Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India [1 ed.] 9781554581115, 9780889204959

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Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Volume 10 of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale

The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale List of Volumes Note: Short title denoted by bold. Edited by Lynn McDonald, except as indicated. Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6 Volume 7 Volume 8 Volume 9 Volume 10 Volume 11 Volume 12 Volume 13 Volume 14 Volume 15 Volume 16

Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family, 2001 Florence Nightingale’s Spiritual Journey: Biblical Annotations, Sermons and Journal Notes, 2001 Florence Nightingale’s Theology: Essays, Letters and Journal Notes, 2002 Florence Nightingale on Mysticism and Eastern Religions, ed. Gérard Vallée, 2003 Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature, 2003 Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care, 2004 Florence Nightingale’s European Travels, 2004 Florence Nightingale on Women, Medicine, Midwifery and Prostitution, 2005 Florence Nightingale on Health in India, ed. Gérard Vallée, 2006 Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India, ed. Gérard Vallée, 2007 Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought, 2008 Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School Florence Nightingale: Extending Nursing Florence Nightingale: The Crimean War Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office Florence Nightingale and Hospital Reform

Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Gérard Vallée, editor Lynn McDonald, general editor

Volume 10 of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

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www.wlupress.wlu.ca

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

Librar y and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910. Florence Nightingale on social change in India / Gérard Vallée, editor ; Lynn McDonald, general editor. (Collected works of Florence Nightingale ; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-88920-495-9 1. India — Social conditions — 19th century. 2. Social change — India — Histor y — 19th century. 3. Public health — India — History — 19th centur y. 4. India — Politics and government — 1857–1919. 5. Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910. I. Vallée, Gérard, 1933– II. McDonald, Lynn, 1940– III. Title. IV. Series: Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910 Collected works of Florence Nightingale ; v. 10. HN683.N44 2007

306.0954′09034

C2007-903531-0

© 2007 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Cover design by Leslie Macredie and P.J. Woodland. Front cover image of Florence Nightingale courtesy of the Royal College of Nursing. Front flap photograph is of a panchayat meeting, in the traditional form of village selfgovernment in India. Back cover image—of an envelope with a letter on peasant debt to J.G. Fife, royal engineer—courtesy of the Wayne State University Librar y System. Back flap photographs courtesy of Jane Martin. ∞ Printed in Canada Ever y reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.wlupress.wlu.ca Collected Works of Florence Nightingale website: www.sociology.uoguelph.ca/fnightingale

Contents Acknowledgments .............................................................................

vii

Dramatis Personae ............................................................................

ix

List of Illustrations ............................................................................

x

Florence Nightingale: A Précis of Her Life .....................................

xi

Introduction to Volume 10 ............................................................... Health and Social Change in India ...................................................

1 7

Key to Editing ....................................................................................

19

Implementing Sanitary Reform ....................................................... Memorandum on Measures, 1868 ......................................................... ‘‘Introductor y Memorandum,’’ 1869 ................................................ Viceroyalty of Lord Mayo, 1869-72 .................................................... Viceroyalty of Lord Northbrook, 1872-76 ......................................... Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton, 1876-80 .................................................. Gladstone, Fawcett and Indian Finance ............................................ The Native Army Hospital Corps ...................................................... Changes in and Later Work of the Sanitary Commissions .................

23 52 73 83 121 135 151 173 182

Village and Town Sanitation ............................................................ ‘‘Letter to the Bengal Social Science Association,’’ 1870 ................... ‘‘On Indian Sanitation,’’ 1870 .......................................................... ‘‘Sanitar y Progress in India,’’ 1870 ................................................... ‘‘Obser vations on Sanitary Progress,’’ 1872 ...................................... ‘‘A Missionar y Health Officer for India,’’ 1879 ................................. The Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, 1885 ......................................... ‘‘Village Sanitation,’’ 1887 ............................................................... Viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin, 1885-88 ............................................... Viceroyalty of Lord Lansdowne, 1888-94 ........................................... ‘‘Village Sanitation in India,’’ 1889 ................................................... ‘‘Sanitation in India,’’ Febr uary 1891 ............................................... ‘‘Sanitation in India,’’ December 1891 .............................................

231 233 235 244 258 261 311 321 326 340 353 357 362

/ v

vi / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘Letter to Lord Cross,’’ 1892 ........................................................... ‘‘Health Lectures for Indian Villages,’’ 1893 ..................................... ‘‘Village Sanitation in India,’’ 1894 ................................................... ‘‘Health Missioners for Rural India,’’ 1896 .......................................

366 375 380 388

Land Tenure and Rent Reform ....................................................... ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot,’’ 1874 ...................... ‘‘The United Empire and the Indian Peasant,’’ 1878 ........................ ‘‘Indian Letters,’’ 1878-82 ................................................................ ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear,’’ 1883 .................. ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill,’’ 1883 .....................................................

393 401 487 500 548 598

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture ....... Ryots’ Banks and Co-operatives ........................................................ ‘‘Letter on Co-operation in India,’’ 1879 .......................................... ‘‘Can We Educate Education,’’ 1879 ................................................. Education, Agriculture and Public Works .........................................

621 621 627 633 676

The Condition of Women in India .................................................. Child Marriage: The Rukhmabai Case .............................................. ‘‘Introduction’’ to Behramji H. Malabari, 1892 ................................. Later Efforts on Nursing in India .....................................................

717 774 777 779

Social and Political Evolution .......................................................... The Ilbert Bill ................................................................................. Indian Society and Culture in Transition .......................................... ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship,’’ 1883 ...................................................... Towards Self-Government and Independence ..................................

797 799 806 818 846

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective .................. 879 Epilogue: Nightingale’s Achievements on India ................................ 890 Appendix A: Biographical Sketches ................................................ Lord Ripon (1827-1909) .................................................................. (Dame) Mary Scharlieb (1845-1930) ................................................ Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) ......................................................... Sir William Wedderburn (1838-1918) ...............................................

903 903 905 907 908

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time ...................... 910 Appendix C: Spelling of Indian Place Names ................................. 919 Glossar y ............................................................................................. 921 Bibliography ...................................................................................... 925 Index .................................................................................................. 931

Acknowledgments

A

cknowledgments are due to a large number of individuals and organizations for assistance on this volume, and even more for assistance at earlier stages in the Collected Works project. First of all acknowledgments are due to the Henry Bonham Carter Will Trust for permission to publish original Nightingale manuscripts and, indeed, for treating Nightingale material generally as being in the public domain. To the owners of Nightingale manuscripts thanks are due for their important role in conservation, for permitting scholarly access and for permitting copies to be made for this Collected Works. Archivists and librarians around the world provided skilled assistance. Many people worked on the preparation of the texts, many as volunteers. Thanks are due to transcribers: Gwyneth Watkins, Maria Schneidersmann, Linda Quirke, Leo Uotila, Arun Dhanota and Daniel Phelan; volunteer verifiers of texts: Cherry Ambrose, Linda Elliot, Mary Par fitt, Marcia Macrae and Joan MacKay; to the volunteers who assisted with proofreading: Sandra Hunter, Cherry Ambrose and Barbara Bayne; Dr Nancy Cassels for research assistance on the history of India. At Wilfrid Laurier University Press thanks are due to Dr Brian Henderson, director; Rob Kohlmeier, managing editor; Doreen Armbr uster, typesetter; Leslie Macreadie and Penelope Grows, marketing; Steve Izma, production; and Jacqueline Larson, peer review. Thanks are due to the anonymous peer reviewers for helpful comments. The copy editing was done by Kristen Pederson Chew. Acknowledgments for photographs and other illustrations are given where they appear. In spite of the assistance of so many people errors undoubtedly remain, which are the responsibility of the editors. We would be grateful for notification of any errors, and for information on missing identifications. Corrections will be made in the electronic text and any later print publication. Gérard Vallée and Lynn McDonald April 2007 / vii

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Dramatis Personae Parthenope Nightingale, Lady Verney (1819-90), sister (Sir) Harry Verney (1801-94), brother-in-law Henr y Bonham Carter (1827-1921), cousin, Nightingale Fund Captain (Sir) Douglas Galton (1822-99), husband of a cousin Rosalind (Shore Smith) Nash (1862-1952), daughter of a cousin Vaughan Nash (1861-1932), husband of Rosalind Nash, journalist Frederick W. Verney (1846-1913), son of Sir Harry Verney Runchorelal Chotalall (1823-98), president Ahmedabad municipality Lord Cranborne (1830-1903), marquess of Salisbury, secretar y of state for India Dr James M. Cuningham (1829-1905), sanitary commissioner (Lady) Dufferin (1844-1936), vicereine of India (Lord) Dufferin (1826-1902), viceroy, governor general of India (Sir) Bartle Frere (1815-84), governor of Bombay (Sir) M.E. Grant-Duff (1829-1906), governor of Madras Lord de Grey (marquess of Ripon) (1827-1909), viceroy, friend Sidney Herbert (1810-61), Lord Herbert of Lea, collaborator and friend Thomas Gillham Hewlett (1832-89), sanitary commissioner for Bombay Courtney P. Ilbert (1841-1924), law member of viceroy’s council (Sir) John Lawrence (1811-79), later Lord, viceroy, friend Behramji M. Malabari (1853-1912), Indian social reformer (Sir) Louis Mallet (1823-90), under secretar y of state for India Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), nationalist leader, mp (Sir) Robert Rawlinson (1810-98), civil engineer Lord Stanley (15th earl of Derby) (1826-93), chair of royal commission (Sir) John Strachey (1823-1907), Bengal Sanitary Commission Dr John Sutherland (1808-91), surgeon and sanitarian, close collaborator James Pattison Walker (1823-1906), Bengal Sanitary Commission (Sir) William Wedderburn (1838-1918), civil servant, judge

/ ix

List of Illustrations Map of India ca. 1858, p xiv. Nightingale paper to the East India Association, p 620. Nightingale letter to Lady Grant-Duff, p 716. Illustrations facing page 466. 1. Florence Nightingale portrait. 2. Imperial Assemblage, Delhi, 1877; Viscount Lytton, viceroy. 3. The 1st Marquess of Ripon, viceroy. 4. Lady Dufferin, vicereine; Lord Dufferin, viceroy. 5. Sir William Wedderburn; Dadabhai Naoroji. 6. ‘‘Life or Death in India,’’ 1873. 7. Indian famine victims; Victoria Monument, Calcutta. 8. Dr Mar y Scharlief; Dr Rukhmabai.

x /

Florence Nightingale: A Précis of Her Life

F

lorence Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy, the second daughter of wealthy English parents taking an extended European wedding trip. She was raised in England at country homes: Lea Hurst, in Derbyshire, and Embley, in Hampshire. She was educated largely by her father, W.E. Nightingale, who had studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. At age sixteen Nightingale experienced a ‘‘call to service,’’ but her family would not permit her to act on it by becoming a nurse, which was then a lower-class occupation and a thoroughly unthinkable pursuit for a ‘‘lady.’’ Lengthy trips to Rome and Egypt were allowed, in 1847-48 and 1849-50 respectively. She had earlier (1837-39) been taken on a long trip with her family, mainly to Italy and France. These European trips not only improved her language skills (she was fluent in modern French, German and Italian and competent in ancient Latin and Greek) but exposed her to republican politics and Italian independence (she was in Rome and France during the revolts of 1848). Her parents finally permitted Nightingale to spend three months in 1851 at the (Protestant) Deaconess Institution in Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldor f, Germany, and several weeks in 1853 with Roman Catholic nursing orders in Paris. In 1853 her father gave her an annuity to permit her to become the superintendent of the Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness, Upper Harley Street, London. She left there in 1854 to lead the first team of British women nurses sent to war, after the outbreak of hostilities in the Crimea. The British Army was poorly prepared for what became the Crimean War and the death rate from preventible disease was seven times that from wounds. The Barrack Hospital at Scutari, where Nightingale was stationed, was structurally unfit to be a hospital, had defective drains and had to be re-engineered by a team of visiting experts before the death rate could be brought down. Nightingale’s work as a social and public health reformer effectively began on her return from the Crimean War in 1856. Recog/ xi

xii / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India nized as a national heroine, she chose to use that renown to work behind the scenes for structural reforms that would prevent any recurrence of the war’s high death rates. She began by lobbying to get a royal commission established to investigate the causes of the medical disaster and to recommend changes. It is thought that Nightingale suffered from the chronic form of brucellosis after nearly dying from the disease during the war. She spent most of the rest of her life as an invalid, seeing people on a one-on-one basis and continuing to exert influence through her research and writing. The illness was certainly painful and incapacitating, but Nightingale learned how to work around it, focusing her hours of working time on the most important projects: those that had the best prospect of saving lives. Nightingale was baptized in the Church of England and remained in it for the rest of her life, although she often despaired of the paltry roles available for women, the minimal demands it made of its adherents in general and its social conservatism. Her experience of religious conversion in 1836 and call to service in 1837 were both shaped by the work of an American Congregational minister, Jacob Abbott, notably his book The Corner-stone. Her faith was nourished by broad reading, from the medieval mystics, liberal theologians and the German historical school, to contemporary sermons, popular devotional books, tracts and religious novels. Earlier generations of the family had been Unitarian by and large, but Nightingale’s paternal grandmother had been evangelical Church of England and was a strong influence. There is a strong Wesleyan element in Nightingale’s faith. Lutheran influences can be dated to her time at Kaiserswerth. God, for Nightingale, was a perfect Creator who made and ran the world by laws, which human beings could ascertain by rigorous, preferably statistical, study. With the knowledge thus gained people could then intervene for good, becoming God’s ‘‘co-workers.’’ Ongoing research is required, for human interventions, however well intentioned, could have negative unintended consequences. This approach appears in all the work Nightingale did, whether in health care or, more broadly, in social reform. To guide her in doing the research necessary to discover ‘‘God’s laws,’’ Nightingale developed an effective methodological approach. Her sources were L.A.J. Quetelet, a Belgian statistics expert, on the conduct of research, and J.S. Mill on philosophical grounding. Society and Politics shows what Nightingale learned from these two persons and how she further developed their ideas.

Florence Nightingale: A Précis of Her Life / xiii

Nightingale’s ardent and consistent liberal politics are another theme informing her social reform work. Her family (and the Verney family, into which her sister married) were strong Liberal supporters. Her brother-in-law was a Liberal mp, as were a number of cousins and family friends. Letters to Indian officials who were known Liberals often have personal messages and political gossip added. Nightingale herself gave money to the Liberal Party and even wrote campaign letters for a small number of Liberal candidates. At a time of considerable political flux her politics were consistent: she was a thorough ‘‘small l’’ liberal in her ideas, a supporter of freedom of inquiry and expression, and an advocate of religious toleration. The Liberal Party seemed to her to be the best political manifestation of these goals. Again, as with the Church of England, the Liberal Party often failed to live up to its principles—she desperately wanted Liberal governments to be liberal on India as well as on Ireland. For most of her long working life Nightingale was confined to her room, describing herself variously as ‘‘a prisoner to my room’’ or even ‘‘a prisoner to my bed.’’ Some days she could not see anybody but usually she had interviews, sometimes several and sometimes lengthy ones, with nursing leaders, medical experts, politicians and Indian officials. Many people who requested interviews with her over their various concerns were turned down. Time with family and friends took second place, fitted around this ‘‘business,’’ God’s business, ‘‘my Father’s business,’’ in her understanding. People who did not get inter views, however, normally got letters in reply, often long and careful explanations and offers of assistance. Nightingale’s own network of colleagues and advisors was impressive, and she continued to add to it as newer and younger experts, mps and officials came into office. She always worked collectively, seeking advice and getting her own questionnaires, draft articles and reports vetted by knowledgeable people. When she herself could not aid someone’s cause, she would suggest someone who could. Nightingale continued to produce papers and reports of various kinds well into her seventies. She did not do any serious writing in her eighties, when blindness and failing mental faculties gradually stopped her. From 1902 on there are only brief messages. She died at ninety and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Wellow, her family’s parish church. Consistent with her wishes, the family declined an offer of burial at Westminster Abbey.

xiv / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Produced by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Introduction to Volume 10

S

ocial Change in India is the second of the two volumes on India, which are volumes 9 and 10 in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. They follow the introductor y Life and Family, three volumes on religion (Spiritual Journe y, Theology and Mysticism and Eastern Religions), two on social reform work (Society and Politics and Public Health Care), a highly personal, pre-Crimea, European Travels, and Women (including women in medicine, midwifery and prostitution). Health in India provides much historical background information on the British occupation of India, health concerns there and the state of Western and Indian medicine of the time. It also presents a vast amount of information on the creation of and work done for the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India. It relates the first work implementing that royal commission’s recommendations, a theme continued here. Following these volumes are the philosophical Suggestions for Thought, two volumes each on nursing and war, and Hospital Reform. Health in India is focused on top-down, expert-led reforms, from a royal commission which consulted the best experts (Nightingale saw to that) and collected extensive data from the field (organized and analyzed by the same). Collaboration with leading officials predominates, notably Sir John Lawrence, governor general of India 1864-68. Unexpected famines occurred in this period, and continued to, so that famine prevention, especially through irrigation and canals, became a major theme. This volume also contains considerable material on disease prevention, notably of epidemic disease, through better provisions for drainage and sewerage. Nightingale’s frustrated attempt to bring trained nursing into India, also related in volume 9, was another top-down measure, a recommendation of the royal commission for which the governor general himself sought Nightingale’s advice on implementation. However, the modest proposal she designed was augmented beyond recognition by officials / 1

2 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India in India, and then rejected as too expensive. Later on she was to help again, although not to the same degree, with nursing initiatives in India. This smaller amount of material is reported in Social Change in India. British politics, and Nightingale’s own strong and never-wavering Liberalism, are part of the context in which all of her India work must be understood. She worked with politicians Liberal or Conservative, of course, and often bemoaned the fact that her fellow Liberals were no better than the Conservatives. On some matters, however, there were clear partisan differences. The Conservatives, for example, were fiercer imperialists. Queen Victoria was named empress of India in 1876 by the Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Nightingale, who never referred to the title, disapproved. That same Conser vative government under Disraeli was, Nightingale thought, reckless in its military expansionism. The former Liberal prime minister, W.E. Gladstone, made foreign policy reform (moderation and scaling back) the central thrust of his election campaign in 1880, and won on it. Thus shifts in British imperial policy and government are reflected in Nightingale’s work, which at times offers a contrapuntal accompaniment to official views. Nightingale’s political liberalism was accompanied with a strong belief in free markets, free trade and running of the economy by the private sector. She was a left-leaning Liberal, a supporter of co-operative measures and a significantly improved welfare state, but no socialist. Her economic liberalism was pragmatic, however, holding for example that the state should create jobs in times of economic distress (long before Keynesian counter-cyclical public spending). She abhorred the classical laissez-faire liberalism of the political economy school, or Manchester School, which justified so much misery in her own countr y and actual starvation in India. The very term ‘‘political economy’’ appears here only as a negative, for its use as an excuse for governmental non-interference in the economy, even in times of famine. Laissez-faire liberalism was widely accepted in both the major political parties of the time. It was well entrenched in British officialdom, both at home and in India. Indian officials were taught it at Haileybur y, the college established by the East India Company, by no less than Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who continued to oppose government intervention in times of scarcity, for reasons set out in his classic Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798. Health in India made the argument that Nightingale increasingly saw the need for action by Indian nationals themselves, a view that

Introduction to Volume 10 / 3

becomes a major theme in the present volume. India was the ‘‘jewel in the crown’’ of British imperialism, but British officials were slow and often reluctant to act vigorously on needed reforms. India was run for British interests, an important theme in both volumes as we see money needed for famine prevention measures being instead turned to pay for military operations, including incursions into Afghanistan. British commercial interests were consistently favoured over Indian needs. After all, it was thought, what is an empire for if not to profit the imperial power? In contrast, Nightingale evolved from being an imperialist, albeit a cautious one, into becoming an advocate for wider Indian participation in government and self-government. Adequate health care, she came to believe, could not be provided in India without substantial social and political change. Self-government, unsurprisingly, was much more actively promoted by Liberal governments than by Conservatives. Nightingale’s great hero in this cause was the Liberal viceroy Lord Ripon, who was succeeded as viceroy by another sympathetic Liberal, Lord Dufferin. Her relations with the Conservative Lord Salisbur y were at least cordial, if more guarded. The same could not be said of those with the archConser vative Lord Randolph Churchill, secretar y of state for India, ‘‘that little beast Randolph at the India Office,’’ as she described him; it is no wonder that she used an intermediar y when trying to convey information to him.1 Her preference for Liberal policies was constant. Social Change in India takes up the theme of self-government as its growing focus. Work to implement the royal commission’s recommendations continues, the subject of the first section, in effect a bridge between the two volumes. But Nightingale increasingly saw the need for the work to be done by Indian nationals themselves, through their own organizations. She promoted that work, joined their organizations, paid her dues and sent encouraging letters to them. Letters show her both consulting Indian leaders and facilitating contacts between them and useful British officials. Her published articles in this volume mainly appeared in Indian journals, which was rarely the case in the previous volume. Her work significantly reflects the evolution of the relations between British and Indians in the empire, passing from British resistance to common action, collaboration and on to withdrawal, and from Indian passivity, to responsibility and on to inde-

1 See Society and Politics (5:348 and 5:534, respectively).

4 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India pendence. As her career developed, Nightingale learnt more and more from her Indian contacts, which afforded both corroboration and correction to her own views. She collaborated notably with Runchorelal Chotalall, Behramji Malabari, Dhadabai Naoroji and Manmohun Ghose. For more detailed background information on relations between India and Britain after the Mutiny, the reader is referred to the introduction in Health in India, which includes a chronology, and to the appendixes for both volumes. However, some highlights are given: 1857-58 The Mutiny 1858 End of rule by the East India Company; crown rule begins (raj); Queen’s Proclamation 1859-63 Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India 1861-67 Famines 1876 Queen Victoria proclaimed empress of India 1876-79 Famines (the ‘‘Great Famine’’) 1877 Durbar of Delhi 1878-80 Second Afghan War 1882 Lord Ripon’s resolution on local self-government 1883-85 Ilbert Bill controversy 1885 Bengal Tenancy Act; foundation of the Indian National Congress 1892 Limited Indian representation on legislative councils; Dadabhai Naoroji elected to British Parliament The first section, ‘‘Implementing Sanitary Reform,’’ contains letters, notes and other material related to Nightingale’s work from the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India or, in other words, conventional top-down reform. There are two major documents which report progress in implementation, and correspondence with officials about implementation. The creation of a Native Army Hospital Corps to provide trained orderlies in hospitals, the initiative of Lord Ripon in 1881, appears here as a late implementation of a royal commission recommendation. The material, as everywhere, is given chronologically in each section, beginning at the end of the viceroyalty of Sir John Lawrence. The viceroys during the time of Nightingale’s work on India, as related in this volume, were: 1864-69 Sir John Lawrence 1869-72 Lord Mayo

Introduction to Volume 10 / 5

1872-76 Lord Northbrook 1876-80 Lord Lytton 1880-84 Lord Ripon 1884-88 Lord Dufferin 1888-94 Lord Lansdowne 1894-98 Lord (9th earl of) Elgin ‘‘Village and Town Sanitation’’ follows ‘‘Implementing Sanitary Reform,’’ now with much writing directed to Indian journals. It begins with a letter to the Bengal Social Science Association in 1870 and includes articles every few years thereafter until 1896. These articles, and related correspondence, show Nightingale gradually coming to recognize that the vast mass of the population were subsistence cultivators who lived in villages and changing her focus towards them. She soon realized that the campaign for public health, accordingly, had to be won at the village level, with massive participation by the Indian people themselves. Tied to this new shift in focus is another major theme in this work, the idea of ‘‘health missioners,’’ or sometimes ‘‘missionaries.’’ Nightingale herself can be seen as a ‘‘health missioner’’ to India.2 She considered ‘‘the sanitary ‘mission’ in India . . . perhaps the greatest ‘mission’ in the world’’ (see p 24 below). When Sir John Lawrence and Dr Charles Hathaway were leaving for India in 1863 she looked on them as ‘‘going forth as ‘missionaries,’ the greatest missionaries God can employ upon His earth.’’3 In ‘‘Land Tenure and Rent Reform’’ Nightingale can be seen to move further into the area of structural social and political reform. The recurrence of catastrophic and widespread famines and the urgent need to prevent them was a frequent concern in Nightingale’s papers and letters. In this section can be seen Nightingale’s concerted attempts at famine prevention. Famines were fundamentally a function of poverty. That is, the drought or flooding that ruined crops would not have brought on famine if the peasants had not been so desperately poor and so utterly lacking in reser ves. The extreme poverty and looming starvation of the peasantry drove them to moneylenders, who exacted their toll. Nightingale often drew a paral-

2 On Nightingale as ‘‘health missioner for India,’’ see Jharna Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 191-225. 3 Letter to Hathaway 9 December 1863, Florence Nightingale Museum, typed copy Add Mss 45782 f123.

