FANNY BODDAM (1796-1825) AND THE BODDAM OF BOMBAY

I’ve been writing here recently about the Baker brothers William and Godfrey, who both served in the Bengal Army of the East India Company. And not so long ago in honour of my brother’s Portuguese wedding I wrote about my cousin Michael Hinton Castle’s first wife Susan Smith.

There are more powerful family connections to India than the Bakers, through MHC’s second wife (of three), Frances “Fanny” Boddam. Her family could be used to chart the early progress of the British rule in India. Fanny’s great grandfather Charles Boddam (active 1715-1726) was a warehouseman at Fort St George in Madras in around 1715. Her grandfather improved on that somewhat – Charles Boddam junior (1719-1794) rose to become a director of the East India Company. But her father Rawson Hart Boddam (1734-1812) topped the lot, serving for four years as the Governor of Bombay.

The British Dominion in India, c1783 –

little Bombay on the west coast, spreading Bengal in the east

(Rawson Hart Boddam’s son (also Rawson Hart Boddam, 1792-1836) served more modestly in the Bombay Civil Service, and his grandson (another Rawson Hart Boddam, 1818-1836) only achieved the rank of Ensign in the 50^th Regiment the Bengal Native Infantry before dying at the age of 18, only three months after his father.)

Governor Boddam held the post from 1784 to 1788. His main claim to fame is that he was the first governor to be paid entirely by salary, at nearly £10,000 a year, a massive sum. It ensured that he could retire in great comfort to his new and stately home, redbrick Capel House north of London.

Capel House, Bulls Cross, near Enfield, the Seat of Rawson Hart Boddam Esq, in an engraving by J. Asperne in 1804 
(now Capel Manor Hoticultural College, 
which counts singer Kim Wilde among its alumni)

Bombay came under British rule after the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza in 1661. But only seven years later the British Crown passed control to the East India Company in return for a token annual rent of £10. The colony thrived to become the jewel in the Company’s crown, until Bengal (where the Baker boys later served) overtook it in importance in the mid 18^th century.

Boddam’s rule sits in a period of relative calm between the first two Anglo-Maratha wars, both of which saw the Company expandng its influence by defeating serious threats to its authority from a confederacy of independent Indian rulers. The first war had ended with the Treaty of Salbai which, among other things, guaranteed peace for twenty years. So Boddam probably had a fairly easy time of it in earning his £40,000.

Rawson Hart Boddam’s epitaph in Bath Abbey

He died, almost exactly 200 years ago, on the 30^th May 1812, in Bath in western England. I imagine there must have been a family home there in addition to the seat at Capel House. His son also died in Bath; and Bath is only a few miles from Bristol where his daughter Fanny’s future husband lived.

Fanny and Michael Castle had four children, two boys and two girls, before Fanny died of complications following the birth of the fourth. The boys were named after her parents Boddam and Tudor (her mother’s maiden name). The name of Tudor Castle recurs: my great uncle of that name was a promising poet before his early death in World War One; and Governor Boddam had a grandson called Tudor Castle Boddam, remembered on his memorial tablet in Bath Abbey.

Fanny and Michael's other son Boddam Castle, on the other hand, grew up to be a barrister and brought some shame on the family when he appeared in the Old Bailey in 1849 on the wrong side of the witness box. He stood accused of failing to pay maintenance for his illegitimate child. But that’s another story.

GODFREY EVAN BAKER (c1751-1786) AND THE HINDUSTANEE COFFEE HOUSE

My 5x great uncle Godfrey served alongside his brother William in the Bengal Army of the East India Company in the late 18^th century. Despite being court-martialed once for insubordination he continued to rise through the ranks to become a Captain. But in 1782 he was eventually persuaded to resign amidst accusations that he had held an entire native village to ransom. Is this how the British Empire was forged?

It was fairly common practice for Britons serving with the East India Company to find inventive ways of augmenting their modest Company pay. Godfrey, like his brother William who followed him in the post, was a quartermaster responsible for the purchase of supplies to the Bengal Army. William certainly set up his own enterprises from which to purchase those supplies, and presumably Godfrey pursued the same income-expanding policies. But extortion on a village scale seems to have been a scheme too far.

Dean Mahomed (1759-1851)

writer, restaurateur, therapist

Godfrey returned in disgrace to the city of Cork in his native Ireland, where his father (also Godfrey) was a prominent merchant. He brought with him the faithful companion of his years in India, Dean Mahomed, a muslim who had served him since the age of 12 when Baker first arrived in India as a fresh-faced cadet. Mahomet had risen to the rank of Subedar, the highest attainable by an Indian in the Bengal Army; but when Baker resigned Mahomed resigned with him in an act of loyal solidarity.

Back in Cork, Mahomed’s life took a remarkable series of twists and turns, bearing in mind that he was an Indian in Imperial Britain in the late 18^th century. He went to school, where he received a thoroughly British grounding in English language and literature. He applied what he had learned to the publication in 1794 of the first ever book written in English by an Indian, snappily titled The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a Series of Letters to a Friend.

