The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh

by Colley, Linda.

  79. On Burke and Shee, see Correspondence of Edmund Burke, III, p.280; VI, p.11; IOL, H/21, fol. 24.

  80. GS’s memorial c.1788, BL Add.MS 60338, fol. 25; IOL, MSS Eur E13C, fol. 655.

  81. The classic account of Philip Francis’s political ideas, which was formulated too early however to address how his attitudes to women’s place fitted crucially into his wider politics, is R. Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal (1996 edn).

  82. S. Weitzman, Warren Hastings and Philip Francis (Manchester, 1929), p.288.

  83. IOL, MSS Eur E13C, fol. 654; MSS Eur E19, fol. 32.

  84. J. Parkes and H. Merivale (eds), Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis (2 vols, 1867), II, p.16; IOL, MSS Eur E14, fols 415–16.

  85. This paragraph and the next are based on Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta, pp.242–59. This is the most comprehensive source available on the Grand–Francis affair, but it contains inaccuracies as well as elements of bias. I am grateful to Sadan Jha for also checking on my behalf the rough notes on the trial made by Justice Hyde, who was one of the three presiding judges in the Supreme Court. These are available on microfilm in the Rare Books section of the National Library and at the Victoria Memorial Library in Calcutta. Hyde also compiled a far more detailed legal notebook, but this has been lost.

  86. Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta, p.265.

  87. Ibid., p.260.

  88. Before he left for the Cape, Grand took a Company position in Patna, where 198 ‘distinct complaints from the inhabitants … of various exactions and oppressions’ were made against him: IOL, O/6/1, fols 200–1.

  89. For what the city could be like for its disadvantaged, see D. Ghosh, ‘Household Crimes and Domestic Order: Keeping the Peace in Colonial Calcutta, c.1770–c.1840’, Modern Asian Studies 38 (2004), pp.599–623.

  90. Parkes and Merivale, Memoirs, I, 399. It was Francis’s reactions to the ‘corrupted’ women of Italy that prompted these observations.

  91. IOL, MSS Eur E 13A, fol. 15; BL Add.MS 47781, fol. 17.

  92. IOL, P/2/28, fols 278–81; Busteed, Echoes, p.252.

  93. Busteed, Echoes, pp.242–51, 259.

  94. For the leading male actors in the trial – Francis, Grand, and their foremost judge – see Guha, A Rule of Property, pp.58–90; B.N. Pandey, The Introduction of English Law into India: The Career of Elijah Impey in Bengal, 1774–1783 (Calcutta, 1967); and G.F. Grand, Narrative of the Life of a Gentleman (Cape of Good Hope, 1814). Catherine Grand merits, but has yet to receive, a transcontinental study to herself.

  95. IOL, MSS Eur Photo Eur 175/2, fol. 201; Busteed, Echoes, pp.252–7.

  96. IOL, MSS Eur E14, fol. 414; MSS Eur E23, fols 298 and 302.

  97. Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, 2–9 February 1782.

  98. Syrett, Shipping and the American War, pp.44, 140–50; Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VI, p.11.

  99. GS to EM, March 1783, BL Add.MS 60338, fols 54–5.

  100. Ibid; for the marriage, see IOL, N/1/2, fol. 243, and MSS Eur E4, fols 231–8.

  101. M.A. Shee, The Life of Sir Martin Archer Shee (2 vols, 1860), I, p.104; Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VI, p.11.

  102. B. Francis and E. Keary (eds), The Francis Letters (2 vols, 1901), II, pp.368–9.

  103. BL Add.MS 60338, fol. 164; for the scale of GS’s commercial profits by the early 1780s, see his letters to G.G. Ducarel, Gloucestershire RO, D2091/F14/10, 16–17.

  Ending – and Continuing

  1. FB, fols 28–32; Burrish Crisp included some of the details of his mother’s mortal illness in his epitaph for her: The Complete Monumental Register (Calcutta, 1815), p.34.

  2. Thus in 1776 Mary Mustell of Chittagong left two hundred rupees in her will to her Indian physician: IOL, P/154/58, fol. 45.

  3. Frances Burney, Journals and Letters, ed. P. Sabor and L.E. Troide (2001), pp.442–3; and for the medical procedures see J.S. Olson, Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer and History (Baltimore, MD, 2002).

  4. FB, fols 28–32; Complete Monumental Register, p.34.

  5. GS to G. Ducarel, 27 November 1784, Gloucestershire RO, D2091/F14/10, 14; EM’s death was announced in the Calcutta Gazette on 5 May 1785.