6 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India lel between peasant debt in India with plantation slavery in the United States and West Indies. While there was a separate section on famine prevention in Health in India there is no section as such here, but the need for prevention measures preys upon Nightingale’s thoughts throughout the volume. Famine is a recurrent theme in the section on land tenure, and in the section, ‘‘Reform in Agriculture, Credit, Co-operatives and Education,’’ as well as in the transition to self-government. The responsibility of the British government for the plight of the peasants was clear to Nightingale and her co-workers. Famines had existed for centuries before British rule, of course, but the Cornwallis Permanent Settlement of 1793 changed the relationship between landowner (zemindar) and peasant cultivator (ryot) in the Bengal presidency (Bengal, Orissa and Bihar). The British gave rights equivalent to landowners’ to the zemindars, ostensibly with corresponding responsibilities, which the zemindars ignored. The result of this zemindari system was the great impoverishment of the peasants, with British law and its courts standing with the zemindars. Elsewhere in the country, for instance in Oudh, revenue was secured by means of the ryotwari system that, in the end, also left the poor in their misery. Education, and practical education for scientific agriculture especially, were part of the solution for Nightingale and her colleagues. To them, educated peasants would be better able to negotiate with their landowners, keep track of what they owed and avoid the cruel exploitation of unscrupulous landowners who had them sign papers they could not read. Scientific agriculture would result in higher productivity; better machinery was needed to improve productivity as well. Education at the local or village level was essential for the prevention of disease, especially epidemic disease. Educated peasants would no longer passively accept visits of the ‘‘goddess of cholera,’’ but insist on sturdy measures to fight disease, once they knew that this was possible. Women, of course, had to be included. ‘‘The Condition of Women’’ is its own separate section in this volume, with material both on health care and sanitary education, for Nightingale believed that women were the key to change here. A longmissing collection of letters to Lady Dufferin appears here, throwing new light on such issues as female medical aid to the women of India, the status of women, education and women in medicine. There is material as well on the issue of child marriage and a final look at the introduction of nursing to India.

Introduction to Volume 10 / 7

‘‘Social and Political Evolution’’ again takes up the theme of social reform from below, and begins with a variety of items on social and cultural change in progress. Lord Ripon’s bold efforts at Indian responsibility, including municipal self-government and the inclusion of Indians as equals in the judicial system, through such initiatives as the Ilbert Bill, are key subjects. Ripon wished Indian nationals themselves to be better trained for self-rule. His measures, taken at a time of growing conservatism in imperial policies, prompted negative reactions and raised the need for vigorous support. Nightingale wrote stirring defences of his policies, both in her published work and in her private letters to influential people. Her support of Indian self-government led to her peripheral involvement in Indian reform politics. Nightingale’s close colleague, William Wedderburn, was involved in the national organizations that led ultimately to independence. After his return from India, Wedderburn deployed efforts within the British Parliament to promote Indian administration of India. Nightingale supported those endeavours and met with and encouraged the Indian leaders of this emerging independence movement. Nightingale’s correspondence and notes reported on an array of topics: cultural, religious, legal, educational and political. More extensive information on each topic is provided at the relevant places in this volume in the form of editorial introduction and comments. Volume 10 ends with a retrospective of Nightingale’s work in India and an attempt to evaluate its successes and failures. Her own late over view of her work, from the 1880s, is given. There are appendixes of useful lists of officials, a glossary and a list of Indian place names.

Health and Social Change in India Nightingale’s first work on India was grounded in the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India and, in a sense, the rest of her career was a sustained effort towards implementation of that commission’s recommendations. Health in India was focused on the immediate implementation of the royal commission recommendations, while the present volume relates both ongoing work and, as new issues emerged, a deepening of her India work. Still, in 1888, Nightingale could regret that India had ‘‘neglected for twenty-five years to adopt measures recommended by royal commission’’ (see p 338 below) and yet, in 1891, would remark that all the benefits wrought for sol-

8 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India diers and the ‘‘native population’’ in India ‘‘sprang from this commission.’’4 Nightingale’s shift of emphasis from sanitation to social change is manifested in a growing critique of British administration in India and an awareness of the difficulties of imposing foreign rule on a subject people. In one instance, she complained that the British government in 1871 did little to help the peasants of Oudh out of their misery. Indeed, the government confirmed and extended the rights of the zemindars (see p 568 below), making British civil courts guilty of aiding and abetting usury (see p 629 below). Biting comments abound every time Nightingale received ‘‘bad news’’ from India conveying the mistakes of British administrators. Changes certainly were needed on the part of Indians and their habits, but she also demanded changes in attitudes from the British toward their ‘‘Asiatic countrymen.’’ Nightingale complained about British condescension and arrogance: ‘‘It is astonishing what large masses there still are among us who think of Indians as ‘niggers’ or tigers or as at best purchasers of Manchester cottons’’ (see p 147 below). Another way of gauging the changes that occurred in Nightingale’s perception of what was needed in India can be found in her expectations of the various viceroys. From the viceroyalty of Sir John Lawrence (1864-69) she expected a willingness to improve sanitation in the presidencies and to set up sanitary commissions to look after the needs, first of all, of the soldiers. From that of Lord Ripon (1880-84) she expected concerted efforts in measures for self-rule, as well as progress on sanitary measures. With the intervening viceroys, Mayo, Northbrook and Lytton, she entertained more modest hopes. Lord Mayo, Lawrence’s successor, was a moderate Conservative, with no background on India (Lawrence was exceptional in having had a long period of service there). Mayo’s rural experience in Ireland perhaps was of some help. Nightingale considered him ill-prepared for the task, but warmed to him for his open-mindedness (see p 83 below). After his departure she commented, ‘‘I liked him better than I expected’’ (see p 92 below). She later said that she had ‘‘guided’’ Lord Mayo ‘‘in sanitation and agriculture’’ (see p 888 below), marking a certain halfway change of emphasis. It was during this time that Nightingale began writing for Indian journals. She then sent Lord Mayo a copy of her address to the mem-

4 Public Health Care (6:676).

Introduction to Volume 10 / 9

bers of the Bengal Social Science Association (see pp 234 and 243 below). Nightingale had less communication with Lord Northbrook, although he had been Parliamentary under secretar y for India 1859-61. A free-trade Liberal, he nonetheless organized relief in the Bengal famine of 1874. Northbrook was one of two viceroys not to call upon her for a briefing before departure. The other was the Conservative Edward Robert Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1831-91), viceroy of India 1876-80. He held an extravagant durbar (an assembly of Indian princes with the viceroy) in Delhi in 1877 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s being made empress of India. This has been described as ‘‘a week-long feast for 68,000 officials, satraps and maharajas, the most colossal and expensive meal in world history,’’ at a time of massive famine.5 He was responsible for the infamous Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which aimed at repressing assumed seditious propaganda in Indian-language newspapers. During his viceroyalty the government actively prosecuted wars with Afghanistan, on India’s northwest border. Nightingale faulted Lytton also for not pressing for an inquiry on irrigation returns she had requested, a matter she had discussed with another Conservative minister, Lord Salisbur y. Lytton did appoint a famine commission, under Colonel (later General) Richard Strachey, but it accepted the viceroy’s reasoning that to accept famine relief would result in an expectation of entitlement to relief at all times, which the British government could not consider (33). The ‘‘new policy era in India’’ (see p 889 below) inaugurated by Lord Ripon became Nightingale’s way of advancing her own agenda over the rest of her career: most importantly putting the actual administration of the raj ‘‘into the hands of the respectable villagers—villages having been self-governing republics with a headman as mayor from time immemorial’’ (see p 889 below). The new policy personified by Ripon was taken further by three later viceroys, Lords Dufferin, Lansdowne and Elgin. Opposition to the salt tax, a ‘‘tax on the poor,’’ and increases in it, sur faces again and again as a major point of contention. Vegetarians, as Nightingale explained, needed more salt than meat eaters, so that the burden of the tax fell disproportionately on those who could not buy meat. Salt had been taxed in India for hundreds—even thou-

5 Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World 28.

10 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sands—of years. The East India Company took over control of the manufacture of salt and, after the Mutiny, increased its wholesale price from 1.25 rupees to about 4 rupees a maund (some 82 lbs.). Then the profit of the retailer and the cost of transport had to be added to the wholesale price. All this occurred at a time when famine and unemployment were rampant, especially in Bengal, when hugely increased land rents were extorted by the government and the zemindars, and when an agricultural labourer’s wage was, if he were employed, 1 or 2 rupees a month. The tax remained at that level until 1879. Nightingale denounced the 40 percent increase in the salt tax in 1879, ‘‘in scarcity time,’’ in her series of articles, ‘‘A Missionary Health Officer in India.’’ There she noted that it ‘‘was prophesied by those who knew that, if this were done, the ground-down people would rise at last.’’ She prophesied another mutiny, pointing out that ‘‘this much-enduring, patient Maratha peasantry have risen at last’’ (see p 285 below). Despite this, the salt tax remained a major burden on the population during the British occupation of India. Later, Mahatma Gandhi would challenge the British monopoly on the salt tax; led by an ‘‘inner voice,’’ he used the practice as a catalyst for a major ‘‘satyagraha’’ (non-violent resistance) campaign: the famous Salt March of 1930. Throughout her published writings and correspondence, Nightingale alluded to contemporary events that threw light upon India’s situation, most notably in Ireland and Russia. For instance, the Irish Land Bill of 1881 was relevant to the situation of the ryots of Bengal (see p 517 below). There are many references to Russia, Britain’s enemy in the Crimean War, and the threat it represented to London, overly exaggerated perhaps, but it remained ‘‘the dread of England’’ (see p 449 below), yet less dangerous, said Nightingale, than the local moneylenders (see p 497 below); Nightingale even saw in Russia and Tsar Alexander’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861 a model on the issue of village reform (see p 582 below). In 1879 she compared the situation in India with that in Cyprus. ‘‘We have there in India the same wants as in Cyprus.’’6 Because Nightingale’s interest in India was focused first on improving the health of soldiers and civilians, Health in India discussed the

6 Society and Politics (5:321).

Introduction to Volume 10 / 11

state of medicine and nursing in the mid-nineteenth century, both in the West and in India. It also looked briefly at her own expertise and experience prior to and parallel with her engagement on India. Her actions on behalf of India, however, would not have been possible without the group of competent and diligent collaborators she was able to assemble and on whom she could rely. Thus, in Health in India, we encountered Sidney Herbert, Lord Lawrence, Lord Stanley, Dr John Sutherland and Douglas Galton, among others, at the core of that group. Many more were co-opted in the course of the years. Her contacts with successive viceroys played a particularly effective role in her efforts to implement better health measures in India. The present volume shows more evidence of the important role her collaborators played in the overall enterprise. It reveals how precious Sutherland’s constant help was, how effective Galton’s knowledge and position were in terms of information and implementation of sanitary measures, how useful Robert Rawlinson, J. Pattison Walker and T. Gillham Hewlett were in providing expert advice on sanitary and engineering works and competent reports on achievements or lack thereof on the Indian scene. More is said about all those helpers at relevant places in this volume. The most congenial collaborator we meet in the present volume was, doubtlessly, Lord Ripon,7 both because his policies favoured greater participation by Indian nationals and he was willing to face opposition in order to see them through. Nightingale’s work had already put her in contact with Lord Ripon, at that time Lord de Grey, already in the 1850s. A first period of co-operation between the two covered the years 1859-73, when he alternately served at the War Office and the India Office. She befriended him then and found in him an ally for improving the lot of ordinar y soldiers. She counted on him to have Sidney Herbert’s plans for the army translated into practice. Often he was her voice in Parliament. In 1863 she agitated to have him appointed as secretar y of state for war, knowing that Sidney Herbert had wished him to be his successor. A second period of intense co-operation began when Lord Ripon became viceroy in 1880. She was enthusiastic about having him in the field because she knew how her thinking and views about India overlapped with his policies on the reform of the land tenure system to alleviate the ryots’ plight,

7 See the biographical sketch below in Appendix A.

12 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India on the place of Indian nationals in the administration of justice and on the overall movement toward self-government for India. Their views of the British role in a colony going through the process of coming of age coincided thoroughly. That and their close friendship were reason enough for her to hold Ripon even higher than Lawrence in her estimation. Her close collaboration with Dr John Sutherland8 must receive particular notice. Nightingale and Sutherland had been already associated in their ‘‘sanitar y labours’’ ‘‘in the Crimea and Scutari hospitals.’’9 His role in the promotion of public health care in England was highlighted in Public Health Care and must now be underlined in relation to Nightingale’s India work. Throughout her career he was her closest associate. They did not always agree on philosophical matters and Nightingale considered him domineering to his wife, but substantially they saw things in the same light when dealing with issues of health care for India and elsewhere. He often appears in archival material as Nightingale’s co-writer. As noted, editorially, in Public Health Care, ‘‘For years he was in constant attendance, drafting material for her and advising on strategy. Sometimes indeed it is not evident whether something was his draft for her or dictated by her’’ (6:675). His role in Nightingale’s Indian work was crucial because of his two-decade-long membership on the Army Sanitary Commission, from 1865 to 1888; indeed he was its only paid member. Sutherland and Nightingale were in almost daily contact to discuss sanitary issues. He regularly prepared background information for her when she was about to meet with Indian viceroys, governors and administrators. Even when she was impatient with his delays and absences abroad, she kept relying on him for sanitary administration and practice. At his death she regretted that the public had expressed so little recognition for his important role, and pleaded with the editor of the Times to insert a notice on Dr Sutherland.10 Nightingale came progressively to realize that advances in public health in India required serious changes in people’s habits and the countr y’s social structure. She did not abandon her efforts at improving sanitation and irrigation—famine and epidemics remained con-

8 See the biographical sketch in Public Health Care (6:674-76). 9 Letter to the editor of the Times 22 July 1891, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC5/91/16. 10 Letter 22 July 1891, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC5/91/16.

Introduction to Volume 10 / 13

stant threats—but, increasingly, saw these measures as dependent upon the carrying out of more basic social and political transformations. For instance, nursing and female nursing in India was hindered by caste considerations, and required the overthrow of centuries-old prejudices regarding the body and the transcending of gender barriers; village and town sanitation could not progress without people themselves being made responsible and taking up the tasks of selfhelp; improving the lot of the ryots called for a radical recasting of the rights and duties of both ryots and zemindars. Such social reforms, in turn, were impossible without corresponding developments in education and a political coming of age. Many conservative arguments had to be overcome in the case of ‘‘women’s labour in husking rice’’; Nightingale insisted that something had to be done ‘‘for my poor Indian sisters’’ (see p 726 below). The material in Social Change in India, then, goes beyond the explicit issues of health, and engages with the cultural, political, economic, educational and legal changes necessary to achieve progress in public health. While the previous volume focused on the royal commission on India, its recommendations and their immediate implementation—top-down reforms—the emphasis in this volume is, increasingly, on bottom-up reforms, especially those that could be carried out at the local level. Effective local self-government was a major goal that could be achieved by reviving and strengthening ‘‘the ancient village organization’’ (see p 354 below) called a panchayat, the traditional ruling council of a Hindu village, the council of five. Those reforms called for the leadership of Indian nationals themselves, who were now free to make use of Western education and experience. They felt that the Punjab could serve as an example in this respect because the village communities there had been allowed to survive and function (see p 484 below). Nightingale felt that she was in a good position to make recommendations at the social level, being well informed thanks to correspondents in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, who provided her with papers, articles, minutes and other such material (see p 538 below); moreover, she continued to see Indian officials on their way out to and on return from India and maintained contacts with parliamentarians at home. An important feature of Nightingale’s work on health and social change in India is found in the distinctive accent she put on the prevention of disease, in contrast with her merely occasional references

14 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to treatment. ‘‘Prevention is better than cure,’’ she said (see p 377 below). She was sadly aware that few effective treatments were then available for the major diseases. Cholera, smallpox, malaria and other fevers reigned and what could be done to combat them, as far as Nightingale was concerned, amounted to adequate drainage and sewerage, ventilation, basic hygiene and education on the ways to fend off occasions of contamination; all these means of prevention were emphasized in her battle against infectious deceases. Nightingale’s late acceptance of germ theor y is recounted in Health in India, a change prompted by the breakthrough in research on cholera made by German bacteriologist Robert Koch in Calcutta in 1883. Her lengthy and vociferous opposition to germ theor y, however, did not affect her practice: the same measures were needed whether one believed that they acted to kill germs or to clean up the environment in which they multiplied. Nightingale saw how the many levels of her activism were interrelated and, in particular, how socio-political changes offered the framework for advances in public health. That is why she considered the political changes brought about by Lord Ripon to be exemplary, and thought they would pave the way for further reforms. Social reform and political accountability were the preconditions of improved public health and Nightingale found in Lord Ripon’s policies and efforts at devolution an ideal she could wholeheartedly espouse. The material of the present volume is not limited to the later part of Nightingale’s career, although most of it comes from that period. It is clear that Nightingale always believed in a connection between societal structure and people’s well-being, and this enduring conviction comes through clearly in the following pages. Material from all periods of her activity can be found here, showing a growing interest in social transformation and political responsibility in the later period of her India work. The material in this and the previous volume will prove to be of interest to people with numerous interests in British and imperial histor y beyond Nightingale’s specific role. Her contacts with such a broad range of officials, not only at home but also in India, offers useful material to scholars interested in the British administration of India, public health, medicine, status of women, social reform and the move to independence.

Introduction to Volume 10 / 15

The Nightingale Method Because of her illness, Nightingale had to conduct her work from her home. She did so mainly by writing, and she wrote nearly every day of her life. This work was punctuated by meetings with senior officials (to brief them), and meetings with knowledgeable experts (to debrief them). The result was an enormous output of carefully prepared letters; memoranda and articles in journals for the wider public, both English and Indian, and papers for conferences (which she did not attend). Intermixed are letters to friends, old and new, that often reveal insights into the work at hand and the major players. In 1887 she could say, ‘‘I have native friends at all the presidency towns’’ (see p 855 below). When writing for English readers, Nightingale was clear on what was wrong with British administration in India. She did not hesitate to express biting criticism of the negligence of British officials, of their lack of cultural sensitivity and their occasionally racist bent. But, when writing for an Indian audience, she encouraged them positively and wholeheartedly to keep working at improving health conditions in their own communities and promoting social justice. Nightingale’s work on India was served by her intellectual habits and a systematic way of dealing with issues: the ‘‘Nightingale method.’’ She read widely and carefully, sometimes going to great lengths to obtain the best, most recent (even confidential) material. Yet she did not rely solely on documents but interviewed the officials who wrote them. She did not shy away from exploiting the contacts afforded her by her family connections, friends and acquaintances, and putting them at the service of her cause. Her exceptional intellectual strengths appear in her ability to analyze reports and minutes, synthesize their main points and then construct pertinent proposals for action based on them. Her hard work, practical networking skills and attention to detail made high officials and experts willing to work with her and respect her. Nightingale’s family connections gave her both confidence and actual useful contacts. Her family was at ease in both social and political aristocratic circles, and even from youth she herself made a strong impression on such people. Her status as heroine of the Crimean War ser ved her superbly as well. On her return to England, Sidney Herbert, who had sent her to that war in the first place, listened to her grievances as to the state of the army and was happy to work jointly with her to reform the army. To that effect, he put her in contact with

16 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India influential persons. In fact, from 1856 on, her contacts multiplied and when her involvement with India began she already had a great number of acquaintances and friends in high places, who recognized her abilities, experience and knowledge, and were willing to lend an ear to her requests. They gave her access to confidential documents few others saw. She then passed on relevant information to her collaborators, often circumventing the cumbersome distribution system of the India Office (she discovered that the ordinar y parcel post was faster). Occasionally she made use of the press, but discreetly. She was careful not to offend her key collaborators by criticizing them in public. She found that letters to the editor were a useful means of publicity for promoting a cause or making a point, but she knew also that should not be used if the result might embarrass or alienate the person whose errors, omissions or private actions were flagged. For example, as she wrote to her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney: ‘‘You will see that it would not do for me to write in the Times that I advised Sir John Lawrence to do such and such things. It is here that, as it appears to me, prudence steps in and tells me when to stop.’’11 Three components of Nightingale’s work on India can be identified. First there was the collection of the necessary data; second, the formulation of proposals for change; and, third, directions for implementation. Each stage required teamwork and each with somewhat different sets of people. Officials, doctors, public health experts and engineers were essential for the first stage, and for ongoing monitoring. The shaping of policy was the work of a smaller number of trusted collaborators. Implementation, of course, required the convincing of senior officials: secretaries of state for war and India, the prime minister and the chancellor of the Exchequer, viceroys and presidency governors. Public education campaigns were needed to persuade mps and various opinion leaders and to create a climate for change. All this effort implied adequate lobbying at specific points where decisions were being taken. In time Nightingale entered into direct correspondence with Indian nationals when these began receiving real responsibilities in promoting sanitary measures and public health. At home she was in constant contact with the joint India Office and War Office Army Sanitar y Commission, which she tried to influence by all means and to which she directed both criticism and advice.

11 Draft letter c1867, Add Mss 45800 f205.

Introduction to Volume 10 / 17

The network of communications she enjoyed in her ‘‘mission to India’’ was diligently kept alive by private encounters and correspondence. After the initial implementation of the recommendations of the Indian royal commission had begun, there was much work still required to ensure its vigorous continuation. New issues emerged as time went on, especially famine and related epidemics. It was essential to maintain detailed and well-adapted follow-up, in order to improve the administration of public health, with adaptation for new contingencies. Efforts directed to ever-new questions of hygiene and sanitation led to complicated questions of social reform. Thus Nightingale was led to emphasize with growing insistence the need for social awareness and political evolution. Progress along those lines among both British and Indians made her contemplate the day when total devolution of power would be a real possibility.

