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East Indian misfortunes: the Fraser brothers and the early Raj
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2023
Abstract
Nothing in William Fraser's life in India is better known than his leaving of it. In March 1835, after 30 years in India, Fraser, then the East India Company's chief representative in Delhi, was gunned down by an assassin. The story of Fraser's murder is well covered in history. However, far more of Fraser's life in India—and that of his brothers—is discernible through their letters home to their family in Reelig, outside Inverness in Scotland.
The Frasers sent five sons to India: William, his older brother James, and their three younger siblings, Edward, Alexander, and George. Only James ultimately returned home. If service in the East India Company in the time of Clive had offered the chance of making a killing, so too was it possible to die young of disease or in battle. By the early nineteenth century, after a series of Company reforms, it was no longer as possible to make a huge fortune in India, though early death was still a probability. Nevertheless, salaries were respectable, and one could live well and maybe even send money home. There is a great deal more than these material considerations in the Frasers’ correspondence. Among the topics covered are the brothers’ impressions of India, descriptions of travel and working life, their professional and social interactions with the British and Indians, and reflections on the contemporary state of medical care. This article will discuss the lives and travails of the Fraser brothers as exemplars of their generation of East India Company officialdom.
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References
1 Thomas Metcalfe was the younger brother of Charles Metcalfe, who had earlier served as Resident in Delhi. This description of the assassination is based on a letter from A. Fraser to James Skinner, 23 March 1835, Fraser Papers (FP), Bundle (B) 273, quoted in Archer, M. and Falk, T., India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser (London, 1989), pp. 54–55Google Scholar.
2 John Lawrence went on to a distinguished career in India, finally serving as Viceroy from 1864–1869. His brother Henry died in the siege of the Lucknow Residency in 1857. Buckland, C. E., Dictionary of Indian Biography (hereafter DIB) (reprint, Lahore, 1975), pp. 246–247Google Scholar.
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4 Skinner, whose father was a Scot and mother, Indian, was a skilled warrior who could never be an officer in the British-Indian Army because of his mixed racial background. He formed an irregular regiment, Skinner's Horse, allied with the British, in a career covered in James Baillie Fraser, Military Memoir of Lieut.-Col. James Skinner C.B., 2 vols (London, 1851). Both Fraser brothers, James and William, were close friends of Skinner.
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6 Ghalib was related to the cadet branch as well as, by marriage, to Nawab Ahmad Bakhsh: his wife was the daughter of Ilahi Bakhsh Khan, Ahmad Bakhsh's younger brother. Farooqi, M. A., Ghalib: A Critical Biography (Gurgaon, 2021), p. xiGoogle Scholar; File re Ghalib's Claim to Certain Jagirs, Foreign (Misc) 208, 1830, National Archives of India (NAI).
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18 William's diary of the journey to Delhi, FP, vol. 29, pp. 28–29.
19 Ibid., pp. 33–36.
20 Ibid., pp. 22, 39–40, 44.
21 Ibid., pp. 50–52, 59–60.
22 Dalrymple, W., White Mughals (London, 2002), pp. 30–31, 53Google Scholar, 183; part of Ochterlony's military career is detailed in Coleman, A. P., A Special Corps: The Beginnings of Gorkha Service with the British (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 34–35Google Scholar.
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30 William Fraser to his father, 1 January 1811, FP, vol. 29, p. 237.
31 Memoirs of William Fraser: Caubul (Kabul) Embassy, FP, vols 21 and 30, 13 October 1808–6 July 1809; cf. M. Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 2 vols (reprint Karachi, 1972).
32 Archer and Falk, India Revealed, p. 17.
33 A painting of her is reproduced in ibid., p. 18, fig. 8.
34 Pernau, Ashraf to Middle Classes, p. 167; Spear, Twilight, pp. 156–157; Buckland, DIB, p. 287.
35 James's Travel Diary, 1820, FP, B 304, pp. 397–402; excerpted in Archer and Falk, India Revealed, p. 52.
36 Coleman, A Special Corps, passim.
37 V. Jacquemont, Letters from India (reprint, Karachi, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 345–346.
38 William to James, Panipat, 6 April 1819, FP, vol. 23, pp. 99–104.
39 William to his father, Delhi, 7 March 1814, FP, vol. 29, p. 278.
40 William to his mother, Meerut, 25 December 1813, FP, vol. 29, p. 288.
41 Charles Ray to William, Hariana, n.d. (1821?), FP, B 426, pp. 1–3; Dr Ludlow to William, n.d., FP, B 429, pp. 37–38.
42 F. Young to William, Dehra, 19 August 1821, FP, B 430, pp. 95–98.
43 For a fictional account of mid-nineteenth-century medical knowledge (in this case, the cause of cholera), see the argument between Drs McNab and Dunstaple, in Farrell, J. G., The Siege of Krishnapur (Harmondsworth, 1975), chapter 25Google Scholar, pp. 274–84.
