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 IMPERIAL BODIES
The Physical Experience of the Raj,
c.1800-1947

E. M. Collingham

216 soz 2004/1974

IIIIIII IIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIll llll

45157681,6

Polity
Copyright © E. M. Collingham 2001

The right of E. M. Collingham to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2001 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Contents
Editorial office:
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
!
Cambridge CB2 lUR, UK I.
Marketing and production:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd
108 Cowley Road
Oxford OX4 lJF, UK

Published in the USA by

Blackwell Publishers Inc.
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
List of Plates Vll
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism
and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
Acknowledgements lX
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Glossary Xl

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it Introduction 1
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being PART I THE NABOB, c.1800-1857
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 1 The Indianized Body 13
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rule in an 'Indian idiom' 14
Survival in an 'Indian idiom' 24
Collingham, E. M. (Elizabeth M.) The dangers of indianization 29
The physical experience of the Raj, c.1800-1947/E. M. Collingham.
p. cm. The limits of indianization 36
Includes bibliographical references and index. The depth of indianization 44
ISBN 0-7456-2369-7 (hb: acid-free paper) - ISBN 0-7456-2370-0 (pbk. acid-free
paper)
1. British-India-Social life and customs 2. India-History-British occupation, 2 The Anglicization of the Body 50
1765-194 7. 3. Body, Human-Social aspects-India. I. Title.
Rule in a British idiom 51
DS428 .C65 2001 The ban on the East 60
954.03-dc21 00-012194 Survival in a British idiom 80
Typeset in 10.5 on 12pt Saban by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall 3 The Limits of Anglicization 93
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
The 'baba logue' 93
The bungalow 99
The household servants 103
v1 Contents

PART II THE SAHIB, 1858-1939

117
4 The Sahib as an Instrument of Rule
The competition-wallah and the ideal official body 118
Plates
Imperial ceremony and the symbolic body 128
The bureaucratic body 136
Prestige and physical violence 141

5 The Social Body 150

Social life and conformity 150
The fragility of domestic space 165
Prestige in the bathroom 174
Degeneration and the regulation of sexuality 177
Race and sociability 185
Plate 1 'A lady in a tonjon palanquin with attendants.'
Epilogue: The Dissolution of the Anglo-Indian (c.1830) Company drawing, Oriental and India Office
Body, 1939-1947 194 Collections. 17
Appendix 202 Plate 2 'The young civilian's toilet.' William Tayler,
Sketches Illustrating the Manners and Customs of the
Notes 204
Indians and Anglo-Indians. London, 1842, pl. 1. 23
Bibliography 240
Plate 3 'Sir Charles D'Oyly seated at a table smoking a
Index 270 hookah, his clerks seated nearby, watching opium being
weighed.' (1820s) Sir Charles D'Oyly's Sketchbook, £. 40.
Oriental and India Office Collections. 31
Plate 4 'Count Rupee in Hyde Park.' (1797)
H. Humphrey. Oriental and India Office Collections. 35
Plate 5 'Mr and Mrs Gladstone Lingham at breakfast with
their friends Colonel Austin Thompson and Captain Bailey.'
(1863) Oriental and India Office Collections. 68
Plate 6 Advertisements from The Englishman 10 April
1834, p. 1. 70
Plate 7 'Our station.' George Franklin Atkinson, Curry
and Rice on Forty Plates; or the ingredients of social life at
·our station' in India. 2nd edn, London, 1859, pl. 2. 83
Plate 8 'Rest, warrior, rest.' Allan Newton Scott, Sketches
in India; taken at Hyderabad and Secunderabad, in the
Madras Presidency. London, 1862, p. 40. Royal
Commonwealth Society Collection, Cambridge. 85
r

vm Plates

Plate 9 'The young Churchill Arthur Luck in the 1860s.'

Private collection. 94
Plate 10 'Taken to shew the servants. Arkonam 1904.'
Bourne Papers, Album 2, pl. 26a, Centre for South Asian
Acknowledgements
Studies, Cambridge. 107
Plate 11 'Group. Clerks and peon and police naik.
Belgaum. R. M. M. Ass. Collector, Belgaum.' (c.1906-13)
Maxwell Collection 14 10, Centre for South Asian Studies,
Cambridge. 125
Plate 12 'Major Lumsden lying in front of animal skins.'
(no date) E. Fullerton Collection, pl. 52a, Centre for South
Asian Studies, Cambridge. 126
Plate 13 'Durbar scene showing Wajid Ali Shah (King of
Oudh 1847-56) embracing the Governor-General, Lord I have incurred many debts while writing this book and it is my
Hardinge.' (Lucknow 1847) Company drawing, Oriental pleasure now to acknowledge them.
and India Office Collections. 130 The research for my Ph.D, out of which this book grew, was
Plate 14 'Presentation of H. H. The Nawab of financed by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Prince
Bahawalpur, Delhi Durbar 1903.' Curzon Collection, Consort and Thirlwall Fund, and the Holland Rose Fund. For their
Oriental and India Office Collections. 130 assistance I am indebted to the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford;
the University Library, Cambridge, where Terri Barringer enthusias-
Plate 15 'The D.P. works revised and improved.' The tically hunted out interesting material in the Royal Commonwealth
Delhi Sketchbook, 5 11 (1 November 1854), facing p. 1. 139 Society Collection; and the Oriental and India Office Collections,
Plate 16 'Lyle - camp Jan 1915 Headload camp.' Maxwell London.
Collection 13 I 1, Centre for South Asian Studies, In particular I would like to thank Louise Houghton and Kevin
Cambridge. 160 Greenbank at the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge, for
making the photographic and archival collection fully available to
Plate 17 'Sompalle: Camp in Temple. 19 August 1900.' me.
J. J.Cotton, Oriental and India Office Collections. 163 The late Master, David Crighton, and the Fellows who make up
Plate 18 'My drawing-room.' (c.1902-10) H. H. Davies the Society of Jesus College, Cambridge, made me very welcome and
Indian Album I, pl. 2, Royal Commonwealth Society provided me with a congenial working atmosphere in which to finish
Collection, Cambridge. 169 writing, for which I am very grateful.
Intellectually I am indebted to Partha Mitter and Carol Dyhouse,
Plate 19 'His Excellency and Lady Graham visit the whose inspirational teaching encouraged me to go into research.
Collector of Hyderabad and his family (Mr and Mrs N. T. Chris Bayly was a fine supervisor and has continued to give me
Gholap) informally at their home.' (c.1936) Col. W. A. unflagging support. He patiently read the many drafts which trans-
Salmon Papers, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge. 189 formed the thesis into a book and never failed to give generously of
Plate 20 'Tennis party including Col. Irwin, and Mrs his time and ideas. His criticism has always been constructive and I
Jacob and local dignitaries, Jaipur.' (1896) Oriental and cannot thank him enough.
India Office Collections. 191 Many friends and colleagues have given me helpful suggestions
and comments. I would like to thank Bridie Andrews, Susan Bayly,
Maxine Berg, Peter Burke, William Dalrymple, Clive Dewey,
r