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Key to Editing

A

ll the manuscript material in the Collected Works has been carefully transcribed and verified (for a description of the process of obtaining and processing this information see ‘‘Research Methods and Sources,’’ Appendix E in Life and Family). Illegible words and passages are so indicated, with [illeg] or [?] inserted to indicate our best reading of the word or words in question. Dates for material cited or reproduced are given wherever possible, and in square brackets if they are estimates only (made by an archivist, previous scholar or the editor). Any controversy about date is indicated. The type of material, whether a note, actual letter, draft or copy is given as precisely as possible. The designation letter/draft/copy signifies that the source was Nightingale’s own files, given to the British Librar y or to St Thomas’ Hospital and then the Florence Nightingale Museum, and are probably drafts or copies kept by her. The designation of ‘‘letter’’ is used only when there is good reason to believe that it was actually sent and received (a postmarked envelope, for example, or the archive being other than Nightingale’s own files). In some cases both the original letter and Nightingale’s draft or copy are extant, and these show that the copies she kept are reliable. We do not use the convention of als (autograph letter signed), but our ‘‘letter’’ is close to it, bearing in mind that Nightingale often used initials rather than her signature. The electronic I-text (that is, the transcriptions as ‘‘input,’’ before editing) gives full information on supporting material (envelopes, postmarks), and whether the piece was in pen, pencil, dictated or typed. The practice was naturally to use the best source possible, and the original letter where available. Where a draft or copy was also available it is noted. Sometimes the original was no longer available and a typed copy in an archive or a published copy had to be used. All sources indicated as ‘‘Add Mss’’ (Additional Manuscripts) are from the British Library, the largest source of Nightingale material. / 19

20 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine Librar y is abbreviated ‘‘Wellcome.’’ Most of those materials are copies of correspondence at Claydon House, indicated as (Claydon copy). If not so indicated they are originals. Where only short excerpts from a letter are used (because the rest is on another subject) these are indicated as ‘‘from a letter’’ and the address and ellipses at the beginning and end are omitted. Postscripts that merely repeat points or move on to a completely different subject are omitted without ellipses. To avoid use of ‘‘ibid.’’ and ‘‘op. cit.,’’ and to reduce the number of footnotes generally, citations are given at the end of a sequence if the same source is cited more than once. Subsequent citations are noted in the text with the new page or folio number given in parentheses. The term ‘‘folio’’ (abbreviated as f or ff in the plural) is used for reference to manuscript pages, p and pp for printed pages, where needed, or page numbers are given after the date or volume number without p or pp. References to material that appears in earlier volumes of the Collected Works are identified by our title, volume number and page number rather than the archival source. To make the text as accessible as possible spelling, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized and standardized, and most abbreviations replaced with full words. British spellings have been maintained and standardized (labour, honour). We have kept her old-fashioned ‘‘farther,’’ ‘‘learnt,’’ ‘‘by and bye’’ and ‘‘whilst,’’ but change ‘‘shew’’ to ‘‘show,’’ ‘‘civilise’’ to ‘‘civilize,’’ ‘‘staid’’ to ‘‘stayed,’’ and her occasional abbreviation ‘‘ye’’ to ‘‘the.’’ We change ‘‘stor y’’ to ‘‘storey’’ when it refers to a floor. We use modern spellings of words with ‘‘ae,’’ such as gynecology, pyemia, septicemia and hemorrhage. Nightingale’s terms for a student nurse, ‘‘probationer,’’ and a maternity hospital, ‘‘lyingin,’’ remain as they are, as does ‘‘confinement’’ for giving birth. We have followed the trend to lesser use of capitals, even to kings, queens and bishops. Capital letters remain for institutions, as Parliament, Cabinet and Governor-General-in-Council. Nightingale was fond of dialect and we trust that the meaning will be clear enough, as other old-fashioned words she used and which we did not edit. We note her predilection for using (2) in a text without having indicated a (1). The electronic text gives a full glossary of edited words. Roman numerals are replaced with Arabic (except for royalty, popes and the citation of classical texts). We have left Nightingale’s use of masculine generics as they are, hence ‘‘man,’’ ‘‘men,’’ ‘‘he,’’ etc., referring to human beings generally. Some, but not all, excessive ‘‘and,’’ ‘‘but’’

Key to Editing / 21

and ‘‘the’’ have been excised. Nightingale’s ‘‘Esq.’’ titles for men have been omitted. Any words the editor has added to make sense (usually in the case of rough notes or faint writing) appear in square brackets. Italics are used to indicate underlining and small capitals for double (or more) underlining. All indications of emphasis in texts are Nightingale’s (or that of her correspondent or source), never the editor’s. Any use of (sic) also is Nightingale’s, never the editor’s. When taking excerpts from written material Nightingale indicated ellipses with x x and we have kept these. Ellipses for editorial purposes are indicated with . . . for skipped material within a sentence, . . . . if to the end of the sentence or more than a sentence has been dropped. Passages that break off abruptly (or in which folios are missing) are so indicated. Editorial notes appear in footnotes or, if ver y brief, in square brackets in the text. Articles (the, a, an) and the appropriate form of the verb to be have been supplied where necessar y to make sense. Persons who changed their names (usually through marriage or the acquisition of a title, sometimes for purposes of inheritance) are referred to by the more commonly used name, cross-referenced in the index to the other if another name is also used. Dates to identify people are given at the first appropriate moment, not where there is only passing mention of the person or the name appears on a list or in a footnote; italicized entries in the index indicate entries with identifying information. Of course, for many people, notably servants and acquaintances, identifying information is not available. The bibliography provides full information on most books cited. Newspaper sources, government reports and periodical references are given in footnotes only. References to classical and other works available in many editions (now often on the Internet) are by book, chapter, canto, scene, line, etc., as appropriate, and are not repeated in the bibliography. We refer to Nightingale and indeed all adult women by their surnames, the normal practice for references to men. We note with some dismay the frequent practice in the secondary literature of using first names, even nicknames, for women, reser ving surnames, initials and honorifics for men only. We use correspondents’ names in the source headings but normally refer to them by the name Nightingale used: hence Dr Sutherland, Mme Mohl. In Nightingale’s day British officials serving in India were usually called ‘‘Indians,’’ Indian nationals ‘‘natives.’’ So they appear in her, and other, texts. In editorial introductions we follow modern usage, to make

22 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India clear who are British officials and who real Indians, Indian nationals. Many Indian terms appear in the texts. A glossary is provided following Appendix C, and a translation where the word first appears. ‘‘Bazaar was a market area or market town, a ‘‘tank’’ a reser voir. ‘‘Ryots’’ are peasants, who may also riot. A ‘‘cess’’ is a local tax, not to be confused with ‘‘cesspits.’’ ‘‘Conser vancy’’ refers to the removal of excrement. Nightingale used various terms and spellings for Muslim: Muhammadan, Muhammedan, Mussulman, Mahometan, Mahomedan.‘‘Muhammadan’’ is generally used in the present volumes when reproducing Nightingale’s material; editorial sections use ‘‘Muslim.’’ Further, the form ‘‘zemindar’’ is preferred to ‘‘zamindar,’’ following Nightingale’s usage. Editing the ‘‘Indian’’ material called for a series of important decisions as to the spelling of place names. Given the many ‘‘archaic’’ ways of spelling Indian names of provinces and states, cities, towns and villages encountered in Nightingale’s writings, the way they were to be reproduced here had to be determined. When possible, spellings have been modernized and made to follow the present-day usage every time there was no risk of misunderstanding or confusion; when the identity of a place could not be ascertained with a fair degree of confidence, Nightingale’s spelling usage was retained, in particular in her printed texts. Editorial notes follow modern usage with some major exceptions, as indicated below. Bombay (now Mumbai), Madras (now Chennai) and Calcutta (now Kolkatta) were left in the old form as these spellings appear in so many proper names, notably of the presidencies and their sanitary commissions. Thus: Banaras is kept instead of the ‘‘new’’ Varanasi Baroda Vadodara Berhampore Brahmapur Bombay Mumbai Calcutta Kolkatta Cochin Kochi Ganges Ganga Madras Chennai Oudh Awadh Quilon Kollam Simla Shimla Trichinopoly Tiruchchirappalli Appendix C below gives a complete list of the other place names in their actual spelling as encountered in the two volumes.

Implementing Sanitary Reform

F

rom the time of the initial institution of the presidency sanitar y commissions in 1864, reported in Health in India, it was the role of the sanitary commissioners to co-ordinate sanitary work in their capacity as advisors and administrators. Nightingale’s correspondence in this section helps to relate the development of the work of sanitary officers from 1864 on and highlights the work of two eminent sanitary commissioners in India: J. Pattison Walker1 in Bengal and T. Gillham Hewlett2 in Bombay. The two were appointed as soon as the Indian sanitary commissions were established, and did exemplar y work for several decades. They were, in Nightingale’s mind, real ‘‘health missioners.’’ Their correspondence with Nightingale shows how crucial their work in the field was and how vital was the information they regularly sent to Nightingale. Hewlett, in particular, was a proponent of the active participation of Indian nationals in sanitar y work. When Nightingale’s closest collaborator, John Sutherland, was about to retire, his replacement on the commission became a key issue as he had been its only paid member. Nightingale favoured Hewlett as his successor, but unhappily he died before this could happen. The work of the Army Sanitary Commission is a major subject in Health in India, while the evolution of the commission, including threats of its complete abolition are more at issue in this volume. The monitoring in London of sanitary work done in India was made possible by the publication of annual sanitary reports, memoranda and minutes, which Nightingale insisted should be written regularly even at the time the royal commission was reporting. Those

1 James Pattison Walker (1823-1906), secretar y to the Bengal Sanitary Commission. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:990). 2 Thomas Gillham Hewlett (1832-89), sanitary commissioner for Bombay. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:991-92).

/ 23

24 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Blue Books were based on information received from India, first drafted by C.C. Plowden during his term as clerk at the India Office (1864-75), and supplemented by Nightingale’s private sources. They reported on progress in the sanitary infrastr ucture of Indian towns and villages, focusing mainly on water supply, drainage, sewers, canals and irrigation. Most reports and memoranda contained a section written by Nightingale herself and those sections are reproduced below. The aim of those reports was not only to provide information on what was done in India but to ‘‘give a practical direction to Indian work’’ (see p 130 below). Other implementation issues are brought in as they appear chronologically. There is a small section on the establishment of a Native Army Hospital Corps and a more elaborate section on changes in the Army Sanitar y Commission, the crucial organization for overseeing the ongoing work of implementation. Nightingale rejoiced at the appointment of J. Pattison Walker as secretar y of the Bengal Sanitary Commission, ‘‘the first board of health India has ever had.’’ She considered ‘‘the sanitary ‘mission’ in India’’ as ‘‘perhaps the greatest ‘mission’ in the world’’, and frankly stated, ‘‘I envy you.’’ She offered all practical support in sending materials.3 In Society and Politics a letter to Walker, sent around the same time as his appointment, called for the ‘‘establishment of a chair of hygiene,’’ important for the ‘‘future progress of the cause,’’ also for Bombay and Madras, and that ‘‘the question of public health’’ should be brought before institutes and native societies for discussion (5:318). In the letter to him below, about the proceedings of the sanitary commission, Nightingale raises issues of caste, asking ‘‘if you take the heads of castes into your counsels, disarm their prejudices, how much might be done?’’ She also specifically addresses the issue of disposal of the dead. Nightingale noted that the work would have great opposition, ‘‘but great works do not prosper without opposition.’’4

3 Letter of 10 March 1864, in Health in India (9:487). 4 Letter of 3 June 1864, in Society and Politics (5:318).

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 25 Source: From a letter to J. Pattison Walker, Boston University 2/2/3

10 March 1864 Private. Before I heard of your appointment I sent to Messrs Smith and Elder the Report on the Mediterranean Stations, the first copy I could get from the printers. This shows the general method of procedure. But I need not tell you that the barrack plans are unsuited for India, where barracks should always be raised much more above the ground and never have but one sleeping storey. Also the married quarters are not suited for India, where they must always be detached. . . . Of the Mediterranean Report, the gist of the defects and remedies is contained in the first twenty-two pages. It gives a good idea of the India problem, with this exception that all the improvements for India need to be on a more extensive scale, with more water, larger cubic space in barracks and hospitals, more complete ventilating arrangements, more constant attention to sanitary police. . . . I congratulate India with all my heart for having you for a missionar y and I congratulate you for having so great, though slow, a work. Source: From four letters to Dr Charles Hathaway, Florence Nightingale Museum, typed copies Add Mss 45782 ff135-38, 139-40, 142-43 and 146-47

10 March 1864 Private. The difficulty on this side is not in framing a code, but in framing a practicable code for India. In the Suggestions, we have laid down the heads. And you should codify them. We may err, if we codify. And you may err, if you leave out duties. But, if you send your draft code to the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission, they would see whether it included everything, leaving you entirely responsible for the procedure. By a little giving and taking in this way, a good code will eventually be framed. You will find a good basis to proceed upon in the new Medical Regulations for the Queen’s Ser vice, at least so far as duties of army sanitary officers go (a copy of which you took out with you). Deputy Inspector General Longmore stated in evidence that these Regulations worked well in India. In the paper we are preparing, there will be many hints for duties of civil officers of health and for officers over bazaars. (I sent, through the I.O., addressed ‘‘private,’’ to Sir John Lawrence, a copy of the Mediter ranean Stations Report, the moment it was out, which you wished to see. If you have time, in the midst of your multitudinous (but not hard) duties to look at it, you will find the gist of the defects and remedies in the first 22 pages. These, with a glance at the ‘‘pic-

26 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tures,’’ give a good idea of the India problem, with the exception that all the improvements for India need to be on a more extensive scale, with more water, larger cubic space in barracks and hospitals, more complete ventilating arrangements, more constant attention to sanitar y police. The plans for barracks will not of course, do for India. There they should be raised much more above the ground and have but one sleeping floor. 2 April 1864 Private. I cannot say how much obliged to you I am for sending me your various news—and the pamphlets, ‘‘Calcutta and Its Health Officer,’’ and ‘‘Our Bazaars.’’ This ‘‘Calcutta’’ pamphlet shows conclusively that the first thing to be done is to appoint the officer of health and to organize such a system of cleansing, removing and prevention of nuisance under his advice, as the local authority may think adequate for getting rid of the terrible but removable causes of disease, which are shown to exist. Do not wait for any works being done by the municipality. It will take years before such works will tell on the public health. Cleansing can begin at once, and the officer of health should be required to proceed at once with his duties. Calcutta is getting used up from neglect of sanitary works and precautions. And, unless the authorities proceed vigorously to work, it will become too unhealthy to be inhabited, and will have to be deserted as Rome was before the time of Gregor y the Great, a state [from] which Rome has never recovered. I shudder when I think of the priceless lives, the irreplaceable energies, now in the power of Calcutta and her abominations which you have hitherto had no public housemaids to sweep and clear away except indeed the jackals. I was very much obliged to you for Sir John Lawrence’s minute on the Commissariat Report, which report we have [not] yet seen. I asked a member of Council at the India Office here to lend me the report itself. But he assured me that they had not seen either the report, or the governor general’s or Sir C. Trevelyan’s minutes upon it. Whether this is true or not I have scrupulously kept private whatever you have been so good as to send me. But I would ask you for the future, might I show what you send me to Lord Stanley, the chairman of our R. India Army Sanitary Commission.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 27

11 April 1864 Private. You have now to fight the battle in India which has been fought in England. And your newspaper articles and letters show that you are quite up to the work. The great point, as far as Calcutta is concerned, is to make the municipal authority do its duty. The officer of health must also be kept up to his work. There should be some officer to whom complaints are to be made. The officer of health should only report to this authority, which authority should be charged with executing works and abating nuisances. Every municipal authority in England has its engineers and surveyor, its inspector of nuisances with his cleansing staff, and its officer of health. And over all is placed a health committee selected from the town council. The proceedings are governed by by-laws. It is quite evident from the papers you have so kindly sent that greater precision in the working of the machinery is required at Calcutta. What they want is system, and the relationship and duties of the different officers should be duly laid down. Under a proper system, ver y few complaints should be necessary. 18 April 1864 Private. Many thanks for Mr Strachey’s first minute (5 March 1864) which is excellent, and lays a good foundation for a great work. It is well that the Bengal Commission of Health should take account of how municipalities do their work; uniformity of system will in this way be introduced, and the authorities will have the certainty always before their eyes of any neglects being made public. There is a question of great importance raised in the minute, viz., the relation which should exist between the police and the sanitary administration. Our experience here is as follows: In the city of London, police and sanitar y powers are virtually lodged in the same body. In the metropolitan parishes, sanitary powers are exercised by the vestries, and the police is under the Home Office. But in neither case is there any relation between the police and the sanitary authority. Ever ything relating to the public health is done by separate organization, which is found to be essentially necessary for success. The sanitary authority has its own separate staff of inspectors for cleansing, nuisances, markets, building, paving, sanitary state of houses, etc. And these officers are held responsible for the perfection of sanitar y arrangements within their jurisdictions. These are all in addition

28 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to the executive officers engaged in sewering and draining. (London is supplied with water by private companies—otherwise there would be also inspectors of water supply.) Ever y parish outside the city has its own staff, so that the work over 1 2 ⁄2 millions of people is done by subdivision. All informations are laid before magistrates, and all orders, for ‘‘abatement’’ (of nuisances) proceed from the magistrates. And yet the police is never called in. Its functions are quite different and relate to public protection simply. Before you legislate anew for Calcutta, you might wish to consider this matter—to make your municipality work by committees on a somewhat similar plan to that here (i.e., provided you can have proper men) to make your laws and by-laws define distinctly the nature of the inspectorial and of the executive duties, in order to prevent incompetent committees (if such must be) from fettering the hands of efficient inspectors. There would, of course, be no objection to having the police sanitar y work all under one administration—but the important practical point is that there is no necessar y connection in their respective duties and that the sanitary administration should be complete and efficient in itself. Source: From a letter to Sir John Lawrence, Florence Nightingale Museum, typed copy Add Mss 45777 ff49-53

26 September 1864 Now the main business of your sanitary commissions should be constr uction, not police. Improvement in India mainly depends on works (police regulations are, of course, necessary). 2. Would there be any impropriety in your sanitary commissions sending copies of their printed minutes to the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission here, through the India Office—merely for information? As far as your Bengal Commission goes: these men don’t want urging; they have not now to be taught. Anything which might even appear to interfere with the responsibilities of your commissions, unless at their own request, is not only undesirable, but, as far as the Bengal commission is concerned, useless. But, if you saw no objection to sending the minutes for information to the War Office Commission here, I am sure they would very much like it. Or, if that would be too formal and official (as regards the India Office here) if they, the minutes, might be sent to me, with permission to show them to one or two, such as Lord Stanley (our late chairman of the royal commis-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 29

sion), Dr Sutherland, Captain Galton, of the War Office, etc., it would answer the same purpose. The India Office here does not show now the least jealousy of the Bar rack and Hospital (War Office) Commission. On the contrary one can scarcely help smiling at the small things it is glad to throw off its responsibility for upon said commission. 3. There are three glaring (though lesser) evils in Calcutta about which I know you have been employed—lesser though they are—and your attention and Dr Hathaway’s have been aroused by them. These are: (1) the police hospitals (or state of hospital accommodation) for sick poor at Calcutta. The police establishments seem about as bad as possible. Indeed the poor wretches are brought in mostly to die. The Parisian system of relief is very good: every police station at Paris has means of temporary help in cases of emergency until the sufferers can be removed to hospital. Some such arrangement, with a thorough reform of the hospitals, and such additional accommodation as may be wanted, might meet Calcutta’s case. The condition of jails and lunatic asylums in India. Certainly it is not for me to draw your attention or Dr Hathaway’s to this. Probably he knows more about them than any man living. The reports and recommendations of one or two of the jail inspectors show that they want experience, as I am sure Dr Hathaway will agree with me. Perhaps we might help you by sending out such reports on the subject as may be useful. The seamen at the great ports. You have already done so much. But Rome can’t be built in a day. Bad water, bad food, bought in bazaars, and bad drinks, cause a vast amount of disease and death. Self-supporting institutions, such as our sailors’ homes (of which indeed I believe you have already founded more than one) would give the men wholesome food and drink and lodgings and day rooms at little cost. So many men perish for want of this kind of accommodation at Calcutta, where the evil seems greatest. Source: From a letter to J. Pattison Walker, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/64/20, typed copy Add Mss 45781 ff246-47 (partial draft in John Sutherland’s hand ff244-45)

18 October 1864 Private. I am ver y much indebted to you for your last letter (of 31 August), also for the copy of ‘‘Rules and Regulations,’’ which I received and acknowledged by last mail.

30 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India You have now had time to look over the Suggestions, which you are kind enough to acknowledge, and which are intended as a kind of guide to executive authorities in India, [based on] European experience of sanitary works, rather than as a guide to teaching in which they are deficient. I suppose that your course of lectures will be attended by Eurasians and natives entering the medical profession. You will have a glorious opportunity, not only of teaching civilization and health, but also of teaching them practice by bringing the pupils into practical contact with sanitary problems in Calcutta. A good textbook would be a great help to them, and also a few tracts in the vernacular. If the natives would give you all the information they can as to domestic habits, you might teach them how those habits can be followed with least injury to health. (I wish sanitary rules could be made a religion, a fanaticism with the ignorant of the natives. I suppose it is not by intelligence, at least at first by explaining reasons that these natives can be led. But we hear of fanaticism about cleanliness in some points among Brahmins, and we know that Moses made sanitary things a part of his code for the people. Could not obser ving certain laws of health be made a religion with the ignorant of the Hindus?) Source: From a letter to Dr Charles Hathaway, Florence Nightingale Museum, typed copy Add Mss 45782 ff162-64

18 October 1864 Private. I for warded your terrible newspaper extracts (about the fallen in Calcutta) to the editor of the Times (he was away on his holiday, but his substitute promises to make use of them, without any mention of your name). But any movement must begin at Calcutta. Every step taken here has only proved the inadequacy of the means to deal with the evil. And any energetic agent taken from London might not be suited for India. The native caste question would interfere also, where vice is followed as a recognized profession. You could do most good probably with European women who have been connected with the army. You will be shocked when I tell you that, in this Christian country, Portsmouth and other garrison towns could match—in some (not of course all) of its most repulsive features—the horrible instance you have given from Calcutta. I have my own convictions about this dreadful evil. I do not believe that any ‘‘Contagious Diseases Prevention’’ Acts, any lock hospitals,

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 31

medical police regulation, or special agencies for reclaiming fallen women will do much good—though all means should be tried, except those which are immoral, as I believe medical police regulation to be. To put down brothels and brothel-keepers and all public prostitution, with the utmost rigour of the law (which is far from being done in England), to raise the moral state and tone, by degrees—of the nation—and in the army to give every facility for employment, recreation and respectable mar riage, to the soldier—these I believe to be the only real means against the evil. I was glad to hear that Sir John Lawrence had received the practical Suggestions for Indian sanitary works. And we shall look forwards with great interest and anxiety for the first signs of practical works and measures being carried out. About enough has been written. The time is now to get the thing done. This is the work of the government executive authorities, and, if taken in hand, it would render any publication of minutes less necessary. Some of the early minutes contained things which might have given umbrage. But the last batch, which is simply a record of proceedings, contains nothing that anybody need feel offended with. As to the ‘‘Imperium in Imperio,’’ there must be some mistake. According to the Army Medical Regulations, all the medical officer can do is to give his opinion to the commanding officer. The authority and responsibility of the commanding officer are positively intact. They are the same as they ever were. . . . I quite agree with you about Mr Strachey. I only hope his health will be preser ved. He would be irreplaceable. Source: From a letter to Sir John Lawrence, Florence Nightingale Museum, draft, Add Mss 45777 ff60-61

26 December 1864 I will not prolong this unreasonably long letter, because you, more than any man on earth, will know whether this proposition is feasible or desirable. I will not therefore waste your time in urging it. I thankfully acknowledge the great progress, due entirely to you, made in sanitary matters for our soldiers in India. I acknowledge it publicly with all my (small) might. I deplore their own excesses which, in any climate, would bring their evil results. But even these you have materially diminished, by giving them manly employments and amusements. But much remains to be done, especially all the draining and water supply works which are, in the want of them, as they were. All depends upon you.

32 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Although there is no doubt that mortality has diminished, as it ought to have done (thanks to you!), yet I do not lay the same stress as some do on temporary and local diminutions of death rates. Numerical records made for short periods are usually in excess or in deficiency, as to sickness and mortality, so that no general law can be educed from them. From such a method Sierra Leone, and all the stations on the West Coast of Africa, might be shown to be amongst the healthiest places in our foreign possessions. And this kind of reasoning pervades the whole of Dr Leith’s Report5 (which, I may mention by the way, has been submitted by Sir C. Wood to the Home Sanitary Commission.) With my warmest Christmas greetings, and prayers that the invaluable life spent in ‘‘goodwill towards men,’’ may we not say like in it some measure to our Almighty Father’s ‘‘good will’’? may be strengthened and long spared for a blessing to men, believe me, dear Sir John Lawrence (in some trepidation at my audacity in writing to you). Source: From a letter to J. Pattison Walker, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/65/11

3 Januar y 1865 I admire your lecture, particularly your famous story of the coolie (at 4 rupees a month) dealing destruction round the land. It is a most suggestive and appropriate illustration. I assure you, the information you are so good as to give me is the greatest interest I have. I had not intended to write this mail, because the papers are not ready about which I meant to write to you, and which alone would have given my letter any worth. But I could not forbear writing to thank you and Mrs Walker (to whom I intend to have the pleasure of writing myself) for your unspeakable kindness and to beg that you will believe me, ever most faithfully and gratefully yours and hers

5 A.H. Leith, Repor t on the General Condition of the Bombay Army, 1864.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 33 Source: From a copy of a letter to J. Pattison Walker, Add Mss 45781 ff323-25

26 March 1866 I have had letters from Sir J. Lawrence and Mr Strachey.6 As you are aware, the position of the sanitary commission will be modified in important particulars. I do not pretend to send you Indian news from England. I am at this moment engaged with the Indian secretar y of state here about this. In one respect, Lord de Grey7 is a better Indian secretar y of state for us than Sir C. Wood,8 for Lord de Grey is entirely penetrated with the importance of the sanitary subject as signifying improvement in civilization more than anything else. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson,9 Boston University 1/4/51

18 September 1866 I feel that I have a great debt of gratitude to acknowledge to you for many very interesting letters and reports, amongst others, a report on the River Thames, sent me as far back as May. I have not been so ungrateful as I appear. For a question about the ‘‘outlet main sewer’’ of Calcutta, which you wished to have elucidated nearly six months ago, I addressed at once to Sir John Lawrence himself—the only way, I find, to get a question unanswered. I wrote to him on 10 April. In a letter dated 17 June he acknowledges mine and encloses the memorandum which I send you. But by an inconceivable fatality which seems to me to attend everything the India Office does (which has never yet been able to learn the calendar difference between months and days) I have only yesterday received Sir John Lawrence’s letter of 17 June with its enclosures, which were important and which reached England on 20 July. I am afraid the memorandum, which I enclose to you, does not contain what you wanted. It would be easy, however, now to obtain more information by putting precise questions.

6 John Strachey (1823-1907), president of the Bengal Sanitary Commission from 1864. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:989-90). His cousin, Colonel Richard Strachey (1817-1908) was head of the Public Works Department in India. 7 Then Lord de Grey, later Lord Ripon; see the biographical sketch in the Appendix below. 8 Charles Wood (1800-85), later Lord Halifax, secretar y of state for India 1859-66. 9 Robert Rawlinson (1810-98), later Sir, civil engineer. He had served as sanitar y commissioner during the Crimean War. Nightingale kept in contact with him throughout her India work.

