A passage to (and from) India

My family's colonial past

The landscape of Kerala (photo by Alison Baxter)

There’s been a bit of a gap since my last post because I’ve been away - enjoying the beautiful Caribbean island of Dominica. I’ll be writing about my trip here soon, but in the meantime, here’s a piece I’ve been working on for a while, about my Dupen ancestors and their links to India.

For many years I assumed that my family’s colonial past was to be found only in Canada, Australia, and possibly New Zealand, where so many of my Scottish, Cornish, and Northumbrian relatives emigrated in search of a better life. Although my direct ancestors stayed behind in the UK, many of their siblings and cousins were to be found roughing it in northern Ontario or the Australian outback in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was only when I began researching my first book that I uncovered my family connections with India, and yet these were still within living memory if I’d known where to look and who to ask. I even had a holiday in Kerala without realising that this was where my relatives had settled some 150 years before.

Coffee growing in Kerala (photo by Alison Baxter)

I wrote in my post A Cornish Cargo about my great-grandmother’s brother George Dupen, who was the first of the family to arrive there when he jumped ship to become a coffee planter. It's probably fair to say that most people think of tea as the main export of colonial India, but in the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, from about 1840, coffee was an increasingly important crop. In the year 1873-4 some 40 million pounds (18.5 million kg) was exported, to a value of £1.5 million. A small percentage of this came from the Nelliampathy hills, south of the town of Palghat (Palakkad) and some 150 km inland from the Keralan port city of Cochin. The planting directory of 1878 lists a small community of a dozen coffee plantations, ranging in size from136 to over 2,000 acres, although just a fraction of the land had been cleared and was under cultivation. They were owned mostly by individuals (only one with a name that identifies him as Indian), plus two companies. About half of the owners managed their own estates, with the others employing a resident manager. By this date, George Dupen owned 200 acres, of which 60 acres were under cultivation. He also managed another 700 acres on behalf of a J. Mackenzie, while his brother Ernest was the assistant manager on the vast 2,117 acre (but only 280 under cultivation) estate owned by the Oriental Coffee Company.

We know all about their daily life thanks to the writer Edwin Lester Arnold, son of a well-known poet and journalist, who spent time as young man in the Nellimapathies and wrote about it in a memoir entitled On the Indian Hills, or coffee planting in southern India. He discreetly refers to the planters by their initials but it’s easy to identify his ‘energetic Cornishman’ G. D. as George and E. D., unkindly nicknamed ‘the stoker’, as his brother Ernest, the former ship’s engineer. I quoted from his book in my earlier post A sailor’s Christmas.

A planter’s home (from On the Indian Hills)

It was not a healthy way of life. The planters built their bungalows on high ground but their days were spent down in the valleys where the coffee grew. Clearing the land, planting, and weeding was backbreaking work, and although the hard labour was carried out by indentured workers referred to as ‘coolies’, the European supervisors also spent all day out in the steamy heat and pouring rain, trudging up and down the steep hills. Arnold describes the terrain like this:

The first thing to be understood is that the land is a continual succession of hills and ravines, There is not such a thing anywhere in the district as a piece of ground, naturally level, of sufficient size to play a game of tennis on, but wherever you walk you are either slipping downhill or laboriously climbing upwards.

Even if they avoided the cholera that broke out amongst the labourers, the managers inevitably suffered from dysentery and ‘jungle fever’ (malaria) on a regular basis (which is no doubt why chinchona to make quinine was another crop planted alongside the coffee). Arnold described his first attack of fever in these words:

When anything unpleasant is in store for me, I like to face it as soon as possible; and consequently, as there was no hope of escaping altogether from the jungle fever, I had been rather impatient for the first attack. On the 14th of February it came on, and I was able to say my curiosity was thoroughly satisfied. The first symptoms showed about breakfast-time, when a bad headache was rapidly succeeded by a fit of ague, which set me shivering until it was scarcely possible to stand up, and quite impossible to do any work while it lasted, which was about two hours. Then succeeded the hot stage, with sharp pains in every limb and joint, accompanied by a fierce throbbing headache and a terrible thirst, which no amount of drink could allay.

Arnold was eventually able to retreat to Ootacamund or ‘Ooty’, that picturesque hill station 2,000 metres above sea level, where the planters of southern India went to restore their health, and subsequently he returned to England and became a successful novelist.¹ George Dupen, on the other hand, stayed in Kerala, and died in Madras in 1884 at the age of just 42. The newspaper report of his death described how he had been planning to travel to a healthier climate but left it too late:

He had been suffering from bronchitis and congestion of the lungs for two or three months, and had gone to Madras to consult a physician, and had made preparations for a voyage to Australia for a change of air.

Ernest Dupen, according to Arnold, also suffered constantly from fever, but around the time of George’s death, after a fungal disease called coffee rust had started to attack the plants, he started a new business constructing roads and other infrastructure. He lived until 1905, when he died of a stroke aged 54.