x Acknowledgements

Rebecca Earle, Manuel Frey, Will Gould, Colin Jones, Polly O'Han-
lon, Roy Porter, Rajit Ray, Anil Sethi, Robert Travers, Carey Watt
and Phil Withington. For their assistance and hospitality in London
and in India I am grateful to Aidan and Francesca Bunting, Rupert Glossary
and Emma Featherstone, John and Susan Gnanasundaram and their
family, Sue Lascelles, Matt Belfrage, Andrea and David Lowe and
Siva and Vatsala Sivasubramanian. For support and encouragement I
would like to thank John Cornwell, John Eaton, Peter and Irmgard
Seidel and Mary Burwood; for sustaining tea parties I thank Will
Gould, Geoff Harcourt and the other tea-party comrades, and Jude
and Jessie Sargent, without whom Haworth would have been very
lonely; for numerous dinners and light relief Rebecca Earle, David,
Gabriel and Isaac Mond, Brechtje Post, Maarten van Casteren, Shai-
laja, Stephen and Edwin Fennell, Silke Secco-Gri.itz and Terry Roop-
naraine. My god-daughter Thea Fennell has brightened many an
afternoon and weekend. Thomas Seidel has enriched both my intel- abdar Servant responsible for cooling and serving drinks
lectual and my emotional life. Without him this book would never alkaluk A long coat with an embroidered bib
have been written and it is dedicated to him. ayah A lady's maid or nursemaid
baba logue Children
The author and publishers would like to thank the following for babu A respectable Bengali gentleman (although the term
permission to use the illustrations: Plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, took on a pejorative tone when it was used to refer
15, 17 and 20 are reproduced by permission of the British Library. to Bengali clerks)
Plates 10, 11, 12 and 16 are reproduced by permission of the Centre banyan Trader or undershirt of Muslim
for South Asian Studies, Cambridge. Plate 19 is reproduced by kind basun Chick-pea"flour
permission of Colonel W. A. Salmon and the Centre for South Asian bhistee Water-carrier
Studies, Cambridge. Plates 8 and 18 are reproduced by permission of box-wallah Itinerant salesman when applied to Indians (it was
the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Plate 9 is reproduced also used pejoratively to refer to Anglo-Indians in
by kind permission of Michael Luck. trade)
burra khana Big dinner
burra sahib Great master
chattah Umbrella, traditionally signifying royalty
chilumchee A brass or copper basin for washing the hands and
feet
chobdar Stick bearer, attendant on Indian nobles and Anglo-
Indian officials of rank
chota haziri Early breakfast
conJee cap Starched nightcap
cutcherry Administrative office or courthouse
dak bungalow Rest-house for travellers
dak runner Post runner
dandy Boatman
darshan A viewing of an august or holy person
dastur Custom
r
xu Glossary Glossary xm

dhaye Wet-nurse shikar Sport, in the sense of hunting and shooting

dhobi Washerman sirdar bearer Head bearer
dhoti Man's waistcloth, worn folded, tucked and draped sowar Indian cavalry soldier
durbar An Indian ceremony involving the formal reception suttee Hindu custom whereby a widow immolates herself
of guests and the exchange of gifts on her husband's funeral pyre
griffin Newcomer terai hat A soft felt hat to protect the head from the sun
bar-carrier Garland carrier thugee The robbery of travellers by a specialized gang of
hookah Indian hubble-bubble pipe thieves
jama Surcoat with a full skirt and a fitted cross-over tonjon A sedan or portable chair
bodice zenana Part of the house reserved for the women of the
khadi Handwoven cloth family
khansaman Head servant
khelat Gift of cloth in a durbar ceremony, symbolizing the
incorporation of the recipient's body into that of
the donor
khichri Meal of rice, lentils and spices often eaten by the
poor
khidmutgar Head waiter
khurta pyjama Knee-length tunic and baggy trousers
kittesan bearer Umbrella bearer
laudal Probably a sweet-smelling liquid, similar to rose
water
mate bearer Assistant bearer
mofussil The provinces, country stations and districts
moorah Footstool
munshi A teacher of Indian languages, or secretary
mussack Goatskin water container
nautch Dance performed by dancing girls
nawab Title given to Muslim gentlemen of distinction,
originally a title given to a governor serving under
the Emperor
palanquin A covered litter for travelling in, carried by either
four or six carriers on poles across their shoulders
peishwaz Indian robe or gown
peon Footman
poshteen A skin coat worn over an alkaluk
pugri A turban, often with a piece of cloth hanging down
at the back to protect the neck from the sun
puja A religious ceremony or rite
pundit A learned man, usually learned in Sanskrit
satyagraha Passive resistance, as advocated by Gandhi
setringee Probably a low bench
shampooing Massage, particularly of the head and feet
r

Introduction

The British experience of India was intensely physical. From the

wretchedness of seasickness on the voyage out, to, on arrival, the
'itching, unsightly bumps' caused by the 'incessant bites of innumer-
able mosquitoes'; the torture of prickly heat which made Ellen
Drummond feel as though 'a-hundred needles' were running into
her; the pain of the 'boils which break out when ... [prickly heat]
gets very bad'; the dry heat of northern India which 'developed
finally into an obsessive torture dominating thought and talk and
action' or the steamy heat of BengaCwhich 'takes all the strength and
the succour out of you like a vapour-bath', India proved a torment to
the British body. 1 All the senses were assaulted by the heat, dust,
dirt, noise and smells, which could be 'Vile, foul, penetrating, body- i
I
and soul-destroying' .2 Even worse than 'the petty annoyances of
the insect race, the destructive moisture, the obtrusive reptiles ...
[was] the slow, midnight, wasting fever, and the quick, mysterious
pestilence that walks in the noon day, and defies the power of
science'. 3 The agonies of disease and the threat of a rapid death
were spectres which hung over every British colonist in India.
Lucretia West, after hearing of the death of a Mrs Newnham, who
had taken 'Tiffen here last Thursday, had an attack of fever that
night, expired last evening', was shocked to find that 'Here
people die one day, and are buried the next. Their furniture sold
the third, and they are forgotten the fourth.' 4 Herbert Maynard
concluded 'Possibly there never was so strange and painful and
wonderful and uninviting an existence lived since the world began
to spin.' 5
All Europeans, even if they escaped serious disease or death,
were believed to undergo a subtle constitutional transformation.
 Introduction 3
2 Introduction