34 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Notes from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere10 for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45752 ff198-201

[ca. 3 July 1867] He [Bartle Frere] has seen Lord de Grey’s Then, he was told that nothing had taken place upon it. Unlike Ellis, he was not satisfied and he went ferreting on. (He says, by the way, that Anderson12 is one of the best men they have but that Anderson told him, as he told Ellis, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, when there were three despatches, but that we ought to get hold of Anderson because, if he once takes up a thing, he will go on with it.) He says, by the way, that there is a standing order at the India Office that I, F.N., am to see any paper I call for. He says that he has found a despatch of Lord Cranborne13 upon Lord de Grey’s minute (which minute, he says, is almost word for word our memo.). Lord Cranborne’s despatch is most unfortunate. He says, finance must come first; when he sees what they can spend, then he will see what can be done to save life instead of, as Sir B. Frere says: save our lives, cost what it will. Then we can work, he says; we will save your lives if it does not cost too much. At the end, there are some good suggestions as to using municipal bodies and local governments. To this, he says, Sir J. Lawrence replied, and he says I (F.N.) have seen his reply. But I don’t know whether he, Sir B. Frere, has seen the reply. In April last, Sir S. Northcote14 wrote a despatch, ‘‘a good administrative despatch,’’ which Sir B. Frere found. But, he says, nothing in all this alters our position. He says, with regard to my letter, I ought to say civilly to Sir S. Northcote that he must go back to Lord de Grey’s minute.11

10 Sir Henr y Bartle Frere (1815-84), governor of Bombay 1862-67. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:986-87). 11 The minute of 18 June 1866, written by Lord de Grey before leaving the India Office and authorizing Nightingale and Sutherland to answer Lawrence’s despatch of 19 January 1866. Lawrence wanted to make changes to the composition of the presidency sanitary commissions but unwisely proposed giving the post of health commissioners to inspectors of prisons. See letter 4 July 1866 to Lord Stanley and notes of 15 March 1867 in Health in India (9:559-60 and 564-66). 12 Henry Anderson became secretar y to the India Office Sanitary Committee later in 1867. 13 Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil (1830-1903), Viscount Cranborne 1865, marquess of Salisbury 1868, secretar y of state for India 1866-67, later foreign secretar y and prime minister. 14 Sir Stafford Henr y Northcote (1818-87), later earl of Iddesleigh, secretar y of state for India 1867-68.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 35

minute and that I ought to call for all these intermediate papers. He wished very much to have taken my letter with him (which he read over again most carefully) and to have taken the famous ‘‘doors and windows’’ paper with it (my letter) at once to Sir S. Northcote. I said I didn’t think that would do, that I must return the ‘‘doors and windows’’ to you. He said, well, the sooner you do anything the better. If you could send me (Sir B. Frere) your letter today, to give to Sir S. Northcote, taking care that the ‘‘doors and windows’’ paper goes in today to the India Office, so much the better. Sir B. Frere says that, if the administrative system in India is bad, that in the India Office is worse. He says we are divided into eight committees of five or six, who all do the business which would be much better done by one man, clerk or secretar y. The business is actually not done. We meet every Thursday, the whole lot of us; everything that is unimportant is then done; everything that is important is left undone for, if any one man moves that the papers be adjourned, ever yone else accedes. Personal questions, of course, come up first; those are always brought up, but no administrative question ever gets on a single stage. There is no time for it; we have just time to do the useless things, the trivial things. So, everything is adjourned from year to year. It is like the Delhi sores, it is always on the list and no one puts on even a plaster. I miss him [S. Herbert?] so. He says the thing is now to let drive at Sir S. Northcote without a day’s delay to get Anderson (who is efficient) on our side and to take advantage of the move to the new office and of the recess. He says, ‘‘I will make 35 South St. the India Office while this affair is pending.’’ Sir B. Frere told me most curious facts (he was here for hours). He said you need not be so miserable about the delay in the Public Health Service, for you have given such a stir to the natives that we hear of nothing else. This last year no European in Bombay could get a house. All the good sea breezy houses belong to Parsis, who, though rich, lived in the miserable parts of the town and let their houses to Europeans. This last year all the Europeans came to me and complained they could get no houses. I made great inquiries and I was told this: the boy Parsis go to the Grant Medical College and ‘‘Sir, we read there Miss Nightingale’s and other works on air, constr uction, etc.’’ The mama and grandmama in Parsi families are the tyrants. The poor papa had begged in vain to be allowed to live in his own house. They would live in the bad parts of the town, but when the boy came home and found a sick child at home, he would say, ‘‘Grandmama,

36 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India you’re killing that child; Miss Nightingale says so.’’ And Grandmama listened to the boy, though she would not listen to papa. Grandmama became a sanitary reformer in spite of herself and they moved to the new house out of the narrow street with no window to the seaside house. Source: From a draft or letter to Sir John Lawrence, Add Mss 45777 f162, draft in John Sutherland’s hand ff159-60

[1867] With regard to what you were kind enough to tell me about the Hardwar Fair, and the papers you were so good as to enclose, we here look upon your sanitary measures at Hardwar as one of the greatest triumphs ever obtained. There are few things which have ever been done, which show more clearly how well you can organize measures for protecting the public health, even under the greatest difficulties. Ah! my dear Sir John Lawrence, I shall know you another time and not be taken in by you again. You are like Atlas with the earth on his back or rather you are like Hercules with his ‘‘Labours’’ of which one, I believe, was cleaning out the Augean stables. Hercules has been writing to me apologetically on account of his great difficulties to be overcome. And then I suppose, he intended to convert me to his views of difficulty by selecting the most difficult case of all and by showing how triumphantly he could deal with it. After this Hardwar case, Hercules will have to adopt another line of argument—both as regards difficulty and finance. I envy these great reformers. By a few measures of absolute simplicity, to disperse a prodigious multitude like that and to save many, many thousands of lives—and apparently for a few thousands of pounds!! If we destroyed an army in the Crimea, by measures of the most absolute simplicity, you have saved a host at Hardwar. Source: Notes from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45752 ff188-91

[22 July 1867] Sir B. Frere was here for more than two hours, reading papers and letters. He entirely approved of my letter to Sir S. Northcote, which he said was a very moderate statement of the case. He said he would present it himself, if we liked it. (The only mistake he said is that the Bombay commission was not broken up.) He said he thought it better that we should know exactly the state of the case as to Lord de Grey’s

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 37

minute [19 June 1866] (which he had never heard of) before we sent in the letter to Sir S. Northcote. And he goes himself to the India Office this morning to rout out the minute and to let us know what has been done. He believes nothing. He says the I.O. is in a state of inexpressible confusion, that when he asks for a paper in the Military or Public Department, he is told that those papers are partly in the Public and partly in the Judicial Department. (He did not at all admit Ellis’s15 excuse for not finding Sir J. Lawrence’s despatch, which he, Sir B. Frere, had of course seen, because, he says, the above fact is well known.) He says that nothing will ever be done till there is a special Public Health Department in the India Office here as well as in India. And he offered, almost with tears in his eyes, to be ‘‘our aide-de-camp,’’ to work out such a department. Yes, but he says the defect of the War Office sanitary commission is that they have no power to ask, has the thing been done? that it is absolutely necessary to have a man or a department in the India Office to ask and to see, has the thing been done? and to furnish the secretar y of state annually with a report, not bigger than an 8vo pamphlet, to be laid before Parliament annually as to what actually has been done. And he actually proposed that he himself, Sir B. Frere, would undertake the department if we thought him fit, if he could get the secretar y of state to consent and if we would help him. Sir B.F. will write or come himself this afternoon to tell me the fate of Lord de Grey’s minute. He says that there could not be a better time than the present to urge our suit. But, he says, it must be between this and 15 August, that the I.O. is actually come to a deadlock because of the badness of its arrangements, that they are compelled to turn into the new India Office before 15 August, that there is then to be a general (compulsor y) rearrangement of sub-departments, papers and the like, that Sir S.N. would, he is sure, consider the subject now, both because Parliament will soon be up and because of this compulsory rearrangement of the India Office, that he, Sir B. Frere, is going to stay in town on purpose. Sir B.F. laughed immensely at that paper. He said quite right, quite right, quite right for the official mind; keep that for the official mind. You know, he looked at that and said, it is all very good. But what you

15 Robert Staunton Ellis (1825-77), sanitary commissioner for Madras 1864-67.

38 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India want is some one man or department here, to ask of India, what have you done? He says, there is absolutely no means at all in the I.O. to forward a sanitar y administrative point at all. And he told me some dreadful stories to that effect, resulting in disease and death under his own Bombay administration. He is going to send me the Orissa [famine] report, some jail reports, and some Pune reports, which he says, particularly the Orissa report, illustrate better this fact than anything he could say. He says the Orissa administrative disaster is beyond historical parallel. He says that only applied to Bengal. Shall I accept his offer of fathering the letter by presenting it himself ? There’s no doubt about that. Sir B.F. read that. And he was of opinion that that, or something like that, should go in to Sir S.N. as a criticism on Sir J. Lawrence’s minute, which he said he (Sir B.F.) had, when he saw it at the time, totally disagreed with. But he afterwards said that as Sir S.N. would be quite certain to show my letter to the Council, we had better send something of that kind in afterwards, as private. He also read this and wished me to send that in. But I said that, till we knew what was the context of Lord de Grey’s minute it would not do for us to appear as if we had in any [breaks off]. Source: From a letter to Captain Henry Tulloch (Madras engineer), Add Mss 45800 ff138-39

19 August 1867 I beg to thank you very much for your excellent report on the drainage of Madras, which you have so kindly sent me through Mr Rawlinson. You have for the first time brought the question of drainage fairly before the Indian authorities. You have shown once for all that drainage in India is simply the same problem, with difference in application, as drainage in England. You have disposed entirely of the fallacies of the dry earth system as applied to towns. Your report will do the greatest good. It is the first Indian report, as regards drainage, which has a just claim to the title of sanitary report, i.e., which really touches the evils and the means to remove them. While greatly admiring the valuable qualities displayed in reports made by medical officers in India, one cannot but always feel the absence of the power of application of and dealing with such practical questions as the removal of evils, costs of works, engineering questions, which are so power fully and ably dealt with in your report.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 39 Source: Notes on Sir Bartle Frere and Thomas Farquhar16 for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45752 f222

[ca. 27-28 August 1867] Sir B. Frere is actually taking the trouble to write for us a paper on Dr Farquhar’s paper [‘‘Notes on Miss Nightingale’s Questions Relative to Sanitation in Algeria and India’’ 20 April 1867], which he says is full of serious mistakes. We must read this before he comes. He says that about trees is a mistake. He says it’s an utter mistake to talk about the natives as if you were a father taking charge of an infant. The natives can, will and do think for themselves and you must make them work for themselves. He says what Farquhar says about the Hardwar Fair is all nonsense, that the natives can perfectly well understand and be made to take care of themselves and to avert cholera during pilgrimage fairs, but that Farquhar and company won’t believe it. He says you have the Marathas, the Sikhs, the Bengalis, the Madrasis, etc., and they are as unlike one another as Spaniards and Laplanders, but Farquhar and company apply to all India what they know of the Bengalis. But he (Sir B.F.) says, Take the Bengali: in keenness and subtlety of intellect he is superior to an Englishman. It is true he tells lies, but still it is nonsense to talk of him as an uneducated savage. He laughs at you and thinks himself (and is) superior in intellect to an Englishman. You must not treat him like an infant but take him into your counsels. This is the grand mistake of Sir J. Lawrence’s present advisors. Then, he says, Farquhar is all wrong about many points of administration. However, Sir B. Frere’s paper is coming, and we are to look it over together. He will come here on Tuesday at 3:30 to talk it all over with you in this room if you like it. He asked to bring Sir Henry Anderson to see me. He did not propose to bring him on Tuesday. Source: Note from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45752 ff225-27

[11 September 1867] Sir B. Frere is quite clear about what he wishes us to do but whether it can be done is quite another thing. I feel quite terrified when I see how much he thinks depends upon our bringing our personal influence to bear upon Sir J. Lawrence. He says whatever originates from that end will be sanctioned by Sir S.N., but nothing will be originated

16 Dr Thomas Farquhar, surgeon to the viceroy, a critic of Nightingale’s views of sanitation.

40 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India by Sir S. Northcote except what we tell him to do. He wishes us to write to Sir J. Lawrence by next mail. (I asked him and he said he would look over any draft we chose to send in time.) He wishes this letter to be like a minute on education which Sir C. Wood sent out to India some years ago, which was not controversialist, not blaming, but simply ignoring all the foolish objections that had been made, ‘‘harking back,’’ saying now ‘‘let us begin, could you not do so and so?’’ He says no time should be lost, that nothing is to be gained by waiting to see what Sir S. Northcote is likely to do, because Northcote has not an idea except of doing what we ask; what we ask will either be done or not be done. It is not as if Northcote was going to suggest anything of himself, for he won’t. Nothing will be done for a fortnight. Sir B. Frere thinks we are quite certain to have the committee [the India Office Sanitary Committee], for Northcote has already discussed it with Sir H. Anderson and Anderson has opposed some retrogradists being put upon it. Yes, I asked, and Sir B. Frere thinks that that is all at first which his committee is likely to do, viz., to receive papers and call for papers. In October all the committees of the India Office are remodelled. Then our committee will be started. They are now in their new house, but all the papers are in vans in the streets. Sir B. Frere says that if we don’t revolutionize India, revolution will come of itself, that they are incapable of bearing the smallest shock, that they have no organization anywhere, that it is absolutely absurd for the viceroy to attempt to be Providence to 180 millions, that he is like Louis-Napoléon,17 who is already an old, broken-down and disappointed man, from attempting the same thing, viz., to do everything for the French, instead of helping them to do for themselves. Yet that it is easier to play Providence for the French than to do so for India. He told me many curious stories, especially about the present government of Sind and the Punjab, showing that, instead of their having a government, there is nothing but a police force, a military force and a civilian administration, all quarrelling and not co-operating with each other. And he reiterated what he had said that, if no improvement were made, there would be a revolution.

17 Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808-73), president of the Second Republic 1848-51; he proclaimed himself ‘‘Emperor of the French’’ as Napoléon III in 1851.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 41

About the sanitary part, he asked me over and over again whether Sir J. Lawrence had changed his views. I said, I thought not. But really, I hardly knew how to explain otherwise than that he has been overridden [on the introduction of nursing in hospitals in India]. You have not brought in the Peshawar papers. Sir B.F. asked about them. Our letter to Sir J. Lawrence, he says, ought to be written at once. And the moment that is gone he says we ought to write to Sir S. Northcote, because we ought to profit of this moment of comparative leisure to keep pegging [hammering away]. Our letter to Sir J. Lawrence, he says, should be to call him back to the time when he first went out. We should embrace a (not controversial) answer to Dr Farquhar and to Colonel Crommelin.18 We should ask him to consider what is to be done in India, ask him to propose something. We should go upon the ground of Lord de Grey’s minute and Ellis’s papers. And, he says, we should ask him to allow Ellis to try his plan in the Madras government. Sir J. Lawrence says, and it is true, that it would not suit the Bengal government without great modifications. Well, then, let Ellis try it in his own government. Sir B. Frere says I ought to show Ellis’s paper to Sir S. Northcote and send a copy again to Sir J. Lawrence. He says I ought now to write a note to Mr Ellis and say, press it now upon Lord Napier19 to write home to have it done. Source: From a draft letter to Sir John Lawrence, Add Mss 45777 ff145-47

18 September 1867 Draft for consideration. I have read over with the deepest interest your letter together with the promised papers, drawn up by Dr Farquhar. I have also referred to all the chief papers connected with this subject which have come before us year by year since you came to the throne. The question which presents itself to our minds is this: admitting the inevitable delay in introducing a new department of administration, and notwithstanding the progress which these papers show nevertheless to have been made, have we arrived at such a period in the public health administration of India as to be able to say that this same system of administration should be continued, or rather would it

18 Colonel Henr y Blyth Crommelin wrote on the construction of hospitals, among other things. 19 Francis Napier (1819-98), 10th Baron Merchistoun and 1st Baron Ettrick, governor of Madras 1866-72.

42 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India not be much better to reconsider our present position with the view of ascertaining whether it be not possible to introduce throughout India some more permanent method of dealing with the evils which still unhappily arise? This great public health question divides itself necessarily into two parts: there is one part of it which can unquestionably be only done by the people themselves. But the other part can only be done through central or local administration, while it happens that the cooperation of this administration. [breaks off] (I speak of this from experience and have just sent to India at the request of enlightened natives there, copies of such sanitary reports as would enable them to know what they can do themselves and what they ought to call on the government to do.) Although no government can be Providence over a vast empire like that of India, any more than over a smaller country like France, there are nevertheless certain things which a government can do. It can delegate powers and responsibilities. It can find money either directly or indirectly. It can by inspection see that the responsibilities are discharged and the money properly spent. By its superior means of information, it can call upon local authorities to adopt or execute every necessar y measure or work. And it can grant facilities to the people besides encouraging the onward course of civilization. It can impress upon its agents that the completion and success of the work is the main object—not the clearness or punctuality of the correspondence. The only proposal hitherto made which appears to us in any way to meet the Indian case is that of Mr Ellis’s Memorandum (of nearly two years ago) which you know and which you judged inapplicable to the Bengal presidency. Would it not be possible, now that Mr Ellis is connected with the Madras government, to allow him to try his proposal there? In this way we should at once obtain the requisite administrative experience. But if the experience already obtained throughout India would enable you to propose a better method of ensuring the ends and objects which we all have in view, by placing the public health administration on a more systematic and permanent basis, I have reason to say with absolute certainty that any proposal coming from you will be received at the India Office here with open arms and on their knees and that no misleading considerations of economy will be allowed to inter fere injudiciously with your views.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 43 Source: Note from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45752 f228

[11-22 September 1867] Sir B. Frere says (I tell you this in the strictest confidence) that Sir J. Lawrence is now so cross that he and the India Office are scarcely on speaking terms, that if the y were to write to him any proposal of this kind, it would just set him against it, that he, Sir J. Lawrence, will not take a word from anyone but me, F.N. I would add something in order to mollify Sir J. Lawrence, to the effect that Ellis might make the plan for Madras, not as if we wished Ellis to legislate for the whole of India, and Strachey and Malleson20 for Bengal, but all together. Source: Notes from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere, for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff27-31

[ca. Februar y-March 1868] [Sir B. Frere] says that no one can imagine the quantity of matter they have disinterred in the India Office. He has written the despatch to Sir J.L. in our sense. But Sir S. Northcote, it is the etiquette, must present it to the Council. Sir S.N. will do so and will previously send it to us. He still says the thing is to get everything initiated in India. He has been disappointed in not hearing from Lord Napier. One of the main things he came about is: Chadwick21 has been at him about an aide-mémoire. Sir B. Frere is quite willing and he came here yesterday to ask me to consult with you about it and to let him know. Well, Sir B.F. is not at all taken in. Quite the contrary. He came to ask me what he was to think of Chadwick. Sir B.F., I think, would rather have as little to do with Chadwick as possible. He empowers us to think and let him know how this aide-mémoire is to be proceeded with, by whom, on what subjects, etc. I told him so, but I don’t think he thinks Sir P.C.22 will do anything. . . . I had better write to Sir B. Frere about the aidemémoire. . . . Sir B. Frere will take my word against Chadwick’s. Sir B. Frere says they have had another despatch from Colonel Crommelin, twenty

20 Major George Bruce Malleson, member of the Bengal Sanitary Commission. 21 Edwin Chadwick (1800-90), later Sir, leading sanitary reformer; see the biographical sketch in Society and Politics (5:828-29). 22 Sir Proby Thomas Cautley (1802-71), irrigation expert and paleontologist, best known for the construction of the Ganges Canal.

44 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India pages of close print against us, and then one short paragraph admitting the whole. He says Rawlinson has written a very good paper on the Bombay drainage, which he hopes will revolutionize the whole of India, that Captain Tulloch is going back to Madras and the wretched man has been ordered by the India government to stop at Bombay, to take Rawlinson’s paper with him and try how he can reconcile Crawford,23 Hewlett and company to it. That Sir B. Frere is furnishing him with introductions, in the faint hope that, as at Constantinople, all the Bombay dogs may not set upon the strange dog. . . . Sir B. Frere says the condition of the War Office is quite beyond belief and that nothing but the duke of Cambridge being a prince of the blood24 keeps things together for a day. He says that Galton does the estimates capitally but it is not possible for a man in his position to do them. Source: From two letters to J. Pattison Walker, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/68/6 and 10, copy of the second Add Mss 45781 ff334-36

3 April 1868 It is long, very long since I heard from you. And I was almost afraid that your health was worse. But I received some few mails ago a tin cylinder which could not have come but from you, I think, and which gave me a very great deal of pleasure, containing a wonderful photograph of the Ganges Canal, with that exquisite bridge, of which the constr uction with its three beautiful arches is worthy of the Ponte della Trinita at Florence and its two magnificent lions. It is a most characteristic picture and the executing of such a work with such very grand architectural art is worthy of India. . . . I will not enter now upon the immense subject of how Indian sanitar y subjects are progressing (or not progressing) at our end, till I hear from you. In December I had the pleasure of seeing Dr Norman Chevers25 for a few minutes just before he started for Calcutta, though I was obliged to receive him on my couch. He gave me some news of you. I have always regretted so very much that your health prevented your remain-

23 Sir Thomas Crawford (1824-95), principal medical officer in India 1880-82, director general of the Army Medical Department 1882-95. 24 Prince George, duke of Cambridge (1819-1904), cousin of Queen Victoria, commander-in-chief of the British Army for thirty-nine years. 25 Norman Chevers, head of the Calcutta Medical College.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 45

ing at Calcutta. It seems to me that to give the native professional young men some idea of sanitary science, as you were so ably doing, and which it appears they are not at all slow to take in, is the only way really to civilize India in physical things. 10 August 1868 Private. I cannot tell you (though I should be very ungrateful if I did not try) how much pleased and touched by your most kind, interesting and entertaining letter of 10 May, I felt. In the first place, as Napoleon said of the ‘‘états de situation’’ of his troops, I read even now in my old age all details of sanitary matters and even ‘‘memoranda on accommodation required’’ with as much eagerness as a girl reads her first novel. In the next place, we had had some questions with very insufficient data referred to us at the India Office. And your details, especially on the meteorology and temperature, day by day, of Chakrata, just filled up the Missing Link. The details of your ‘‘dinner parties’’ also—don’t laugh—were most important. When people can feed themselves well that is the best proof of our military power to hold the country. There was no Crimean bungling here. And I shall always believe that we have a firm tenure there where we can give a dinner under difficulties. Add to this, your letter was as amusing to me as White of Selborne,26 as touching as Sterne.27 And you are as zealous as Mr Chadwick himself on sanitar y matters with a poetry and humour quite beyond Mr Chadwick. And now, I am afraid I shall make but a very poor return for your most kind letter, I am so over worked and so constantly ill—I feel now how much the enormous pressure of work, and often of disappointing, always of harassing work, for the last eighteen months has told upon me. And when the Parliamentary Session was over, I ‘‘disappeared’’ and would not give my address. (I told the War Office I was going to Ephesus, because I much preferred fighting with the wild beasts of Ephesus28 to fighting with the War Office wild beasts.)

26 An allusion to Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. 27 Perhaps Lawrence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr Yorick. 28 An allusion to 1 Cor 15:32.

46 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I dwell gratefully upon the encouragement which your kindness gives me at a time I will not say of despondency but a solemn time to me (every life has its solemn times, if people would but mark them). For this week in August I saw, fifteen years ago, my first undertaking of the matronship of a public institution, twelve years ago, my return from the Crimea home, since which time I have not revisited this home, and have never had ten minutes’ leisure, seven years ago, the death of the best friend and fellow worker man or woman ever had, Sidney Herbert, the war minister, whose labours in the administration were the highest good as his too early death was the deepest loss the army—I had almost said the country—ever had. Five years ago, we finished the Report of the R. India Sanitary Commission which has, praise be to God and thanks to your labours and those of Sir John Lawrence and many others, borne good fruit both for natives and Europeans in India, although we must all of us feel, as people do whose idea is higher than human power of performance, that the work in India might have progressed more rapidly. (I will return to this.) It is also eleven years this very day since I was taken ill with the illness from which I have never risen again. You see how much I have to thank God for who has indeed led me by a way which I have not known.29 At the same time He has seen fit to send me trouble and trials, like waters which one could not cross, were one to look down into them. I am almost the last survivor of my fellow workers in England, men, some of them but little older than I. And this very year has even the death of the best and dearest of my pupils, my ‘‘Una,’’30 who was many years younger than I. I enclose a little sketch of her which was published in Good Words for June, which may possibly give ten minutes’ interest to you and Mrs Walker, who have given me so much. Source: From a letter to C.C. Plowden (clerk at the India Office), Wellcome Ms 5480/1

13 September 1868 A short time ago, he [Sir Bartle Frere] wrote to me (from Bohemia) saying that he wished me to have a few copies immediately of the Memorandum on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvement in India Up to the

29 An allusion to Isa 42:16. 30 Agnes Elizabeth Jones (1832-68), superintendent, Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary; see the biographical sketch in Public Health Care (6:678).

