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“Oh What Horrors will be DisclosedWhen We Know All”Catherine HartPublished online: 09 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Catherine Hart (2012) “Oh What Horrors will be Disclosed When We Know All”,Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, 34:3, 185-196, DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2012.751258

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Catherine Hart

“OHWHATHORRORSWILL BEDISCLOSED

WHEN WE KNOW ALL”

British Women and the Private/Public

Experience of the Siege of Lucknow

As casualties and victims of large-scale rebellion against imperial authority in India, Britishwomen played an important role in shaping public opinion of the Rebellion at home and ininitiating a shift in imperial ideology. Repeatedly cast in the role of helpless victims in historiesand first-hand accounts written by men, British women came to symbolize the fragile, albeitmorally superior, empire. I argue here, however, that the diaries and letters written by Britishwomen actively contributed to the collective understanding of the siege of Lucknow and byextension, to the place of the Rebellion in initiating a shift in imperial ideology.

Keywords Indian rebellion; siege of Lucknow; woman diarists; domesticity;Lady Julia Inglis; Katherine Harris

The Rebellion of 1857 marked a political turning point in the history of British India: itsresolution resulted in the end of the East India Company’s rule and the inception ofdirect British government rule on November 1, 1858. However, more than a catalystfor a change in colonial governance, the Rebellion, as an event, had a profound impacton the way the British conceived of themselves as imperial rulers and of Britain as animperial power.1 This impact can be attributed at least in part to the fact that unlike thenumerous uprisings that had occurred in India before 1857, this rebellion was the firstin which the families of British soldiers were also killed (Sharpe 63). As such, in theirunprecedented position as casualties and victims of large-scale rebellion againstimperial authority in India, British women played an important role in shaping publicopinion of the “Mutiny” at home and in initiating a shift in imperial ideology.Repeatedly cast in the role of helpless victims in histories and first-hand accountswritten by men, British women came to symbolize the fragile, albeit morally superior,empire. Consequently, as Jenny Sharpe articulates, this symbolic British womanhoodserved to legitimize the imperial project:

When articulated through images of violence against women, a resistance to Britishrule does not look like the struggle for emancipation but rather an uncivilizederuption that must be contained. In turn, the brutalized bodies of defenselessEnglish women serve as a metonym for government that sees itself as the violatedobject of rebellion. (7)2

Prose Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 December 2012, pp. 185-196

ISSN 0144-0357 print/ISSN 1743-9426 online q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01440357.2012.751258

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Significantly, the representation of feminine victimhood that provided the foundationfor this view of a violated government was based largely on the experience of theBritish women at Cawnpore. Following a three-week siege, the rebels murdered 197women and children on July 15, 1857.3 The bodies of these women and children,found by British troops two days later in a well, served as emblems of innocentvictimhood and were used as motivation for the reestablishment of British imperialauthority. Moreover, the repeated and never substantiated story of systematic rape andmutilation of these women provided justification for British vengeance and brutalityagainst the Indian rebels as they attempted to put down the Rebellion.4

