edge of the river Ganges from which they had been promised safe conduct. 

Massacre at the Satichaura Ghat, 27th June 1857

As the mutineers began instead to slaughter those whose safety they had guaranteed, Margaret was grabbed by a sowar, one of the rebellious Indian soldiers. It was assumed that she too died in the ensuing slaughter (by local butchers using meat cleavers) of the women and children of the garrison. Her name still appears on the memorial to these victims.

Soon after the event the story began to circulate that she had defended herself fiercely with sabre and pistol, killing four of her captors before throwing herself down a well to preserve her honour from violation. It was a gruesome end, but a satisfyingly heroic one, which upheld the high moral principles of the British imperial elite.


Miss Wheeler Defending Herself Against The Sepoys At Cawnpore

(a contemporary engraving from The History of the Indian Mutiny by Charles Ball)

In fact, Margaret Wheeler, also known as Ulrica, survived. Whether the sowar rescued or simply captured for himself the twenty-year old Ulrica is not clear. She was seen, claimed Edward Leckey writing only the year after the massacre, riding side-saddle in the English fashion and wearing a veil. By 1865 it was known that she was not only still alive but had married the man who saved her life, Ali Khan.

This news was greeted not with joy but with a shocking display of imperial racism. Lady Wheeler, Ulrica’s mother who died at Cawnpore, was of mixed race; this was not uncommon in Indian colonial society. Having celebrated the manner of her honourable English death, Ulrica’s survival now was because she was “by no means of pure English blood,” according to historian G.O. Trevelyan writing in 1865. The implication was that a proper pure-bred Englishwoman would have behaved as Margaret was supposed to have – either dying to protect her honour or, having lost it, committed suicide.

George Otto Trevelyan (1838-1928), historian and politician, author of Cawnpore (Macmillan & Co, 1865)

Ulrica became a Muslim and with looks inherited from her mother she disappeared into Cawnpore’s Indian community. Was it an early case of Stockholm Syndrome? Or did she just want no further part of an imperial power which could be so two-faced about one person in death and in life? 
For more on Ulrica Wheeler, her treatment and colonial life in general, Clare Anderson's book Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World 1790-1920 is detailed, readable and insightful.

8 comments:

  1. Having visited Sati Chaura twice in as many years, is easy to see how the boats were stranded. Adjacent the fishermans temple, is extremely shallow with an island of sand just beyond with main river flow closest to Lucknow side. The story of Ulrica, I believe as true and why wouldn't she turn to the only people who would accept her. Look at what happened to Amy Horne and the limited opportunities in British class society for anyone not 'heaven born'. The EIR presented pretty much the best one could hope for if of mixed parentage

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  2. Thank you for this account. Further evidence of Ulrica's survival came from an officer's wife who had known her before 1857 (they were contemporaries) who claimed that Ulrica contacted her through a servant and made regular visits to her home to don her old friend's clothing and admire herself in a mirror. The story is told in my account of the uprising at Kanpur, Our Bones Are Scattered.

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    1. It's a fascinating story. Delighted to hear about your account of it too.

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  3. The book Love story for my sister says a lot about Margret Wheeler. But it may or may not be work of fiction. It clearly fills you with fascination

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    1. For the benefit of other readers, Love Story for my Sister is a 2015 novel. It tells the story of two kidnaps 140 years apart. The earlier one is Ulrica's - the later I think is fictional. I haven't read it but it seems to discuss Stockholm Syndrome. Mixed reviews on Goodreads.

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  4. Fascinated to read, will look for the book called Love Story for my sister. My great grandmother was called Frances Wheeler, she married Charles Middlemiss.

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  5. Dispute news of Margaret Wheeler’s survival was met with ‘imperial racism’: it is at least as, if not more, likely any hostility stemmed from disgust that a woman would marry one of the murderers—or accomplice to those murders—of her father, mother, brother and sister, and so many other British soldiers, women and children. Victorians, after all, were unaware of the phenomenon of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ where victims bond with their captors.
    It would be like discovering Anne Frank had not only survived but married one of her SS guards.
    The emotional investment, the image they’ve built of Margaret Wheeler being a tragic but heroic victim and then finding she was not heroic at all nor much of a victim, would leave many with a sense of betrayal. Frankly, by marrying one of her family’s murderers or accomplices to their murders, she is straying into Karla Homolka/Rose West territory.

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  6. I find Hindu culture very wonderful and interesting

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