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 47

End of 1867 (that is, before the Blue Book of Sanitary Abstracts, of which it is to form a part, comes out) and that he would request you to be so good as to forward them to me. May I ask whether you have heard anything from him to this effect? Source: Notes from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff79-80

[before 25 September 1868] 1. Copies of that [aide-mémoire?] are going to be sent round to your commission with a request from Sir S. Northcote that you will criticize it and send him your remarks. 2. General Baker is selected by Sir B. Frere himself because he will carry more weight at the I.O. and at the H.G. [Horse Guards] than Sir B.F. himself in pushing the recommendations of your Army Sanitary Commission. 3. It was Sir B.F. who sent Dr Hewlett to you. He was very much pleased at what I told him you thought of Hewlett. He says, why can’t we train medical officers at Netley to be like Hewlett? He wants us to teach Hewlett all we can. He had heard nothing of the paper you told Hewlett to write. I think now I must write to Hewlett about the executive work because I snubbed him by your desire about it. 4. Sir B.F. says if we two would draw him up a scheme for ‘‘training sanitar y officers,’’ he would urge it. He said this à propos to Dr Goodeve having turned out to be so ignorant. Sir B.F. said this à propos to your saying that medical officers were not the people and to your mooting the question: Should not we train sanitary officers? 5. Now comes much the most important point of all. Sir B. Frere is seriously uneasy about the Sir J. Lawrence organization question. He says that, when all the local government reports have come in, Sir J. Lawrence has no one to deal with them, that Major Malleson will deal with them exactly as if he were drawing up a report of the Buddhist religion, that Major M. has not an idea except of the political side of a question, that nothing has come home from him. And Sir B.F. wants me to write to Sir J. Lawrence by next Friday recommending him to have Ellis over to Calcutta unofficially to draw up with Major Malleson a scheme. I objected that Sir J. Lawrence did not like Ellis. He said: ‘‘Then Strachey is the only other man to recommend. But Strachey is not a practical man like Ellis.’’

48 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From two letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5066 and 5067

2 October 1868 [completed 5 October] Private. I cannot tell you how sorry I was to hear some weeks ago from Sir B. Frere that you were obliged to come home on sick leave, owing to your too great exertions. And your own account confirms it. On the subject of your letter I can say nothing till I have communicated with Sir B. Frere. But I immediately, on receiving yours, made a private inquiry merely to ascertain ‘‘how the land lies.’’ I trust that you will understand, first of all, how much everyone here admires the exertions of so earnest and so good an officer and if anyone says a single word in opposition to your views, it is never but for one reason: that things appear to be taking the course which I am going to try to indicate. The Indian practice, which you have been so nobly and successfully following at Bombay, of being executive officer, is the very natural sequence from the state of things with which the health officer has to contend. It is a very difficult thing for a man who knows what ought to be done to stand by and see it not done, especially when he knows that this neglect will endanger health and life. The whole question of the duties of officer of health was considered fully as far back as 1844 in this country. There were two views in regard to it: one that he should simply supply advice and be a check on the inspectors in their duties; the other, which was actually embodied in a bill, was that he should be both officer of health and nuisance inspector. After careful discussion, it was decided that the offices should be separated. This separation has worked very well in England. As regards India, any arrangement must still be considered as tentative. If the sanitary work cannot be done unless the precious time, as well as the health, of the medical officer has to be devoted to it, there is no help but for the officer of health to be head of the executive department. But there are so many duties which the officer of health has to do, apart from mere executive duties, that, if the time has arrived for separating the offices, so that there may be an efficient head over all persons engaged in sanitary work, which the health officer is left to his special and arduous duties, and acts as a check on the executive officer, it will doubtless be an advantage. This is the question now to be decided. You find the matter discussed in the Suggestions of the Army Sanitary Commission. They appear to have arrived at the conviction that the sanitary medical offi-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 49

cer had a class of duties quite distinct from the inspector of nuisances (which, in England, are of an executive character). 17 October 1868 Private. Since I wrote to you, I have had communication both with Sir Bartle Frere and with Dr Sutherland. Dr Sutherland informed me of what had passed between you and him as to the question of the administrative position of the medical officer of health in India, and that he had agreed to address a paper to Sir Bartle Frere on the subject. As I feel very strongly that this ought to be done, that the whole question is likely now to be raised, perhaps to be included in a scheme, and that it would be very important to have your views as soon as possible on the point, because your great activity, your knowledge and experience and ability in Indian practice would ensure your views a hearing. I venture to write to say this and to remind you that, the sooner you can write such a statement of them, the better for the decision of the question. Source: Notes from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff99-100

[ca. October 1868] Sir B. Frere has brought me the despatch from Sir J. Lawrence. It is exactly the same as Sir J. Lawrence sent me and which Sir B.F., it appears, knew he had sent me (the one you would not look at). I have arranged with Sir B. Frere that the document shall be referred to you at the Army Sanitary Commission officially with a request for your remarks. You will find it there today. Sir B. Frere has dictated to me the way in which you at the Army Sanitar y Commission can officially harry on the recommendation for the sanitary executive, which he will get passed at the I.O. and which I will tell you when you have read the papers. Do you wish to hear what Sir B.F. told me? He told me about that, your Calcutta fever minute. He said that he was afraid his department would have said: ‘‘Oh we have lived among rice fields all our lives and we never had fever,’’ but that, on the contrar y, they will now pass officially almost everything which we send officially, and that in effect they said, ‘‘This is nothing new and it is all quite right’’ and it passed at once. Sir B. Frere says that, after having reported your opinion on the subject of the despatch, you should sum up something in this manner (and that he will engage to pass it through the I.O.):

50 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘The time has now come when effect (or execution) should be given to the excellent sanitary recommendations that have been made’’ (or) ‘‘when the Government of India should give executive power to carry out the admirable recommendations which they have received. In all those places (this, he says, will include the great towns, the districts where there has been cholera, the districts about Calcutta, Lower Bengal and elsewhere where there has been persistent fever, where reports have been made showing clearly the steps which require to be taken (or) the evils which require to be removed, and what the steps are by which they can be removed, an executive power should be created (or) executive power should be given to the officer of health to proceed at once to the removal of those evils.’’ Say nothing about funds at present, he says. Temple31 will manage that. And say nothing about a wider executive at present). Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5069

7 November 1868 Private. First of all, let me say that I have mentioned the subject on which you are so justly indignant (viz., the omission from the Blue Book’s Memorandum of all mention of the energetic and successful sanitar y works at Bombay of the municipal officers) at the India Office. This omission arose, as I dare say you know, in the following manner: the municipal reports were actually pointed out to the compilers of the Blue Book. It was shown them that they emanated from the government press. But, because unfortunately they had not been sent officially by the government, they would not be inserted. I believe we are quite safe in saying that this omission shall be fully and satisfactorily repaired in next year’s Blue Book and an abstract of the municipal report given from the first. I feel sure that Sir Bartle Frere shares your feeling, as indeed I do. I have seen your very able answers to Dr Sutherland’s queries relative to your printed statement about the position of officers of health for India. The whole question will now be discussed with a sincere intention of coming to some decision, some practical organization, some executive in short.

31 Sir Richard Temple (1826-1902) had a long career in India before becoming a member of the viceroy’s council in charge of finance 1868-74, lieutenant governor of Bengal 1874-77 and governor of Bombay 1877-80.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 51 Source: Note on John Strachey’s letter criticizing Memorandum on Measures, 1868, for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 f126

[before 4 December 1868] Well, you must prepare yourself that this is the nastiest pill we have had yet, but we have swallowed a good many and we’re not poisoned yet. Strachey’s letter to Sir John [Lawrence] is in a passionate and unjust tone, which bodes ill to us now. Strachey is on the [viceroy’s] Council. I understand now what I have been told for the last year that the communications of the government in India to the government at the India Office have been in such a tone that they are scarcely on speaking terms. One thing you must consider: what I am to answer Sir J.L. since next Friday is the last mail which will find him in India. Of course I will do what you deliberately think best. But Sir B. Frere is so anxious, so annoyed with the tone of recent communications to the I.O., and I think so ill that I must answer this and acknowledge his report, because Cuningham32 has taken immense pains to let me and the I.O. have a copy each as early as possible. Source: Note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff130-31

[ca. 9 December 1868] I think the paper admirable. But it strikes me that instead of being less, it is more dogmatic than Sir B. Frere’s suggestion, and more dogmatic for your having seen Strachey’s letter. Sir B. Frere says there is great virtue in these words: ‘‘The time has now come,’’ as if you implied that the Government of India has been all along working for this. . . . Then [write]: ‘‘The time has now come for that important information which has been obtained by inspection to be turned to immediate practical use for improving the health of those places which have been thus reported on.’’ . . . Yes, I will, if you like it, send it to Sir B. Frere. . . . I think I should tell him of (not show him) Strachey’s angr y letter. I ought to see it.

32 Dr James M. Cuningham (1829-1905), sanitary commissioner of Bengal and India. See Health in India (9:642).

52 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Memorandum on Measures, 1868 Editor: This memorandum, the first of the Annual Blue Books, consists of (1) a summary of measures adopted in 1859-67; (2) Sir S. Northcote’s despatch of 23 April 1868; and (3) a review of the situation. Nightingale wrote (1) and (3), and drafted (2). See E.T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:154, 446. We print here (1), Nightingale’s introductor y summar y. Source: From Memorandum on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India Up to the End of 1867. Together with Abstracts of the Sanitary Repor ts Hither to Forwarded from Bengal, Madras and Bombay, printed by order of the Secretar y-ofState-for-India-in-Council (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1868): 1-12; Add Mss 45836 ff27-37 has a handwritten draft of that summary

In May 1859 a royal commission was appointed to inquire into the sanitar y state of the army in India, the warrant, bearing date 31 May 1859, setting forth the leading points to which the attention of the commission should be directed: the rate of sickness and mortality, etc., the causes of such sickness and mortality, the healthiness of the different existing stations, the subject of healthy positions generally, the best construction of barracks, huts, hospitals and tents for India, the present regulations for preser ving the health of troops and enforcing medical and sanitary police, organization of the army sanitary and medical service, practicability of establishing a general system of military statistics throughout India and what changes it might be considered expedient to make in present practice on the above-mentioned subjects. Their report, dated 19 May 1863, accompanied by voluminous evidence, was forwarded by the then secretar y of state for India, Sir C. Wood, in his military despatch to India of 31 July, No. 280, 1863. A large number of copies of this report were for warded with instructions that it should be widely distributed in India and with an intimation that the government should be addressed in a separate despatch as to the measures which it might be advisable to adopt on the recommendations of the commission. Accordingly, on 15 August in the same year (Military Despatch to India No. 297), the secretar y of state addressed the Government of India at length on the recommendations with which the royal com-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 53

mission concluded their report, stating that such of these recommendations as required to be carried out in this country would be considered by the secretar y of state for India in communication with the secretar y of state for war, and pointing out, for the special attention of the Government of India, the most important of the recommendations which were to be carried out there. These latter were: 1. The appointment of a sanitary commission at each of the presidencies. 2. A careful consideration of the changes that may be necessary in the present distribution of the European troops. 3. The selection of sites for new barracks and hospitals, the constr uction of those buildings on approved principles and the application, as far as possible, of those principles to existing buildings. 4. The regulation of the diet of the European troops and the prevention, if possible, of the use by them of ardent spirits. 5. The provision of means for the innocent recreation and healthy occupation of the men. 6. The measures to be adopted to prevent the spread of venereal disease. Authority was given for the immediate formation of committees of public health in each presidency and for the preparation of a draft code of sanitary regulations. This draft code was to be submitted for revision in this country and the completed code to be sent back for promulgation in India. The other recommendations of the royal commission, and the necessity of introducing a systematic registration of deaths, were pressed on the early consideration of the Viceroy-inCouncil. (In accordance with Recommendation No. 36, ‘‘that in order to render available for India the experience obtained in dealing with all classes of sanitary questions in England, two officers of the Indian government be appointed in England to be associated with the War Office commission for this special purpose,’’ Colonel Sir Proby Cautley, K.C.B. and Sir J. Ranald Martin, C.B.,33 were at this period appointed members of the War Office Sanitary Commission.) A copy of this despatch was transmitted to the governments of Madras and Bombay. On 5 Februar y 1864 (Military Letter from Government of India No. 48) the Government of India informed the secretar y of state that, in consequence of the non-arrival of the report of the royal commission,

33 James Ranald Martin (1793-1874), member of the Army Sanitary Commission. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:988-89).

54 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India it had not been possible to carry out the measures indicated in the despatch of 15 August, but that having just received a few copies, it had taken some preliminar y steps, had directed the immediate formation of sanitar y commissions in the three presidency towns and trusted to be able to reply very shortly more fully to the instructions of the secretar y of state. It at the same time stated that most of the questions treated of by the royal commission had long been the subject of anxious thought and added that it would hereafter point out some erroneous impressions and conclusions in the report, which must have misled its readers as to the past and present condition of the British soldier in India. In an enclosure to this despatch it was stated that the sanitary commission in Bengal was to be composed of a president and secretar y on salaries respectively of Rs. 3500 and Rs. 600 per mensem, whose time was to be exclusively given to the work of the commission, with three militar y, judicial and engineer officers as members, on salaries of Rs. 300 per mensem, in addition to the pay of their own appointments. Commissions similarly constituted were to be formed in Madras and Bombay, and the respective salaries of the presidents and secretaries was fixed at Rs. 3000 and Rs. 500 per mensem. On 24 March 1864 (Military Despatch to India No. 94) the secretar y of state acknowledged the receipt of the above-mentioned despatch and approved of the arrangements detailed in its enclosures. It was considered that the salaries of the secretaries of the several commissions, being medical officers, should be regarded as subject to revision in connection with arrangements for the future organization and pay of the medical service which were then under consideration. The Government of India, on 8 March 1864 (Military Despatch from India No. 103), transmitted some papers showing the instructions which it had been thought expedient to issue to the sanitary commission in Bengal and which had been communicated to the other governments and administrations, in order that, so far as might be possible, there should be uniformity of purpose and action in the proceedings of the several commissions. The instructions alluded to in this despatch were in some degree a reiteration of the recommendations of the royal commission. It was considered to be premature to describe with minuteness the manner in which the proposed new system of sanitary administration was to be organized; only the main principles on which it was to be based were laid down. It was pointed out that, while the diminution of mortality in the army and the improvement generally of its sanitary state was the pri-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 55

mar y object which the government had in view, still the full improvement in the health of the European troops, which it was hoped would be effected, could not be brought about by measures solely directed to the amelioration of the sanitary condition of the soldier as such, that the interests of the community at large were as much concerned as those of the army, ever y step wisely taken towards the improvement of the public health being a step towards better civilization and better government. Sanitar y commissions having been established, it was declared that their duties were partly consultative and partly administrative. Where the removal or prevention of disease involved the construction of works, the functions of the sanitary commissions were to be consultative; where the end was to be obtained by the careful adherence to rules and regulations, the functions of the commissions were to be administrative. These instructions further laid down the relative duties of the president and members of the commissions, giving on all occasions decisive authority to the presidents, but reser ving to the members the right of recording their views in minutes and of requiring that those minutes should be submitted to government. All civil and militar y authorities were directed to afford to the commissioners every assistance they might require. The submission of monthly returns and annual reports by the commissioners were prescribed. The commissions were at once to draw up a code of rules adapted to the special sanitar y requirements of the army and of the civil population, such codes to be prepared in communication with the sanitary commissions of Madras and Bombay. It was considered that the practical work of executive sanitary administration must be carried out by the local government and by the local civil and military authorities. The three commissions were to communicate freely with each other on all matters of importance. The sanitary state of the city of Calcutta was urged upon the special notice of the commission and finally they were directed in difficult questions to apply through the government for advice and assistance to the War Office commission. These instructions were fully approved by the secretar y of state in his despatch in the Military Department dated 9 May (No. 136) 1864, who concurred in the advisability of reference in all matters of difficulty for the opinion and advice of the War Office sanitary commission and promised that immediate steps should be taken on receipt of such references from the Government of India to obtain the required information from the War Office.

56 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In pursuance of these instructions Mr Strachey, president of the sanitar y commission for Bengal, requested that the War Office commission would forward to India a statement of the principles which they considered essential in constructing barracks, hospitals and other military buildings in India, and also a statement of the points which might seem to them of essential importance for the new code of sanitary regulations. Accordingly, a paper of ‘‘suggestions’’ on these subjects by the War Office commission was forwarded to the three presidencies on 23 August 1864 (Military Despatch No. 263). In reference to their despatch of 5 Februar y 1864, No. 48, which mentioned their intention of pointing out some erroneous impressions and conclusions in the report of the royal commission of 1863, the Government of India forwarded a despatch, dated 8 December, No. 459, 1864 (Military Department), founded on a memorandum by Colonel Norman,34 militar y secretar y to the Government of India, entering fully into these points, which were three in number. 1. The alleged death rate of the British Army in India. The report of the royal sanitary commission led to the conclusion that the then existing rate of mortality in the British Army in India was 69 per 1000 annually. The Government of India point out that this is erroneous, that this average was arrived at by taking the whole of the deaths of the Royal Army in India from 1817 to 1855 and those in the European forces of the East India Company from 1800 to 1856; that the improvements which have been proceeding during recent years would have caused the rate of mortality to have been gradually decreasing and that an average of deaths, including the earlier portion of this century and such periods as the Maratha War in 1804, when deaths rose to 134 per 1000, the Burmese War 1824-26, casualties in action such as Chillianwallah and disasters like that of Kabul, could not fairly represent the present rate of mortality of the British Army in India. Reviewing the returns of death in the different presidencies, the Government of India show that in 1864 the rate of mortality of the whole British Army in India was not much over 20 per 1000, a death rate below that of the British soldier in England and the colonies not many years ago. 2. The alleged want of care in the selection of the sites for cantonments.

34 Henry Wylie Norman (1826-1904), later Sir, member of the Council for India.

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The governor general shared in the opinion of the royal commission that sufficient care had not been exercised in selecting the sites for the military cantonments in India and a minute to that effect was for warded with the despatch. The members of his excellency’s Council however contest this opinion, pointing out that, in some of the stations objected to, the rate of mortality has been comparatively low, that though selections of sites have had sometimes to be made hurriedly at the end of a campaign, still that such selections, especially during the last twenty-five years, have as a rule turned out well, and that though it has been at times necessary on grounds of public policy to place troops in districts not considered healthy, still in such cases the most eligible point appears generally to have been selected. 3. The third point in the royal commission’s report objected to was the absence from the report of a recognition of the various efforts made in India to improve the health and general condition of the British soldier; instances are quoted in support of this: permanent barracks constr ucted on improved principles, with separate accommodation for married soldiers; convalescent depôts on the hills established and augmented; improved rations; recreation and instruction for the men; employment of a responsible kind in the various departments supplied from the unattached list opened to deserving and qualified soldiers of the Royal Army; measures taken and laws passed to prevent the spread of venereal disease. It was regretted that these and other improvements in the same direction had not been noticed by the royal commission. This despatch of 8 December 1864 (No. 48) was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 6 March 1865, and the statements contained in it were replied to in a letter addressed to Sir Charles Wood, then secretar y of state for India, which was signed by Lord Stanley, chairman of the royal commission,35 also by Dr W. Far r36 and

35 The 15th earl of Derby (1826-93). See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:698). 36 Dr William Farr (1807-83), superintendent of statistics at the General Register Office, closely associated with Nightingale’s work and a member of the second royal commission. See the biographical sketch in Society and Politics (5:831-32).

58 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Dr John Sutherland, members of the commission. It bears the date 20 May 1865 and was also printed by order of the House of Commons. In this paper it was proposed to show: [quotation begins] 1. That the principal cantonments of the British Army were on some of the unhealthiest sites in India. 2. That the commission did no injustice to the commanders-in-chief or to the government. 3. That the mortality of the European forces in India, at the date of the inquiry, was not overstated by the royal commission. It had been, on an average, at the rate of 69 per 1000 down to the year 1856 and was higher in the excluded Mutiny years. 4. That the Indian government, writing on 8 December 1864, by avoiding any reference to the actual facts, citing a return for 1863 and mistakenly applying the ‘‘now’’ of one date to a different date, produces an erroneous impression, but does not disprove the above proposition. 5. That at the same time they admit by their argument the previous waste of life in India and the possibility of reducing the mortality for the future to the rate of 20 per 1000 or still lower by judicious measures. His excellency the governor general, the despatch states, agrees with the commission that the sites have been badly selected and, in a minute accompanying the despatch, he has given eight striking examples, all falling within his personal cognizance, in proof that sufficient care had not usually been exercised, even in recent times, in selecting the sites for military cantonments in India (Delhi, Kurnool, Jullundur, Mian Mir, Wuzeerabad, Sealcote, Multhan, Nowsherah). Sir John Lawrence gave evidence to that effect before the royal commission and in his opinion all the principal witnesses concurred. The evidence supplies innumerable circumstantial examples, which it is unnecessar y to cite, as they may all be summed up in a simple statement. India is a vast territor y extending over several degrees of latitude, at various altitudes, ranging from the inundated plains and deltas of great rivers to the Himalayas and the tablelands of the Deccan. Up to the date of the conquest of the Punjab and the annexation of Oudh, the bulk of the European troops in Bengal were in cantonments on the unhealthy plains. Many of the old stations were as badly selected as possible in regard both of air and water, and as the new stations could not be worse, the Government of India has no difficulty in showing that they are better than those it adopts as its standard. That this standard is not high is evident from the observations on Mian Mir, of which the defects are commented on by the governor

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 59

general and described in the evidence. ‘‘Cholera,’’ the despatch says, ‘‘has appeared at Mian Mir in 1856 and 1861 with intense severity, producing a very high rate of mortality, but it does not appear that the place should be utterly condemned, for in 1863, when cholera was absent, the death rate was only 10.27 per 1000.’’ By the same reasoning, the worst stations on the west coast of Africa may be vindicated where the death rate is often low when epidemics are not raging. The evidence and the returns, in two folio volumes, go to show that much of the high mortality of the British troops in India, in past years, was due to the bad choice of stations. The royal commissioners appointed on 31 May 1859 under Lord Derby’s government, had the advantage of examining in England, orally, Sir John Lawrence, Sir Charles Trevelyan,37 Sir Ranald Martin, Sir Alexander Tulloch38 and others, in all forty-eight witnesses of the highest authority, at inter vals between 25 November 1859 and 18 October 1861. Three series of questions were sent to 175 stations in the three presidencies (Report of Royal Commission, Volume 2) and the answers received in time from the commanding, engineering and medical officers of 117 stations are printed in an appendix to the evidence; with observations on the said returns by Miss Nightingale with statistics of the East India Company’s army (1:347), extending nearly from its origin down to the latest date, by Dr Farr (1:528), with statistics of her majesty’s troops in India by Dr Balfour39 (1:585) and statistics of regiments which had served in India, by their commanding officers (1:757). (These ‘‘Obser vations’’ of Miss Nightingale’s were published separately in a pamphlet form and extensively circulated in India. They have had a very wide and powerful influence and have, in the opinion of many competent judges, done more than any other publication to attract attention to the subject and to popularize sound principles of sanitary science.) Actuarial reports on the militar y and civil funds, as well as the papers by able Indian statists, such as Henderson, Hannyngton, Macpherson, Ewart and Chevers were consulted. All who have had to do with military statistics know the difficulty of getting any accurate numerical statements whatever respecting the

37 Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807-86), governor of Madras. See the biographical sketch in Health in India (9:988). 38 Sir Alexander Tulloch (1803-64), major general in India, army reformer. 39 Edward Balfour (1813-89), surgeon general and Orientalist; he founded the Mahomedan Literary Association in Madras 1852.