While the symbolic value of British womanhood cannot be underestimated, it isimportant to note that British women were more than silent victims of the Rebellion.As evidenced by the published diaries and letters of women – specifically Lady JuliaInglis, Adelaide Case, Katherine Harris, Katherine Bartrum, Emily Polehampton, andMaria Germon – who lived through the five-month-long siege of Lucknow, whichlasted from June 30 until November 17, 1857, British women were also vocalsurvivors.5 Because the writings of these women who survived the siege of Lucknowoffer insight into the personal, nonmilitary experience of one of the most significantevents that transpired during the Rebellion, they demonstrate the extent to whichwomen actively contributed to the collective understanding of the siege of Lucknow.In a field dominated by the voices of men – most personal accounts of the Rebellionand of the siege of Lucknow were penned by men, after all – these women’s narrativeshave received considerable critical attention since their first publication for the veryfact that they are women’s narratives. For instance, in an 1858 review of eight personalnarratives from the survivors of the siege of Lucknow, the author includes twonarratives by women as worthy of attention and goes so far as to qualify LetterContaining Extracts from a Journal Kept by Mrs. Inglis during the Siege of Lucknow as “the mostinteresting of [all] these documents” because of her position as wife of Brigadier Inglis,the officer in command of Lucknow during the siege (Milnes 505). Similarly, A Lady’sDiary of the Siege of Lucknow: Written for the Perusal of Friends at Home by Katherine Harrisis characterized as “the true woman’s story of that perilous and mournful time” (Milnes506). More recently, Jane Robinson, Pat Barr, and Margaret MacMillan, in theirrespective histories of the women of British India, use these diaries and letters in theirlarger project of dismantling the stereotype of the “memsahib,” the arrogant, ignorant,and intolerant British woman who learned enough of the language to give orders toservants and spent the rest of her time bored and lounging about, that is perpetuated inother histories and fictional representations of British India. Alison Blunt, who exploresthe spatial element of these narratives, uses the diaries to examine the ways in whichthe siege undermined imperial order through the disruption of the class hierarchy thatexisted among the British in India; while Claudia Klaver, who focuses on the materialrealities of these women, reads the diaries as evidence that these women did not seethemselves merely as individuals caught up in a conflict over which they had no effect,but as writers critically aware of their symbolic power as victimized women. Like Bluntand Klaver, I contend that these diaries illuminate the intersections of gender, class,race, and imperialism already identified by Anne McClintock, Jenny Sharpe, andRosemary Marangoly George. I maintain, however, that through these publisheddiaries and letters these women did more than articulate their awareness of theirsymbolic power or seek to maintain their imperial identity; I argue that in writing their

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experiences, these women contributed to the collective understanding of the siegespecifically, and the Rebellion in general, for an audience at home in Britain. In makingtheir private experience public, these women allowed Britons at home a view ofeveryday life during the siege from a very different perspective than the one offered inthe numerous accounts presented by soldiers and officers. By bringing the horrors ofthe siege and its aftermath to life for a home audience from their perspective asparticipants and survivors, these women transformed the “Mutiny” from a distantimperial-military contest to a very close, very real national–domestic conflict. Whilethese women do reaffirm the perception of British domesticity in crisis, they do sofrom the vantage point of survivors and of reporters. Through their first-hand accounts,these women use their experience to inform the British public of the realities of theRebellion. Their narratives thus play an important role in helping to transform Indiafrom a foreign space to a British space, and assist in making the Indian Empire anational, rather than simply a commercial, concern.

Diaries: Private Thoughts/Public Spaces

As Suzanne Bankers and Cynthia Huff point out, although diaries are generallyconsidered to be private texts, they are usually written with some audience in mind,thus always already blurring the lines between public and private (2–33). It is thisblending of public and private that makes this form significant within the context of thesetting in which they were written. In reading the prefaces attached to many of thesediaries, it is clear that these women wrote with the primary intention of sharing theirexperience with family and friends after the siege ended. For them, these private diarieswere public from the very beginning. They were writing to reach loved ones at home,rather than making, as Claudia Klaver suggests, a conscious acknowledgement of their“symbolic role as emblem of Britain’s moral superiority and civilizing mission withinIndia” (23). For Klaver, the act of writing alone provides the evidence to substantiateher claim:

It is only [the siege], in fact, that justifies the public aspect of their writings, andone of the most striking contradictions of their ideological role is that they had toself-consciously step into the public role of “author” in order to fully realize andembody their functions as symbols of private English domesticity. (28)

In making this assertion, Klaver fails to acknowledge the inherent public aspect of diarywriting, on the one hand, and the direct claims that these women make about theirreason for writing, on the other hand. Emily Polehampton, the wife of ReverendHenry Polehampton, for instance, did not publish a diary herself; she only wrote of herexperience at the bequest of her brothers-in-law who edited and published herdeceased husband’s memoirs, letters, and diary:

You ask me to write my recollections of the siege; but as I kept no journal duringour residence in hospital, in the early part of the siege, it would be impossible forme to give, at this distance of time, any detailed account of my life there; but I willmention a few of its incidents, which were omitted in Henry’s diary. (334)

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For Polehampton, her retrospective writing has almost no value in and of itself – in heropinion, it fails to provide details of her daily life that may prove interesting to anaudience – but it does serve to fill the gaps in Henry’s diary, most of which exist becausehe died on July 20, 1857. Despite the fact the other women kept diaries from thebeginning of the siege, they share with Polehampton the desire to inform loved ones athome. For instance, in the preface to Katherine Harris’s diary, the anonymous authors,presumably the friends to whom she sent and who subsequently decided to publish thediary for an even wider audience, include an excerpt from a letter she wrote to them onDecember 14, 1857 from Allahabad, one of the cities on the long road from Lucknow toBritain, that clearly articulates her motivation for keeping a diary:

I have kept a rough sort of journal during the whole siege, often written under thegreatest difficulties – part of the time with a child in my arms or asleep on my lap;but I persevered, because I knew if we survived you would like to live our siege lifeover in imagination, and the little details would interest you; besides the comfortof talking to you. (i)

Here, Harris identifies her role as writer as both a form of personal sacrifice and ofpersonal comfort. By establishing an imaginative space within which her family canexperience life within the Residency compound, she allows herself the opportunity tomaintain ties with loved ones whom she feared that she might never see again. Thisattempt at using writing as a vehicle for sharing experiences and maintaining a line ofcommunication, despite the fact all communication between Lucknow and the rest ofthe world was virtually nonexistent during the bulk of the siege, can also be seen inLady Inglis’s published letter, dated Tuesday, October 27, 1857, from the LucknowGarrison:

Although I fear at least a month must elapse before any opportunity of sending aletter home occurs, I have come to the determination of commencing an accountof all that has occurred since last we had the happiness of corresponding – a sadand anxious time for all of us, but more especially for you all at home, who havebeen, and still are, in such a wretched state of uncertainty as to our fate. (3)

While she downplays her own anxiety at the situation in which she is now living – atthis point the siege has lasted almost four months – Lady Inglis astutely acknowledgesthat relative to her own lack of certainty of events in India, she has more knowledge ofwhat is going on, at least in Lucknow, than anyone in Britain. As such, she takes it uponherself to reconstruct the events for her family using extracts from the journal she keptduring the siege to create a vivid picture of what transpired so as to help them betterunderstand what she experienced. The fact that she decides to include passages fromher journal in the letter rather than waiting to let them read the journal itself when shearrived home demonstrates the extent to which she appreciated the implications of thesiege to Britain’s imperial authority in India and understood the importance ofdocumenting siege life for those beyond the Residency walls and offering it to themas soon as possible.6

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Beyond the Domestic Space

The intersection of providing information about the details of siege life and offeringinsight into the political ramifications of the Rebellion – and the British reaction to theRebellion – has remained largely ignored for the simple reason that these womenwriters are not read as contributors to public understanding of the realities of the siegeor of Britain’s role in the events that led to the siege but as symbols of Britishdomesticity. Contrary to this general perception of these women as merely women and,therefore, only concerned with the domestic sphere, several of these women do includepoignant comments on the political situation at hand alongside their repeated – andmost frequently cited – comments about domestic hardships, the loss of personalproperty, and death from the very beginning of their journals.7 For example, in hersecond journal entry, dated May 16, Maria Germon recounts her impression of herhusband’s attitude after he attended a meeting between officers and Sir HenryLawrence, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh: “I could see Charlie felt perfectconfidence in him, but I also saw that he thought very seriously of the state the countrywas in for he remarked he thought we were in a position of a man sitting on a barrel ofgunpowder” (18). Without disclosing any particulars – what, exactly, led Charlie tothis, as it turned out, astute impression? – Germon clearly shows that she is fully awarethat the British position in India as a whole and in Lucknow in particular is a precariousone at best, a point corroborated by the fact that the Germons, as detailed in the entryof May 19, slept with weapons by their sides to defend themselves against an attack inthe night. Katherine Bartrum, who lived at the station at Gonda during the first fewdays of the Rebellion, echoes Germon’s concern in a much more decisive manner in aletter she wrote to her father on May 29: “I think we have all become fearfully nervous;every unusual sound makes one start; for who can trust these natives now, when theyseem to be thirsting for European blood” (3). Unlike Germon, however, Bartrumpresents this impression of the current situation as her own rather than as a documentof her husband’s comments. She both observes and expresses the sentiments of theBritish at Gonda: they are afraid, and they believe all natives pose a threat to their lives.Along with registering the fear among the British at Gonda, Bartrum also speculates onboth the resolution and the larger implications of the Rebellion:

If signal vengeance is taken on the mutineers it is hoped others will be intimidated,and quietness be once more restored to our land; but we can never feel confidencein these native regiments again, and of course European troops will have to bestationed in every large city. (5)

In making this claim, Bartrum maintains that violence provides the only remedy forviolence. To exert their claims to authority, the British must not only defeat the nativesbut also exert vengeance; to reestablish power, the British must right the wrong thathas been done to them. Putting down the “Mutiny,” then, is a matter of honor, andreclaiming India, then, is a matter of duty. Furthermore, to fulfill this duty, the Britishmust never make the mistake of trusting native troops again as evidenced by her claimthat the British can no longer rely so heavily on native troops. Through her reflectionon both present and future troop disbursement, Bartrum presents her own opinion of

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events and, more significantly, educates her audience on the deficiencies in imperialpolicies that contributed to the Rebellion. From her perspective, if only the British hadmanaged their troops more intelligently, the Rebellion would never have happened or,at the very least, would never have spread so quickly. Katherine Harris corroboratesand expands on Bartrum’s claims in her account of a discussion on the annexation ofOudh in her entry on June 20:

[An unnamed person] was speaking at dinner to-day, of the iniquity of theannexation of Oude, and thinks the tribulation we are now in is a just punishmentto our nation for the grasping spirit in which we have governed India; the unjustappropriation of Oude being a finishing stroke to a long course of selfish seekingour own benefit and aggrandisement. No doubt it is a judgment of God, and thatwe have greatly abused our power; and, as a Government, opposed the spread ofChristianity; while individually, by evil example and practices, we have made ourreligion a reproach in the eyes of the natives. God grant that this heavychastisement may bring all to a better mind! (33) Like Germon, Harris allowsanother person, presumably a man, to voice an opinion on the present condition ofIndia. However, her decision to record it and her prayer that God allow this man’sspeech, difficult as it was to hear, to influence positively all who heard it and,implicitly, all who read it, suggests that Harris, the wife of a chaplain, agreed with thenegative critique of the government’s interference in Oudh and with the missionaryefforts in India. Ultimately, the inclusion of comments such as these, comments thathave nothing to do with husbands, children, or household chores, in these journals ofdomestic experience illuminates the extent to which these women were not onlyaware of the political situation of India but the fact that they hoped to shape theiraudience’s opinions of the policies – past, present, and future – through which Britaininteracted with India.

