1910 Archives - INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT

The dynasty of forensic and hand-writing experts

Our Great-grandfather Charles R. Hardless (seated left), his son Charles E. Hardless, with Nizam’s palace staff. King Kothi Palace, Hyderabad. 1912

Our Great-grandfather Charles R. Hardless (seated left), his son Charles E. Hardless, with Nizam’s palace staff. King Kothi Palace, Hyderabad. 1912 Image and Narrative points contributed by Karin Tearle, Shahila Mitchell – UK, with expert inputs from Prof. Projit Mukharji – USA This is a photograph of our great grandfather Charles Richard Hardless, his son Charles Edward and the Nizam of Hyderabad’s court staff, taken in Hyderabad State (now Andhra Pradesh) in 1912. Our great grandfather was at the time a detective superintendent and the government’s first handwriting expert. He had been engaged by the Nizam Mir Osam Ali to help foil a conspiracy to overthrow his reign, and is seen here examining some documents. My great grandfather was what Prof. Projit Mukharji and other experts deem ‘The founder of a dynasty of graphologists’. Our great-grandfather, Charles Richard Hardless was born in 1866 in Calcutta (now Kolkata, West Bengal). We believe that his father worked with the East India Company and as was customary in most British families in India, Charles along with his other siblings were brought up between Calcutta and UK. Charles had a keen eye for detection detail and inspired by an uncle, John H. Hardless, an administrator in the British Indian Railways and a trained graphologist (Hand-writing expert) - Charles taught himself the same skill but with a lot more ingenuity. By the 1870s, the Calcutta police had established an exceptionally skilled and large Detective Unit (especially after the infamous Amherst Street murder and Ezra Street murder cases). The department was constantly on the look out for expertise that could help them solve criminal cases in the subcontinent – a empirical region that was still…

“My family were pioneers of photography in the Subcontinent”

My grand-uncle, Maharaja Birendra Kishore Manikya in his studio at Ujjayanta Palace, Agartala, Tripura. Circa 1910

My grand-uncle, Maharaja Birendra Kishore Manikya in his studio at Ujjayanta Palace, Agartala, Tripura. Circa 1910 Image and Narrative points contributed by Vivek Dev Burman, Agartala & Kolkata While clearing a godown in our house in 2015, I chanced upon a wooden box with a sliding cover. On close inspection, it contained ten 10”x12” B&W glass negatives photographed between c. 1897 to 1910, covered in cobwebs and fungus. It turned out to be part of my grandfather’s photographic portfolio. My grandfather, Maharajkumar Brajendra Kishore Dev Burman of Tripura was an avid photographer and a gadget freak. Up until now only few prints of my grandfather’s early work existed and had never before been seen or mentioned outside of immediate family. But discovering these negatives revealed a whole different level of quality and scope than what we had seen before. Later I discovered 36 more glass negatives, dated c.1890-1925, in cupboards wrapped up in newsprint, albeit not in very good condition. This is a photograph of my grand-uncle Maharaja Birendra Kishore taken by my grandfather, his brother, Brajendra Kishore, a year after my grand-uncle became the King of Tripura. They were both 24 years old. My grand-uncle was born in 1883, just 3 months before my grandfather (their mothers were sisters). He was a gifted painter, singer and songwriter. The painting you see on the left,‘The Hermit’, was his adaptation of Job (1880) by Léon Bonnat, an Italian painter. In those days it was quite usual to copy other artists works, and family stories tell us that the painting was sent to Paris, France and won a prize for the best copy. Several of his paintings now hang the palace…

The 100 year old photograph lost, found and lost again

My great great grandparents. Hyderabad State, (now Telangana, India) Circa 1910.