60 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India strength and losses of armies. How many men were engaged, killed and wounded, on both sides, at Waterloo, is not yet settled, French and British military historians largely differ. The royal commission encountered difficulties of various kinds, but they succeeded in obtaining access to two classes of documents which were per fectly tr ustworthy, and supplied the data from which they deduced the mortality of the British troops in India. Sir Alexander Tulloch gave, in his evidence from documents in the War Office, returns of the Royal Army in India during the thirty-nine years 1817 to 1855, showing that the mean strength was, during that period, 20,332 and that the registered deaths out of that strength were 55,584, or at the rate of 1425 deaths annually (Report 1:319). Hence he inferred that the mortality of the Royal Army in India had been, during the series of years sufficiently long to furnish an average, at the rate of 70 deaths per 1000 of strength annually. It is a simple rule-of-three sum and it will be found, upon repetition, to be a fraction over 70. Sir Alexander Tulloch’s facts are authentic and his calculation is correct, but it does not include the deaths among invalids shipped home and dying on the voyage of mortal diseases. According to his estimate about 10 of the 70 annual deaths are accounted for by casualties in the field. The regiments of the Royal Army had depôts of two companies each at home and they served for only limited terms, and dying invalids were omitted, so that the real mortality of the queen’s troops in India was to some extent masked. The royal commission therefore procured from the India House and analyzed the annual casualty rolls of the late Company’s European troops who served their full term in India. The rolls were ‘‘compiled upon the principle of accounting for ever y man becoming ineffective in the year.’’ From these rolls the mortality for each presidency was calculated year by year and the general result may be thus summed up (Report 1:531). The deaths in fifty-seven years upon a mean strength of 10,330 were 40,420 or 709 annually; consequently the mortality had been at the rate of 69 deaths annually in 1000 of strength. Thus, putting the non-commissioned officers and men of the Royal Army and the Company’s European troops together the strength was about 30,662, the annual deaths 2134 and the annual mortality at the rate of nearly 70 in 1000. Why did the royal commission appointed in 1859 not include in its investigations all the returns of later years? For two reasons: (1) the returns of later years they were told did not exist at the India House and were not supplied from India; (2) the Mutiny had produced so

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much disturbance and led to so extensive a destruction of life that these were exceptional years. The commissioners knew enough to be certain that the mortality in those years was excessively high, as was evident from the regimental returns with which they were supplied by the colonels of seventy-eight regiments serving in India. The mortality of those regiments during the four years 1857-60 was at the rate of 77 in 1000 (Report 1:757-79). The commission, therefore, concluded from the whole series of returns that ‘‘the death rate of the British soldier since the first occupation of the country down to the present day has oscillated round 69 per 1000.’’ The last accessible returns and the experience of the Mutiny were in strict conformity with this statement. With a strength of 30,662 British soldiers who sufficed for all purposes, England had lost for years 2134 or 69 per 1000 men annually by death; but, from the returns of 1861 the commission learnt that there were 75,759 men (including non-commissioned officers) in India, besides 8324 officers (Report 1:lxxxv). The proposed European establishment was to comprise 73,000 men, or a third part of the British Army, of whom, at the rate of 69 per 1000, the loss by death would be 5037 annually (Report 1:lxxxi). The sick in hospital by one estimate would be 7300; by another, 6132. This was an alarming prospect to the country and distressing, inasmuch as the deaths out of the same number of men at the soldier’s age is only 657, or at the rate of 9 per 1000. Instead of losing 657 lives annually, there was a well-grounded fear that should years of war and cholera and fever and dysentery and liver disease recur as they had in past times, England might be called upon to supply the places of 5037 dead soldiers by 5037 recruits. This it was felt would, in addition to other casualties, be a strain upon the military resources of the country. The returns, the despatch truly says, included the deaths in war. They were intended to include those deaths, for neither the recent wars nor the Mutiny were at that date forgotten in England, and the commission would not have been justified in basing its calculations upon a future of unbroken peace in Asia. But the commission inquired carefully into the effects of war, as efficiency in the field is the supreme test of an army’s sanitar y organization. And they showed that the mortality in the wars of India had been chiefly from spirits, fever, dysenter y and cholera to which the troops were often unnecessarily exposed, as was notoriously the case in Lord Amherst’s Burmese War, when British ‘‘soldiers perished by

62 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hundreds in the swamps of the Irrawaddi’’ (Despatch 10). Due credit is given to the Indian government for the improvements in the sanitar y arrangements which reduced the mortality in the Afghan and Sikh campaigns (Report 1:xvi). Some of the heaviest losses occurred in time of peace and to regiments when they were not in action. The following is an example (Report 1:759). All the Bengal regiments enter India at the stations about Calcutta, Fort William, Dum Dum, Barrackpore and Chinsura. The 29th regiment of foot arrived 1004 strong in India on 29 July 1842; at Chinsura it lost 106 men in eight months; at Ghazipur and Meer ut 418 men in the two next years before it had seen an enemy: its valour was not extinguished, for 141 of the men were killed or died of their wounds in the Sutlej campaign and 48 in the Punjab. It lost 1661 men in all by death in India and sent home 461 invalids, etc., before it embarked with a strength of 824 for England on 30 September 1859. Another example will suffice (Report 1:xxvii); ‘‘Hyderabad, the capital of the nizam’s dominions, is on high land near the centre of the Deccan; it is surrounded by fine sites but the barrack for the European regiments is in an unhealthy locality at Secunderabad. A regiment, of which the mean strength was 753, died at the rate of 64 in 1000 annually; in one year a third of the force was killed and the deaths in the thirty years (1804 to 1833), chiefly by dysentery, were about 1435. The barracks were emptied twice by deaths in thirty years and the graveyard close above the barrack was filled, for a crowded barrack crowds the churchyard. New barracks were erected on the same site and the mortality declining still remained as high as 37 in 1000 during the years 1837 to 1858. In the last year of the period 104 of the First Royals died, out of a strength of 1098. The officers lived in detached bungalows and their mortality rarely exceeded 20 per 1000.’’ Besides the loss by death, other casualties had to be taken into account and, preferring to understate rather than to overstate the case, the commission selected the ten years 1847 to 1856, before the Mutiny, embracing Lord Dalhousie’s40 administration, when the mortality of the Company’s English troops in India was at the rate of 51 (not 69) in 1000, that is, lower than it was in the previous decennials through the reduced mortality in Madras and Bombay. In Bengal no

40 The 10th earl and 1st marquess of Dalhousie (1812-60), governor general 1847-56 when much territor y was annexed and improvements in infrastr ucture made.

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improvement was visible. The soldier’s life table was calculated upon this reduced rate and it showed that 1000 of the Company’s European soldiers of the age of twenty-one years were reduced to 216 through death and invaliding alone by twenty years’ service in India, while they were reduced to 96 by transfers, desertions and casualties of all kinds (Report 1:lxxxvii). Her Majesty’s 84th regiment experienced a comparatively low rate of mortality, yet of 1064 men landed at Moulmein in 1842, only 93 landed in England in 1859; of the number joining and the losses, Brigadier-General Russell, C.B., gave in his evidence an exact return (Report 1:233). In 1857, the year which the commission omitted, this regiment lost 274 men. Thus the prospect was not encouraging when the commission commenced its inquiries; and as no one doubted the good intentions of the old military board, few were so sanguine among old Indians as to expect that the European troops would ever escape from the diseases for the future which had decimated them in the past. Some of the best medical officers, however, held other opinions. The first great fact which struck the royal commission forcibly was this: the civil servants of the Company at the soldiers’ age did not die at a rate higher than 20 in 1000 and, as they are distributed all over the country, it follows that the climate of India is not necessarily fatal to any higher proportion (Report 1:xxi). The mortality of the military officers who were stationed with the British and native troops all over India had been high (38), but it had been less by 31 than the mortality of the European soldiers (Report 1:xix). The mortality of the British soldiers in many stations did not exceed 20 per 1000 and half of this was by diseases resulting from defective sanitary arrangements. The mortality of the native troops did not exceed 20 in 1000 under many unfavourable conditions and the mortality of Indian cities is not higher apparently than that of European cities in the same unhealthy condition (Report 1:xxii). In the seventeenth century London, chiefly in summer and autumn, suffered from the same diseases as Calcutta—fever, dysenter y, cholera and the plague periodically in addition.41

41 It is questionable that London experienced cholera in the seventeenth centur y. It seems that until early in the nineteenth century cholera was mainly found in the area around Midnapur, and it is only in the wake of the Maratha and Pindari Wars of 1816-18, due to the movement of armies, that cholera broke out from there and eventually reached Europe.

64 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The experience of the civil service, of the military officers, of their wives and children, of the British troops in many stations and of the native troops proves, the commission concluded, ‘‘that in the present state of India the mortality of the British troops there can be reduced to 20 in 1000’’ (Report 1:xxix). India is undrained; there is no adequate arrangement for the supply of pure water and malaria pervades nearly the whole country, as it formerly per vaded England. Looking into the future, when India is cultivated and the sanitary organization of the army is brought to a level with the present state of science, the commissioners add, ‘‘we cherish the hope of realizing what statistical inquiries appear to point to, namely, that the natural death rate in times of peace of men of the soldiers’ ages in India will be no more than 10 per 1000 per annum’’ (Report 1:lxxxi-ii). The commissioners collected from the most competent witnesses in England and in India evidence of the sanitary evils to which the English Army in India had been exposed, analyzed the causes of disease with the help of science and suggested what it was conceived were effectual remedies in forty explicit recommendations. They did not conceal from the public—for it would have been contrary to their duty and to the English practice—the expense in blood, in suffering and in treasure, at which England had ‘‘held dominion there for a century.’’ But while it was their painful duty to expose past and still existing abuses, they had the gratification of being able to point out remedies which, in their belief, were likely to prove effective and thus to hold out the prospect of a brighter future for the English soldier in India. The Indian government does not question the authenticity of the documents upon which the royal commission relied, neither does it at all dispute the accuracy of the calculations; and we, as members of the late commission, whose conclusions we are seeking to defend, willingly admit without questioning the accuracy of the facts and figures which are brought forward by the writers of the despatch. The controversy turns almost wholly upon dates and on the application of the word ‘‘now.’’ Writing at the date of 8 December 1864, the authors of the despatch show that in the year 1858, ‘‘no less than 111 per 1000 died (in Bengal) during a year of arduous service, as far as fatigue and exposure were concerned, the number of casualties in action, or as the effect of wounds, being not a thirteenth of the whole’’ (Despatch ss. 12 and 13). The mortality fell to 45 in 1859, to 36 in 1860, to 45 in

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1861, to 27 in 1862 and to 22 per 1000 in 1863, a year of peace (Despatch ss. 36 and 37). ‘‘In this presidency,’’ the writers say, ‘‘it will be seen that the rate of mortality, so far from being at present 69 per 1000, is not much more than the rate of 20 per 1000’’ (Despatch s. 38), hoped for by the royal commission as the result of very improved sanitary arrangements. They show a still favourable state of things in Bombay and Madras. ‘‘We hope,’’ they concluded, ‘‘it has now been satisfactorily shown that the present rate of mortality of the whole British Army in India is not much over 20 per 1000, and we entertain a confident hope that by constr ucting improved barracks and, as railway communication becomes more developed, by withdrawing troops from some of the less healthy localities, the mortality will ordinarily be even less than 20 per 1000’’ (Despatch s. 111). It will be exceedingly satisfactory to the public in England and in India thus to see the predictions of the commission—predictions which at the time appeared somewhat sanguine even to their authors— endorsed by the Government of India. The ‘‘now’’ of the despatch dated at the end of 1864 really means the year 1863, to which their latest returns refer; the ‘‘now’’ of the royal commission was 1858 and the years preceding—not through their own fault but through the impossibility of obtaining returns from the India Office and Horse Guards for years later than 1856, except the regimental returns of 1857, 1858 and 1859, years of war, of exposure in the field and consequent disease. It is sometimes the fate of royal commissions to see none of their recommendations carried out. This fate has not befallen the royal sanitar y commission for India. As soon as, and in some places before they were appointed and had sent out a series of searching queries to all the principal stations, the authorities set about abating and removing many of the evils which were to be described and published to the world. The commander-in-chief has acted with the most praiseworthy zeal and the army of the Bengal presidency, risen out of the trough of the Ganges, occupies the healthier regions of Oudh and the Punjab (Despatch s. 559); several measures described in the despatch have been carried out; new statistical forms have been introduced; and, in conformity with the directions of the secretar y of state for India, accompanying the report of the royal commission, a permanent sanitar y commission has been appointed in each presidency. The statistical returns are now brought down to recent dates; it is incredible how much they were in arrear when the commission sat. We have now

66 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India before us a return for the calendar year 1864; the mortality of the Bengal presidency was at the rate of 21 in 1000, ranging from 25 to 27, on the Ganges stations to 17 in the Oudh and Agra commands and 15 in the Punjab. In the same presidency, according to the despatch (ss. 36 and 37), the mortality rate was 22 per 1000 in 1863, 27 in 1862, 45 in 1861, with ‘‘a fearful outbreak of cholera,’’ 36 in 1860, 45 in 1859 and 111 in 1858, the year immediately preceding the appointment of the commission. Thus going backwards, we have a rapidly ascending series, which conducts us to the long period when the facts demonstrate that the annual mortality of the queen’s army was at the rate of 70, of the Company’s forces at the rate of 69 in 1000. The report of the royal commission explicitly states the years in which the mortality was at the rate of 69 per 1000, and its ‘‘now’’ applies to the years ending with the Mutiny. The latest information was for the single year 1860. The mortality given was based upon what had been the case during a long series of years. The commissioners traced the excessive death rate to its obvious causes and predicted that, under given conditions, in times of peace, it would fall to 20 in India and may reach 10, the mortality of men of the soldier’s age at home being at the rate of 9 per 1000. It does undoubtedly appear, upon the face of it, incredible that the death rate of the soldier, which was 22 and 21 in Bengal during the two years 1863 and 1864, should have oscillated round 69 since the first occupation of the country down to the day of the latest returns which the commission could procure. The facts are, however, incontestable; they are fully explained by the circumstances and the writers of the despatch are scarcely justified in the representation that the commission stated the mortality to be ‘‘now’’ (8 December 1864) at the rate of 69 in 1000, as the dates of the inquiry and the returns are given in the report. Still less do the facts justify them in the use of the phrase ‘‘inaccuracy of’’ the death rates laid down by the commission. The change from long periods to the limit of ten years’ service in the queen’s army has tended of late years to reduce the apparent rate of mortality in India inasmuch as unhealthy men are got rid of when their term of ser vice expires, and only the healthy, well-behaved seasoned soldier remains, if he chooses to volunteer for a further term. In addition to the loss by death, there was the great loss by invaliding of 81, 74 and 60 per 1000 in the three several years of 1860-62 (Despatch s. 62). But the great and satisfactory fact remains that in

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1862 ‘‘we have,’’ the despatch informs us (Despatch s. 29), ‘‘1408 deaths in an army of over 70,000 men’’; while in the previous half centur y the annual average loss was 2135 deaths on a force of 30,662 men! Nor does it appear that so many as 1460 men died in 1863 ‘‘out of an establishment of nearly the strength (73,000) estimated by the commission’’ (Despatch s. 30). ‘‘The hope of the sanitary commission, that by improved sanitary arrangements the death rate may be reduced to 20 per 1000 and thus only 1460 recr uits be needed annually to replace death vacancies in India, was practically realized before the publication of their report.’’ The inquiry of the commission was silently working its way through ever y station in India from May 1859 to May 1863, and now, at the end of 1864, this we are told is the state of things; the death rate was 69; it is 20. People in India are now ready to believe that the mortality which, before the inquiry commenced, was held to be inevitable is now incredible; for this change in public opinion the royal commission may perhaps claim some degree of credit as well as for their practical recommendations. Two of these, ‘‘the revision of the whole distribution of the army in India, in view to placing the troops as far as possible in healthy positions, and the construction of greatly improved barracks,’’ are, we are told, under consideration; and many measures for the improvement of the soldier have been either carried out or are now in contemplation (Despatch ss. 3 and 4). The task of maintaining the English Army in India is not light and can only be achieved in field and cantonment by the most sedulous vigilance, in combination with scientific and administrative ability of the highest order. Its accomplishment depends as much upon the men and officers themselves as upon the government. The royal commission only collected evidence, analyzed observations and embodied the recommendations in their report of the most eminent Indian and other authorities, including two of the members of the present Government of India. To the government, the commander-in-chief, the officers and men, by whom these recommendations are carried out to a successful issue, and by whom the sickness and mortality of our brave army for years to come are reduced to the natural standard, ever y member of the royal sanitary commission—bearing in mind how arduous is the duty of converting science into action—will, we doubt not, gladly ascribe all the credit. [quotation ends] In his letter of 9 March 1865 (Military Despatch No. 70), forwarding obser vations of the sanitary commission at the War Office on the report

68 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India on the Bombay Army by the sanitary commission at that presidency, the secretar y of state requested that the several sanitary commissions at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay should be called upon to prepare at the close of each calendar year a concise report on the sanitary condition of the army in the respective presidencies during the preceding twelve months. On the 21st of October 1865, the Government of India forwarded two despatches in which a reconstitution of the sanitary commissions was proposed (Military Despatches Nos. 462 and 463). It was stated that the constitution of the Bengal commission had not worked well and that modification was required on the following grounds: (1) that it was unnecessarily expensive; (2) that the several members who had other duties to perform were practically of little use; (3) that there was a constant risk of disagreement between the commissions and the head of the Medical Department, British troops and other heads of departments at army headquarters, but especially with the former, his own subordinate, the deputy inspector general at the presidency, being on the commission. The Government of India, therefore, proposed to reduce the commission to a president and secretar y, the latter being a medical officer, and to assemble committees of selected officers for the consideration of any particular subject which at any time or place might demand inquir y in association with the sanitary commission. This arrangement would at once save the salaries of the members of the commission, whose services were no longer required, and further it was proposed on the occurrence of vacancies to reduce the salary of the president in Bengal to Rs. 2500 (from 3500), and in Madras and Bombay to Rs. 2000 (from 3000) per mensem. The secretar y was to be a carefully selected medical officer with a staff salar y of Rs. 600 in Bengal and 500 in Madras and Bombay, in addition to the new scale of pay (from 600 and 500 with old rates of pay). The second letter (No. 463) forwards correspondence relative to the mode in which the sanitary commission should receive returns and necessary information regarding the health of the army. No immediate action was taken on this subject by the home government in consequence of the general question of a health department being known to be under the consideration of the governor general; and in their further despatch of 22 March 1866 (No. 79) the Government of India reported that they had taken the opportunity of Mr J. Strachey’s vacating the appointment of president of the Bengal Sanitar y Commission to introduce the proposed changes at once. They accordingly issued a general order, in anticipation of the approval of

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her majesty’s government, car rying out the suggested alterations in the constitution of the Bengal commission and reducing the salary of the president. Reference was at the same time made to the governments of Madras and Bombay to consider whether similar changes could not be introduced into the commissions of their presidencies. The Madras government, in reply to the suggestions of the Government of India, reported that the proposed alterations and reductions would be carried into effect; and in their despatch to the secretar y of state of 26 April 1866 (Military Department No. 140), they forwarded for approval their proceedings, modifying, from 1 May 1866, the constitution of the sanitary commission at Madras in accordance with the plan proposed by the Government of India (Military Despatch 2 June No. 116). The government of Bombay, on the other hand, deprecated the proposed changes, stating that no collisions between heads of departments of the kind alluded to by the Government of India had arisen under existing arrangements and that the loss of the services of the engineer member in particular would be productive of great inconvenience (Military Despatch 9 April 1866 No. 15). Mr R.S. Ellis, the president of the Madras Sanitary Commission, on 25 October 1865, being then on leave in England, submitted to the secretar y of state a memorandum on the constitution of the commissions. Mr Ellis’s views, which were set forth with great clearness, tended to one conclusion, that the commission should be brought into a more intimate and confidential relation with government by placing the president in the position of a secretar y to government. Mr Ellis proposed retaining the sanitary commissions as a consultative body, meeting, with a secretar y to government for public health as their president, to deliberate and advise on all matters referred to them by the government relating to the public health, the result of their deliberations to be embodied in reports, which the president would personally lay before the government in his capacity of secretar y to the government. This suggestion of Mr Ellis, with the question of a general health department, was taken up by the Government of India who, with the despatch (No. 121) of 2 June 1866, forwarded copies of minutes by the governor general, Mr Grey and Colonel Durand, that of the governor general being concurred in by the other members of Council. The governor general’s minute was dated 9 January 1866 and was at first sent home in the financial department. It detailed the measures which, in the opinion of H.E. the viceroy, ought to be adopted for the

70 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India establishment ‘‘on a satisfactory basis of a system for ensuring proper care and supervision of the public health in India.’’ The proposals of the viceroy with reference to Bengal, the N.W. Provinces, the Punjab, Oudh and the Central Provinces may be thus stated: there should be under each lieutenant governor and administration a principal health officer for the supervision of sanitary improvements among the civil population; this officer should be the inspector general of prisons. He should be the advisor of the local government on sanitary questions and, as such, should be appointed, in limited accordance with the suggestion of Mr Ellis, a deputy secretar y to government. For the performance of these duties an addition of Rs. 300 per mensem should be made to his salary. In each district the civil surgeon should perform the duties of health officer, but in exceptional cases, in towns in which the municipal income was large and the duty involved heavy, a separate health officer might be appointed, if so desired, to be paid from the local funds. Under the Government of India itself should be the president of the sanitary commission, who in that capacity should deal only with matters affecting the health of the army. He should be designated ‘‘sanitar y commissioner for the army’’ and should make his reports and recommendations to the Military Department; but as many references would probably come to the Government of India from the local governments and administrations immediately subordinate to it, the questions involved in such representations should be disposed of in the home department, in which the sanitary commissioner for the army should be appointed a deputy secretar y to the Government of India. With reference to the presidencies of Madras and Bombay, the viceroy proposed a similar arrangement. The president of the sanitary commission was to be appointed sanitary commissioner for the army and as such was to submit his reports to the Military Department. He was also to be appointed a deputy secretar y to government for the discharge of the ‘‘sanitar y duties connected with the civil departments.’’ Civil surgeons, as in Bengal, the N.W. Provinces and the Punjab, were to undertake the duties of district health officers. The proposal of the governor general had the concurrence of the members of Council, the Hon. Mr Grey only urging that there should be one inspector general of prisons in Bengal as at present, instead of two as suggested by the viceroy, and the Hon. Colonel Durand guarding himself against any supposition that he personally attached any positive value to the experience gained by sanitary commissions.

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On receipt of the governor general’s proposals, the secretar y of state, Earl de Grey and Ripon, recorded a minute which he left for consideration on his resignation of office. In this minute, which bears the date 19 June 1866, his lordship, drawing his conclusions from the recommendation of the royal commission, points out that of the duties to which the Indian sanitary commissioners were to turn their attention, some were inspectorial, others engineering, others military, others medical, and amongst the most important of all were financial and administrative duties; that the intention of the royal commission was that there should, first, be a competent administrative authority and then that the administrative authority should have the very best means of information and advice that India could afford; that what was really required was administrative ability of a high order, together with sufficient knowledge of the causes of disease and the works and methods which have been ascertained by experience to be suitable for preventing or mitigating them. Earl de Grey considered that the best method apparently of fulfilling the intention of the royal commission would be to secure the services of able sanitary and engineering advisors to form the permanent members of commissions, to whom might be added, temporarily, such military, civil and medical members as might be necessary to give advice on subjects within their cognizance. The functions of such commissions should be consultative and limited to replying to questions sent to them by the administrative authority, the head of the Health Department to have a responsibility towards government distinct from that of the commissions and his position towards the government to be such as to give due influence to what he considers it necessary to recommend. The plan proposed of attaching functions of such great importance to an inspectorship of prisons did not appear to his lordship adequate to meet the requirements of the case, and he concludes by recommending that the question should again be examined by the governor general of India. Earl de Grey had intended forming a special committee of council for consideration of the subject, but was prevented by his resignation of office. Viscount Cranborne, the successor to Earl de Grey, also recorded a minute, from which it may be gathered that he regarded the views of his predecessor as involving a far larger expenditure than the finances of India could afford. His lordship considered the great difficulty of sanitar y improvement in India would be, in the first instance at least, its cost. Sanitary works are uniformly costly, consisting either of great

72 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India systems of drainage or of water supply; that such heavy expenses could be met neither by the revenues of India, loans on account of supreme government or local funds, but only by increased local taxation; that, until the amount of the resources at their disposal was known, the plans of the Government of India submitted in the despatch under consideration were premature. The governor general’s plan, Lord Cranborne considered, would be inexpensive and might do if no new taxation was to be raised, but that, in the event of increased resources being placed at the disposal of government, the sanitary staff might be correspondingly increased. Also that it might be possible to raise large sums by special taxation in one locality, as Bengal, and not in another, as in the Punjab, wherefore it would be absurd to furnish the latter province with an administration as elaborate as the former. Viscount Cranborne concludes his minute by a recommendation that, before pronouncing any opinion on the governor general’s proposals, his opinion should be solicited as to the amount and source of the funds that were to be available for these purposes. Eventually, under date 30 April 1867, a despatch was addressed in the Public Department (No. 40) to the Government of India, in which the views of the viceroy were generally approved, but the policy of appointing the principal officers of health under the supreme and local governments to be deputy secretaries was questioned. His excellency’s proposals were not examined in detail, as it was considered evident that the most suitable arrangements would be best arrived at by communication between the Government of India and the governments of the subordinate presidencies and the several lieutenant governors. The proposal to constitute the sanitary commissioners in the several presidencies to be the chief officers of health in the governments of India, Madras and Bombay was approved and it was suggested that in Bengal, the N.W. Provinces, the Punjab and Oudh the inspectors general of hospitals, rather than the inspectors general of prisons, should be the principal health officers. Sir Stafford Northcote, who was then secretar y of state, was of the opinion that the duties of the principal officers of health should be consultative only and that any measures determined on in consequence of their advice should be carried into effect through the officers of the several departments of government to which the subject might most appropriately belong. Circumstances were considered to differ so much in the different presidencies that anything like strict uniformity in the proposed sanitary arrangements was deprecated.