Ernest Dupen in the uniform of the Volunteer Malabar Rifles

Neither George nor Ernest had any (legitimate) children but despite the risk to health, they encouraged two of their nephews to come out and join them. One was confusingly named after his uncle, George Semmens Dupen, and was the second son of naval engineer John Dupen. (I wrote in A tale of two brothers about his brothers Arthur and Bertie.) In 1895 this second George is listed in Thacker’s Indian Directory as the manager of the Coomblacodie coffee estate, the smallest of the Nelliampathy plantations, although he would only have been seventeen at this time. It is easy to forget how very young the men were who set off to seek their fortune in the colonies. The first George was twenty-two when he became a coffee planter and had already spent eight years at sea, while Edwin Arnold was barely twenty when he set off for his memorable year in the jungle.

Because of the coffee rust, many plantations were being abandoned or converted to tea, and by 1904 the younger George had changed career to become the assistant commissioner in charge of recruiting Indian labourers to work on the tea, coffee, and rubber plantations of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The economy of Ceylon was almost entirely dependent on the export of these crops and relied on cheap labour from southern India for the planting and harvesting. At a time of high unemployment, destitute low caste Tamils were recruited into a form of debt bondage, where the money advanced was unlikely ever to be repaid out of their low wages, meaning they would be permanently tied to the plantation. Living conditions were tough and even today, the descendants of these ‘Plantation Tamils’ are amongst the most marginalised communities in Sri Lanka. You can read more about them in this article.

Based in the town of Dinidgul in Tamil Nadu, by 1912 George was being congratulated by his superior for achieving an annual increase in recruitment. After warning of an outbreak of plague that might ‘hinder emigration’ he submitted the following report. You will find his language and attitudes offensive, as I do, but such first hand accounts provide a valuable insight into the reality of our colonial history.

CAMPING REPORT FOR DECEMBER, 1912. I left Palghat at 9-10 a.m. by motor cycle for Ottapallam, a distance of 22 miles, on the way I stopped at Parli and Pathripoliam and distributed notices and talked with several of the inhabitants of the villages. Most of the villages along this road are inhabited by Maplahs [Moplahs were a Muslim community who made the headlines in 1921 when they staged a rebellion against the colonial government], who I gather are not wanted by many estates in Ceylon.

11th December, 1912. — Remained at Ottapallam. I endeavourd to find two kanganies [local men who would act as recruiters and supervisors] who were supposed to be in this place, but found they had left. I had a large number of notices distributed in the village. I have not interviewed any of the village officials daring this camp, as I know Malabar so well that I do not find it necesary to question them about crops or recruiting prospects.

10th December, 1912. — I motored from Ottapallam to Pattambi, a distance of 14 miles. I stopped at one village named Vaniakolam and distributed notices. All the other villages are peopled by Maplahs. In Malabar the people as a rule do not live in villages like they do in other parts of India, but their houses are scattered all over the country, each person having his own little compound and house, the best way to get at the people is to arrange one’s camp so as to be at a place when the weekly bazaar is held, this I endeavoured to do as much as possible, people come from miles to attend these bazaars.

[The entries for December 11^th-19^th continue in the same vein]

20th December, 1912.— I remained at Calicut. This is the most important town on the West coast, its population consisting mostly of Tiyaa, Iruvas and Maplahs, there are also a large proportion of Cherumars, the latter being excellent estate coolies, though, being more or less bondmen to the large land-lords, they are difficult to get. On both days whilst at Calicut I had large number of notices distributed.

21st December, 1912. — I went from Calicut to Palghat by train. Whilst at Calicut, I stayed with District Judge. Distance travelled by Motor Cycle 97 Ditto by Train 83 Total 180 Remarks on the Camp. — A good deal of this camp has been over country chiefly populated by Maplahs, though there is a large percentage of other castes scattered about the country, a Maplah is not a persona grata for estate work in Ceylon or Straits, but in his own country he is much appreciated both for road and estate works, most of the labour employed on the Rubber estates in South India is composed of Maplahs, and the planters speak very well of them. Of the places I have stopped at I can recommend Ottapallam, Angardipuram, Ferok, Kalui and Calicut as good recruiting grounds, though Chirakal Taluq in North Malabar is the best place for Malayalam labour; an Agency is being shortly opened at Cannanore, which I think will be a success. Superintendents in Ceylon who intend employing Malayalam labour should, if possible, in every case put a Malayalam kangaly in charge of his coolies, the Malayalam likes to keep to himself and work with, and be managed by his own people. The Nai caste [traditionally a caste of barbers] should never be sent to Ceylon.

(Signed) G. S. DUPEN, Asst. Ceylon Labour Commissioner.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his gruelling travels on his motorbike, George seems to have been in poor health. In 1906 his wedding ceremony, which took place in the attractive hill station of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, was a quiet one because he had only recently recovered from an undisclosed illness. George was 28 and his bride was a 38 year old Englishwoman called Alice Walton. There is no obvious reason for her presence in India. In the census of 1901 she was living on her own means, alone except for a maidservant, in Horley, Surrey. Was she husband hunting when she travelled to India? One of the single women unkindly labelled ‘the fishing fleet’? I can find no family connection to India but she was given away by a Mr Arthur Edgington, an employee of the East India Company and senior civil servant. Alice, who wore ‘a beautiful gown of white satin, the bodice trimmed with fine lace and clusters of chiffon roses mixed with orange blossom’, was attended by Mrs Edgington ‘wearing a very pretty gown of green voile and a picturesque hat, while her charming little son was dressed as a miniature man-of-warsman.’ Was Mrs Edgington perhaps a friend of Alice’s who had invited her to India? And I do hope someone will be able to elucidate what kind of outfit her son was wearing! I’m imagining maybe a sailor suit?

