The below article was published in the mail online in the UK and has been copied here for the sole purpose for the spread of knowledge of a lesser known fact of life during the British Raj in India.
Such were the fates of the Fishing Fleet who came to India in their thousands, right from the first days of Britain’s trade with India in the 17th century, to the twilight of the Raj as India headed toward independence in 1947.
Once in India, those who were either returning to their parents ‘up country’, or who had found a husband who lived far from the coastal ports, faced long, often arduous journeys by bullock cart, camel or elephant.
Both mothers and children were made miserable by these separations. During the school holidays the children were left at their boarding school, farmed out to relatives, or lodged with paid guardians.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2169532/Husband-hunters-Raj-How-fishing-fleet-1920s-society-girls-drawn-sexual-intrigues-India-steamier-climate.html#ixzz55SSeeoXb
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Cleaving their way through the sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean, the ships bore their cargo into port.
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| British Indian flag is being raised at the Berlin Olympic Village in 1936. |
Whether at Colombo, on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) or one of the Indian ports such as Madras, Calcutta or Bombay, the cargo was the same: hordes of eager young women, sweltering in the corsets, stockings and flannel underwear they were required to wear beneath their dresses — some still suffering from sea sickness as they staggered down the gangway into the searing heat.
These were the girls of the ‘Fishing Fleet’, and they had come to India for the purpose of landing their catch — a husband.
If they succeeded in their quest, they might soon find themselves ensconced in a spacious bungalow with a retinue of servants, as the wife of a senior official or officer.
Alternatively, if their beau was posted ‘up country’, they could end up eking out a miserable existence in a remote jungle or mountain range, fighting off the ravages of termites, cholera and bubonic plague.
Such were the fates of the Fishing Fleet who came to India in their thousands, right from the first days of Britain’s trade with India in the 17th century, to the twilight of the Raj as India headed toward independence in 1947.
Now, a fascinating new book by historian and former Daily Mail writer Anne de Courcy chronicles the lives of these intrepid women.
For generations, young men had sailed out to India as soldiers, bureaucrats and businessmen. Once there, some took Indian wives and mistresses and sired children with them. Others sated their lust in the numerous brothels that sprang up to serve the British.
In regimental towns, the brothels were even licensed and the prostitutes inspected for sexually-transmitted diseases and compulsorily treated, as they were back home in Britain.
But the Contagious Diseases Act, which required the examination of any woman suspected of being a prostitute near a garrison, was repealed in India in 1888, after which rates of venereal disease soared, incapacitating almost half the British soldiery (only soldiers, not officers, were allowed to use brothels).
So in the eyes of the authorities, shipping out British girls to keep their menfolk happy during their long exile made perfect sense. The East India Company — which effectively ruled over much of India until 1857, when the country came under British government rule — even helped provide the men with brides by paying the passage of single girls to come to India.
In 1671, 20 girls went out to Bombay on the promise of an allowance of £300 a year (about £25,000 today) for life from the Company if they married there. If they misbehaved in any way, they would be put on a diet of bread and water and shipped straight home. Any who did behave themselves, but failed to find a husband after a year, would be sent back in disgrace as a ‘returned empty’.
A bride of the British Raj: Iris Butler on her wedding day in 1927, one of the girls of the 'Fishing Fleet'
As a result, girls felt under huge pressure to marry the first eligible man who asked them. Many courtships were conducted within days. The first few nights ashore, the girls with the smartest social credentials would be invited to dinner by the ship’s captain. All the eligible British men in the neighbourhood would be asked along — young and old — to look over the cargo.
The prettiest girls would be snapped up quickly, the plainer ones would have to try their luck in India’s more remote stations, in the hopes of finding a man sufficiently desperate for a wife to stave off loneliness and sexual frustration.
By the 20th century, the advent of steamships and quicker voyages meant that men could more easily return home on leave to find a suitable bride. But with the desperate shortage of eligible men at home after World War I, shiploads of hopeful girls still continued to traverse the Indian Ocean in search of a husband.
Some were daughters returning to their parents in India after ten years at school in Britain. For others, it was a journey into the unknown, and many who came out on the steamships were innocent and unworldly.
Twenty-one-year-old Violet Hanson came to India in 1920 to escape the shame of a brief, disastrous marriage at home. She had married her brother’s tutor, but having never been taught the ‘facts of life,’ it was only months after the wedding that Violet saw a doctor and learned that she was still a virgin.
It transpired that her husband was homosexual. So the marriage was annulled, and Violet was packed off to India with an aunt. She soon became engaged to a handsome young officer, and the shame of her first marriage was expunged.
In the days of sail, the voyage could take months and was fraught with danger — primarily pirates and storms. In 1840, one ship coming into Bombay sank with the loss of 80 troops and all the women and children passengers, while the crowds on the shore watched helplessly.
Steamships, which took over from sail in the mid-19th century, were safer, faster and more comfortable, as well as romantic. Many a Fishing Fleet girl became engaged during moonlit strolls on deck with a handsome young man, although not all shipboard romances ended happily.
Enid Shillingford, who went to India in 1921 aged 24, fell in love during the journey with a handsome young officer, who duly proposed. They planned to wed when they reached Ceylon, but two days before their arrival Enid was informed that the man was already married.
Humiliated and heartbroken she took the next ship back to England. Five years later, she went back and this time was luckier. She fell in love with another gentleman on board, and was married on arrival.
Once in India, those who were either returning to their parents ‘up country’, or who had found a husband who lived far from the coastal ports, faced long, often arduous journeys by bullock cart, camel or elephant.
