Tight connections: international living
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (250) studies families found in Boscombe, 1901, who had connections with administration or commerce in colonial India. Micro-biographies show how the families illustrate different aspects of lifestyles experienced by people who occupied two cultural spaces in parallel.
Victorian Bournemouth (250): Hawkwood Road
Robinson-Wilkinson-Martin
This family nexus sprawled across three properties on Hawkwood Road. Tea and coffee provided their livelihood. Horace Robinson (1852-1929), an expat, appears to have worked on the Kairbetta tea estate Nilgiri Hills, Kotagiri. George Kelso Martin (1852-1928), a British Indian, helped establish Kairbetta. His daughter, Dorothy (1887-1967), stayed further down Hawkwood Road, at St Elmo’s. She may have attended the school run at Tennyson Hall by Elizabeth Robinson, Horace’s wife. Further along Hawkwood, at Cuolavin, lived Grace Wilkinson, Dorothy’s aunt (1862-1949), the wife of an Indian Civil Servant. Dorothy Martin would marry Colonel G.A.R. Spain, serving with the Indian military. Born in Manitoba, where his father, an expat, farmed, he would run Kairbetta after her father’s death. This family group combined involvement in both colonial administration and commerce. Later, World War I would claim some, Elizabeth’s son a VC, while administrative work in colonial Nigeria awaited Grace Wilkinson’s son.
Kindersley-Wormald-Moule
Elsewhere on Hawkwood (Weybourne) stayed Eleanor Kindersley. A solicitor’s daughter, born in London, she had married her husband, a planter, while in Madras. Eleanor and her husband had three daughters, two born in India, one in Weymouth, the hometown of her father. Meriel (1899-1923) married an expat who had a farm in the Nyeri area, Kenya, but she soon fell to malaria. Sister Doris (1887-1973) married a successful barrister in 1912, but her husband fell at Salonika in 1916, an extension of the Gallipoli campaign. One of their sons fell at El Alamein. The third girl, Phyllis (1893-1949), married a professor, born in Ning Bo, the son of a China missionary. Their daughter became the second wife of her cousin, the surviving son of her sister Doris. This family illustrates how the lives of such families wove between colonial activity, extensive combat, and close connections set against widespread geography.
Victorian Bournemouth (250): Westby Road
Clogstoun
Cuthbert Clogstoun, born in Hyderabad, at least the third generation of British Indians in his family, joined the Madras Police Department in 1882. He proceeded through the ranks to become Superintendent by 1901, rising later to Deputy Inspector-General. That year, while his family stayed in Algeria, Westby Road, Boscombe, he had travelled north to visit a couple living near Hull. An Indian connection applied, for the wife’s father, Henry Thoby Princep, had played an important role in the East India Company and, later, the Council for India. Thus, Cuthbert appeared to combine business with the pleasure of leave taken in England. He may have retired in 1908, choosing to settle in England. The next two census listings record the family in Ringwood and the New Forest. His probate listing, however, placed him in Bournemouth. His daughter, a spinster, continued living in Hampshire for many years, leaving a sizeable estate.
Pyper
This family consisted of a Scotsman and a woman native to Dorset, who married in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Daughter of a landed proprietor, Alice Pyper appears to have married as a teenager. Gordon Pyper grew tea. In 1901, Gordon perhaps remained on the plantation, while Alice stayed for a while at St Osyth’s, Westby Road. She had with her eight children, ranging in age from 21 to 1. A companion helped with this brood, all born in Sri Lanka. The size of this family suggests prosperity from Gordon’s tea business. Several of their children left large estates, two of the girls perhaps making marriages at a good social level. One son fell in Flanders (1915), but the other two lived long after this, at least one continuing his father’s line as a tea planter in Sri Lanka. Alice lived long after her husband, returning to Dorset in later years.
Victorian Bournemouth (250): Florence Road
Porter
Although a native of Calcutta, George Porter (1822-1906), staying at Glencoe, Boscombe, in 1901, spent much of his life in Melbourne. His father, an expat, had moved first to Penang before proceeding to Australia. There, the family prospered, with several members listed as solicitors. Nevertheless, George and his mother maintained active links with England. The 1881 census lists his wife, children, and his widowed mother living there. She appears to have maintained connections with Australia. Her house in Devon bore the name Toorak, after a suburb in Melbourne, while her income derived in part from Australian bank shares. George’s family stayed in Bedford, but the children returned to Australia, the boys becoming solicitors. By 1891, George had come to England, where he and his wife visited several places before settling in Boscombe. Thus, despite Indian origins, George Porter’s family became Australians, although their lives had a multinational framework.
Gibbs
Henry Metcalfe Gibbs, staying at Jannenfels, perhaps knew Cuthbert Clogstoun, both serving in the Indian Police. Henry, however, worked in Bombay, Superintendent by 1901, but would rise higher. The 1890s may have tested him well. Addressing religious strife and constant outbreaks of plague became the main tasks for the local police. A native of that city, Henry’s father, a barrister, had served in the Bombay Civil Service. The Gibbs family had an earlier association with Bournemouth; his brother, Upton, a clergyman, a native of there. The Gibbs family followed other British Indian families in two respects: global reach; close internal relationships. Henry’s brother Upton emigrated to the USA, noted in Oregon, in 1910. A niece, daughter of a general serving in India, stayed with the Gibbs in Boscombe. The Gibbs’s younger daughter later emigrated to Hobart, Tasmania. Here she married a surgeon, then a widower, his first wife her elder sister.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (250) uses micro-biographies to show that British Indians in the late nineteenth century had connections to India, British India, and England. They built relationships in England through education, visits, and settlement, while frequent sea travel was common. Their complex cultural links led them to form strong family and business ties.
References
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