SIR HENRY, LADY LAWRENCE & THE LAWRENCE ASYLUMS

 SIR HENRY, LADY LAWRENCE & THE LAWRENCE ASYLUMS 

Honoria Lawrence's role in shaping the character and temperament of Henry Lawrence was immense as also her contributions to his literary and philanthropic work. This of course included establishing the Lawrence Aslyums for the children, especially orphans, of British soldiers posted in India. 

The Lawrences first thought about setting up asylums for the children of British soldiers in India when Henry was the Resident in Nepal from 1843. 

An interesting fact is that Lady Lawrence was probably the first white woman to step into the remote kingdom of Nepal. 

Frederick Gibbon wrote, "As Major Lawrence and his wife sat in their balcony at Khatmandu, drinking in the pure bracing air and rejoicing in the beauty around them, their hearts went out to the little ones in the plains, the children of the European soldiers who were being dragged about from cantonment to cantonment , their strength and energy sapped by the sun, wasted by fever, sickening in the stifling night time; and their desire to benefit and safeguard the children now began to take definite shape " Source:  "The Lawrences Of The Punjab",by Frederick Gibbon,: published by J M Dent & Co, 1908. 

                                                         Henry Lawrence (1806-1857)

                                                 Honoria Lawrence ( 1808-1854) 

They developed the idea and saw their dream come true with the establishment of the first Lawrence Asylum in Sanawar in 1847. Naturally, this got the most attention from Sir Henry and Lady Lawrence as it was planned and built in their lifetime.  

Sir Henry and Lady Honoria were largely instrumental in framing the rules for this asylum, including determining the priority list for admission covered in the previous blog post.

Ed: While we refer to them as Sir Henry and Lady Honoria, for convenience, it must be clarified that he was actually knighted in 1848

The Lawrence Asylum at Sanawar was formally inaugurated by Lord Hardinge, the Governor General and Viceroy of India on October 28, 1848 . Sir Henry was closely involved in its management till his death in 1857. This, the oldest of The Lawrence Asylums, continues till this day as the Lawrence School, Sanawar.

 Sir Henry moved to then Rajputana as The Governor General's Agent in 1853. He and his wife actively oversaw the establishment of The Lawrence Asylum at Mount Aboo (present day: Mount Abu) till tragedy struck in January 1854. Lady Honoria Lawrence passed away on January 15, aged 45. The Asylum was formally inaugurated on December 12, 1854, almost as a memorial to her. It was the smallest of The Lawrence Asylums and finally closed down in December 1950. 

His next assignment saw Sir Henry move to Lucknow as the Chief Commissioner of the Oudh province. It was here that he died in 1857. The Asylum in Ootacamund established in 1858 was the first to be set up in his memory. He had always wished that an asylum be set up in the Nilgiri Hills in South India similar to the ones set up in Sanawar and Mount Abu. This, today, is Our School- The Lawrence School, Lovedale. 

The fourth Lawrence Asylum in British India was established in Ghora Gali near Murree in 1860, again in the memory of Sir Henry Lawrence. This went to Pakistan following the Partition of India in 1947. It continues till today as  The Lawrence College. 

Sir John William Kayne wrote about Sir Henry: " There is a monument to his memory in the great metropolitan cathedral of St Paul; but the grandest monument of all is to be found in the Asylums which bear his name."

Source:  “Lives of Indian Officers: Major D’Arcy Todd; Sir Henry Lawrence; General Neill; General John Nicholson” by Sir John William Kayne; published by David Bogue, 1880 

The monument referred to by Sir John is the one made by J G Lough in St Paul's Cathedral, London. It shows Sir Henry and Lady Lawrence welcoming orphan children with open arms. 

This picture is from The Victorian Web: Literature, History, and Culture in the Age of Victoria. published with the kind permission and courtesy of Dr Jaqueline Banerjee. 

 

THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN INDIA & THE LAWRENCE ASYLUMS

THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN INDIA & THE LAWRENCE ASYLUMS 

Sir Henry Lawrence, aided and abetted by his wife, Lady Honoria Lawrence, established The Lawrence Asylums in India with the aim to better the life of children of British soldiers serving in India, especially the orphans of soldiers who had died in service. 