Throughout the nineteenth century the medical orthodoxy stated that similar habitus. Thus the habitus acts as a bridge between personality
the heat of the Indian climate over-stimulated the organs of the body structure and social structure.
resulting in sluggishness and congestion. The altered state of the Bourdieu's concept of habitus demonstrates that the values, atti-
colonist's metabolism was made physically manifest in a ..saJlow tudes and ideologies of a society are literally embodied. 'Body size,
skin and general lassitude, in the decline in fertility among European volume, demeanour, ways of eating and drinking, walking and sit-
women, and in the sickly, querulous natures of children born and ting, speaking, making gestures etc.' all reveal, consciously and
raised in India. The British body's physical deterioration was com- unconsciously, the social structures as they are embedded in the
plemented by an idiosyncratic appearance. The loose trousers and body. 11 The body as an object of historical inquiry can therefore be
white waistcoats which made conspicuous those who returned to approached through the everyday practices surrounding it. In his
Britain from India in the early nineteenth century were replaced in innovatory essay 'Body Techniques', Marcel Mauss, following the
the later imperial era by the equally distinctive white flannels of the biography of an individual, mapped out a set of spheres of bodily
sahib. Besides an altered appearance, the colonist was said to acquire practice from birth and the bodily techniques of infancy (e.g. suck-
an 'Asiatic' arrogant manner, the consequence of the fact that 'He has ling and weaning), through adolescence to the activities of adult life
been so long accustomed to measure his own humanity by the (e.g. sleep, rest, gait, posture and gesture, exercise), to reproduction
6
standard of a conquered and degraded race.' The experience of (e.g. sexuality}, care and adornment of the body (e.g. medical prac-
7 tices, washing, clothing), consumption (e.g. eating and drinking), the
India was thus perceived to be written on the Anglo-Indian phy-
sique, from the boils, mosquito bites and the altered composition regulation of physical contact (e.g. touching, physical violence), fol-
of the fibres and tissues of the body, to the colonist's characteristic lowed by illness and death. 12 Mauss's spheres are neither exclusive
nor comprehensive but they provide a ground plan for the investiga-
clothing and confident demeanour.
It is clear, then, that the body was central to the colonial experi- tion of the British body in India, widened by setting the body within
ence, but the body, as the site where social structures are experienced, the spatial context of urban and domestic space. The wide range of
transmuted and projected back on to society, is ill-defined as a spheres brought together by an investigation into the body opens up
the possibility of identifying a coherence between these different
historical object. 1t is__~-1i~~s~n~~etst.:h~l2jJus'_ which
has most influenced the conceptualization oT tne body, which 1s to be spheres on the level of cultural structures.
found in this book. 8 The habitus can be understood as a set of The study of the British body in India traces the transformation of
schemas or dispositions, acquired through the processes of socializa- the early nineteenth-century nabob from the flamboyant, effeminate
tion, which act as principles by which the individual organizes his or and wealthy East India Company servant, open to Indian influence
her behaviour. 9 Through the habitus the structures of the class- and into whose self-identity India was incorporated, to the sahib, a
specific social world in which the individual finds him or herself sober, bureaucratic representative of the Crown. This shift from an
open to a closed and regimented body appears to reflect the emer-
are transferred into the individual.
gence, between 1650 and 1900, of what might be termed a modern
Adapting a phrase of Proust's, one might say that arms and legs are full European bourgeois body. Work on early modern Europe shows that
of numb imperatives. One could endlessly enumerate the values given the body in this period was conceptualized as open and in flux with
body, made body, by the hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy its environment. 13 Rather than acting as an enveloping shell, separ-
which can instill a whole cosmology, through injunctions as insignifi- ating the internal and external worlds, the skin was thought of as
cant as 'sit up straight' or 'don't hold your knife in your left hand', and open and porous. 14 Gradually this conceptualization of the body
inscribe the most fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of a altered until by the nineteenth century the body was visualized as a
culture in seemingly innocuous details of bearing or physical and verbal closed entity which needed to be preserved intact, separate from the
manners, so putting them beyond the reach of consciousness and expli- environment. Among the bourgeoisie the body was bounded off from
10
cit statement. the environment in line with a withdrawal of many bodily practices
into the private sphere. Rituals of cleanliness were re-sited in the
In this way social structures are transformed into patterns of behav- private space of the bathroom, the black suit and the corset
iour, or lifestyles, shared by the other members of society with a restrained and disciplined men's and women's bodies, 15 and complex
r
4 Introduction Introduction 5

regimes of diet and exercise were developed which sought to train product of particular social groups with specific ends in mind. In this
and improve the physique. 16 The result of this process of emotional way 'competing regimens and images of the body' can be integrated
regulation and discipline was the transformation of the open unaf- into the discussion. 21 It can then be acknowledged that discourse
fected body of the Georgian middle ranks into a tightly regulated does not always have the desired - or a homogenous - effect, and
Victorian bourgeois body. that individuals negotiate and draw upon a variety of discourses in
Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias explain this process as the the construction of their bodies. 22
consequence of the changing configuration of modern society. Setting While Foucault approaches the relationship of society and the
out to overthrow the idea that since the seventeenth century Euro- body during the period of European modernization from above,
pean society had progressed towards an enlightened humanitarian- Norbert Elias approaches the relationship from a different direction.
ism, Foucault argued in Madness and Civilization and The Birth of 3
In his m_ajo~ work, The Civilizing !rocess,cl ias argues that the
the Clinic that the medical gaze became increasingly intrusive and monopolization of power by developmg nation states, and the con-
oppressive, defining the body through the medium of the clinical gaze sequent complexity of the relatedness, and intertwining, of the effects
as a passive object, the reality of which was prescribed by medical of individual acts, was linked to changes in the personality structure
discourse. In Discipline and Punish he charted the effects on indivi- of individuals. The increasing complexity of society required the
duals of the intrusion of the gaze of the state into their lives. As the individual to act in a more differentiated way. Although social con-
power of the monarch faded during the seventeenth century the state trol was imposed less and less by external powers, in order to succeed
shifted from using the body of an offender, during the ritual of public in a complex society the individual had to exercise self-restraint. 23
execution, as a symbol of its authority, to imposing discipline or The by-product of self-restraint was the construction of an 'affective
technologies of power, 'general formulas of domination', on all indi- wall' between oneself and the bodies of others, as well as a distancing
viduals.17 Discipline was enforced through the regimentation of of oneself from one's own body, which was manifested in the refine-
space and time. Space was subdivided into factories, schools and ment of many forms of behaviour, such as table manners. 24 This
prisons, and within these institutions space was partitioned by allott- display of regulated behaviour functioned as a means of social differ-
ing each individual a particular area correspondent to the rank he or entiation.
she occupied within the hierarchy of the institution. Time was meted There are many areas of difficulty in Elias's argument: the reliance
out in hours, minutes and seconds. The more the actions of the body on etiquette books which specify behaviour but do not tell us how
were regimented within these time spans, the more exhaustively the people actually behaved; the emphasis on state formation, and the
body could be exploited. Discipline was founded on minute detail: it small amount of space which he gives to the discussion of the role of
treated the body like a machine and moulded it into a state of religion, the family, urbanization, the division of labour, population
aptitude or docility. 18 The disciplining of the body as a machine growth, disease, and groups within society which attempted to
was combined with the regimentation of the body as a biological impose certain norms of behaviour on 'lower orders'. 25 However,
organism through the construction of sexuality. The control of popu- the essential aspect of his work is that he links social and economic
lations combined with the disciplining of individual bodies - ana- change to changes in personality structure through the concept of
tomo-politics - to produce bio-politics. 19 Thus, Foucault redefined 'figurations'. 'Elias's hypothesis is that firstly, there are non-inten-
the body as the site where political power is exercised and announced tional interconnections between intentional acts, and secondly, that
the death of the subject. (at least up to now in history) these non-intentional interconnections
A Foucauldian approach to the body tends to conceptualize it as have prevailed over the intentional meanings fabricated by
26
.the passive object of discourses of power. Foucault's neglect of the people.' The behaviour of individuals takes place within a struc-
body as the site where experience is felt and interpreted means that ture which is created by the actions of individuals but which has
he tends to ignore the self-consciousness of the individual. This leads implications and effects which are greater than those individual acts.
to the treatment of the body as an unchanging entity throughout Elias argues that these 'blind' structures have a dynamic of their own
history, always 'available as a site which receives meaning from, and and that patterns and directions can be detected within this
is constituted by external forces'. 20 The limits of Foucault's thinking unplanned process, although it is necessary to be careful not to
on the body can be escaped by adopting a view of discourse as the view the process as linear and inevitable.
 6 Introduction Introduction 7