  6. Complete Monumental Register, p.34. The original position of EM’s grave, plot 1094, is shown in South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta: Register of Graves and Standing Tombs, from 1767 (BACSA, Putney, 1992). I am grateful to Rosie Llewellyn Jones for information on the disappearance of EM’s gravestone. Analyses of the imperial iconography and intent of South Park cemetery have sometimes failed to consider that many of the modest monuments that once made up the bulk of the tombs are now lost.

  7. FB, passim. Later members of this family showed a similar concern to collect and deploy artifacts in order both to represent vast distances and to render them more intelligible. See, for instance, the list of James Milbourne Marsh’s household contents in Australia in 1884: Mitchell Library, MSS. 1177.

  8. JM’s account of his career: NMM, BGR/35; JM is quoted in R. White, The Case of the Agent to the Settlers on the Coast of Yucatan (1793), pp.35–6.

  9. See the account of this Marsh grandson on http://www.jjhc.info/marshgeorge1868.htm.

  10. FB, entries for 1790–91; M. Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (Sydney, 1989), p.236.

  11. Note by JM, dated 20 September 1791, at the front of IJ.

  12. For GS’s support of the Union, see BL Add.MS 33106, fols 159–60; and D. Wilkinson, “ ‘How Did They Pass the Union?”: Secret Service Expenditure in Ireland, 1799–1804’, History (1997), p. 240.

  13. Particulars of a Very Improvable Estate, Lockley House (1812), Hertfordshire RO, D/EJnZ21.

  14. The younger Shee’s career and friendship with Palmerston can be traced in BL Add.MSS 60341–2; the contents of the Shees’ London house are listed in GL, MS 11936/471/921679.

  15. S. Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), p.7.

  16. A possibly over-drawn report on the decay of Dhaka’s textile industry by 1800 is in IOL, H/456f; for the mounting pressures on Sidi Muhammad, see N.A. Stillman, ‘A New Source for Eighteenth-Century Moroccan History’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 57 (1975), pp. 463–86.

  17. Slightly different chronologies for this decline are offered in J. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden, 2002), and F. Trivellato, ‘Trading Diasporas and Trading Networks in the Early Modern Period: A Sephardic Partnership of Livorno in the Mediterranean, Europe and Portuguese India c.1700–50’, Brown University Ph.D diss., 2004. Both scholars agree that, by the end of the eighteenth century, there had been a marked reduction in ‘the general importance of the Sephardic trans-Atlantic and international trade network’ (Israel, pp.38–9).

  18. Most recently in N. Fergusson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York, 2003); for some interesting remarks by contrast on the tensions between empire and transcontinental economic linkages, see H. James, ‘The Vulnerability of Globalization’, German Historical Institute Bulletin 35 (2004), pp.1–11.

  19. F.G. Dawson, The First Latin American Debt Crisis: The City of London and the 1822–25 Loan Bubble (New Haven, CT, 1990); I am grateful to J. Heath-Caldwell for information on William Marsh.

  20. Galsworthy referred to ‘that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature’: The Forsyte Saga (New York, 1933), p.3.

  21. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York, 1959), pp.4–5. As Mary Midgley puts it, ‘There can’t be a single, comprehensive global story: all stories are partial’: B. Mazlish and R. Buultjens (eds), Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, Co., 1993), p.43.

  22. By 1804 he was second judge of the court of appeal at Dhaka. His will is at IOL, L/AG/34/29/23.

  23. IOL, N/1/4, fol.125; according to this register, John
Henry had been born in 1789.

  24. John Henry Crisp’s career is summarized in Historical Records of the Survey of India. Volume III: 1815 to 1830 (Dehra Dun, U.P., 1954), pp.434–5. His experiments on Sumatra, where he worked closely with Stamford Raffles, are detailed in IOL, MS Eur G51/30 and F/4/760, item 20656.

  25. IOL, F/4/1855, item 78480; and see D. Ghosh, ‘Making and Un-Making Loyal Subjects: Pensioning Widows and Educating Orphans in Early Colonial India’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 31 (2003), pp.1–28.

  MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

  a) PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

  AUSTRALIA

  Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

  PXA 1012: Samuel Wallis sketchbook on Dolphin

  MS 1177: James Milbourne Marsh papers

  ENGLAND

  Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Service, Bedford Wrest Park (Lucas) MSS

  Gloucestershire RO, Gloucester

  Ducarel MSS

  Hampshire RO, Winchester Wills

  Hertfordshire RO, Hertford

  D/EJn/Z21: Lockleys sale particulars

  National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

  ADM B: Board of Admiralty in-letters

  ADM/L/G and K: Lieutenants’ logs

  BGR/35: Account of John Marsh

  HWK/1–7: Papers of Admiral Hawke

  JOD/7: John Stimson’s Barbary narrative

  JOD/157/1–3: Journal of Admiral Sir Roger Curtis

  MRF/14: Journal of the siege of Menorca (microfilm)

  MS 83/135: John Russell papers

  VAU/2: Commissioner at Gibraltar letterbook

  National Archives, Kew

  ADM 1: Records of the Admiralty

  ADM 7: Admiralty miscellanea

  ADM 33: Pay books

  ADM 36: Ships’ musters

  ADM 42: Yard pay books

  ADM 51: Captains’ logs

  ADM 106: Navy Board records

  CO 91: Gibraltar original correspondence

  CO 142: Jamaica miscellanea

  CO 174: Minorca original correspondence

  CO 389: Gibraltar and Minorca

  FO 52: Morocco original correspondence

  MPQ: Maps and plans

  PC: Records of the Privy Council

  PROB 11: Wills

  SP 44: Entry books

  SP 46: Supplementary domestic papers

  SP 71: Barbary States original correspondence

  SP 79: State papers, Genoa

  SP 94: State papers, Spain

  T1: Treasury Board papers

  T77: East Florida Claims Commission

  Liverpool RO, Liverpool

  Earle papers

  British Library, London

  a) MANUSCRIPT ROOM

  Additional Manuscripts

  11643: Plan of Agent Victualler’s house, Chatham

  12427–35: Charles Long papers

  23638: Minorca papers, 1721–56

  24157–79: Papers of Lord Grantham, Ambassador to Madrid

  35895: Minorca enquiry papers

  47781–3: Philip Francis Papers

  60337–42: Shee papers

  King’s MS 197: List of Persian vocabulary

  b) INDIA OFFICE LIBRARY: RECORDS

  Minutes of Court of Directors: B/84–B/94

  Home correspondence: E/1/60

  East India Company correspondence with India: E/4/304 and 624

  Records of the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India:

  F/4/760: Mission of Captain J.H.Crisp

  F/4/1855, item 78480: Madras Female Orphan Asylum papers

  Factory records of Dacca: G/15/8–21

  Home miscellaneous papers: H/21, 122, 224, 456

  Biographical series: O/5/29

  Bengal: Public consultations: P/2/9–11; P/2/28

  Proceedings of Mayor’s Court, Calcutta: P/154/57

  Bengal Revenue consultations: P/49/61–68

  Inventories and wills: L/AG/1/1/8–10; L/AG/34/27/1–2; L/AG/34/29/23

  Marine Department records: L/MAR/C/891

  Madras Army Lists: L/MIL/11/1

  Madras returns: N/2/1

  c) INDIA OFFICE LIBRARY: EUROPEAN MANUSCRIPTS

  Eur D. 1073: Papers of James Rennell

  Eur E 4: Papers of Margaret Fowke

  Eur D18, E 13–19, F5: Papers of Philip Francis

  Eur E 25: Papers of Alexander Mackrabie

  Eur G51/30: Madras Observatory papers

  Photo Eur 32: Memoir of Margaret Elizabeth Benn-Walsh, 6 vols

  Photo Eur 175: Memoirs of William Hickey, 4 vols

  MSS Eur/Orme OV.202

  Guildhall Library, London

  Records of Sun Fire Office

  MS 05038: Churchwardens’ accounts, Parish of All Hallows, Bread Street

  MSS 05396 and 5419: Rate books, Parish of St Botolph, Bishopsgate

  Lambeth Palace Library, London

  Court of Arches records

  Postal Museum and Archive, London

  Receiver General’s entry book

  Wellcome Library, London

  MSS. 7628–9: George Marsh MSS (CB)

  Bodleian Library, Oxford

  MSS Eng.lett.c.81: Palmer MSS

  Dep.d.485: Mary Morgan MSS

  INDIA

  National Library, Kolkata

  Hyde MSS (microfilm)

