Monday, February 1, 2010

HISTORY IN SMALL TYPE

THE SPEIR DYNASTY- A long tryst with India

Writing on the wall
Ashok V. Desai

Alexander Speir, a cadet under training in the Royal Military College,
Marlow, in 1802, was extremely short of money. His father, Archibald,
was a rich man in Glasgow, but he had told his son never to get in
touch with him because he did not want his wife to know about his
16-year-old illegitimate son, or did not want her to know he was
financing Alexander. So Alexander had to write to Walter Logan, a
friend of Archibald’s father who managed much business for
him. Sometimes Logan would send Alexander money. At other times, he
would ask Archibald and wait for his answer. Either way, little money
arrived, and it came after long entreaties.
But a cadet had to be properly dressed; and the marching and riding
took a heavy toll on clothes and boots. So Alexander would keep a
detailed account of his expenses and send it to Logan from time to
time. Often he still did not receive the money. And then the College
would close down in vacation, and Alexander had no home to go to. Once
his professor took pity on him and took him in. He was so outraged by
Alexander’s penury that he sent an account of £42 15s 2d to Logan. Of
this, the draper’s (i.e. tailor’s) bill came to £14 1s 9d, stockings
cost £1 6s, and the shoemaker charged £1 6s 7d. A student in a college
could not survive without writing; paper cost £5. Perpetually
embarrassed about money and about his father, Alexander was keen to
leave Britain and try his luck abroad. But his father told him,
through Logan, that he had to study more, and that his handwriting was
atrocious.
Alexander was a well-behaved and motivated student. That led to two
disasters in 1804: in May, he was promoted to corporal, and in July to
sergeant. As sergeant, he had to make a round of the rooms every night
and make sure that every cadet had folded away his clothes and gone to
bed. For that he needed three nightshirts and a flannel dressing
gown. He also had to fence, and the thrusts and lunges were hard on
underclothes; so he needed four stocking-webbed drawers. His clothes
were in such poor shape that in August, his captain wrote to Archibald
Speir that upon inspection of Alexander’s wardrobes, 7 handkerchiefs
and 4 pairs of drawers were found unserviceable or missing.
Archibald knew William Elphinstone, a director of the East India
Company, on whose recommendation Alexander was enlisted in the
Company’s army. On 7 March 1805, he left Portsmouth on the sailing
ship, Surrey – 819 tons, 143ft 11in long, with 6ft 2in headroom
between its three decks – for Calcutta. He should have carried 72
calico shirts with him on the voyage since none could be washed on the
way; but he had only 48. On arriving in August, he joined the first
battalion of the 23rd Bengal Native Infantry as lieutenant.
After the East India Company forces took Asirgarh, the last Mahratta
bastion, in 1819, much of India came under the Company’s
domination. It kept in place most of the kings who littered India
except when they misbehaved, left its own troops in strategic places
to keep the kings under discipline, and appointed officers as
residents or political agents – ambassadors to the various states. As
an army officer, Speir was political agent successively in Sirohi,
Gwalior and Nagpur.
Once he had found his feet, Alexander took on a concubine; he did not
marry her until 1847, when he was on his deathbed. Amongst the
children he had with her, four sons and four daughters survived. The
youngest, John Alpine Speirs, was sent to England where he studied in
King’s College, London, without taking a degree. He returned to India
in 1857 and joined Bray and Co, contractors who were building the
Poona-Sholapur railway line for the Great Indian Peninsula
Railway. After working for them for seven years, he became an
inspector of police in Lucknow. In 1866, he married Rachel, daughter
of Joseph and granddaughter of Dr James Short.
James Short was a surgeon in the service of the East India Company in
the late 18th century. In 1800, he was sent to serve the Bacha (Pasha)
of Baghdad. There he married Mary, widow of an Armenian named
Carrapet. In 1817, he moved his family from Cawnpore to Lucknow, and
sent ahead his 12-year-old daughter Mary, together with his infant son
Joseph, in a palanquin. On the way, they encountered Ghaziuddin Hyder,
Nawab of Oude, returning from a hunt. Mary got out of the palanquin to
watch the Nawab pass by. The Nawab liked her looks, took her with him
to Lucknow and married her. Little Mary, suddenly finding herself
imprisoned in the Nawab’s harem, kept Joseph and brought him
up. Joseph grew up as an oriental prince. He had four children by his
first wife Jane, three by his second wife Amelia, and eight by five
slave girls. Rachel was his daughter born out of an affair with Amelia
in 1846; he married Amelia in 1860, after her first wife Jane Huggins
had died in 1849 and after many more liaisons.
John Alpine Speirs had five children by Rachel, two of whom died in
infancy. One of the survivors was John Sleeman Speirs, named after
William Sleeman, the legendary law enforcer who pursued and eliminated
the Thugs who used to waylay travellers on trunk roads, kill them and
rob them till the 1870s. John also had two other sons – Alexander John
born to John Alpine’s sister-in-law out of an affair with John, and
William Stephen, born out of an affair with the wife of one of his
best friends, Joey Johannes.
John Alpine Speirs remained a policeman for only 7 years. He was an
Anglo-Indian. The government of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, took over
the government of India from the East India Company in 1857, and began
to send pure-blooded British gentlemen to rule India. Half-breeds or
Anglo-Indians like John Alpine came to be looked down on; John’s
prospects in the police were poor. So he went back to
railway-building, and worked on railway lines built in eastern
India. He left his children in Lucknow with Amelia, the sister-in-law
he had an affair with. Of his children, Alexander John, William
Stephen and John Sleeman took law examinations. William became deputy
registrar of the court of Oude, Alexander practised in Faizabad, and
Sleeman in Moradabad.
Sleeman did well as a lawyer, and built a big bungalow named Fairlawns
to bring up his five sons and two daughters (all legitimate). He
retired in 1940 and went to live in a house in Mussoorie called
Silverwood. But by that time, all his children had left for England –
even those educated in India. By 1945, he could see the end of British
rule coming, and left for England. His son, Lawrence, did physics and
worked on rockets in England in World War II. Lawrence’s son, Malcolm,
was intrigued by his family’s long tryst with India. He researched it
and wrote it up in The Wasikadars of Awadh: A History of Certain
Nineteenth-Century Families of Lucknow (Rupa, 2008).

(I wrote this in the Calcutta Telegraph of 24 February 2009.)

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