On first reading, Foucault and Elias appear to be incompatible: questions of how to rule India and how to survive in the tropics. In
Foucault argues that the body is defined and controlled by external the early nineteenth century the British in India were able to draw
forces, while Elias argues that the configuration of modern society upon a wide variety of sometimes conflicting discourses about suit-
encourages the internalization of restraints which gradually become a able conduct in India. As a consequence the bodily norms of;tµ~early
part of the individual's psyche.2 7 Both theorists were, however, con- Company servants remained fluid, able to incorporate tensibrl.s and
cerned with the same problem - the increasing regulation of the the existence of competing sets of beliefs and attitudes. During this
individual as a result of the process of modernization. Their concep- period the British were open to Indian influences, and aspects of
tualization of the body as the locus of power struggles brings their Indian practice were incorporated into the display of British power
arguments together. In fact Foucault's argument that bodies become and authority as the Company servants set about projecting an image
increasingly disciplined is perhaps more convincing if we view his of themselves as the new Indian ruling aristocracy. Traces of India
discourses of power as akin to the blind structures which Elias links can be found in Anglo-Indian ceremonial display, in their personal
to changes in personality structure. 28 Elias's conceptualization of habits of eating, clothing, hookah-smoking and cleanliness, and in
figurations allows the balance of power to be seen as in a state of the Anglo-Indian household, which incorporated large numbers of
fluctuation, shifting and differentiated in its effect, rather than as a Indian servants and frequently an Indian mistress. Thus the British
monolithic force. body in India developed a set of distinctive norms which marked it
out as different from the British body in the metropole. Some Anglo-

I
Despite the complexity of the theoretical literature on the body,
and the quantity of research it has generated, there remains no study Indian norms such as those relating to cleanliness were even trans-
29 ferred back to the metropole and incorporated into the cultural fabric
of the European body within the colonial context. This study of
the British body in India sets out to explore the impact of colonialism of Britain.
on the bodies of its protagonists and the way in which power The transformation from nabob to sahib involved a process of
impacted on the bodies of those wielding it rather than its intended bodily closure which forms the main focus of chapter 2. The early
subjects. Members of the civil service form the core community history of British rule in India is fundamentally the history of the
under investigation as it was their bodies which formed the main interaction of structures of power as the British vied with the French,
focus of official and medical discourses about how the British should minor Indian princes, and the Emperor in Delhi in the process of
rule in India. The term 'Anglo-Indian' is used as a shorthand to refer establishing their dominion. As the British consolidated their hold on
to this official community in India. Evidence from other sections of India the Anglo-Indian body lay at the centre of a process of what
the British community such as the military, planters and businessmen might be termed 'state formation'. Elias's theory would suggest that
has not been ignored, but the lower orders of British society play a the increasing restraint which characterizes the transformation of
lesser part in the analysis due to their more shadowy role in the nabob into sahib can be linked to the concentration of power in
. o f Bnt1s
expression .. h power. 30 India in the hands of the British. Lengthening chains of interdepend-
Confronted by their physical transformation in India, as well as the ence stimulated the internalization of external restraints and the
manifestly different bodies the Indian climate and culture shaped, the creation of an 'affective wall' which distanced the British body
Anglo-Indians engaged in a process of defining what made a body from India, as well as from itself. The political shift towards utilitar-
British. Britishness in the colonial context was, then, conceptualized ianism, changing ideas about disease and health, and the increasing
through a dialogue with difference. 31 The Anglo-Indians were pro- commercialization of Anglo-Indian society, created a dialogue
foundly affected by the processes of change within society in the between the state, the economy and the body which resulted in a
metropole, or home country, but the transformation from nabob to process of anglicization. In line with the political shift towards rule in
sahib in India was more complex than the playing out of European a British idiom, India was edged out of the bodily practices of eating
developments in an exotic setting. The following chapters demon- and clothing. Metropolitan signifiers of respectability were subtly
strate that the Anglo-Indian body developed both its own distinctive transformed within the colonial context and reformulated as
signifiers and its own momentum of change. distinctively Anglo-Indian signifiers of Britishness. A British
Chapter 1 looks at the way in which the body of the nabob (and environment for the body was sought in hill stations such as
'nabobess') was formed at the centre of debates surrounding the Simla, and medicine struggled to preserve the Britishness of the
8 Introduction Introduction 9

Anglo-Indian body. The Indian mistress gradually disappeared to a head with the massacre at Amritsar in 1919. It was revealed that
from Anglo-Indian households while relations between the British prestige rested not upon physical superiority but UflOn physical force.
and the Indians deteriorated. Solidified around the idea of prestige, a distt¥ctive Anglo-Indian
The specific conditions in India placed limits on the process of culture was in place by the last decades of the nineteenth century.
anglicization, and these limits are explored in chapter 3. Cultural Foucault's conceptualization of power as the driving force impacting
change was patchy, and within the domestic sphere India continued on the body takes on a new edge in the colonial situation where the
to influence childcare practices, the layout and use of domestic space medical discourse in particular extended its power to define the body
and the relationship between master and mistress and the household due to the threat of fatal and untreatable tropical disease. The pos-
servants. Here the dissonance between political shifts and cultural ition of the British civil servants in India as government employees
change can be observed. This is highlighted by the impact of the also intensified the power of the official discourse of prestige to shape
Mutiny on the process of anglicization. Although it brought about the British body, even within the domestic sphere. Chapter 5 explores
important political changes, it had surprisingly little impact on the the way in which the medical and official discourses were re-worked
openness of Anglo-Indian domestic life to India and its influences. on the site of the body and manifested in increasingly regimented
In the latter half of the nineteenth century racial theory, the body eating, clothing, bathing and sexual practices. The ability of the
and the ideology of prestige worked in dialogue together to produce regimes of work, leisure, health and sexuality to regulate the body
the sahib. Chapter 4 examines the importance of the sahib as an gained a sharpened significance outside Europe where they were vital
instrument of British rule. While the British were still in the process in the demonstration of racial difference. After the First World War,
of establishing their dominion, they demonstrated their authority viewed against the background of the rapidly changing political scene
with the partially indianized figure of the nabob. Once power was in India and the metropole, the social life of Anglo-India began to
firmly in their hands with the transferral of Indian government from seem archaic. Political concerns began to break down the barriers
the Company to the Crown, they legitimized their rule by re-casting between the races. The British were increasingly forced to work and
themselves as the embodiment of racial superiority, pre-ordained to socialize with Indians. This eroded the construction of bodily differ-
rule over the Indians, trapped as they were within their racially ence which prestige relied upon.
inferior bodies. Thus, the British grounded their authority in the Between 1800 and 1857 changes in bodily practice kept pace with
bodily difference between ruler and ruled, thereby ensuring that the the traditional periodization of Indian history. After 1857 an alter-
body became the central site where racial difference was understood native chronology is revealed, with changes in bodily practice shift-
and reaffirmed in British India. The ruling style was re-worked and ing at different times in different spheres and, most importantly,
the flamboyance of the nabob was concentrated into imperial cere- failing to keep pace with the political changes of the twentieth
monial where the relationship between ruler and ruled was symbolic- century. By 1939 the Anglo-Indians found themselves culturally and
ally enacted. The real work of government was separated off into the bodily out of step and inadequate in the face of the political and
bureaucratic world of the office, where the civil servant stoically social demands of the twentieth century. In particular they were
laboured away doing the real work of running the country. faced with the fact that their disregard for the Indian response to
The nineteenth-century figure of the sahib was carried forward the British body had severely undermined their position. Indeed,
into the twentieth century. Here, though, he became an increasingly Indian responses play only a small part in this history, reflecting the
outdated and fragile figure. The civil servant was so overburdened by curious lack of attention paid to them by the British. For the Anglo-
paperwork that the ability of the government to make decisions was Indians the strategies they adopted were a self-fulfilling rhetoric. As
hampered. The power of the body as a symbol of prestige was long as the majority of the Indians they came into contact with
gradually eroded by Indian nationalism and the Indian refusal to conformed to their expectations, the Indian response impacted very
respond to the British with deference. British ceremony was increas- little upon the construction of their bodies. Aunt Fenny, in Paul
ingly met with hostility, culminating in the riots which broke 01:t Scott's The Day of the Scorpion, sums up the Anglo-Indian attitude:
during the Prince of Wales's visit in 1920-1. Finally, the symbolic 'We have responsibilities that let us out of trying to see ourselves as
resonance of the Anglo-Indian official's body was fatally undermined they see us. In any case it would be a waste of time. To establish a
by the violence which marked inter-racial relations and which came relationship with Indians you can only afford to be yourself and let
r
I