The advent of the railways made these journeys easier, but they could still take several days and the trains were stiflingly hot in summer. When Edwina Ashley, later Lady Mountbatten, travelled through India in temperatures of around 50C the train door handles were too hot to touch.
Heat was not the only hazard. Olive Crofton was travelling by train to meet her new husband in 1920 — he had gone ahead to prepare their marital home — when a man began climbing through her compartment window with a large knife and heavy stick.
There had been a spate of robberies and murders on the railways, so her husband had instructed her to pack a revolver.
She grabbed it, pointed it at him and asked him coolly, in Urdu: ‘Do you want to be shot?’ He threw himself backwards through the window and troubled her no more.
As well as getting to grips with the climate, there was the rigid social etiquette that governed Raj life.
People were seated at dinners according to rank. Single girls had to be chaperoned at all times. And British women must on no account mix with Indians, other than servants.
The exceptions to this rule were the maharajahs, the hereditary rulers of India’s princely states who had surrendered power for fabulous wealth.
Their palaces were opulent beyond compare, they wore jewels and dazzling garments, even their elephants were painted in gorgeous colours. One maharajah had 52 Rolls-Royces. They entertained on a lavish scale.
Rosita Forbes met the Maharajah of Jodhpur in 1930, and described his fabulous palace with writing table sets encrusted with precious jewels and children’s balls set with rubies. He had a cap made of the finest solitaire diamonds.
While white girls might accept a maharajah’s hospitality, inter-racial marriage, even with a royal prince, remained unthinkable and forbidden by the Viceroy. ‘I was told who was within my marriage range and who wasn’t,’ remembered Iris James. ‘Anybody, however old and decrepit, bald or dull, was a possible husband, as long as he was white. Anybody with the slightest touch of colour wasn’t.’
One girl, Florry Bryan, defied this convention, falling in love with the wealthy Maharajah of Patiala. They began an affair in 1893 and, finding that she was pregnant, wed in secret, scandalising British and Indian society, both of which shunned Florry.
She gave birth to a son, who died in infancy. Florry passed away in 1896, and her husband soon followed her to her grave.
A more common scandal was adultery. Every summer, the wives and children of British officials would make their way up to the hill stations to escape the worst of the heat, while their husbands continued to toil away on the burning plains, joining them on leave when they could.
These hill stations, such as Simla, described as a place where ‘every Jack has somebody else’s Jill’, became hotbeds of extra-marital intrigue. ‘Perhaps it was the mountain air that caused so many women to cast away their inhibitions,’ pondered John Masters, a young Gurkha officer. ‘Perhaps the friendly unfamiliar wood fires burning on the hearths warmed their blood and made them think with fervour of romps on tiger skin divans.’
Not all of them got away with their behaviour. One man became suspicious when his wife kept returning late from dances in Simla with his best friend, a cavalry officer.
Once, when they were all staying at the same hotel, he burst into his friend’s room, and on finding him in bed with his wife, set about him with a poker. The cavalry officer was later posted to a department called Remounts, to general amusement.
Many latter-day Fishing Fleet girls fondly recalled their time as one big party. Katherine Welford, who went to India aged 19 in 1932, recalled that during an eight-day visit to Madras she went out with eight different men.
Iris Butler, whose brother Rab became a leading Conservative politician, eventually Chancellor of the Exchequer, also recalled staying with her parents in Simla and going dancing 26 nights in a row, ‘after which I fell asleep at one of my mother’s official dinners when sitting next to a very woolly old judge, for which I was afterwards severely reprimanded.
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| In 1617, two unlikely travellers, Mariam Begum and Frances Steele (née Webbe), arrived at the busy port of Surat on board an East India Company ship called the Anne. |
Another girl, Bethea Field, was so desperate to attend a dance several miles away — at which there would be lots of single men — that, faced with a lack of transport, she gamely hitched up her long satin dress and rode there on a camel.
Girls who did marry, but ended up in remote outposts, could expect a very different life to the whirl of balls, polo matches and tiger hunts that characterised life in the larger stations.
Sheila Hingston married a tea planter and went to live in almost total isolation in the Elephant Hills in southern India. She and her husband still changed into evening dress for supper every night, however, because: ‘It was felt one must keep up standards and not let oneself go native.’
Sheila survived smallpox and avoided bubonic plague, but battled loneliness and boredom for the 18 years she lived there. To see the nearest white woman, she had to walk five miles through the tea plantations.
Another source of anguish for the girls who successfully landed their ‘catch’ was that, when their children reached the age of six, they were expected to send them back to school in Britain and would seldom see them over the next ten years.
Both mothers and children were made miserable by these separations. During the school holidays the children were left at their boarding school, farmed out to relatives, or lodged with paid guardians.
Despite such sacrifices, many of the Fishing Fleet came to love India, the breathtaking sunsets over the mountains, the squawking of peacocks and parrots, the chattering of monkeys in the garden and the thrill of hunting tigers atop an elephant.
If they did return to Britain when their husbands retired, it felt, in Iris Butler’s words, ‘similar to bereavement’.
For years afterwards they would live off the memories of ‘the honey smell of the fuzz-buzz flowers, of thorn trees in the sun . . . more alive and vivid than anything in the West’.
THE FISHING FLEET: HUSBAND HUNTING IN THE RAJ by Anne de Courcy is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on July 12 at £20.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2169532/Husband-hunters-Raj-How-fishing-fleet-1920s-society-girls-drawn-sexual-intrigues-India-steamier-climate.html#ixzz55SSeeoXb
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