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This despatch was acknowledged by the Government of India in their letter dated 16 August 1867 (No. 152). It was considered that to introduce a really effective sanitary administration special organization would be requisite and that such organization should be thoroughly harmonized with that of the general civil administration of the countr y and be immediately under the control of the chief civil authorities. His excellency objected to the proposed double system, whereby these arrangements would be partly under the authorities and partly under the inspector general of hospitals in each province, who is identified in great measure with the military administration, a system he considered likely to create difficulty and delay, if not obstr uction. It was now proposed that instead of inspectors general of prisons, as formerly suggested by the viceroy, or inspectors general of hospitals, as preferred by the secretar y of state in Council, medical officers specially selected should be appointed for the exclusive duty of principal health officers. Four medical officers to be appointed health officers for Bengal, the North Western Province[s], the Punjab and the Central Provinces on salaries of Rs. 1500 per mensem, and three for Oudh, Assam and British Burma on salaries of Rs. 1200 per mensem, the charge of these medical officers to be borne by the state, leaving the cost of establishments to be defrayed from local taxation. An immediate answer was requested to these proposals, which were accordingly approved and sanctioned by telegram dated 29 November 1867 and subsequently by despatch dated 30 of the same month. This despatch (Sanitary Department No. 1) announced the appointment by the secretar y of state of a sanitary committee and department in the India Office, in order that systematic attention might be given to the important questions which are now coming forward affecting the public health in India. In this department all propositions relating to public health, civil and military, would be considered and such propositions were to be separately reported to it.

‘‘Introductor y Memorandum,’’ 1869 Editor: Nightingale wrote the substance of this ‘‘Introductor y Memorandum,’’ according to Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:180-81, 446. The entire report contains 214 pages.

74 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Introductor y Memorandum,’’ in Repor t on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India during the year 1868 and up to the month of June 1869. Together with Abstracts of Sanitary Repor ts for 1867 Forwarded from Bengal, Madras and Bombay, printed by order of the Secretar y-of-State-forIndia-in-Council (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1869): 3-8

The Memorandum on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India up to the End of 1867 with abstracts of sanitary reports, etc., which was submitted by the sanitary department of the India Office in September 1868, was presented to Parliament in March last (1869). A paper of remarks by the Army Sanitary Commission upon this Memorandum is given in the Appendix at page 178. The present volume continues the series, giving abstracts of the sanitary reports since received from the three presidencies for the year 1867. The abstract of the Repor t of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government on India has again been submitted for revision to Dr E. Goodeve, late deputy inspector general of hospitals, Bengal. The suggested additions for the improvement of the annual sanitary volume made by Dr Goodeve last year were for warded to India, and the statistical information required, with a map showing the rise and progress of cholera for the years under report, have been promised by the Indian government (Despatch No. 9, 19 December 1868, Sanitary Department) but have not yet been received. The greater part of the Bengal report for 1867 is occupied with the histor y of the cholera epidemic of 1867 in northern India, with a description of the Hardwar Fair of that year. A copy of this report, with the voluminous papers connected with it, was forwarded to the Army Sanitar y Commission who, after a careful consideration of the cor respondence, came to the conclusion that it was most desirable that a special inquiry into the whole subject of epidemic cholera in the East should be undertaken. A letter from the secretar y of the Army Sanitar y Commission, dated 15 April last, enclosed a memorandum to the above effect with copy of ‘‘Instr uctions for Conducting an Inquir y into Cholera in India,’’ both of which are given in extenso in the Appendix, pp 179 and 181; also copies of registers were prepared by the commission to enable officers in India engaged in the inquiry to transmit to the India Office for reduction and report a large amount of information on cholera. The Secretar y-of-State for-India-inCouncil concurred in the views of the Army Sanitary Commission and with his despatch dated 28 April 1869 (No. 21 Sanitary) forwarded a number of copies of the memorandum, cholera instructions and registers to India for distribution, with directions that the special inquiry

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on the whole subject of cholera therein suggested should be at once instituted and the results reported in the form indicated in the communications from the War Office sanitary commission. The Indian government was further desired to issue such orders as might be deemed necessary for the record, as far as circumstances will permit, of cholera cases in regiments in the form of register transmitted. In the beginning of this year Drs Cunningham and Lewis, the gentlemen alluded to in the memorandum of the sanitary commission, were authorized by the secretar y of state to proceed to India to investigate the mode of origin and spread of cholera in the East. Drs Cunningham and Lewis had previously visited Germany and, in interviews with celebrated professors in that country, Professor de Bary at Halle, Professor Hallier at Jena, Professor Pettenkofer at Munich, had made themselves acquainted with the latest inquiries into the nature of cholera and the microscopic character of organisms, to whose existence in the human body cholera has been attributed. An important despatch was received from the Government of India (dated 18 September 1868, No. 7 Sanitary) on the subject of the duties to be discharged by the sanitary commissioners with the local governments and administrations in the Bengal presidency, and the relations between those officers and the sanitary commissioner with the Government of India. These papers were also forwarded to the Army Sanitar y Commission and a memorandum by them on this subject, which is given in the Appendix, p 195, was transmitted to India by the secretar y of state on 22 April last (Sanitary Despatch, No. 19, of 1869). Bengal. One very important question connected with the sanitary system in India is the extent to which officers of health should be entr usted with executive duties, instead of confining themselves to the simple duty of consulting officers to a distinct executive authority. There are instances (though they are as yet not numerous) of men in the service who already combine theoretical and scientific knowledge on sanitary subjects with executive ability, common sense and temper. In certain localities where it might be deemed advisable for a single officer of this class to fulfill executive as well as advising functions, such men might advantageously be entrusted with powers which could not safely be placed in the hands of men whose sole qualifications are scientific and theoretical. It would be an obvious misuse of such talents and practical activity to make the possessor simply a consulting officer, where the advice

76 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tendered, however excellent, might be taken or not by men who knew nothing of the subject. Officers possessed of such exceptional qualifications might be employed as executive heads of a health department, that is, the law might direct what is to be done and they might be entr usted directly with giving effect to the law. Such an officer would in fact combine in his own person the offices of officer of health and inspector of nuisances. All matters regarding cleansing of streets, courts, compounds and houses would come under him; also the provision and state of domestic conveniences, unwholesome trades, impure wells, nuisances of all kings, everything in short in which the direction of labour for a given legal object is concerned, and he would see it done. But in cases where new works, say of drainage, street paving, water supply and the like are required, involving expenditure present and prospective, as well as plans, levels, outfalls, surveys and the like, the officer of health would report to the executive engineering authority, either directly or indirectly, who would then provide the plans and estimates for submission to the municipal or other authorities. It is especially in great cities, such as the presidency towns and others where the evils to be got rid of and the mode of correcting them have formed the subject of special report and exhaustive discussion, that this combination of consulting and executive functions will be found most desirable and even necessary. In regard to district officers of health, when such are appointed in India, they might, as a general rule, also have directly executive functions on all matters of cleanliness, examining wells, tanks, etc., and ordering on the spot precautions for preser ving purity of water, but in all questions of works they should have simply to report their opinion to other authorities as to the necessity of such works for planning and execution. Reports on the potable waters of cantonments in Bengal by Dr Macnamara were for warded to the Army Sanitary Commission. A memorandum by that commission is given in the Appendix, p 196, at the conclusion of which it is suggested that the whole subject of water sources should at once be taken up in India with the view of devising some practical method for providing troops and civil population with pure water. This memorandum with a paper of remarks on the analysis of water by Dr Angus Smith42 has been forwarded to India and also to Madras

42 Robert Angus Smith (1817-84), water expert.

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and Bombay, requesting that reports on the water in these presidencies should be prepared and transmitted to the home government. [Bengal] The serious defects in the Calcutta Medical Hospital and the urgent necessity for efficient improvements was pressed upon the Government of India by the lieutenant governor of Bengal. The correspondence was forwarded to the home government and in reply the secretar y of state for India, whilst according his sanction to the proposed measures, questioned the propriety of expending any large sum of money on the existing buildings, and suggested as preferable the disposal of the existing hospital on the best terms which can be procured and the erection of a new building on a carefully selected site. A letter from the Foreign Office, dated 21 April last, reports the termination of the Mecca pilgrimage and the satisfactory condition of the health of the pilgrims. The question of the quarantine station in the Red Sea was decided by the selection of the Island of Camarau, near Hodeida. In answer to a request from the Foreign Office (13 Febr uary 1869) a despatch was forwarded to India (No. 11, 15 April 1869 Sanitary) on the subject of the transmission to Dr Dickson, British delegate to the Board of Health at Constantinople, of correct and regular information regarding the state of public health in India, if possible by monthly reports. Copies of the nomenclature of diseases drawn up by a joint committee appointed by the Royal College of Physicians were for warded to India through the military department in September 1868 (Despatch No. 326) for distribution to the medical and sanitary departments in the three presidencies, in substitution for the Registrar-General of England’s nomenclature and classification of diseases in India previously in use. Abstracts are given of the reports of the Calcutta municipality for 1866-67 submitted by Mr Stuart Hogg, chairman of the justices. The report for 1868 has just been received, but it is proposed to make an abstract of this with the report of the sanitary commission with the Government of India for the same year; it will therefore form part of the sanitary volume for 1870. In the meantime it is satisfactory to learn from this report that the water supply works were rapidly advancing towards completion and, when it is remembered that the contractors, Messrs Brassey, Wythes and Aird, did not commence operations till January 1867, it must be admitted that the rapidity which has marked the progress of these works is ‘‘tr uly astonishing,’’ and leaves but little doubt but that early in 1870 the inhabitants of

78 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Calcutta will be in full possession and enjoyment of the comfort of a plentiful supply of pure filtered water laid all over the town; that the new drainage works, having been pushed on vigorously since 1864, were advancing towards completion and that, so far as they had been tried, they had answered their purpose and improved the sanitary condition of the areas into which they have been introduced; that before the periodical rains set in, with a few exceptions, all the open ditches which formed a part of the old system of drainage had been filled in and the drainage of the area voided into sewers of the new system, which had worked successfully in spite of the severe trial of having to pass off the surface drainage (rainfall) of an unnaturally wet season; that nuisances have been diminished; a system of public latrines introduced for the use of the poorer classes; the proper cremation of Hindu corpses insisted on and that it may now be confidently stated no dead bodies are thrown into the river from Calcutta. The justices confidently assert that any person who has been absent from Calcutta for a few years would on his return now be struck with the improved appearance and sanitary arrangements of all the southern portion. The total number of deaths for 1868 was 13,733, being an excess of 1636 over the previous year; this excess is considered attributable to cholera, which had been more prevalent in Calcutta than for many previous years. 1867 1868 Per 1000 Per 1000 From cholera 5.3 9.7 Excluding cholera 22.8 22.2 Total deaths from all causes 28.1 31.9 However, as pointed out by Dr Macrae, the officiating health officer, the death rate of 31.9 does not contrast unfavourably with that of the great cities of Europe and even of Great Britain, where the rate of mortality ranges from 23.39 in London to 36.43 in Liverpool. Madras. The abstract of the Repor t of the Sanitary Commissioner for Madras for 1867 has been submitted for examination and revision to Mr James Shaw, late principal inspector general, Medical Department, Madras. A report upon the dry earth system of sewage by Surgeon Major J.L. Ranking, the sanitary commissioner for Madras, was forwarded by the India Office to the Army Sanitary Commission, and a memoran-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 79

dum by that commission on the subject, given in the Appendix, p 203, was transmitted to India by the secretar y of state, in [a] sanitary despatch dated 22 April, No. 20, of 1869. This memorandum shows the deficiencies of the dry earth system on conservancy and the great expense and other difficulties connected with carrying out the system in large stations. Copies were also forwarded to Madras and Bombay. Other important reports were transmitted by the sanitary commissioner for Madras, including one on the control of pilgrimages in that presidency, with the order of government passed thereon, and a list of fairs and festivals, with rules for their management and conservancy. A memorandum (Appendix, p 209) by the Army Sanitary Commission was forwarded to Madras in Sanitary Despatch No. 4, 11 March 1869, which bore testimony to the value of the information conveyed and to the efficiency of the measures for prevention of epidemic taken by the Madras sanitary authorities at the places of pilgrimage. Copies of a memorandum by the same commission on the report on the sanitary condition of Ootacamund by the sanitary commissioner for Madras and another on the report of the Madras cholera committee are also given in the Appendix, pp 209-10. A report on the working of lock hospitals in the Madras presidency transmitted in Despatch No. 289, 9 September 1868 (Military Department) was also submitted to the Army Sanitary Commission, who considered that the experience yet obtained was of too limited a character to enable conclusions to be drawn as to the effect of these hospitals, and that several years’ experience will be required before this can be determined. Bombay. The abstract of the sanitary commissioner for Bombay for 1867 has been submitted to Dr Leith, deputy inspector general of hospitals. Abstracts are also given of the reports of the municipal commissioner for Bombay, Mr [Arthur] Crawford, and of the health officer, Dr Gillham Hewlett. A memorandum on sanitary measures in Bombay, from the year 1830 up to 1860, has been kindly contributed by Dr Charles Morehead, F.R.C.P., deputy inspector general of hospitals, Bombay establishment (retired).43 Introductor y memoranda for Bengal and Madras, by Dr Goodeve and Mr J. Shaw, were given in the last sanitary Blue Book in 1868.

43 Charles Morehead (1807-82), former principal of Grant Medical College, Bombay.

80 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India As organized measures for protecting the public health are intended to ensure an adequate supply of the prime requisites of life—pure air, pure water and wholesome food—it is perhaps a truism to say that where these objects have been attained the public health has improved. In her majesty’s army ser ving at home the adoption of measures of this class has been followed by a reduction in the death rate from 18 to 9 per 1000. The reduction has been most remarkable in diseases of the tubercular and miasmatic classes, the foul-air diseases, consumption, fevers and the like. Comparative statistics showing the effect of sanitary improvements on the health of provincial towns in England have not yet been fully deduced. But from inquiries made at the instance of the Privy Council in twenty-five selected towns, into which improved drainage, cleansing and water supply had been introduced, there appears to have been a marked lowering of the death rate in most of them by the diminution of fever and other diseases. This experience in regard to the influence of these combined improvements in lowering the death rate, especially from fever, is important for India; but still more important is the statement made by Dr Buchanan,44 the reporter, that cholera in these instances has been ‘‘practically harmless.’’ There is, however, one example so remarkable in its character as to include the whole question of the effect of improvements on health. This is the metropolis, for which we have comparative statistics for groups of years extending over upwards of two and a quarter centuries, showing a most striking advance in public health in proportion to the advance in sanitary improvements. The earliest group includes the years 1629-35. During this period the metropolitan death rate was (approximatively) 5 percent per annum, most of which arose from fevers, dysenteries, consumption [and] infantile diseases. During the next group of years, from 1660 to 1679, the death rate, including the Great Plague, was 8 percent. The chief causes of mortality during this period were the same—foul-air and foul-water diseases. From 1728 to 1757, although plague had disappeared, the death rate was 5.2 percent, due to the same diseases, with the exception of a great reduction of deaths from dysentery, apparently coincident with the extension of a purer water supply by means of the New River.

44 Probably Andrew Buchanan (1798-1882), physician involved in cholera research.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 81

From 1771 to 1780 the death rate was still 5 percent, due to the same diseases. During this period London was undrained; the subsoil45 was honeycombed with cesspits, into which all the filth and foul water of households was passed. The dead were buried among the living and much of the water supply was derived from wells dug in the same foul subsoil. The population was also increasing, though by no means in the same ratio as it has done since the beginning of the present century. It is from this time that improvement may be said to have advanced, but at a date nearly forty years later, Dr Southwood Smith46 could still report that wherever the commissioners of sewers had not been at work there fever prevailed and that fever had diminished only as far as drainage had advanced. In the years from 1801 to 1810, with a still increasing population, the death rate fell below 3 percent (2.9). The reduction was chiefly in miasmatic and infantile diseases and in consumption. From 1831 to 1835, including deaths from cholera, the death rate was 3.2 percent. During the next fourteen years, from 1850 to 1864, the death rate has been 2.2 percent, with a great diminution of mortality from miasmatic and tubercular diseases. Sanitary improvements had made rapid advances during these latter years. Drainage works had been everywhere extended, cesspits abolished, intramural burials had ceased, old unwholesome wells were no longer used and a purer water supply had been extended. The sanitary administration of the metropolis had also been entirely reorganized and officers of health, as well as other sanitary officials, had been actively engaged in removing causes of ill health. Since 1850 there have been two epidemics of cholera. But instead of prevailing equally over the metropolis they were in reality local tests of bad water, bad drainage and other local sanitary defects not yet grappled with. In order fully to appreciate the nature of these results we must bear in mind that it is not in a country town with a limited, chiefly agricultural, population with which we are dealing, but the largest capital city which has ever existed and among a mixed population containing a large proportion of poor town workers and now amounting to 3,000,000. The present death rate, low as it is, is still too high. It is much higher than the rate in ‘‘model dwellings,’’ where improvements have been

45 The subsoil is the layer of earth beneath the surface soil. It is fouled mainly by human excrement and refuse. 46 Thomas Southwood Smith (1788-1861), pioneer ‘‘sanitarian.’’

82 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Table Showing the Mean Annual Number of Deaths in London Produced by 20 Classes of Disease Out of 100,000 Living (See McCulloch’s Statistical Account of the British Empire vol. ii, p 613) By Chrisomes, overlaid, convulsions, worms, teething, mould shothead, dropsy on the head, inflammation of brain, rickets, livergrown canker, thr ush, croup, whooping cough Smallpox Measles Scarlet fever Fever Spotted Plague Dysenter y Sur feit or cholera Inflammation Pleurisy Asthma and phthisick Consumption King’s evil, scrofula Dropsy Apoplexy and suddenly Palsy and lethargy Old age, bedridden Casualties Childbed and miscar riages Unknown causes Other diseases

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. 1629- 1660- 1728- 1771- 1801- 1831- 1850- 1855- 186035 79 57 80 10 35 54 59 64

}

1681

1591

1827

1682

789

625

–

189 16 – 636 45 125 221 63 – 14 –

417 47 – 785 90 1225 894 148 – 6 –

426 37 – 785 – – 50 1 10 10 112

502 48 – 621 – – 17 – 31 5 85

204 94 – 264 – – 1 – 101 4 89

83 86 53 111 – – 1 135 307 39 136

27.9 19.9 40.6 41.21 89.1 110.4 99.5 89.8 – – – – 12.1 7.7 30.6 4.5 – – 5.1 4.9 25.8 23.8

1021 14 146 47

1255 19 349 30

905 5 218 48

1121 5 225 55

716 – 131 49

567 3 133 59

281.1 264.8 256.6 14.5 15.3 16 54.9 45.1 37 66.1 62.5 61.5

14 370 65 80

17 388 76 100

12 415 85 43

18 324 70 47

19 241 40 32

28 357 57 43

44 46.5 49.4 149.4 143.1 138.6 74.6 74.2 77 17.7 16 16.7

– 253

– 565

– 211

– 144

– 146

88 289

21.5 –

–

14.9 –

–

19.1 47.8 119 84.7 – – 5.7 3.4 – 4.3 20.1

– –

All All All causes causes causes Deaths in 100,000 living

5000

8000

5200

5000

2920

3200

2239.9 2205.3 2224.9

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 83

extended from the outside to the inside of houses. In these the lower death rates have been due to the almost total exemption of the inmates from miasmatic diseases, fevers, scarlet fever and the like. And the rates scarcely exceed those among small rural villages in healthy parts of England. This is what we ought to attain for the whole metropolis. The annexed table of the comparative death rates of London in groups of years from 1629 to 1864, with the different classes of disease has been obtained from the Registrar-General’s office. The columns of earliest dates, it must be borne in mind, are only approximations to, but within the truth.

Viceroyalty of Lord Mayo, 1869-72 Editor: Richard Southwell Bourke, Lord Mayo (1822-72), was Sir John Lawrence’s successor as viceroy and governor general. He left England November 1868 to take up his new position, and was assassinated by a penal convict in 1872. His family nobly forgave his murderer. Nightingale’s views on him were mixed, while Sir John Lawrence’s views were even negative: that he was a ‘‘gentleman,’’ but nothing more (see p 95 below). She complained that Mayo wrote ‘‘masterly letters,’’ but that nothing came of them. Despite these drawbacks he proved to be open-minded and willing to learn. After his departure for India Nightingale said: ‘‘I liked him better than I expected’’ (see p 92 below). By his untimely death, he had become, as she described him to her brother-in-law, ‘‘the kindest of personal friends to me in matters of sanitary work and administration in India,’’ and even ‘‘wanting to know all he could, to do all he could.’’ There was ‘‘something grand and heroic about him, in acting up to his highest sense of duty at whatever risk or cost to himself.47 Lord Napier of Magdala,48 a militar y hero, was commander-in-chief in India during Mayo’s viceroyalty. He had been trained as an engineer, which made him close to Nightingale on sanitary concerns and there is warm correspondence with him. As Nightingale later reported to a friend, she had become ‘‘the dog and intimate’’ of

47 In Society and Politics (5:526); see also Health in India (9:636-37). 48 Robert Cornelius Napier (1810-90), field marshal, engineer, commanderin-chief in India 1870-76, not to be confused with Lord Napier and Ettrick, governor of Madras 1866-72.

84 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Napier, who had just gone out ‘‘to my great joy as commander-in-chief to India’’ (see p 115 below). Source: From two letters to Lord Mayo, National Library of Ireland

23 October 1868 Miss Florence Nightingale presents her compliments to the earl of Mayo and begs to thank him very sincerely for his kind note of 22 October, desiring a short conversation with her on matters of Indian sanitary administration. Miss Nightingale will hold herself in readiness to see Lord Mayo on any day after Monday 26, at any hour that [breaks off] 24 October 1868 Lord Mayo is going to India (I always know when there is a catastrophe coming) because he has written to ask to see me. Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5068

26 October 1868 I beg to thank you very much for your interesting pamphlet, but I only write one line now to acknowledge it. It shall be carefully studied. And probably you will be asked to elucidate some points. Have you seen a Blue Book, just issued by the India Office: Memorandum on Sanitary Improvements up to the End of 1867 above]? If not, shall I send you a copy? Source: Note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff89-90

[28 October 1868] There is a ‘‘something’’ which most people would think a very big ‘‘thing’’ indeed, and that is seeing the viceroy or sacred animal of India. I made him [Lord Mayo] go to Shoeburyness49 yesterday and come to me this afternoon, because I could not see him unless you give me some kind of general idea what to state. Thank the Lord, I never consorted with them low Irish. Just say again quite shortly, as you said it then, what has been done (or rather not done) in India. Lord Mayo goes next week, and till he’s gone I mean to put this ‘‘limitation’’ on myself that I will do as little else as possible. Lord Mayo = cats. When Lord Mayo gone, cats come.