10 Introduction

them like it or lump it.' 32 This arrogant assumption that they could
take their impact on the Indian population for granted contributed to
the downfall of the British in India in the twentieth century. Caught
in bodies which represented an aristocratic concept of rule, out-
moded in a newly democratic Britain as well as the India of the PART I
independence movement, the legitimacy of British rule in India was
brought into question to the extent that the British themselves lost
confidence in the values which they thought of themselves as
embodying. As confidence in imperialism and empire dissolved, so
The Nabob c. s-oo-1,.85
V"

too did confidence in the emblem of the British body. This was
reflected in the ultimate Indian rejection of the British body. Under
the influence of Gandhi, Indian nationalists discarded westernized
dress in favour of the dhoti or khurta pyjama made from khadi
(handwoven cloth), thus presenting the British with the challenge of
a reinvented and proudly Indian body. 33
----~------

1
The Indianized Body

He was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah. He scarcely

knew a single soul in the metropolis; and were it not for his doctor, and
the society of his blue pill, and his liver complaint, he must have died of
-loneliness .... Now and then he would make a desperate attempt to get
rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and love of good living
speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found
himself again at his three meals a day. He never was well dressed; but he
took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and passed many hours
daily in that occupation. 1

Jos Sedley, William Thackeray's fat, vain, cowardly and foolish cre-
ation, is typical of fictional representations of the nabob, a term
derived from the M_lJ.sljm title for the governor of a district, which
was applied to East India Company servants who returned to Britain
with large personal fortunes.2 By the turn of the century the persona
of the nabob was firmly fixed in the public mind. He made his
appearance throughout the eighteenth century in magazines, period-
icals, newspapers, cartoons, fiction and plays such as Samuel Foote's
The Nabob, performed at the Haymarket in 1772, as a figure of fun
and the target of lampooners of new wealth. 3 Neither British nor
Indian but a particular blend of the two, he was identifiable by his
dry yellow skin; his liver complaint and consequent biliousness; his
propensity to drink large quantities of wine and eat copious dinners;
his extravagant attire, which generally included a white waistcoat;
his fondness for smoking a hookah and, when in India, his enjoyment
of nautches which he would attend wearing the loose clothing of the
natives. He was reputed to inhabit certain areas of London - 'such is
the nabobery into which Harley-street, Wimpole-street and
r
14 The Indianized Body The Indianized Body 15
Gloucester-place, daily empty their precious stores of bilious human- ality as well as the British belief in the essential conservatism of the
ity', as well as spa towns where he struggled to reclaim his health, Indi~n people made them wary of instigating radical change. 6
ruined by the harsh Indian climate. 4 Their dilemma was solved by orientalist scholarship which, encour-
The nabob was to a large extent a fictional figure whose creation aged by Warren Hastings and led by the principal orientalist scholar
in Britain was stimulated by a number of Company servants who William Jones, uncovered a sophisticated ancient Indian culture. O~
returned from India with large fortunes and social aspirations, and the basis of this oriental scholarship, the British argued thatCthdir role
by the trial of Warren Hastings (1788-95) during which the behav- as governors of India was to rediscover India's ancient laws and
iour of the East India Company's government came under public traditions, which had fallen into decay und~r Mughal rule, and to
scrutiny. However, the nabob was not simply a fictional character. reimpose them upon India in a process which Nigel Leask terms
The caricature of the Briton in India was based on the reality of 'reverse acculturation' .7 In this way India's natural form of govern-
Anglo-Indian life. In the late eighteenth century the British in India ment would be restored and British rule could be cast as a benevolent
were faced with two vital questions. Firstly, how were they to rule form of despotism. The British likened their return of India to an
India? Secondly, how were they to survive the hostile Indian environ- ideal classical past to the actions of the ancient Romans in Greece. 8
ment now that their role as rulers rather than merchants required Thus the acquisition of Indian territory by the British was legitimized
long-term residence in the country? This chapter examines the way in by administration in an 'Indian idiom', which at the same time
which the dialogues which arose out of the need to solve these recalled the splendid classical past of Europe. 9 This had far-reaching
problems generated a range of possible codes of behaviour which implications for the British administrators, who saw themselves as a
the Anglo-Indians drew upon in the construction of their bodies. new Indian nobility and extended the legitimization of rule in
Firstly, the British ceremonial ruling style of magnificence and the an Indian idiom to the individual by adopting a range of Indian
way in which this constructed the Anglo-Indian officials as a new · practices.
Indian aristocracy is investigated. In the second section the construc- An important aspect of rule in an Indian idiom was the use of
tion by the medical discourse of a different, more ascetic, indianized magnificent ceremony by the British. As a ruling power in India, the
British body is examined. Both rule and survival in an Indian idiom East India Company nominally recognized the authority of the
drew attention to the problem of bodily corruption in the Indian Mughal emperor in Delhi although in reality the Company consid-
environment, and the implications of these anxieties for the nabob ered itself to be equal to him and other regional Indian rulers. These
are then explored. Even greater anxiety was felt with regard to the regional rulers were at the same time attempting to assert their own
indianization of women's bodies, and the fourth section looks at the independent political legitimacy through flamboyant displays of
limits placed on their assimilation of India. Finally, cleanliness is used we~lth and power. This occurred most dramatically in Awadh,
as a case study through which to explore the depth of the indianiza- which actually broke with the Mughal emperor in 1819 and marked
tion of the British body in India. its independence by staging an elaborate coronation ceremony which
combined Mughal and European symbols of power. 10 The British
concluded that ceremony was as important in India as it was in
Rule in an 'Indian idiom'5 Britain, where one reaction to the French Revolution had been an
increase in public ceremonial by George III in order to impress the
With the acquisition of Bengal in 1765, Company officials gradually prestige of the monarchy upon the minds of the lower orders. 11 They
replaced Indians in administrative positions and took over many of t~erefore responded by creating an equally impressive backdrop of
the functions of their Mughal predecessors, including the adminis- display and ceremony against which they moved across the Indian
tration of law and order, the collection of revenue and the super- scene. With the arrival of Lord Wellesley as Governor-General in
vision of temples and shrines. By replacing the Mughals without 1798 the pomp and ceremony of early British rule reached its height.
dismantling the Mughal structure of government the British put The Governor-General acquired semi-royal status, surrounded by the
themselves in the position of men whom they had previously trappings of silver-stick bearers, club bearers, fan bearers and sentries
described as degenerate and despotic, whose rule they claimed had in the new setting of Government House, which Wellesley built as a
led to the decay of large regions of India. On the other hand practic- more suitable residence than Fort William for the representative of
16 The Indianized Body The Indianized Body 17

British authority in India. Lord Valentia defended the project with

the argument that displays of wealth on an extravagantly Indian level
were essential to the consolidation of British power.