  Victoria Memorial Library, Rare Books Room, Kolkata

  Hyde MSS

  ISLE OF MAN

  Manx National Heritage Library, Douglas

  Goldie-Taubman papers

  Sir George Moore papers

  JAMAICA

  Island Records Office, Twickenham

  Parish registers

  Wills

  Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town

  IB/11/1/1A: Patents to grants of land

  IB/11/3: Inventories

  IB/11/24: Powers of attorney

  IB/11/17: Letters of administration

  IB/5/9 to 11: House of Assembly journals

  2/19/1–4: Port Royal vestry minutes

  SCOTLAND

  National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh

  CS226/5171: Kirkpatricks vs Crisp and Warren

  National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

  MS. 5599, 5619: Liston correspondence

  SPAIN

  Arxiu Històric de Protocols de Barcelona

  Sebastià Prats papers

  UNITED STATES

  William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  Thomas Shadwell letterbook

  Charles E. Young Research Library, Special Collections, University of

  California, Los Angeles

  Bound manuscripts collection, 170/604:

  [Elizabeth Marsh], ‘Narrative of her Captivity in Barbary’ (FCMS)

  [Elizabeth Marsh], ‘Journal of a Voyage by sea from Calcutta to Madras, and of a journey from there back to Dacca’ (IJ)

  Library of Congress, Washington

  Microfilm 22671: Governor James Grant papers

  b) PRIVATE OWNERSHIP

  George Marsh Papers

  Marsh Family Book (FB)

  ‘A Journey to Hamburg’

  Family Bible and Prayer Book

  Miscellaneous papers

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The global span of this book has made me more than usually indebted to the expertise, criticism and aid of very many friends, and to the kindness of even more learned and benevolent strangers.

  For Elizabeth Marsh’s Caribbean origins, I am grateful for the help of Vincent Carretta, Richard Drayton, Barry Higman, Nuala Zahedieh, and especially to James Robertson and Trevor Burnard.

  For information on the Royal Navy and matters maritime, I thank Daniel Baugh, Jonathan Coad, Margaret Hunt, N.A.M. Rodger, and especially Roger Knight.

  For Elizabeth’s Mediterranean and Maghrebi worlds, I have benefited from the expertise of Amira Bennison, Khalid Bekkaoui, Wolfgang Kaiser, Frank Stewart and Madeline Zilfi.

  For help
in reconstructing James Crisp’s European and transatlantic dealings, I wish to thank Michela D’Angelo, Josep Fradera, Christopher French, Derek Keene, Kenneth Morgan, Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Daniel Schafer, Francesca Trivellato, and above all James Amelang and David Hancock.

  At different times, Susan Bayly, Anthony Farrington, Peter Marshall, Om Prakash, Giorgio Riello and John Styles have supplied me with valuable aid in the Asian portions of this book. I am particularly grateful in this regard to the close readings of Maya Jasanoff and Durba Ghosh.

  Conversations with Natalie Zemon Davis, Hermione Lee, Felicity Nussbaum, Cassandra Pybus, Emma Rothschild and Jonathan Spence have helped me to think more clearly about biography, life-writings and history.

  For encouraging me to think globally, I am grateful to Chris Bayly, Peter Coclanis, Paul Kennedy and Patrick O’Brien.

  J.J. Heath-Caldwell has proved consistently generous in sharing his deep knowledge of the Marsh family and in introducing me to his remarkable family website: http://www.jjhc.info.

  Benjamin Heller, Antonio Garcia, Sadan Jha, Katrina Olds, Suzanne Podhurst and Hannah Weiss have been invaluable researchers and proofreaders.

  I began this project when I was Senior Leverhulme Research Professor and School Professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. I am most grateful to all my colleagues there, and especially to the generosity of Tony Giddens and Barry Supple. Crucial portions of this book were written when I was a Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of ANU in Canberra in 2005, and I wish to thank Ian Donaldson and Iain McCalman for giving me the opportunity to spend time in that wonderful place. I benefited too from the award in 2006 of a GlaxoSmithKline Senior Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, where Geoffrey Harpham and Kent Mullikin and the rest of the staff and fellows provided me with a rich environment in which to think and write. My colleagues and students in the Department of History at Princeton, most civilized of universities, have afforded me boundless support and patience and ideas while I was completing this book.

  As my list of manuscript sources consulted will make clear, it would be impossible for me to mention by name every archivist who has helped me in the ordeal of tracking Elizabeth Marsh. I am left, as ever, in awe of the enormous time, trouble and thought that the staff of records offices and libraries in different parts of the world willingly devote to people like myself.