Forgotten stories of Scots women who crossed world in colonial times pieced together

This is the last resting place of many Scots who came to the city of Kolkata – formerly Calcutta – in the days of the British Empire, most often recognised for their work as traders, missionaries and soldiers.

Now the untold stories of the women who played a role in colonial times are also being uncovered, through analysis of the fragments of inscriptions that remain on the memorials and handwritten records.

The research comes as a major project to restore the once abandoned Scottish Cemetery has restarted after Covid. As well as reclaiming the site from jungle and decay, it aims to regenerate the area and provide support for the local community – including helping women to set up micro-businesses.

Researcher Sayan Dey, postdoctoral fellow at Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says the contribution of the Scottish women who came as nurses, apothecaries, teachers, missionaries and administrators in the 19th century and their influence on the city should be recognised.

“In some of the gravestones you can see the fragments of the stories – so for example, it says this woman has been a schoolteacher at this time,” he says. “Or this person came here with her father or with her husband helped in establishing this particular school.

“These are fascinating – it gives you goosebumps.”

Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, was once a colonial city which grew rapidly as the hub of the British East India Company and became the capital of the British Indian Empire until 1911.

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The influences of the past still remain today, from buildings including the remains of a college established by Scottish missionary Alexander Duff to food influences such as the Anglo-Indian dish of chicken jalfrezi.

Dey, who grew up in Kolkata, says: “Every year we are celebrating independence day and counting the number of years that have gone by after the British have left us.

“But the interesting part is that although the physical colonisation has faded, what we see is the very existence of the invisible form of colonisation. The colonisers are not physically present but their spectres keep on haunting us.”

His interest in the Scottish Cemetery was sparked by a project in which he interviewed Anglo-Indian women in the city to get an insight into their experiences in society.

When listening to their stories, he was fascinated to hear about some of the contributions that had been made by their ancestors, Scottish women.

Dey points out the context of why they were there – the backdrop of colonial benevolence – cannot be discounted.

But he adds: “At the same time, we cannot ignore some of the realities – for example, that some of the very prominent schools for women, colleges for women, were opened up by the Scottish women.

“They have vastly contributed as nurses, as apothecaries, as medicine women, as piano tuners and in several other ways.

“But I realised that hardly any work, any narrative or any archives exist about it.”

Most of the accounts which mention Scottish women of the time portray them only as assistants to men, Dey says. They are mentioned arriving as the wives and daughters of merchants, engineers, ministers, doctors and architects.

Yet the various stories etched on the gravestones in the Scottish Cemetery, which was established in 1820, reveal their role was not just confined to supporting their own families.

CARRIE Jane was one of the most prominent Scottish women into the city, as the President of Women’s Christian Temperance Bengal Division and the first vice-president of the National Union of India.

Anne Baynes Evans arrived in Calcutta along with her husband the Reverend Williams in 1840. As well as working for the Baptist missionary society as an assistant to her husband, the research reveals how she “tirelessly worked for the social and economic welfare of the poor and the education of the local Indian women”.

The records held by the Scottish Cemetery reveal that Ann Elliot was a missionary who dedicated her life to the welfare of homeless children in the city.

Some of the stories uncovered reveal how women died in the course of their work. Christiana Rodger Wighton was a social worker who mostly worked with locals suffering from epidemics like cholera, malaria, diarrhoea and influenza. She died at the age of 27 after contracting cholera herself.

Caroline Leach, who is believed to have arrived in Kolkata in the mid-19th century, worked as an apothecary in a leper’s asylum and died due to tuberculosis – also known as consumption.

Dey says at the time the Scots arrived in Bengal, there were severe outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, cholera and typhoid.

“You see the lamentation in the history books of how many male members, young Scottish males and British males and other European males died in the process,” he says. “But you hardly find an example of a women dying who played an active role. Obviously you have mentions that women have died, but it just reported they have died along with their male partners and their story is over.

“Yet if you look at the gravestones, it is written. That this lady was a nurse, and she died of cholera while serving the patients. It is very much there.

“These examples invite us to think how much it is necessary for us to revisit the existing narratives.”

Even the story of Catherine Gordon, who came to the city to join her husband and worked as a piano tuner, as well as being a reputed player of the instrument, defies the way in which women have been portrayed.

Dey says paintings of the time often show a man playing the piano while his wife looks “coyly” at him.