44 James to his father, 14 May 1818 and 9 November 1818, FP, vol. 23, pp. 59–61, 75–85.
45 C. T. Metcalfe to J. Ferguson, n.d. (1817 or 1818), FP, B 326, p. 53.
46 Panigrahi, Metcalfe in India, pp. 55–57, citing Kaye, Metcalfe, pp. 48–53.
47 C. T. Metcalfe to W. Fraser, 16 February (1818?), FP, B 329, pp. 38–44.
48 On the Colebrooke affair, see Spear, Twilight, pp. 167–181; cf. Prior, K., Brennan, L. and Haines, R., ‘Bad language: the role of esoteric tongues in the dismissal of Sir Edward Colebrooke as Resident of Delhi in 1829’, Modern Asian Studies 35.1 (2001), pp. 75–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Fisher, M. H., Indirect Rule in India, Residents and the Residency System, 1764–1857 (Delhi, 1991), pp. 183–184Google Scholar, citing Foreign Political Consultations (FPC), 19 March 1830, Nos. 6–7, NAI.
50 The official akhbār listed his frequent absences from the city. Pernau and Jaffrey, Information and the Public Sphere, pp. 166, 173, 175, 222–223, 364, 371, 391, 401.
51 Jacquemont, Letters, vol. 1, p. 345.
52 Ibid., pp. 346–347.
53 See below, note 63.
54 H. Prinsep to William Fraser, Calcutta, 18 February 1831, FP, B 345, pp. 4–6.
55 Jacquemont, Letters, vol. 1, pp. 347–348; regarding the French officers at the court of the Punjab, see Lafont, J-M., French Administrators of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Delhi, 1986)Google Scholar; and Lafont, J-M., Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations, 1630–1976 (New Delhi, 2000), chapters 7–9Google Scholar.
56 Jacquemont's letters to William are in several bundles of the Fraser papers (B nos. 274, 338, 343, 346, 452). They have, to my knowledge, never been transcribed, edited, or published, and are well worth exploring by some future scholar.
57 V. Jacquemont to W. Fraser, Salsette, 26 September 1832, FP, B 346, pp. 44–51.
58 John Bax to William Fraser, Bombay, 8 December 1832, FP, B 337, pp. 32–33.
59 C. T. Metcalfe to Lord Bentinck, 19 February 1832, in Philips, C. H., The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (London, 1977), vol. 2, pp. 759–760Google Scholar.
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61 Journal of J. B. Fraser, 1–3 June 1816, FP, vol. 19, pp. 205–211.
62 Reproduced in Archer and Falk, India Revealed, pp. 74–88.
63 Reproduced in ibid., pp. 62–72.
64 Among the artists were Ghulam Ali Khan, Mazhar Ali Khan, and Lallji. These are attributions based on comparisons with other manuscripts cited by Archer and Falk. Selection of the Fraser Album Company drawings, reproduced in ibid., pp. 90–136.
65 Archer, M., Early Views of India: The Picturesque Journeys of Thomas and William Daniell, 1786–1794 (London, 1980)Google Scholar.
66 Archer and Falk, India Revealed, p. 57.
67 J. B. Fraser to his mother, Delhi, 8 October 1820, FP, vol. 24, pp. 16–18.
68 Archer and Falk, India Revealed, pp. 53–57.
69 File concerning settlement of William Fraser's estate, FP, B 282–283. The house still stands, considerably remodelled and expanded, and is known as the Hindu Rao Hospital.
70 The complete inscriptions on the tomb are quoted in Spear, Twilight, pp. 189–190; a painting of the tomb is reproduced in Kaye, M. M., The Golden Calm: An English Lady's Life in Mughal Delhi (New York, 1980), p. 77Google Scholar.
71 Mirza A. K. Ghalib, Dastanbuy: A Diary of the Indian Revolt of 1857, (trans.) K. A. Faruqi (Bombay, 1970), p. 31.
72 In fact, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi has written an Urdu novel in which William Fraser, Nawab Shamsuddin, and Ghalib all appear. It is not focused on the Frasers, but rather on the culture of Delhi at that time. It is fiction, and will not be reviewed here. Faruqi, S. R., Ka’ī Chānd The Sar-e Āsmān (New Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar, translated by Faruqi, S. R. as The Mirror of Beauty (New Delhi, 2013)Google Scholar. On a personal note, my thanks to William Dalrymple, whose book, City of Djinns (London, 1994), first introduced me to the existence of the Fraser brothers’ correspondence. He graciously put me in touch with the Fraser family, and I was able to spend a month in Scotland reading some of the brothers’ letters. My profound thanks to Kathy and Malcolm Fraser of Reelig for their help and hospitality. While there, I happened to mention that my mother's ancestors were from Scotland, and she had told me that her family name, McKim, was somehow related to Fraser. It turns out that, indeed, McKim/Mackim is a version of MacSymon and thus a sept of Clan Fraser. Kathy welcomed me to the clan and presented me with a short clan history: Fraser, C. I., The Clan Fraser of Lovat (Edinburgh and London, reprint 1960)Google Scholar.