The sums expended upon it [Government House] have been considered

as extravagant by those who carry European ideas and European econ-
omy into Asia; but they ought to remember, that India is a country of
splendor, of extravagance, and of outwa~d appearances: ~hat the Head
of a mighty empire ought to conform himself to the pre1udices of the
country he rules over; and that the British, in particular, ou?ht to
emulate the splendid works of the Princes of the House of T1mour,
lest it should be supposed that we merit the reproach which our great
rivals, the French, have ever cast upon us, of being alone influenced by a
sordid, mercantile spirit. In short, I wish India to be ruled from a
palace, not from a counting-house; with the ideas of a Prince, not
with those of a retail dealer in muslins and indigo. 12

Plate 1 Surrounded by pomp and ceremony. 'A lady in a tonjon palanquin

Display was required not only of the G~wernor-~e~~ral but of a!l with attendants.'
the representatives of the Company, especially the civilians and t~eir
families, who seeing themselves as the successors of the Mughal elit~,
Thus the British adopted a composite mode of communication,
surrounded themselves with Indian signifiers of nobility. In public
shaped by Indian ideas of appropriate forms of display, as well as
they were attended by large retinues. Sophia i~ Hartfy House,_ Cal-
their own notions of ceremony in medieval England and the splen-
cutta felt as though she were 'a kind of state pnsoner of the climate
dour of oriental magnificence. 15 This combination of oriental and
and ceremony, fatigued by 'gaudy trappings and the pomp of
occidental magnificence constructed the body of the nabob at its
retinue'. She 'sigh[s] for one delightful strole in St. Jaines' Park, centre as a hybrid of East and West.
unincumbered by palanquins, kittesan-bearers, the clamour of har-
The pomp of retinue was complemented by the residences of the
carriers &c. &c.',13 as the lady depicted in her tonjon in plate 1
East India Company officials, which functioned as magnificent stage-
might well have done. In the creation of a form of ceremonial
settings imparting grandeur to the bodies of the Anglo-Indians who
appropriate to the Indian situation the British borrowed ~rom the
lived within them. Once the British moved out of the enclosure of the
rituals of their own country (mace bearers and state carnages) as
factories (the fortified area around the warehouses), they built them-
well as from the Mughals (elephants, stick bearers, spear-men and
selves imposing houses in the neo-classical style in pleasant areas of
peacock plumes). James Campbell described how in Ceylon judges
the Presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. In contrast to
were:
simple unpretentious eighteenth-century town houses in Britain, the
homes of the Anglo-Indians resembled the country seats of the Eng-
attended ... by a band of natives, armed with lances, and are likewise 16
lish nobility. J. H. Stocqueler commented that some of the build-
surrounded by a host of tom-tom beaters, who drum away with all their ings at Garden Reach in Calcutta were 'on a scale of much grandeur
might, and by a set of fellows blowing, as loudly and discordantly as
possible, the most horridly squeaking pipes imaginable; thus alt_ogether
and elegance, and surrounded by extensive grounds, laid out in
forming such a ridiculous group, that it is impossible to refram from miniature representations of the beautiful parks of England' .17
laughing at the kind <.Jf absurd stage effect produce_d._.: . b~t no doubt Although the furnishings in these palaces failed to maintain the
all this parade and show (so highly prized here by clVlhans m general), illusion of grandeur projected by the exterior - insects and the
were supposed to make a strong impression upon the minds o~ t~e climate did too much damage to furniture to make extravagant
natives, and to increase, in their eyes, the importance of the law digrn- expenditure worthwhile - the life which the British led within their
tary.14 homes sustained the idea of them as a new Indian nobility. Every
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Title: Woman in Prison

Author: Caroline H. Woods

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN IN

PRISON ***
 WOMAN IN PRISON.
BY

CAROLINE H. WOODS.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.

Cambridge: Riverside Press.

1869.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by

Caroline H. Woods,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
 WHY WRITTEN.
I was reading an evening paper. I glanced over the advertisements.
One attracted my attention, and held it so strongly that I read it over
and over, again and again. There was nothing unusual in it to
ordinary observation. It read, "Wanted.—At the Penitentiary, a
Matron. Inquire at the Institution."
I turned the paper over to read the general news; but could not
place my thoughts so as to comprehend the meaning of the words
before my sight. Without the intention to do so, I looked again at
the advertisement. It became a study to me.
Said Thought—If you were to answer that advertisement, and
obtain the situation, it would place you upon missionary ground, and
at the same time give you employment which would afford you a
support while you are teaching the ignorant. You would get
knowledge in the position. A new phase of life would be opened to
your view. You would have an opportunity to observe, practically,
how well the present system of prison discipline is adapted to reform
convicts, and repress crime. But the cost is too much. I cannot
become a Matron in a Penitentiary.
I laid the paper down, without reading it, because I could see
nothing in it except that advertisement.
The next day I went in town, sat down in the office of a friend, and
took up a morning paper. No sooner had I opened it than that
advertisement spread itself out before me. It changed the form of its
appeal; left out what my selfishness might gain, to enlist my
compassion and aid, entirely, in what I might accomplish for others.
It called to me, in piteous tones, to go work for the prisoner. It was
the echo of a voice that I long ago heard, Come into our prisons,
and help us, we beseech you!
I cannot! I have other things to do, and they are as much for the
benefit of humanity as anything I may be able to accomplish for you.
My spirit darkened as I made the answer; a cloud of guilt settled
down upon it. I threw down the paper in order to dissipate it, and to
avoid the plea.
I turned and talked with my friend; but my thoughts were not in
what we were saying. That advertisement followed them, and filled
them to the exclusion of every other subject.
In the abstraction which it caused the hour in which I was to leave
the city passed, and I missed my train. I must remain and avail
myself of another.
While I was waiting, that advertisement returned to my reflections,
and urged its cause imperatively as a command. It was a call, to me,
resistless as the voice that awoke the young Israelitish Prophet from
his slumbers. In another moment the struggle with my pride was
over, and my spirit answered,—I will go, even to lust-besotted
Sodom if thou leadest, Light of my path!
I seated myself in a street car, went to the prison, applied for the
place, and obtained it.
Day by day I wrote down what I saw and heard, what I said and
did. Why? In obedience to the same Voice that called me to the
work.
The tale is before you.
May it touch the heart of every one who reads the story, and melt it
into a compassion which will labor for the redemption of the
prisoner; into a pity which will echo around the cry—Open the prison
doors, not to let the prisoner go free, but to let in, to him, the light
of moral knowledge, and the discipline of Christian charity.
 CONTENTS.
PAGE