Into the Residency Compound: Domestic Suffering MadePublic

Fittingly, given their need to communicate the entire siege experience to theiraudiences, most of the diaries begin around the 15th of May, the day Lucknow receivednews of the uprising that occurred on the 10th of the month at Meerut, the event thatofficially marks the beginning of the Rebellion. As each lady living in Lucknow at thetime notes, this news resulted in immediate precautions against an uprising inLucknow, the most significant to them being Sir Henry Lawrence’s decision to moveall women and children out of their homes in and around the city and into theResidency compound, 33 acres of land with various bungalows, houses, and smallpalaces located at the center of the “native city” (Blunt 418). Adelaide Case and LadyInglis, as “ladies” of the 32nd Regiment, were among the first women to be relocated(Case 3). They arrived in the Residency on May 17, were invited to choose their ownrooms, and were followed by the rest of the women on the 25th. Maria Germondescribes the scene she saw as she left her home and her husband, Charlie, a captain of

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the 32nd, and traveled to the Residency with Katherine and Mr Harris and Mrs Barwellin her entry for May 25:

when we drove up to the Residency everything looked so warlike – guns pointedin all directions, barricades and European troops everywhere – such a scene ofbustle and confusion – we then heard there was hardly a room to be got. (27)

Within this single sentence, Germon seemingly sums up the situation for all of thesewomen: on the one hand, moving to the Residency marks the sign of imminent attackand war and shows the dangerous circumstances under which they lived, while on theother hand, being displaced and relocated is unpleasant and inconvenient – there is notenough space for these women to live as they are accustomed, and the women areforced to share quarters.

Adjusting to this new life and the lack of privacy that came with it was no easy task.Mrs Case, who lived with her unmarried sister, Caroline, Lady Inglis, and Lady Inglis’sthree children in rooms off of a relatively protected courtyard, has a difficult timefinding peace in her surroundings as indicated by the following entry from June:

The noise of the children in this house is something dreadful, and there is not onehole or corner where one can enjoy an instant’s privacy . . . The coming and going,the talking, the bustle, the noise, inside as well as outside, the constant alarmingreports, and at times the depressed expression on the countenances, baffle alldescription. (22)

It seems that regardless of how alarming the reports from outside Lucknow are, it is thenoise and the lack of privacy that make this situation so unbearable for her. Of course,like everything, discomfort is relative. Compared to other women in other parts of theResidency, Mrs Case, with her complaints of noisy children, is in a decidedly bettersituation than Katherine Bartrum, for example, who following Sir Henry Lawrence’sorder that all women and children at the outstations be sent to Lucknow, traveled 80miles from Gonda, the station where she lived with her husband, with only her youngson and the clothes on her back. She arrived in Lucknow on June 9:

I accompanied another party to a house called the Begum-Kotie, a most uninvitinglooking place, so dirty, having neither a punkah to cool the air or a scrap offurniture to set it off, but we had to make the best of it . . . I was then left for thefirst time to take care of myself, separated from dear Robert, and ignorant of whathad become of him. In addition to this, I was entirely without servants, and thrownamongst a crowd of strangers, too much taken up with their own anxieties to heedanother. But this was but the beginning of our troubles, and we felt that we mustset ourselves with brave hearts and ready hands to encounter the miseries anddiscomforts consequent upon our situation. (16–17)

What is remarkable about Bartrum’s impression of her new living quarters, quartersshe shared with 14 other women, several children, and countless rats, is her sense ofisolation, despite the close proximity of her new roommates, and her willingness topersevere.

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As time passed, this perseverance and self-sacrifice become necessities, especiallyafter the siege itself began on June 30; up until this point they had just been waiting foran uprising to occur. From this day until their eventual evacuation in mid-November,inconveniences became downright hardships. For one thing, with the siege, themajority of native servants fled the Residency compound, leaving the ladies, all ofwhom were accustomed to having domestic help, almost entirely responsible for theirown domestic survival. It seems the Inglis–Case household was the glaring exceptionto this exodus of domestics, for the majority of their servants remained; the onlydomestic task for which they were responsible was the laundry, an increasingly difficultduty given the shortage of soap, a fact which Mrs Case laments with increasingfrequency after mid-July. The rest of the ladies were forced to take on the unfamiliartasks of maintaining a British household in India for themselves. Emily Polehampton,whose reminiscences of the period following her husband’s death in July are brief, doesaddress the effect the lack of servants has on her:

I had now no servant of my own left excepting the African, and he would donothing but wait at meals, and fill my bason with fresh water; so I had to wash myown clothes, and keep my own portion of the room clean. (344)

She immediately attempts to retract any note of complaint that could be read into thiscomment because she readily acknowledges that there were other ladies who sufferedmore hardships for the lack of help. She specifically names Katherine Bartrum as oneof these women. According to Polehampton, Bartrum, who was responsible forcooking, an unwelcome task in the heat of an Indian summer, had to beat the meatfor half an hour to make it tender (344–5). While Bartrum herself does not mentionher long bouts of meat tenderizing, she does record the amount of work she isresponsible for now that there are no servants at all at the Begum-Kotie; however,rather than a hardship, the domestic work is actually a comfort: “In one way it wasalmost a blessing to have no servants, because it gave us so much occupation that wehad less time to dwell upon our troubles and anxieties concerning those absent fromus” (23). While Harris makes a similar statement, not all of the women met theirnewfound domestic responsibilities with this welcoming or, at the very least,accepting attitude. Germon, for one, seems to suggest that the work done by theladies in Dr Fayrer’s house, where she was living, was not equally shared, a problemfinally remedied on July 5: “after breakfast Mr. Harris arranged all our duties as up tothis time I, Mrs. Anderson and Miss Schilling were the only ones who had doneanything” (59). Interestingly, it is neither Mrs Fayrer nor even Dr Fayrer who takeson the role as manager of the household, but Mr Harris, the chaplain. The fact that hehad to step in and organize the labor suggests that the women of the household didnot take to the idea of performing domestic labor readily. Although Germon, as shetells us, did work – harder than anyone else it seems from her estimation – she wasnot happy about it and even refused to do her duty at times. For instance, on July 16,she writes, “That night I rebelled against watching – we had quite a fight about itduring the day” (64).

As interesting and significant as all of their writing about the hardships of domesticlife under siege is, these ladies did more than record the amount of work done, thedwindling rations, and the loss of life. They also comment on their fear – a fear that is

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both personal and collective and exacerbated by the fact that very little reliable newsentered the compound during the siege – of the fall of Lucknow. As the siegecontinued, this lack of news became more and more unnerving. On August 12, Casewrites, “one’s heart sickens at all this delay, and knowing nothing of what is going onoutside these gates” (147). Of course, the news that Case and the others ladies areawaiting – Germon, for one, opens each entry for seven consecutive days in late Julyand early August with the report that no news has come – is the news of the reliefforces. The relief force, led by General Havelock, finally arrived on September 25. Thewomen are unanimous in their joy at its presence. Case is the most emphatic: “What aday is this to be remembered for life with gratitude towards our Heavenly Father, forhis great mercies by all those who have lived through this siege! Our relief has arrived!”(204). However, despite Case’s claim that God, in his infinite mercy, has deliveredthese troops to them for their immediate salvation, the reality of the situation soonsinks in. These troops do not relieve them; they merely reinforce them. The siegewould continue for almost two more months. However, regardless of the way in whichthese women describe their disappointment at the lack of relief provided by Havelock,the British public seemingly ignores their readings of the relief and instead focuses onthe glorious triumph of the soldiers whose presence ensured English victory inLucknow. Imagined military glory trumped the reality of continued domestic suffering.Lady Inglis, as the wife of Brigadier Inglis, the commander in charge of Lucknow afterSir Henry Lawrence’s death in July, feels compelled to right this wrong and uses her1892 journal to correct the British people’s understanding of the period between thebeginning of the siege and the arrival of Havelock: “It is of this time that I write, hopingthat the simple account of each day’s events may give a clear idea of what was done bythe garrison under [my husband’s] command” (vii). She writes for her husband’s sake,not for her own, and she uses her voice to give him his proper place in history. Hersecond published narrative, then, has little, if anything to do with her own domestictrials and tribulations, and everything to do with correcting history.