Jane Mahomed, née Daly

“wife of Mr Mahomed, Shampooing Surgeon”

During his studies he fell in love and eloped with a fellow student, Jane Daly – a teenage member of the ruling white Protestant Ascendancy. Although you might expect this to have been a shocking event, it does not seem to have done Mahomed’s standing in local society any harm. In fact, the publication of his Travels was funded by advance subscriptions from many prominent Cork families. Today the book is regarded as a unique social record, a view of India by an Indian working for the occupying power. There is a superb modern edition with biographical commentary by Michael H Fisher, well worth tracking down.

After the death of his patron, Mahomed joined the household of Godfrey’s brother William. But when William got married in 1807, Dean and Jane Mahomed were no longer welcome there and they moved to London. In 1809 they opened what is now regarded as Britain first-ever Indian restaurant, the Hindustanee Coffee House at 34 George St. After some initial success, the venture went bankrupt in 1812 and the couple moved to Brighton.

Mahomed’s Baths

Brighton

There Mahomed established himself in perhaps the strangest role of his life, as a massage therapist of sorts, practicing what he called shampooing – not what you’re thinking, the word comes from the Hindi word “chhampa,” meaning to press. He opened Mahomed’s Baths, a bath house offering Indian oil massage and medicated vapour baths. The business thrived, bolstered by claims no worse than those of many quacks of the day. It even launched a branch in London run by one of Dean’s sons. But eventually the fashion for it declined; and Mahomed died in 1851 almost forgotten by the world.

Dean Mahomed deserves credit for his capacity to reinvent himself after setbacks. He led a life rich in variety – I’ve barely scratched the surface here – and as a writer, restaurateur and therapist pioneered the art of marketing “exotic” Indian culture to a western audience.

Uncle Godfrey himself did not live to see any of his old friend’s successes. Perhaps the shame of his dismissal from the Bengal Army sent him into physical decline. Perhaps the shock of the Irish climate was just too much after 13 years in India. He died only four years after his return to Cork, the year Dean and Jane got married.

COLONEL WILLIAM MASSY BAKER (c1759-1829) AND THE WOMEN IN HIS LIFE

Why do I write about all these people? Sometimes it’s because I know they have a story worth telling. Sometimes I pick on someone precisely because I know nothing about them – it’s a way of forcing myself to look deeper into their lives. Sometimes you think there just must be a story, and only by starting to write can you tease it out of them – it’s like thinking aloud to know what you’re thinking.

William Massy Baker’s brother Godfrey was my 5x great uncle, who was married to my 4x great grandfather Eyre Massy’s sister Margaret. The Massy and Baker families intermarried pretty regularly, hence William’s middle name. William and Godfrey both served in the Bengal Army, one of three private armies owned and operated by the British East India Company.

The flag of the East India Company

before (above), and after the 1800 Act of Union

Granted its Royal Charter in 1600 to trade in the sub-continent, the Company exploited its trade monopoly to become the administrative power in large parts of India. It operated more or less beyond the control of the British government for 100 years, making its owners, British merchants and aristocrats, very wealthy men. Only after the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8 was the British Crown forced to assume some direct responsibility for the colony.

This was all after William’s time. He was a quartermaster in the Army, responsible for the purchase and distribution of supplies of all kinds. It was position from which he was able to generate a great deal of personal wealth, setting up a number of private commercial enterprises to boost his basic army pay. When he came home to Cork (in Ireland, another British colony) on leave in 1796, he splashed out a massive £2500 on a large estate in nearby Glanmire. There he built a well-appointed mansion which, after the manner of the times, he named Fort William.

Fort William, Glanmire, Cork

Generating wealth wasn’t Baker’s only enterprise. In Calcutta in 1785, he arranged the christening of Eleanor, his lovechild with an Indian mistress. It’s not clear whether he brought either or both of them back with him in 1796, but he certainly returned to Calcutta for another tour of duty from 1800 to 1806. When he finally came home to Ireland, it was to make a “suitable” marriage, in 1807, with Mary Towgood Davies.

Mary, daughter of a protestant minister, took over the running of the Fort William household. As one may readily imagine, she was keen to give William a fresh start, a break with the past. It’s known that one Dean Mahomet, an Indian guest in the house, left very quickly at this time.

What became of Eleanor, and indeed her mother? One report I’ve read says Eleanor, now 22, got married to a James Swayne. I can’t find any confirmation of this; but one of William and Mary’s many children (at least eight, some say twelve) was christened James Swayne Baker. Another, rather surprisingly, was called Eleanor Davies Baker.

Troops of the Bengal Army c1785

In writing about Eleanor I came across the remarkable Dean Mahomet, and learned more about my 5x great uncle Godfrey. (More on them in a future posting.) But Eleanor is the story I wanted to tell here. Such Anglo-Indian relationships were no doubt common; and no doubt wives were expected to accept the past and present affairs of their husbands. But to call your children James Swayne Baker and Eleanor Davies Baker is a sign either of a very understanding wife or of a very insensitive husband. Since I first posted this I have learned that William did indeed bring home his lovechild, named (according to my source) not Eleanor but Eliza; and Eliza did marry James Swayne, in 1814.