My great great grandparents. Hyderabad State, (now Telangana, India) Circa 1910. Image and Narrative contributed by Dr. Vishnu Sharma Kesaraju, Boston, USA This photograph may have been taken in Warangal, Hyderabad State, (now Telangana, India) or Garla, Hyderabad State, (now Telangana India) more than hundred years ago, circa 1910. The old man in the photograph is Mateti Ramanujana Rao and his wife Cheruku Ranganayakamma. And they were my great great grandparents. The origin and journey of this photograph tells a tale of middle class family in the southern region. Matati Ramanujana Rao worked as a Jemadar, equivalent to today's head constable, in Warangal Central Jail under the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Mahboob Ali Khan Siddiqi Bayafandi’s rule. In a Muslim dominated state, being a Brahmin/Hindu didn't helped his upward mobility, but since he was a salaried person, he could afford a photograph. I don't know much about his life, but that he was survived by two sons and four daughters. Both his sons were Patwaris (village administrators) and my paternal grandmother is the daughter of one of his sons. When my father visited his native village Garla, (formerly Hyderabad State), he discovered the glass plate negative of this photograph in the trash. Grasping its heritage and family value, he tried, albeit in vain, to convince his relatives to take care of it. Later, he took it upon himself to develop it into a photographic print at a photo studio in Jammu (of Jammu & Kashmir), where he was stationed as an Airman in the Indian Air Force. He even distributed copies of the photo to all his relatives to increase the chance of its survival. After a decade or…

The man who compiled the first English to Hindi & Marathi dictionaries

My great grandfather, Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari. Ajmer, Rajasthan. Circa 1955

My great grandfather, Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari. Ajmer, Rajasthan. Circa 1955 Image & Narrative points contributed by Myra Khanna / Rachana Yadav, Gurgaon Volunteer Assistance : Myra Khanna, New Delhi This is the probably the only photograph we have of my maternal great grandfather Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari or as we refer to him Nana Sahib. Born in 1891, Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari was the eldest of four brothers. He was brought up in Bhanpura, a district in the Central Provinces of the subcontinent (now Madhya Pradesh, India). I never did get a chance to meet him, but stories my mother and grandmother tell me about him make me feel that would have been an honour to know him. While there is some documentation that mentions our ancestor Rao Raghunath Singh Bhandari as the acting King of Jodhpur from 1713-1724, I am not sure how it all turned out because in our family’s current memory we had humble beginnings from a village called Jaitaran (Jodhpur District). The family then migrated to their maternal land Bhanpura where Nana Sahib was born. After his birth and as tradition was, his umbilical cord was cut and buried in the soil of our family home’s courtyard and a tree was planted. The house still stands in Bhanpura today, and in it’s courtyard so does a grand tree. In 1904, at the age of 12, Nana Sahib was married off to 13-year-old, Roop Kavar, my great grandmother. Nana Sahib was not interested in the family business and ran away to Jodhpur to complete his education. He excelled at Marathi, Hindi and English languages and self-published his first works by translating Ralph Waldo Trine’s In tune with the Infinite in…

The mythical Uncle Bunnu.

The Cordeiro Siblings. Alec, May and Beatrice. Karachi (now Pakistan). Circa 1910

The Cordeiro Siblings. Alec, May and Beatrice. Karachi (now Pakistan). Circa 1910 Image and Narrative contributed by Naresh Fernandes, Author, Bombay The picture, photographed sometime around 1910, is the childhood image of my grand-uncle Alec Cordeiro, fondly called Bunnu. Next to him is my Grand-aunt May and my Grandmother Beatrice. It isn’t clear when and how exactly my ancestors got to Karachi, but it seems that they’d been there for four generations. Like most Goans, they left looking for work: the Portuguese didn’t establish any industry in Goa, so hundreds and thousands had to seek work in other places. There were sharp discussions in the family about whether our ancestor Santan Vaz had made his money running a liquor distributorship or a booze joint. My paternal great-grandfather, Xavier Cordeiro, was a postmaster general in Karachi. His son-in-law, my grandfather, Alfred Fernandes, moved to Karachi from Burma during World War II. He’d been working for the Burma Railways and had to leave when the Japanese invaded in 1941. So he and his wife, my grandmother, Beatrice (standing right), decided to return to their family’s home in Karachi. In only a few years, the entire family pulled up their roots from the city in which they’d lived for four generations to take their chances in India, a few months before Partition in 1947. Though my father was only nine when the family left Karachi, his elder siblings had more vivid memories : trips between Bombay and Karachi were made on ferries named the Saraswati and the Sabarmati (“they were like little tubs, we all got seasick”) ; relatives having leisurely evenings at the Karachi Goan Association (KGA), “gin and lime was the favourite drink”, and the enterprising…

All translations are machine generated, hence they are not 100% accurate.