The Ladies of Lucknow: Field Reporters for the British Public

Ultimately, what is important to remember is that with these diaries and letters thesewomen filled a void and corrected errors in the British public’s knowledge of the siege.Due to the constraints imposed on the transmittance of information – it took at leastfive weeks for news to travel between Britain and India – and the lack of informationpassing in and out of Lucknow during the siege, the plight of the besieged inhabitants ofLucknow was virtually unknown to the British public until after they evacuated the cityand began their long journey to Britain. Until there were actual facts to report, Britishnewspapers instead focused on the need to save the women of Lucknow from the fateof the women at Cawnpore (Blunt 418). As lines of communication opened, the ladiesof Lucknow became the prime sources of information, as evidenced by the presence ofexcerpts of Lady Inglis’s letter in the Glasgow Herald on March 17, 1858. In effect, all ofthese women acted as field reporters for the British public, and as Sarah Ann Graham,another survivor of the siege of Lucknow, who wrote to her mother and, ultimately, tothe rest of Britain in a letter published in The Leeds Mercury on both Tuesday, February 2and again on Saturday, February 6, 1858: Contends, “Oh what horrors will be

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disclosed when we know all.” Significantly, by disclosing the horrors they experiencedin India along with their opinions of imperial policies, it is the ladies of Lucknow, asthey came to be known, from their curious position as witnesses and survivors whoplayed a vital role in shaping all that the British public did know of the Rebellion.

Notes

1. British commentators at the time came to refer to the Rebellion as “the Indian Mutiny,”which implied that the cause was discontent in the army. Since, however, the Rebellionextended beyond the army and assumes a significance in the history of Indiannationalism, the term “Mutiny” seems inadequate. For more complete accounts of theRebellion, specifically the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, see David and Hibbert.For discussions of the impact of the Rebellion on the British imagination seeChakravarty, Brantlinger, Gregg, Herbert, and Sharpe.

2. Jenny Sharpe’s argument provides a fundamental link between imperialism anddomesticity and, as such, serves as the foundation for much of the recent scholarship onBritish women’s experiences of the Rebellion.

3. The siege of Cawnpore began on June 5 and officially ended on June 27 when NanaSahib, the head of the rebel forces, allowed the British to evacuate Cawnpore by boat.However, rather than grant the British safe passage, the rebel troops shot at the Britishaboard the ships. The majority of those who were not killed were captured andimprisoned in Cawnpore. The rebels murdered the remaining British at Cawnpore,most of whom were women and children, when they learned that Henry Havelock andhis troops were on their way.

4. For a further discussion of the fictitious atrocity stories that came out of Cawnpore seeSharpe and Blunt, “Flight from Lucknow.”

5. Most of the letters and diaries examined here were published in 1858 shortly after thewomen arrived back in Britain. There are a few exceptions. Emily Polehampton’s diarywas not published on its own but was as part of her deceased husband’s memoir, whichwas edited by his brothers. Maria Germon’s diary was published for private circulationin 1870 and was only made available to a wider audience in 1957. Lady Inglis publishedtwo accounts. The first, a letter, though published for private circulation only in 1858,was mentioned in a review of personal narratives of the Rebellion that appeared in TheQuarterly Review in 1858 and excerpts of this letter were also published in an article titled“The Defence of Lucknow” in the Glasgow Herald on Wednesday, March 17, 1858. Shepublished a second, much longer account, in 1892.

6. In retrospect, Inglis’s decision to quote from the journal was effective for anotherreason: it was lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Ceylon on the journey back to GreatBritain. See “Arrival of the China Mail, With Officers and Ladies from Lucknow.”

7. My emphasis on merely and only stems from Klaver’s argument that these women usedtwo rhetorical strategies to navigate the implicit tension in their situation: theyemphasize their presiege identities as wives and/or mothers, and they presentthemselves as “Lucknow ladies” (24). In supporting the first part of her argument,Klaver points to passages where women talk about their husbands and/or children as ameans of confirming their subjectivity during a time when their subjectivity was beingthreatened: “By emphasizing their maternal devotion, these women assert the centralityand continuity of their maternal role to their sense of themselves as English ladies” (36).