As we have seen in Book 1 of "Glimpses of a Glorious Past: An Informal History of The Lawrence School, Lovedale":-

"For growing children, especially orphans, there could be few places worse than the barracks of the East India Company scattered across its various cantonment towns in India in the first half of the 19 th century. The British soldier led a rough life and though the Church of England did its best to teach him to follow the faith and live by it, many British soldiers were prone to bouts of depression, drunkenness and womanizing. These resulted in a rather sordid barrack room life for the orphans of British soldiers who died in the course of duty, either on active service under the Colours or due to bouts of diseases which frequently took their toll resulting in clusters of graves and tomb stones dotting dusty remote parts of a land far away from what old India hands called Home. 

British society in India had a well-defined pecking order. While the officer’s wife, the “memsahib” enjoyed the luxury of living in well-kept bungalows with servants at her beck and call, the soldier’s wife lived in far worse conditions in barracks amidst ribaldry and blasphemy. While the barrack room boys were expected to join the regiments as soldiers or as tradesmen such as farriers and blacksmiths, the girls had far less opportunities and faced greater hardships. Considering the very low proportion of English women in India in those days, the barrack room girls invariably got married at young ages, often in their teens to soldiers far older than them. 

 It was common for young British girls, often widows, to marry older widower soldiers. Rudyard Kipling, the eminent British poet of his times, has captured this so beautifully in the old barrack room ballad, "Soldier, Soldier."

Children were born to these young girls and often they found themselves widowed early in life as soldiering was a hard occupation for the ordinary British soldier. He could as easily fall to an enemy bullet as he could to disease and illnesses that haunted them. The young widow then frequently re-married or simple lived with another soldier. Some women went back to England as ladies maids after a spell in India. Here too the Standing Orders mentioned earlier warned the troops of this eventuality. “Many cases of the greatest distress having occurred in consequence of the wives of soldiers being induced when in India, to come home as servants to ladies, trusting to get a free passage back, the Commandant feels it necessary to warn the women for their own sakes against such a practice, as the East India Company will of course not be the expense of sending them out a second time.” 

All in all, life in the barracks was rather squalid and shocked Lawrence and his wife’s sense of dignity.

They established the first Lawrence Asylum in Sanawar, near Kasauli  in  present day Himachal Pradesh in 1847.  This was followed by the one at Mt Abu in present day Rajasthan in 1854. .

After Sir Henry's death in 1857, two more Lawrence Asylums were established in his memory. The one at Ootacamund in the Nilgiris in 1858 and the last in 1860 in Ghora Galli , near Murree in present day Pakistan. 

Who were entitled to admission to the Lawrence asylums? It was clearly stated that the Principal would decide keeping in mind prescribed conditions. Children should be between the ages of 5 and 12 with preference being given to children of pure European parentage. 

First priority was to orphans of British officers and soldiers who have died on field service. 

Next was to orphans of British officers and soldiers who have died on the active list. 

The third priority was to children of serving British officers and soldiers on the active list. 

Troops of the East India Company's Bengal Army 

Since presumably many ex-servicemen joined the police, the next priority was for the Children of British officers and soldiers in Police service. 

Then came Orphans of British officers and soldiers who had died as pensioners or since their transfer to the reserve, followed by children of British officers and soldiers who were pensioners or transferred to the reserve. 

The last priority was to children of officers and soldiers of the Auxiliary Forces which comprised Europeans and Eurasians, mainly Anglo-Indians.

For a quick overview of the Armies of the East India Company, read this article from the National Army Museum.

Cadets at the Company's Military Academy at Addiscombe 1859

What was the life of the British soldier in India like in those far away years? 

This article in Find My Past is about life on board a troop ship used to ferry soldiers out to India in the 1890s. Tommy Atkins (often shorted to just Tommy) is the usual name given to the ordinary British soldier.

Another interesting book to read is "Armies Of The East India Company, 1750 to 1850 " by Stuart Reid.