Talk:Begum Johnson

Cut and paste from William Watts

Hi Wikibiohistory - just explaining why I changed your edit about Lord Liverpool's mother. According to the book in footnote 3 she was part-Indian, also according to the biography of Lord Liverpool by Norman Gash. Of course it is possible that they are wrong. If there are any published sources that argue that they are wrong then we could put in something about a dispute.Southdevonian (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that either William Watts or "Begum Johnson" had Indian ancestry. Please see the following links for more:

• • William Watts, a Wikipedia entry, with footnotes, partly added by myself and partly by others
  • Frances Croke, a biographical entry, unfortunately with no sources provided except family archivists.
  • Ghosh, Durba, 1967- "Who Counts as 'Native?': Gender, Race, and Subjectivity in Colonial India

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History - Volume 6, Number 3, Winter 2005. available online; restricted access. This article probably provides the most current information, and I will have to look this up.

• • Ivor Edwards-Stuart. The Calcutta of Begum Johnson Published March 28, 1990 by BACSA (British Association for Cemeteries in South . link to openlibrary citation

Other references to Begum Johnson online include:

• • [2] "— Mrs. Johnson, the Begum Johnson (1725-1812) (75x62cm; 400x328pix, 23kb) _ The British Empire was not acquired in a fit of absence of mind so much as in a fit of absence of wives. Until the late 18th century, very few British women ventured to come to India. The original charters of the East India Company forbade women on its trading posts. About 1800, of the Europeans in Bengal and its dependencies, there were only 250 women as against 4000 men. The cost of landing a European wife at Calcutta worked out to Rs 5000, far beyond the means of ordinary company officials. A famous exception was the “Begum” Johnson (strictly, begum in India meant a Muslim woman of high rank), who was born Frances Croke on 10 April 1728 in Fort St. David, Bengal, the daughter of its Governor, Edward Croke [1690 – 12 Feb 1769]. (italics mine) She first got married at the age of 12 and took her fifth (but not last) husband when she was nineteen. On 24 March 1749 she married William Watts [1722 – 04 Aug 1764], Governor of Bengal; their daughter Sophia married George Poyntz Ricketts (1st), Governor of Barbados; their daughter Amelia [22 Dec 1750 – 20 Jul 1770 bur.] married on 09 February 1769 British politician Charles Jenkinson [26 Apr 1727 – 17 Dec 1808] (later 1st Earl of Liverpool), and died not long after giving birth to the future British Prime Minister (08 Jun 1812 – 17 Feb 1827) Robert Banks Johnson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool [07 Jun 1770 – 04 Dec 1828]. After the Begum Johnson died in Calcutta on 03 February 1812, having become the grand old dame of Calcutta society, she was given a state funeral. ". Her portrait is at the NPG.

• • article from a Calcutta newspaper The Telegraph date 3 January 2010. By the way, I visited the church myself that month less than a week after this article appeared and saw the lady's tombstone myself.

Short of a full ancestry (ahnentafel etc) of Begum Johnson, we cannot be certain that she was part-Indian or not. Her portrait is ambiguous. However, to call her Indian would be correct in the language of that time. She was born in Madras and raised in India, and so counted as "Indian". Her mother's ancestry is not known, but her father was the very British Governor of Fort St. David (Coromandel coast).. At best, if her mother was part-Indian, she would be part-Indian. That would not make her an Indian wife to the Englishmen then living in Calcutta, but rather an India-born English wife. There are wonderful books debating the nature of English and Anglo-Indian (then known differently) identity in early British India. Unfortunately, I don't think any books exist on the period before Lord Cornwallis and Wellesley, as materials are so scanty. Job Charnock's wife was Indian (apparently a Brahmin widow), but his daughters were apparently regarded as English and certainly married prominent Englishmen.

Wikibiohistory 00:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The source in the footnote in the Lord Liverpool article says part-Indian. So, more importantly, does the biography by Norman Gash, whilst acknowledging that Liverpool was only a small part Indian. And others, who have probably just got it from Gash. One source said that Liverpool was proud of his Indian ancestry. Why not find a published source and put in a sentence saying that so-and-so has disputed this and says that Liverpool's grandmother was European or whatever?Southdevonian (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

And, in my creation of the Begum Johnson article, I came across this debunking of the idea that her grandson the Prime Minister had any Indian ancestry:

Lord Liverpool did not have then an Indian grandmother but, at best, an Indian great-grandmother. But even that is stretching it a bit. After all, ‘Isabella Beizor’ is a very Portuguese name and she presumably belonged to the substantial eighteenth-century Portuguese community in India Did she have any Indian blood in her veins? Given some of the unfortunate attitudes that were floating around at the time the very fact that Edward married her suggests not. A ‘Portuguese Indian Creole’ would have been for the bedroom not for the church and the drawing room. If she had come out from Portugal then Lord Liverpool did not have even a finger’s worth of Indian DNA. If, instead, Isabella’s family had been in India for several generations then it is possible that a grandparent had been Indian and that this ‘indiscretion’ was distant enough that Isabella’s bloodline did not obstruct a marriage with Edward Croke. If that was, indeed, the case then PERHAPS a thirty-second part of the British Prime Minister was Indian. By Beach’s calculation that is about half of his left foot...

Not WP:RS but delightful. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 23:07, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

References