SIR HENRY LAWRENCE: AN APPRECIATION

 SIR HENRY LAWRENCE: AN APPRECIATION 

I was in Lovedale from 1959 to 1967. During my years in the Prep and Junior Schools, I can't recall hearing anything about Sir Henry Lawrence, in whose memory our School was founded in 1858. It was only when I entered the Senior School that one came across Sir Henry, through his portrait in the Large Hall and through a sculpture on the front lawns made of him by our Sculpture Master, the highly talented Mr P E "Pet" Thomas. 

Photo courtesy: Farrokh Chothia, ARA 1982. 

It was in this time that we read in our History class about the "Indian Mutiny" of 1857. We had a text book the name of which I still remember, more than 50 years after I last read it: " The Advanced History of India" by R C Majumdar, H C Raychaudhary, and K Datta. It described the mutiny in units of the East India Company's Bengal Army, which had far reaching consequences. In modern day India, the uprising of 1857 is referred to as The First War of Independence or The Indian Rebellion. 

Sir Henry Lawrence was then the Chief Commissioner for Oudh, stationed at Lucknow. He died defending the Residency in July 1857 where he exhorted his men to " Never Give In". This became- and continues to be- the motto of The Lawrence Schools. 

 In 1858, the British Government formally took over the governing of the provinces managed by the The East India Company . Two decades later, Queen Victoria was proclaimed the Empress of India in 1877.  Clearly, the British had come a long way since they first made their appearance by starting a trading station at Surat in Gujarat in 1608. Thereafter they continued to rule India till we got Independence in August 1947.  

In Book 1 of " Glimpses of a Glorious Past: An Informal History of The Lawrence School, Lovedale" we have covered Sir Henry and his life in considerable detail. His love for Honoria Marshall who became his wife and their life together featured in the Valentine's Day Special of the OL Assembly in February, 2021. 

Amongst the Old Lawrencian community of today, Wing Commander Joseph Thomas, VM, Indian Air Force (Retd) , Aravalli House, 1957, was, to the best of our knowledge,  the first to show serious interest in Sir Henry.

He wrote two detailed articles about Sir Henry Lawrence and The Lawrence Schools, in the popular website Guftagu in 2014 which you can read using the links given: 

• "Sir Henry Lawrence" by Joseph Thomas
• "The Lawrence Schools" by Joseph Thomas 

Recently, I had the pleasure of conversing with him about Sir Henry in a podcast titled:

• Sir Henry Lawrence, An Appreciation: Conversation with Wg Cdr Joseph Thomas, VM, IAF (Retd). 

As I write this, I recognize that Sir Henry lived, worked and died in a world very different from ours today. His life -and the events that took place in 1857 -have been extensively written about in innumerable books. Needless to say, there  are different points of view while looking at historical events. 

 For those interested in more detailed reading :- 

• "Lawrence of Lucknow, 1808-1857: Being The Life of Sir Henry Lawrence Retold From His Private and Public Papers" by J L Morrison,. G Bell & Sons, London, 1934
• " The Life of Sir Henry Lawrence" by Major General Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwardes & Herman Merivale ( In 2 Volumes), Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1872.
• "History of The Indian Mutiny, 1857-59" John Kaye & G B Malleson, first published 1897

Prem Rao

NIL 1967 

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.