“It is as if the woman is always the silent, non-performing observer. The male is always playing the central performative role,” he adds. “Looking at this particular grave of a piano tuner questions these kind of narratives.”

The last internments in the Scottish Cemetery took place in the 1940s. In the decades that followed, it went into rapid decline, with broken tombstones becoming consumed by overgrown jungle and rubbish. It became a place where homeless people sought refuge and gangsters loitered.

Dey says the importance of his research, which has been published in the journal of International Women’s Studies, was emphasised when he looked at the condition of the gravestones.

“You never know what is going to happen after a few years,” he points out.

“Even if they are replacing the gravestones there is no guarantee that those stories will be etched there – it might just be they put the name, the date of birth and the date of death.

“So I felt it is necessary and an urgent project to document and create an archive to whatever extent is possible – and this is why I focused on gravestones.”

He adds: “It is always not necessary that history will be right in front of you in the written form. History is narrated in a silent way so much as well, it is existing in every corner.”

He is not the only one concerned with preserving the graveyard. The Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust (KSHT) resumed work earlier this month on a project to restore the site following Covid lockdowns.

Just before the pandemic hit, critical landscaping work had been completed, with the records of around 1800 headstones and memorials meticulously recorded.

Lord Charles Bruce, chairman of KSHT, says: “India has been through a traumatic period which has endured for the past 18 months, since March last year.

“There have been two lockdowns and the very serious infection rate in the city of Calcutta earlier this summer. So the project has been affected by this issue.

“We managed to keep our team together and we ran our own covid support package.

“We made sure none of our contractor labourers were out of pocket, we really tried to keep our team together ready for the moment when we could resume.”

He adds: “Obviously if you leave any open space in that city, that climate, for more than month or so – we have been through two monsoons – then everything is going to grow exponentially.

“So we are busily clearing jungle just to get back to where we were.”

One aim of the KSHT project, which started in 2009 but got underway in 2012, is to eventually provide a digital files of the burial entries, which can be used for a “self-guided” tour of the cemetery either remotely or in person.

But the conservation of the site is only one aspect of what the Trust hopes to achieve.

Bruce explains: “I think in India there is more of a sense of the past being consumed by the present, simply because it is a much more populous place.

“The demand for empty sites in these big cities which are growing very rapidly puts a lot of pressure on justifying maintaining a 19th century burial ground.

“As a result, we have done a lot more with the project in making it relevant to the needs of today and possibly tomorrow in the city.”

This approach has led to three surveys being undertaken of the surrounding neighbourhood.

With the threat of climate change, there is a biodiversity plan for the site, and the aim of eventually having space to allow local people to grow their own vegetables.

A Saturday school was established for children, which had 70 primary and secondary pupils registered before the pandemic.

“It is providing a very useful service of helping children and their families engage much more with education,” Bruce says.

“As a result of which we are aware that a very high proportion of our children get what are called minority scholarships and it has really given a boost to their life opportunities.”

Women in the local neighbourhood have been helped to set up their own micro-enterprises – including training as Avon ladies and making decorated paper bags to sell.

A group has also been set up to help men have better leverage in dealings with the municipal authorities over issues such as getting more standpoints put in and making sure rubbish is cleared away frequently.

“They feel they have got more of a voice now because of our project,” Bruce says.

“It is all very well restoring 19th century monuments to deceased Scots, giving a very important reflection on our overseas history.

“But we can also help our neighbours with all the very serious issues they have to face on a day to day basis. So it really is to an extent is a very integrated project in that sense.”

FOR Dey, there’s also still much more work to be done on the Scottish Cemetery – including solving the mystery of where some of the tombstones have gone.

There are records of gravestones which cannot be found at the site, and fragments of documents suggest some could have been taken to Scotland.

“Where have they been taken, if they are still existing, if there are family members who are still existing – that would be very interesting to find,” he says.

The story of the cemetery and the Scottish women who are buried there is a complex one to analyse. But Dey believes it is vital their contribution is not simply forgotten.

“Obviously on the one side we cannot deny the fact they have contributed a lot,” he says.

“They have contributed in terms of building hospitals, working in the churches and towards the health and education of women in Kolkata.

“So this cannot be denied.”

“But we have to read this contribution with the background of colonisation - we cannot remove that background, otherwise it is going to be a celebration of colonisation.

“A major reason why I wanted to do this research is not rejecting or accepting, it is not falling into the binary trap of rejection or acceptance.

“We need to stand right in the middle and unpack these complex entangled spaces.”