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Given the circumstances under which these women and their children lived during thesiege, it would be surprising if these women did not write about their children.

References

“Arrival of the China Mail, With Officers and Ladies from Lucknow.” Daily News 3702 (27March 1858): 5.

Bankers, Suzanne L., and Cynthia A. Huff. “Issues in Studying Women’s Diaries: ATheoretical and Critical Introduction.” In Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’sDiaries, edited by Suzanne L. Bankers and Cynthia A. Huff. Amherst, MA: Universityof Massachusetts Press, 1996, 2–33.

Barr, Pat. The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976.Bartrum, Katherine. A Widow’s Reminiscences of the Siege of Lucknow. London: James Nisbet,

1858.Blunt, Alison. “The Flight from Lucknow: British Women Travelling and Writing Home,

1857–8.” In Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, edited by James Duncan andDerek Gregory. London: Routledge, 1999, 92–113.

———. “Embodying War: British Women and Domestic Defilement in the Indian Mutiny1857–8.” Journal of Historical Geography 26.3 (2000): 403–28.

———. “Spatial Stories under Siege: British Women Writing from Lucknow in 1857.”Gender, Place and Culture 7.3 (2000): 229–46.

Case, Adelaide. Day by Day at Lucknow: A Journal of the Siege of Lucknow. London: Bentley,1858.

David, Saul. The Indian Mutiny 1857. London: Viking, 2002.George, Rosemary Marangoly. “Homes in the Empire, Empires in the Home.” Cultural

Critique 26 (1994): 95–127.Germon, Maria. Journal of the Siege of Lucknow: An Episode in the Indian Mutiny. 1870, edited

by Michael Edwardes. London: Constable, 1957.Graham, Sarah Ann. “Letter from a Yorkshire Lady in Lucknow.” The Leeds Mercury 6752

(6 February 1858).Harris, Katherine. A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow: Written for the Perusal of Friends at

Home (1858). New Delhi: Rupa, 2002.Hibbert, Christopher. The Great Mutiny: India 1857. London: Penguin, 1978.Inglis, Julia. Letter Containing Extracts from a Journal kept by Mrs. Inglis during the Siege of

Lucknow. London, 1858 [Printed for Private Circulation Only].———. The Siege of Lucknow: A Diary. London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine, 1892.Klaver, Claudia. “Domesticity under Siege: British Women and Imperial Crisis at the Siege

of Lucknow, 1857.” Women’s Writing 8.1 (2001): 21–58.MacMillan, Margaret. Women of the Raj. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988.Milnes, Richard Monckton. “Personal Narratives of the Siege of Lucknow.” The Quarterly

Review 103.206 (1858): 505–26.Polehampton, Emily. “Letters and Diary.” In A Memoir, Letters, and Diary of the Rev. Henry

S. Polehampton, M.A. edited by Rev. Edward Polehampton and Rev. Thomas StedmanPolehampton. 2nd ed. London: Richard Bentley, 1858.

Robinson, Jane. Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny. London: Viking, 1996.

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Sharpe, Jenny. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text. Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Catherine Hart earned a PhD in English from The Ohio State University and is currently a

lecturer at Vanderbilt University. Her primary area of scholarly interest is colonial

discourse studies and nineteenth- and twentieth-century empire literature. Her

dissertation, English or Anglo-Indian? Kipling and the Shift in the Representation of the

Colonizer in the Discourse of the British Raj, uses Rudyard Kipling as a focal point and

examines nineteenth-century discourse on English identity and imperialism through

literature of the British Raj written in the 1840s through the 1930s. Address: Department of

English, Vanderbilt University, 331 Benson Hall, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, PMB 351654,

Nashville, TN 37235-1654, USA. [email: catherine.e.hart@vanderbilt.edu]

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