East India Company 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 father’s inspired passive resistance

Woven portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute. Bombay, Maharashtra. 1934

Woven portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute. Bombay, Maharashtra. 1934 Image and Narrative contributed by Jayati Gupta, India Indian textiles were a major part of the East India Company’s trade since the 17th century. Hundreds of thousands of people in India were involved in the textile trade, as spinners, weavers and dyers.  By the early years of the 20th century too, textile and textile technology was controlled and promoted by the British and colonial masters. Indian textiles was a rapidly growing industry, especially since the demand for British cotton had slumped during the interwar period. During the booming era of the East India Company, raw materials were sent back to Britain and the finished goods were re-exported and sold in the colonies at exorbitant prices. The production and consumptions of textiles was controlled with imbalanced equations between the producer and the consumer, the coloniser and the colonised.   When Mahatma Gandhi's activism to promote khadi (homespun thread and home-woven cloth) became a big part of resistance to imperial authority, cotton became an important symbol in Indian independence and the Swadeshi movement began to overrule all. The resistance took the form of boycotting foreign goods and textiles. My father, Nirmal Chandra Ghosh (1911-1989), after his initial education in the Zilla School (district scool) in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, (formerly part of Bihar), won a scholarship and decided to train as a textile technologist. In 1930, he became a student of Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (now Veermata Jeejabai Technical Institute/VJTI) in Matunga, Bombay (now Mumbai). He graduated in 1934 becoming that year’s recipient of the Dadabhai Nowrojee Gold Medal. His name appears on the Roll of Honour, a board that is maintained in the Institute.   Those…

Celebrating the end of war at the Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta

My grandparents, mother and her boyfriend. The Great Eastern Hotel. Calcutta, West Bengal. 1946

My grandparents, mother and her boyfriend. The Great Eastern Hotel. Calcutta, West Bengal. 1946 Image and Narrative contributed by Jonathan Charles Cracknell, London, UK Just as India was heading towards Independence in 1947, people were celebrating the End of the World War II and this picture was photographed at New years Eve in the real capital of British India, Calcutta (West Bengal). My maternal grandfather, Peter sits here with a fez on his head, and next to him is my grandmother Anna. She was of mixed heritage - of Kashmiri and German Jewish descent. Sitting next to her is my mother and her then boyfriend, a British soldier, on leave from his posting in Malaya (now Malaysia). It was earlier in the same year that the British Military Administration in Malaya had been replaced by its own, the Malayan union. The hotel, then known as the Great Eastern Hotel where this image was taken is now called the Lalit Great Eastern Hotel. An extremely popular place, the colonial era hotel was originally established as a confectionary shop and then grew into a grand and plush hotel in the early 1840s, a time when Calcutta was the top seat of the East India Company. The hotel had a 100 rooms, and claimed to be second oldest of the British Empire and India's first luxury hotel. It was also well known for its extravagant and delicious french cuisine, and served snacks and a whisky peg or two, similar to a drive-by service, to horse drawn carriages. Referred to as "the Jewel of the East" and the "Savoy of the East" in its heyday, Great Eastern Hotel hosted several notable persons visiting the city including I am told, Queen Elizabeth II, the…

The Last Great Silk Route trader of India

My great grandfather Munshi Aziz Bhat with his two sons, Munshi Habibullah and Munshi Abdul Rehman. Kargil, Ladakh. 1945.

My great grandfather Munshi Aziz Bhat with his two sons, Munshi Habibullah and Munshi Abdul Rehman. Kargil, Ladakh. 1945. Image and Narrative contributed by Muzammil Hussain Munshi, Kargil, Ladakh This photograph is of my great grandfather Munshi Aziz Bhat, in his proud head gear Pagdi (locally the Thott) with his two sons, Munshi Habibullah (my grandfather) and Munshi Abdul Rehman, sitting at the Sarai on a usual business day. It was taken by a Mr. Daniel Berger from Neuchatel, Switzerland in 1945, who was probably a Moravian Missionary travelling across Ladakh and Tibet. This photograph along with few others was telegraphed to my great grandfather in Kargil, Ladakh the following year. Munshi Aziz Bhat was my paternal as well as maternal great grandfather. My mother (daughter of his son, Munshi Abdul Rehman, seated left) and father (son of his other son Munshi Habibullah, seated right) are first cousins. In older times, marriages between cousins was normal like many other cultures of the world. Marriages were fixed when the betrothed were still children and they hardly had any say in the decision. My great grandfather, Munshi Aziz Bhat was last of the Great Silk route traders of India. Born in Leh in 1866, he was the son of Khoja Rasool Bhat. The last name Bhat came from his ethnicity of Kashmiri Brahmins from Kishtwar, Kashmir. Due to influences of Islamic revolutionaries during the Mughal period, several Kashmiri Brahmins converted to Islam but the last name was retained. Khoja Rasool Bhat was a record keeper with the Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jammu & Kashmir State government. After he died suffering a sudden illness in 1868, Aziz Bhat’s mother brought up him…

He designed motorbikes, served the British Army and worked in a circus with his wife.

My grandfather, Glyndon Ralph O'Leary, fondly known as Mike. Location - Probably Sibi (Now Pakistan). 1941

My grandfather, Glyndon Ralph O'Leary, fondly known as Mike. Location - Probably Sibi (Now Pakistan). 1941 Image and Narrative contributed by Shaun Waller & Oonagh Waller, UK These are the memories of my mother, Oonagh who was born in India to my grandparents, Glyndon Ralph O'Leary (Mike) and Sheilagh Anges Mary Maguire. - Shaun "My father, Glyndon Ralph O'Leary was fondly known as Mike. He was born in 1902 in Toronto, Canada to Winifred and Ralph O'Leary, who were of Irish descent. At the age of Twelve, he left Canada and began his military career in the Boys service, Indian Subcontinent from 1914 - 1919 and continued in various regiments serving the British Empire on and off until 1946. Mike was also a Practical Motor Engineer: his brothers and he owned and worked in a motorcycle workshop and showroom called the O’Leary Brothers in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh. They also designed and built a motorcycle called the White Streak. However, it never made it to production. At one point, they bought an old motorcycle, a Brough Superior from T. E. Lawrence (The very original Lawrence of Arabia) and exhibited it in their showroom. While in the army in Lahore, Mike manufactured scale models for Forest Research, Rural upliftment, P.W.D. and Irrigation departments and also tactical models for training of mechanised fighting vehicles. 12 such gold medal standard models manufactured by him were on display in the Forestry Department of Lahore Central Museum. I wonder if they are still there. Mike married Sheilagh Anges Mary Maguire in October 1928 in Lahore and subsequently had three children - Michael, Oonagh and Larry. Later the children went to boarding school in Mussoorie: Wynberg…

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