WHY WRITTEN iii

I. FIRST DAY IN PRISON 1

II. AT NIGHT 13

III. SECOND DAY IN PRISON 23

IV. A QUARREL, AND DISCIPLINE 34

V. THE SUPERVISOR, AND THE RULES 48

VI. FIRST NIGHT ALONE IN PRISON 58

VII. THE MASTER AND THE RULES 75

VIII. MRS. HARDHACK 79

IX. A BREAD-AND-WATER BOARDER 87

X. AN ARRIVAL 93

XI. INSIDE MANAGEMENT 98

XII. SUNDAY 102

XIII. LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY 110

XIV. INSPECTION OF PRIVATE APARTMENTS 127

XV. A DAY OF ODDS AND ENDS 138

 XVI. A FRIGHT 151

XVII. VISITING DAY 156

XVIII. CALLAHAN AGAIN 163

XIX. DISCOMFORTS, AND THE END 178

 I.
FIRST DAY IN PRISON.

It was Saturday morning that I became an inmate of the

Penitentiary.
I was conducted to the kitchen, where I was to oversee the cooking
for the prisoners, and to the prison adjoining it, which I was to see
kept in order, by the Deputy Master of the institution, who gave me
my keys and installed me in my office of Prison Matron.
When we first went in he called the six women who do the work in
the kitchen, and the three "sweeps" who keep the prison clean, to
him, and presented their new mistress, in my person, to them.
They were convicts that surrounded me at his call; but they were
human beings. Human faces looked up to mine for sympathy and
care. Some of them were fine looking, even in their coarse uniform,
some were pretty as I picked them out one by one. They all looked
at me earnestly, for a few moments, as though they were reading
their sentence of harshness or kindly treatment, under my rule, in
my face; then, turned away to their work again.
They whispered as they stood together, and I saw by their furtive
glances that they were watching, and discussing me, as I walked
around to take a survey of my new field of labor. They were
undoubtedly commenting upon my personal appearance; and
making their predictions as to my sharpness in detecting their
impositions, and ability to control their perverseness; or, I imagined
so.
 The Deputy showed me the mush boiler, that would cook two large
tubs full of that farinaceous edible at a time; the potato steamer,
that would hold four barrels of that esculent vegetable at a cooking;
the soup and coffee kettles, of still larger dimensions; and that
comprised all of the apparatus required in preparing the mammoth
meals which were to serve above four hundred people. These
cooking utensils were kept in operation by pipes conducting steam
to them from a boiler stationed in the middle of the room.
When he put the steam boiler under my direction I shrank back in
terror from the task of managing it. The huge culinary apparatus,
which he had been exhibiting, although outside the pale of ordinary
housekeeping, was still within the reach of my understanding; but I
had no idea of the management of steam; it was not only a difficult,
but dangerous affair.
"The house will surely be blown up if you leave the care of that
upon me," I said to him.
"You must watch it very closely."
"I don't know how, and I have no aptness for learning that kind of
science."
"One of the women will tend it." And he went on with explanations
that were all Greek to me. "It is safe when you have on twenty
pounds of steam. There is your gauge," and he pointed to a clock-
like looking affair on the wall. "That hand will move round and tell
you how much steam you have on. You must keep water enough in
the boiler or you will get blown up. If it runs from that centre
stopcock, on the side, it is safe. You notice that glass tube in front.
The water is just as high in that as it is in the boiler. This faucet is to
let the water off if you get the boiler too full. Turn that faucet when
you let the water on," and he went along and pointed to one in a
pipe by the wall, "and that pump is there in case of accident. You
must have it worked every day so as to keep it in order."
 All knowledge is useful, I thought, and in time I shall understand
running a steam-engine. As the women have been trusted with the
dangerous thing, they may still continue to be, till I have leisure to
learn the science of steam as applied to cooking.
After I had taken a survey of the kitchen the Deputy took me into
the women's prison which led out of it.
The centre of the hollow square, in which the dormitories are built,
looked like a huge block of glittering ice, so white were the washed
walls of brick and stone. The black, grated doors of the cells,
inserted into them, like the teeth of grinning demons, were ranged
along the sides about two feet apart, tier after tier, five stories, one
above another.
The Deputy led me along past the iron doors. I trembled and
shrank back; but I had no idea of receding from my undertaking. I
"screwed my courage to the sticking-point," and looked into the
narrow, stone rooms; but it was many days before I could force
myself to enter one.
I grew heart-sick, and faint with apprehension of unknown terrors
at their cheerless aspect.
"What lodgings for human beings!" I exclaimed.
"They are not very pleasant," said the Deputy.
"If you were the one to blame for it I should certainly charge you
with great inhumanity."
"I suppose you will think us very cruel sometimes."
"In this case I don't know as you can help it. You did not make
these sleeping apartments for the prisoners. The public functionaries
of the State may be thanked for showing such tender mercies as
these."
 "We are used to seeing them, and they don't look to us as they do
to you."
"Does that make them any more comfortable for the prisoners? Do
they get used to them so as to be comfortable?"
"I presume so. I know they are more comfortable places than some
had before they came here."
"Then it should be the work of the vaunting Christianity of this
religious land to raise such degradation to cleanliness, comfort, and
respectability."
"There might be a great deal done in that direction if people were
only disposed to do it."
"Our prisons are rather private affairs, I believe. They can only be
visited on certain days and occasions."
"It would be very inconvenient for our work to have people running
in, and over the place at all times. We could not have it. And it
wouldn't be liked by the prisoners to be gazed at constantly."
I made no reply; but I thought it might have a salutary effect upon
the discipline of the prison, which he had just said I might think
cruel, to be exposed to the observation of the public. The prisoners
must have lost the sensibility which would shrink from being made a
spectacle before they came in there. If visiting were allowed only on
certain days and occasions, the place and the convicts would be put
in order for company, and a very incorrect idea of the every-day life
of the prisoners would be obtained.
If there were liberty to visit the place, every day, many might go
from curiosity, and it might become annoying. That very curiosity
might discover and discuss faults in the management, which ought
to be remedied, and thus produce a counterbalancing benefit.
The officers might dislike such scrutiny, especially, if they were not
doing their duty. They are officers of the government. Is it not
proper that their conduct should be looked after by the people as
much as that of any other government official?
Evil comrades might go in and hold improper communication with
the prisoners. Can they not do that on regular visiting days?
Is it not only the work of humanity to see that crime is punished in
a way that will not increase it; but also that of the legislator as a
matter of civil policy; and that of the taxpayer as a matter of
personal interest. It should interest every man and woman as a
matter of personal protection from the depredations of vice to know
how convicts are treated, and to judge whether that treatment tends
to reform the criminal, or to harden and lead him deeper into crime
when he is let out into the world again to pursue his own ways.
Ought the punishment of criminals, who have been tried, convicted,
and sentenced publicly, to be conducted in secret? It is to be
presumed that the keeper of the prison is trusty. There should be no
presumption in the matter. It should be known that he is so, and he
should be kept so by the ceaseless vigilance of public inspection.
What is the quarterly, or semi-annual visit of fifty or a hundred men
when the visit has been notified, and the prison put in order for their
reception, towards effecting that?
My residence in that prison led me to see that the descriptions of
Dickens, and his compeers in the regions of fictitious writing, have
given, not the poetic illusions of imaginary sufferings to the
contemplation of the world—hardly a vivid picture of the truth.
God speed the day when our prisons and penitentiaries may take a
place beside public schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge, all
institutions for the cultivation of a knowledge which tends to the
elevation of virtue, and the suppression of vice, in the care of the
public!
Our own children may not stimulate to an interest in them. Our
own children may not require the benefit of the public school, or
orphan asylum; but somebody's children will. In working for the
elevation of everybody's children are we not benefiting our own?
After he had shown me around, so that I might take a general
survey of my field of labor, the Deputy left me with my charge,
saying,—
"You are mistress here. No one has a right to interfere with you,
and you are responsible to no one but me, or the Master."
"But the Head Matron will, of course, come and instruct me in the
details of my work. I must know what work belongs to each woman,
and how she is expected to perform it."
"The women know their work and will do it. The most you have to
do is to keep order."
"That may be a man's idea of managing a kitchen; but there are a
great many details that I ought to understand in order to get the
work properly done, and done in its proper time; and with the
greatest ease to myself and the women."
"The other Matrons will tell you. I will tell you all I can."
I thought, but I did not say it,—You are better disposed than
informed. He saw by the anxious expression of my face that I was
not satisfied, and added, "The women know, they will tell you."
I made no reply; but I thought—It is not the proper thing for me to
receive my instructions from the convicts. It is their place to be
instructed by me. If I am taught by them, I am placed in an inferior
position to them. In order to entertain a proper respect for me they
should look up to me as their superior in all things.
The arrangement for receiving my directions from them placed me
too much in their power also. It would be only indulging natural
proclivities to "play off" on me under the circumstances; and I could
hardly expect these poor, abandoned creatures to be superior to the
temptation to do it when the opportunity was afforded them.
 I could not consider such teachers reliable. If, by misleading me,
with regard to a rule of the institution, they could obtain an
indulgence, or relieve themselves of a burden, would they not take
the advantage which they had of me and do it. I was suspicious that
they would.
There was, probably, some pride mixed with these considerations,
that rebelled against becoming a pupil of convicts when I was their
mistress.
I stood looking on, or walking around, watching the movements of
the women very narrowly, till one of the other Matrons came in.
Then, I went to her with a volume of questions.
To most of them I received the answer,—
"I don't know about that particularly. I have never had anything to
do with this department."
"Then, how am I to learn my duties, and get definite orders for the
regulation of my work? Is there no Head Matron, no superior officer
in the women's prison to whom I can go?"
"The Master's wife is enrolled as Head Matron, and receives pay as
such, but she never comes round."
"I would go to her if I knew where to find her."
"I don't think she knows much more about it than you do, if you
were to go to her. We will all tell you."
"But you don't know. If there is a Head Matron, and she is paid for
doing the duties of one, why does she not perform them? Is she
enrolled head officer of this prison merely to obtain the salary? The
government is very obliging to make her office a sinecure."
I was already perplexed—I was beginning to get vexed.
"Her husband does them for her, perhaps."
 "Perhaps! Then why is he not here, to tell me the work which
belongs to each woman, and how she is to do it; what work is
required, and how I am to get my things to do with? But how can
the Master attend to his own duties and those of the Head Matron
too?"
"The Deputy will tell you."
"He must have his own duties to attend to—how can he perform
hers? He is just as willing to tell me as you are, and I don't think he
knows any more about my place than you do."
"The women know, they will tell you."
I was thrown back upon the convicts again for my instructions.
I went on, despairing of help, to study them out as best I could.
Sometimes by asking left-hand questions of the women, and
sometimes by getting direct explanations from them; but chiefly by
watching the progress of the work. The place seemed to me full of
disorder, confusion, and dirt.
When the Deputy came round again, I was full of trouble.
He said, when I complained to him,—
"You will find things in confusion. The Matron who went away
yesterday was inefficient."
"Perhaps so," I replied; "but the confusion appears to me to date
farther back than the last Matron. It arises from the want of a head
officer to regulate affairs."
"I have double the trouble on this side, with four Matrons and a
hundred women, than with three hundred men and more than a
dozen officers on the other."
"You would insinuate that women are more difficult to get on with
than men. I make a very different solution of the difficulty in this
particular case. You are on the ground all of the time; explain his
duty to every officer, and see that he does it. That makes the
officer's work distinct before him. It is done under your eye, which
makes it promptly and well done. If that were the case on this side,
we might be as orderly, and have as little trouble in performing our
part, as you on yours. The cook tells me that certain work belongs to
the slide woman; the slide woman says it belongs to the sink
women; the sink women shift it on the steam woman, and so I am
kept on the chase, from one to another, for some one to do a piece
of labor. I do not know who ought to do it, and they know it. If they
do not intend to confuse me, they intend to clear themselves of all
the work they can."
"Use your own judgment, and call on whom you please. They are
all obliged to obey any order that you give."
"If I call upon one to do the work that has formerly been done by
another, I stir up ill feelings among the prisoners towards each other,
and contention, and they think me hard and unjust. It makes me
trouble. They obey my order reluctantly, and say, 'That isn't my
work.'"
"If they quarrel, they know the punishment. If they refuse to obey
your orders, report them to me, and I will put them where they will
be glad to obey." He nodded towards the prison door.
I knew he must refer to some kind of punishment. I did not know
what; but frightful visions of the cruelties of which I had read rose in
my imagination, and I said no more.
I vowed to myself that I would never get them punished by
refusing to obey my unjust exactions if I could help it.
My thoughts did not stop with my words. I reasoned with myself. If
my ignorance, or bad management, cause me to be unjust towards
those women, and if I, by my injustice, arouse their bad temper so
as to cause them to be punished, who will be most in fault? I
decided that I should be. The question suggested itself to me—If
you get them punished unjustly who will avenge them? The All-
seeing-Eye will notice, and avenge it. I will be careful.
I resolved to feel my way along softly and carefully. There was no
relief for my dilemma, except in my own ingenuity to find out the
ways of the place, and the proper management to apply to it.
 II.
AT NIGHT.