Alice and George had no children but touchingly, in 1908, Alice is recorded in the Madras Weekly Mail as attending a little girl’s twelfth birthday party, where she handed out toys to 35 children, who consequently regarded her as ‘a sort of Fairy Godmother for the time being’. The couple remained in India until after World War I, but by the time of the 1921 census they were back in England, living in London, with George explaining defensively under ‘Occupation’ that he was ‘Late Assistant Commissioner Ceylon Labour Commission. Lost employment owing to crisis in tea and rubber.’ Does anyone know of any other examples of such explanations being given in the census? To me, the fact that he felt the need to write this argues a certain vulnerability and perhaps he was already showing signs of the mental ill health that affected him later. He and Alice moved to Torquay, and in 1929 George died in the Devon Mental hospital in Exminster. There was however a happy ending for Alice. According to family legend, she followed the example of George’s cousin Clare (described in An avalanche in Newfoundland) and supported herself by running a home for children sent home from India. But in 1935 she remarried, to a widowed baronet and retired master mariner called Sir Charles Louis. (Rather delightfully, he prided himself on being the first baronet to become a trade union official, when he was appointed treasurer of the National Union of Masters and Mates.) My grandparents attended the wedding, which was a big society event, and my grandmother (who loved an aristocratic title!) saved the newspaper clipping complete with photograph of the happy couple (unfortunately not well enough preserved for me to include here).

The other nephew who made a career in India was Vivian Pennefather Dupen, youngest son of my great-grandmother’s oldest brother, Sharrock Semmens Dupen. His experience was very different from that of his cousin George. Vivian’s mother died when he was only four and he was taken to live with his grandmother and aunts in Hayle, were he made the news by receiving a certificate from the Royal Humane Society for saving another lad from drowning. In 1891, at the age of nineteen, he was working as an ironmonger’s assistant, not a particularly exciting job for a young man whose two older brothers had respectively gone to sea and emigrated to the USA. But the heyday of the big Hayle foundries and shipyards was over by that time and unemployment was driving mass emigration from Cornwall. It is in that context that in 1892 Vivian sailed for India to join his uncle Ernest in his engineering business.

In 1903 Vivian married Jane Rowe, a young woman whom he had known at school in Hayle, although she had been born in Akkerman, near Odesa in the Ukraine, where her father was assisting his father, a millwright, to instal mill machinery. (I think Jane, who as a child spoke fluent Russian, will have to be the subject of another post!) After Ernest’s death, Vivian carried on with the business and in 1910 opened up a 900 acre rubber plantation at Elak near Palghat. Another characteristic of these men is how, with absolutely no training or experience, they were prepared to turn their hand to anything that promised to make money. During World War I Vivian lost money on a contract for a bridge and had to give up the business. He found work managing a tile works and was later employed by James Finlay & Co, a Scottish company that had started in textiles and was now the leading Indian tea supplier to the UK. The firm employed some 70,000 workers, supervised by a large number of European managers, and had taken over much of the land in the Nelliampathies.

Vivian stayed on, even after India gained its independence, and according to the passenger lists on the Ancestry website, his final voyage home was in 1957, when he was 86 years old. His son Vivian Cecil was born in India but returned to the UK for his education, staying with his aunt Clare in Weymouth. He trained as a civil and mechanical engineer and returned to India in 1925 with the idea of reviving his father’s business. When this proved impossible he joined the firm of T. Stanes. (Tom Stanes of Coimbatore had been the man who offered Vivian’s great-uncle George the chance to work on their coffee plantation back in 1863.) Vivian Cecil returned to England in 1935 and had a successful career as an engineer. Of his three sisters, two of them married in India but moved to live in Scotland after the war. The third sister married an agricultural adviser and went to live in West Africa. The Dupens were, I imagine, quite a typical British Indian family of their time. Not soldiers or administrators but ambitious members of the middle class who recognised the limitations of life in England and seized the opportunities on offer overseas. It would not have occurred to them to consider the needs or wishes of the local population.

I’m therefore pleased to conclude on a more positive note. The Nelliampathy land is now cultivated by Poabs estates, recognised as the ‘largest perennial multi-crop organic farm in the world’. They grow tea, coffee, pepper, cardamon and oranges. Their website also states that they adhere to statutory Government of India regulations under the Plantations Labour Act of 1951, which legislates the terms of employment for plantation workers.

This Act is considered exemplary, even today, providing for health, welfare, including recreation, education and housing, the hours and limitation of employment, and leave with wages. It is well known that Kerala state ranks the highest in India in terms of literacy and health, and we are proud to be a part of a society that has set standards for human development in the country.

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^[1] Ooty is also the setting for an episode of the charming Indian Hill Railways on BBC iPlayer.

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