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.