At seven o'clock, P. M., came the marching in to supper, and the

locking up of all the prisoners.
I looked to see, as they filed past me, one by one, if they carried
marks of their crimes upon their faces. I saw nothing unusual in the
mass; occasionally an individual countenance betrayed the vicious
habits which had brought the woman there. If I had not known that
they were convicts, I should never have suspected them to be
different from the ordinary poor people who are constantly passing
along the streets.
About sixty of the women in the Penitentiary were employed in the
shop upon contract vests, pantaloons, coats, and shirts. There were
about fifty employed upon sewing-machines. The rest cut, basted,
and finished the work.
There were from four to ten in the wash-room. These were all
lodged in my domain, with the exception of two or three who slept
in the hospital.
When they left their work, at night, they were placed in file, in the
order of their cells, and marched into the prison past the ration door,
where their meals were handed out to them, through a slide, from
the kitchen.
Their supper was a "skillet pan" of mush, or a slice of bread, and a
quart of rye coffee, which was taken to their cells to be eaten after
they were locked in their rooms—or stone dens, I called them in my
indignation. The sight of those little, cramped stone cells recalled to
my memory the pictures of dungeons, and imprisonments, and
tortures which I had looked at in my childhood till my heart was
racked with agony at the cruelties which they portrayed.
It was no paper picture that I was looking upon, but a stern reality;
and my shrinking spirit asked again and again, as I saw those poor
creatures marched in, and immured for the night,—Why did your
folly prompt you to undertake such work?
Never shall I forget the hissing creak of the sliding bar as it closed
them in; or the click of the lock as I turned the key in it, for the first
time, upon those poor wretches. Long before I got through with the
thirty-six locks, it fell to my share to bolt, my fingers were bruised,
and my arm ached; but not so much as my heart.
I looked in upon the poor things, one by one, as I locked them in.
An agony of pity worked itself into my soul, and oppressed me
almost to suffocation.
I said to myself—Is this a woman's work? May be. If it must be
done, it should be done tenderly. Great God, for Christ's sake, pity
them in their cold, damp, narrow cells, and make their straw pallets
couches of rest! I prayed mentally as I left the grated doors.
I had thought this to be missionary ground. I might teach some of
them the way to Eternal Life, and the way to reformation. Alas! I
found little chance with those who went to the shop and wash-room.
They rose at sunrise, and worked till sunset. No one was allowed to
hold communication with them, but their own Overseer, about their
work. Neither were they allowed to talk in their cells at night, and
they would have been too tired if they had been given the liberty to
do so. The taskmaster had been over them all day to drive them,
pitilessly, to fulfill their sentence of so many months hard labor in
the Penitentiary.
I turned away, sadly, from that disappointed hope; but I saw the
opportunity still before me to teach the nine, whom I had under my
immediate care, to govern their tempers, and their passions, and to
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