49 In Kent, an army garrison with a military hospital.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 85

Here’s a letter about you and the new sanitary laws commission. I don’t know what to do but to show it to you. Source: Notes from an interview with Lord Mayo for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff91-96

[29 October 1868] Lord Mayo: I think this very good and I don’t know myself what to add. But you know with the exception of III [of Sutherland’s brief ?] it is exactly what I put in my lilac pamphlet [‘‘How People May Live and Not Die in India’’], which I gave him and which he actually read in my room and a little bit out of the scarlet book [a reprint of Obser vations], which I also gave him. I will tell you some of the things Lord Mayo said, not that they showed much insight. He said that formerly there were collectors or magistrates everywhere, who had almost supreme power, that power had been almost taken out of their hands; that his idea was to have a supreme European in every district, and that part of his business should be to look after the sanitary things, that he looked to interesting the natives in them (then I told him about Ellis’s experience at Congeeveram [Kanchipuram]); that he had small faith in reporting but much in inspecting, that Indians were much too fond of paper. He’s a curious mixture of sagacity and superstition. He said that cholera and cattle plague could be effectually stamped out and then it appeared he meant by quarantine. He actually said, it was a pity we could not kill men like cows. He told me with the most excessive selfgratulation of his rushing over to England and forcing ‘‘Palmerston’’50 to put on a strict cordon to prevent calves from coming into Dublin from Liverpool. And the result of my quiet action, he said, was that we had only three cases of cattle plague in all Ireland. I of course said nothing. But when I told him of Lord Granville’s51 cattle shed and also ofsanitar y precautions against cholera and cattle plague, he entirely assented. He said they had stamped out cholera in Dublin by buying and burning the clothes of the patients and by whitewashing. He, as an illustration of what he meant to avoid in India, said that Trevelyan had actually wasted £6,000,000 in the Irish famine [1846-50] by trying to

50 Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), Whig/Liberal prime minister, an ally in Nightingale’s causes. 51 George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville (1815-91), Liberal leader in the House of Lords, later to serve as foreign secretar y on two separate occasions.

86 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India direct it from Downing St., and that very little of that found its way down the throats of the starving, that Sir J. Burgoyne52 had afterwards spent £1,500,000 on it, which had produced more relief than the £6,000,000. Not, he said, to direct everything from Calcutta was his conclusion. He said that Trevelyan’s 6 millions had actually gone chiefly to paying clerks and printing forms. He seemed a little puzzled by what we say about an executive. He said, do you mean a central executive? He talked a good deal about jails, but I rather tried to keep off that as not being my speciality. Sir Walter Crofton53 is his scripture, his authority. The only thing I said was that we deplored the building of these enormous Pentonville jails in India and we thought a better system might be cheap huts. Then we got upon barracks. I said we deprecated great solid permanent expensive barracks. There he was quite up to us and he said, O I know the Curragh huts are much better than solid barracks. Well, you know we’ve put that in all our books. So I did not take up his time. I think he understands that. But still you had better put it down. Call them temporary barracks. What passed between us was chiefly as against the Dalhousie barrack. He talked a good deal about the occupation of the soldier, said the duke of Cambridge, whom he had just come from, was not averse to it but told him that he had a great deal of opposition to encounter and that the men themselves did not like it. I said that’s not true, especially if you pay the men. He didn’t seem to think that the men could be paid. . . . I think those were the main points. He is, as I told you, a curious mixture of sagacity and superstition. He asked most sagacious questions about the men, the two Stracheys, Temple, Frere, Lawrence, Ellis. That was clever of him, what I told you that he would tell Sir J. Lawrence to tell me what to write to him. He asked a good deal about Hindu and Parsi54 character. I told him how Hindu mds were so clever and then fell off. He said Dr Chuckerbutty, a man I know, of Calcutta, had been given a government appointment and from that time had done absolutely nothing but draw his salary. Not he. He’s as clever as he can stitch together. However, if he told Sirs Lawrence and Frere what I said, I should not mind. Two other things Lord Mayo talked to me about:

52 John Fox Burgoyne (1782-1871), general. 53 Sir Walter Crofton (1815-97), crime and prison expert. 54 Parsi, adherent of the Zoroastrian religion, of Persian origin.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 87

1. Freedom of the press. 2. Irrigation. 1. He said that the native press had so much improved that he thought it desirable to publish all that could be published. I said that we and Sir J. Lawrence himself had been anxious that the minutes of the sanitary commissions should be published, but that the local governments had been averse to it. (I did not tell him what Sir B. Frere told me that, as to the jails, they had positively been afraid of publishing the facts.) Yes, but that’s the reason why government does not publish a great many of its minutes. Now, Lord Mayo says he shall. 2. Irrigation. He discussed the prevailing prejudice that you can’t ir rigate without being unhealthy. I said, and I gave him instances, that you can’t be healthy without irrigation, that the thing is to carry off the water, not to let it be stagnant. He said Cotton had told him that too. Well you see it’s so difficult. He’s a good and sensible man, but he knows absolutely nothing. He told me himself that he had had to work hard at his own office (Irish) till the 6th. He goes next Thursday. He has evidently been cramming at the India Office exactly as a House of Commons man crams for his speech. He repeated to me phrases which I knew were Sir B. Frere’s, and that I was rather glad of. What he said was not unsensible, but essentially Irish. He said that he should see Sir J. Lawrence for two days!! before he left. And he said he should ask Sir J.L. to call upon me the moment he returned and to ask me to write out to him (Lord Mayo) anything that Sir J.L. thought ‘‘a new broom’’ could do. That was clever of him. But, he asked me (over and over again) that we should now, at once before he goes, write down for him something (he said) that would guide me upon the sanitary administration as soon as I arrive. And ‘‘especially’’ (he said) ‘‘about that executive’’—he repeated this several times. I have written to Sir B. Frere this morning. Lord Mayo told me himself that he was going to see Sir B.F. today. But I could also ask Sir B.F. to come if you wished it. I have asked Sir B. Frere to write to me as soon as he has seen Lord Mayo today. It occurred to me that, as I must thank Lord Stanley for his great kindness about that Trench, I might use the opportunity to ask him to say something to Lord Mayo.

88 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Letter, National Library of Ireland

35 South Street Park Lane, W. 2 November 1868 Private and Confidential Dear Lord Mayo According to your kind request, I have put down a few very short suggestions on sanitary things, which I beg to enclose. I venture to suggest that, in my little red pamphlet, you may find a few convenient illustrations to 1 and 2. To 3 might I add that, after you have heard the satraps’ [subordinate rulers] difficulties at Bombay and Madras on your way out (and after wards in the successive stages of your career), a plan for doing what is required will probably sketch itself out to your own mind. And no difficulty that we have yet heard of in India, of those I have indicated, will be insuperable by a man who knows how Irish difficulties are to be met and who wields a power no Irish viceroy ever wielded. Also to 3 and 4 I venture to add: Lord Napier of Magdala combines more knowledge with practical power and vigour of action on these subjects than almost any man in India. He could probably suggest to you immediately a station under his own eye, as at Pune, where the militar y and civil requirements point to the necessity of the same works. E.g., at Pune—and such an important station too—you know how fond we are of poisoning the water and then of carefully storing up the water thus poisoned and preventing it from purifying itself. Now both natives and Europeans must drink water. At Bombay, if you had the governor and Mr Barrow Ellis, Mr Arthur Crawford (the municipal commissioner) and Colonel Bell (the sanitary director) before you, with Dr Leith’s reports on Bombay, Pune, Nassick, Ahmadnagar, Solapur, etc., on the table, you would set the work going ever ywhere speedily, if you could once convince the men before you that the work indicated in the way of drainage, street opening and water supply could and must be done. Lord Napier of Magdala combines all the local and general experience as an engineer and general commander-in-chief, which makes him a safe advisor, and would enable him to make a really good example of the truth of what I have ventured to suggest in my little paper. And - - he does not hold the hopeless view which nine tenths of the men you will have to deal with in India do. And this because his own vigorous experience and mode of action have taught him the contrary from the effects of what he has done himself.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 89

To 5 may I venture to add to what I have said about agricultural improvement, that Colonel Keatinge, governor general’s agent in Rajputana, who has succeeded both in Rajputana and, I believe, at his former post, in agricultural improvement by means of machinery, without final cost to the state, on a small scale, could at once arrange the details for a trial on a large scale of the same thing. So could General Frederick Cotton, whose name may possibly be known to you. (He is in England now—the more’s the pity—for he is unemployed. He is the brother of Sir Arthur Cotton.55) Lord Napier of Madras has also, I believe, been successful in agricultural improvement. And he is a man wise and prudent and at the same time energetic in many sanitary projects. But he is hampered by the want-of-money cry, the cry of economy which often degenerates into the worst economy. Mr [Robert S.] Ellis, (chief secretar y) at Madras, combines rare administrative with sanitary experience and ability. Captain [H.] Tulloch, a Madras engineer, has just gone out to Bombay and Madras thoroughly trained in the best main drainage methods. Lastly, I would fain touch upon the great hospital necessities of India—not to say more for fear of trespassing upon your time—the want of trained nurses to nurse the general hospitals, the need of having a few women of this kind first from England, of beginning on a small scale but still of beginning. This necessity is actually recognized by the natives more than by the government who, for four years, have been corresponding with me about it, have been making plans on an (absurdly) extensive scale and then condemning their own (absurdly) extensive plans. Lord Napier of Madras has now a small well-digested plan ‘‘under consideration’’ by the supreme government. I need hardly say that, should Lady Mayo wish to say a word to me on such subjects before she leaves, I should hold myself at her command. But I naturally felt shy of saying this, knowing how immensely occupied she must be. Permit me to say how much I look forward to the success to be expected from your reign. And if I might wish you a wish (as for luck), it would be that, while other governors general have won safety for person and property for our Indian fellow subjects, you may win for

55 General Arthur Cotton (1803-99), commandant of engineers, Madras, renowned canal builder, and author of Public Works in India, 1854, and The Madras Famine, 1877.

90 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India them safety for life and health from preventible disease and death, especially for the poor in towns. Many will tell you in India of the impossible cost of doing this. Lord Napier of Magdala will tell you of the cost of not doing it. It is a cholera every three years, perhaps every year. May I ask you to believe me both now and at any future time, ever your ready and faithful servant Florence Nightingale Editor: Nightingale enclosed a printed postscript of Dr Sutherland’s on cholera epidemics, with advice ‘‘that neither quarantine nor disinfection kept cholera out of the villages,’’ and arguing instead that ‘‘the immemorial annual outbreak and spread of cholera from Congeeveram had been put a stop to by measures of hygiene alone.’’ Nightingale added her observations: The facts in this sheet are illustrative of No. 5 in my little paper. They afford a striking example of the uselessness of quarantine against cholera, and of the sovereign use of real measures of hygiène. F.N. 2 November 1868. Source: Note on Lord Napier, Lord Mayo and sanitation for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 f103

4 November 1868 A number of local reports have been already prepared setting forth the sanitary defects requiring remedy. A consideration of these reports would at once show what works were required. Lord N. could probably suggest a station under his own eye, where the military and civil requirements, as at Pune, point to the necessity of the same works. I don’t know. Of course you will do as you like, but I should have thought Lord Mayo was more important than anything else. He sees Sir J.S. Northcote tomorrow, the queen on Thursday and stays till Saturday on purpose to do anything extra of this kind. Who are ‘‘our true men’’? . . . I shall write to Lord Napier of Madras on Friday, telling him all I can glean about Lord Mayo, who is going there, and I shall be as busy ever y day till Lord Mayo goes as I can be for him.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 91 Source: Note about a memo on Lord Mayo for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff105-06

[5 November 1868] Sir B. Frere says that Lord Mayo goes out to Egypt, joins Lord Napier of Magdala there, but, after the ceremony of investing the viceroy of Egypt is over, that is etiquette, that then the two, Lords Mayo and Napier of Magdala, take the Feroza at Suez and visit together Aden, Bombay, Madras, Lord Mayo reaching Calcutta in January; that it is therefore of the utmost importance I should give him every hint about men, men whom possibly he will never see again, as well as measures before he leaves, because it’s no use writing to him about Bombay and Madras after instead of before. But Sir B. Frere does not like my adding to the paper [Memorandum on Measures, 1868]; he says it would be hampering it. I don’t think he even liked the additions I have made, but he insisted on my writing a private letter, which I have done. He also insisted on my asking to see Lady Mayo. He said Lord Mayo was disappointed I had not. I did not. He looked at the pencil additions, said they were ver y good, but said, generally, don’t overload the paper but write a private letter. You’d better read it all through with the private letter and then you will judge. I will rewrite anything you like, but Sir B.F. said: let it now go in as soon as possible. Source: From a note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff124-25

[3-4 December 1868] If they expect me to coach the new secretaries of state for I.O. and W.O. they may whistle for me in vain: Sir C. Wood not, because too old; Lord Stanley not, because he won’t; Lord de Grey I wish for but don’t hope for. If he has Lowe,56 you know Lowe is absolutely a slave to Simon.57 What’s worse, he’s an oligarchical Titan. I could write on another sheet, if you liked, something quite general to Sir J. Lawrence, [in] order to prepare his mind to act with us when he comes home.

56 Robert Lowe (1811-92), first Viscount Sherbrooke, barrister and writer, first mp for London University 1868-80. 57 Sir John Simon (1816-1904), sanitary reformer and pathologist, surgeon at St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital; Nightingale was strongly critical of some of his views.

92 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Sir John McNeill,58 Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC3/SU159, copy Add Mss 45768 ff222-25

Christmas Day 1868 I do not hope much (perhaps because I am tired of hoping) from present ministers, at least in our three departments, the War Office, the India Office, the Poor Law Board. The cry for economy seems to me to absorb all their faculties. To anyone knowing and knowing, feeling, what a great organization, like a government office, really is and the enormous consequences for weal and woe for all time it holds in its hands, retrenchment seems but only one element of what it has to do, and almost a brutal one. Sir John Lawrence is coming back. And though he has not done all we expected, yet still we must feel, on looking back, how much has been done, during his five years. Lord Mayo, whom I did not know at all, came to me of his own accord on this appointment to ‘‘get up’’ the sanitary question for India. I liked him better than I expected. He said (which I thought was sharp of him) that he should ask Sir John Lawrence, who has always most kindly kept up his correspondence with me, to tell me on his return what to tell him, Lord Mayo, to do on sanitary points. It is indeed a vast field and one which grows vaster every day. Sir Bartle Frere has been of the most essential service to us since he came home. And we have now a department of our own at the India Office. Source: Undated note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 f131

[1868] Sir B. Frere approves my letter to Lord Mayo but wants me to add something. I feel quite incapable of doing it today. He says: they have resumed the public works, but he would let the letter go all the same. Shall I send it as it is? Source: From a draft letter to Lord de Grey in John Sutherland’s hand, Add Mss 45778 ff49-51

6 Febr uary 1869 During the whole period of Sir J. Lawrence’s reign I have been in constant communication with him in all the subjects in your minute [of 19 June 1866]. He has entered readily into them and has done all he can to forward these views. There have been and there will be great

58 Sir John McNeill (1795-1883), surgeon, friend and ally from Crimean War days.

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delays there and the habits of people cannot be changed in a day. He has had much opposition to enter against, but his own personal weight and interest have been enough to set much of it aside, and India owes a great debt to him in this matter. Lord Mayo I saw before he went out and I discussed with him all the points for progress with which he wisely entered [?] and promised to look into the whole subject. Source: From a letter to Lord de Grey, Add Mss 43546 f130

11 Februar y 1869 Besides this, the course which science is taking now is the very reverse of Newton’s and Bacon’s.59 Now, it starts from a central hypothesis, fills up with facts, perhaps half a degree of the circle, leaves out, I need not say, the opposing facts, and declares the hypothesis proved— the circle completed. But there is a certain naïveté in all Indians (which you do not find in Englishmen) which makes them give the opposing facts, those that do not come at all within their arbitrary circle, and which prove it to be entirely arbitrary. I am certain that you would see this in the hundreds of Indian reports on this subject which come home to me, but you will see it even in those I send. I will not therefore insist on this point, but only mention that the high authority in India (quite confidentially) actually wrote home to me but a few months ago to know whether it would not be possible to frame a Sanitary Ser vice for India, independently of medical officers, on account of their interminable contradictions and squabblings among themselves on theoretical grounds which they put forward as practical ones. Thus, the hypothetical anti-commercial doctrine of spread of cholera by contagion, which has been fostered in England by certain medical men, has gone far to neutralize logically (if there be such a thing as logic in them) any attempt at diminishing the liability of troops and peoples to cholera. A re-examination of the subject is most urgently required.

59 Isaac Newton (1642-1727), mathematician and physicist, and Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher and essayist.

94 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Note on Sir Bartle Frere and T. Gillham Hewlett for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff197-99

[Febr uary-March 1869] Sir Bartle Frere wants us (you and me) to begin helping directly about the next blue memo. He says one thing which can be initiated from this end is the duties and powers of the sanitary officers, if we would draw up something short about that. He says they are quite disinclined at Bombay to give Hewlett even the powers he had before, that they say he was very extravagant, which Sir B.F. says he was not. But he says we must be very careful how we make Bombay an example in anything general we propose, that they are quarrelling about Hewlett’s salar y now. Still he says that, when Hewlett goes out, he means to ask me to write some kind of letter with him, that he thinks Bombay will come round. To return to the general, he says, could we not mention some place, either English or European (he mentioned Worthing) as an example where such and such works had been carried out (he’s not upon sewage at all), where such and such sanitary works had been carried out, when such and such powers had been given to the health officer, where such and such diseases had disappeared in consequence, where such and such a lower rate of mortality had been secured? He said there must be such towns; he mentioned to me some watering places where no houses could be let because of fevers; where sanitar y works were undertaken, fevers disappeared and every house was let. He says yes, it is an English one and he wants us to say such and such powers have been given to English health officers; they were not sufficient, they have not worked well; therefore we recommend that such and such should be given to India officers. We have magistrates in every corner of India; say what powers, if any, should be granted beyond bringing the thing before a magistrate to India health officers. I told him so. He said: does it work well? I told him all that. He said and I said, that won’t do. He said, can you give no examples from the continent? Say what has worked and not worked well and give [breaks off] Well, you know, ever y word of what you have been saying has been gone through not once but many times between Sir B.F. and me. Ever y word of what you have been saying has been said by Hewlett to Sir B.F. and written by Hewlett to me. I have all his letters. There is nothing new in it. But what Sir B. Frere wants us to do now is to write something of a scheme of powers and duties; [from here in JS hand] officers of health in England have no powers and can spend no money. They

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make up mortality returns and disease returns and tell how many people have died. They inspect houses where fever takes place or any other epidemics and they report to the vestry or other local authority. But no proceedings and no spending of money follows necessarily on their reports. The vestry is both judge and executor and the health officer does nothing but advise in cases where his opinion is asked for, or where he thinks it necessary to report on specific causes of disease. Some of the officers propose analyses of various kinds. Source: From a letter of J.J. Frederick [secretar y to the Army Sanitary Commission] to Nightingale with her note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 ff215-16

10 March 1869 My dear Madam At Dr Sutherland’s request I beg to enclose for your information a copy of a memorandum by the Army Sanitary Committee on papers relating to the duties of inspecting sanitary commissioners in India, as passed at the meeting of the committee on Monday last. A copy was for warded to the India Office yesterday. I am, dear Madam yours very faithfully J.J. Frederick [FN:] I told you that, in three or four months, I was to write a letter by Sir B. Frere’s desire about Dr Hewlett’s position. I wrote four sheets for you the other day from him. It is you who must tell me now. I have seen him (to my own great exhaustion). And I told you what he wants. I told you all that myself from Sir B. Frere. My dear soul, really Sir B. Frere could not have known the fatal, the exhausting, labour he has put you all to; to produce that in four months must prove fatal to all your constitutions. I really cannot take upon myself to go farther to tell you what he asks. He is an ogre. Source: Note for John Sutherland on an interview with Sir John Lawrence, Add Mss 45753 f227

[ca. 25 March 1869] Sir John Lawrence said: you initiated the royal commission, which initiated the public opinion, which alone forced Sir C. Wood to take up as a matter of policy the sanitary measures which he did not believe in. Now there is not a station in India where there is not something doing. He thinks Lord Mayo a gentleman, but he evidently thinks him nothing more.

96 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India He says the difficulty of being led without being misled is almost insurmountable, that a new governor general coming has only three ways of getting on, either to work his way into all the business himself, which entails getting so much into arrears that, like Lord Canning, he never gets out of them, or to take the advice of others while getting to know for oneself, which entails, unless a man has extraordinar y penetration, the being misled instead of led. He said [this] of course in strict confidence. Source: From a letter to Edwin Chadwick, Wellcome Ms 5482/82

12 May 1869 How can we thank you enough for your bold onslaught at the Society of Arts? I had already heard of your prowess there. And now you have been good enough to send me copies of the debate, which is one of the greatest importance. I had already said all I can at present say in the Indian Army Sanitar y Report. My paper [Obser vations, 1863] is in the Appendix and has been reprinted by Stanford of Charing Cross, as a small red book. I think I sent you a copy. But if not, I will. Also, I think I sent you a copy of a small paper of mine, called: ‘‘How to Live and Not Die in India’’ [1863] published now by Longmans. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson, Boston University 1/4/57

17 June 1869 I am sometimes asked (confidentially) to write a bit for India Office reports and despatches on one subject or another, such as the drainage question, in as few words as possible and as impartially as possible so as to lead people to give up their hot partisanship. Would you be so very kind as to look at the enclosed and tell me if it is right—if possible by messenger, who waits. Source: From three letters to C.C. Plowden, Wellcome Ms 5480/2-4

9 April 1869 I beg to return the proofs [of the annual report on measures adopted for sanitary improvements in India 1868-June 1869] with which you have favoured me, viz., pp 56 to 106 (Madras and Bombay). The abstract is excellent and represents most faithfully the facts in the various reports. After working them over carefully and with the utmost desire to criticize, I cannot do so at all. The spirit is very good. The same tone

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runs through them which actuates your committee, viz., a desire to bring out the evils boldly and carefully with a view to remedies and a hopefulness which is strongly expressed but not more so than the case authorizes. When the whole country is well in hand, an excellent future is warranted by these reports. It would forward our knowledge ver y much of the causes of disease in India if they would send the death rates of children born in India of European parents for various ages, such as under 1 year, 1 and under 2, 2 and under 3, 3 and under 4, 4 and under 5, 5 and under 10, 10 and under 15 (if there are any, poor little things!). At page 63 the death rate aimed at by the royal Indian commissioners for soldiers is stated to have been 20 per 1000. This is true as a practicable death rate with existing agencies for improvement. But the commissioners also state that statistics appear to show that, when ever ything is done that can be done, the death rate should be only 10 per 1000. It would be of great importance to give the causes of invaliding. I am glad—and I am sure that you must be so too—that I have so little to say on this occasion. 15 June 1869 I have to thank you for your two notes of 14 and 15 June and their enclosures and then to arrange my reply to them under the following heads as conveniently as I can for the purpose. 1. Your own report, p 2 third line from foot of page: Does the report of the municipality of Calcutta fix ‘‘1869’’ as the date for the water supply? If so, would it not be better to place the words ‘‘present year’’ immediately before ‘‘1869’’ to prevent an anachronism? P 4: perhaps two additions would make this passage (about improvements) complete. . . . 2. Dr Morehead’s Sketch:60 Possibly it would be better to avoid any appearance of controversy with so good a man’s quer y. I would suggest for your consideration whether, after having added the fact about the new nomenclature to your own report and the striking proofs of the utility of good drainage and water supply in London and other English towns, it would not be better to leave out the three manuscript footnotes at pp 13, 21 and 37. Dr Morehead’s objections

60 Charles Morehead, A Sketch of Sanitary Progress in the Presidency of Bombay 1830 to 1860.

98 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India are those of a medical man (I think when I was a schoolboy, they used to teach us that these ‘‘are solved by walking’’ as you have already proved in the body of your report). . . . 3. About the omissions of terms of praise of work done in India: your committee knows the Indian feeling with regard to introducing such into official documents so very much better than I can possibly do that I should be very sor ry if my opinions weighed for a moment in the scale when it differs from theirs. 4. Captain Tulloch’s report: I herewith send you my copy. The state of the case appears to be this and something like the following might, if approved by you, be inserted at p 7 of ‘‘Abstract (Municipal) Bombay’’ at A: The discussions respecting drainage plans for Bombay are hence not as yet satisfactorily concluded. Two methods of dealing with the question have been advocated: one, mentioned above, for providing sewers of large dimensions for carrying off the tropical rainfall of Bombay, together with the sewage of the city—the whole to be discharged into the sea, leaving the sewers nearly empty during the dr y season; the other, proposed by Mr Rawlinson and adopted by Captain Tulloch, R.E., who was specially sent to England by the Madras government to study the various questions regarding town drainage and the utilization of sewage. This latter project provides for draining and sewering the city by sewers and drains large enough only to convey away the sewage and for applying the sewage to agriculture at a distance from the city.

It has been objected to the first proposal that the large sewers, being left almost empty during the dry season, will become generators of foul air and tend to deteriorate the health of the city, while it is objected to the second place that there must of necessity be partial flooding of the surface during heavy rains when the tide [is] unusually high. It appears to be an important element in the discussion to bear in mind that town sewers and drains are primarily intended for removing the foul water of the population and not for removing rainfall, while any attempt in such a climate as that of India to provide for rainfall (sometimes 14 inches), even if practicable, which it is not, must entail an enormous outlay for an occasional and temporary purpose. It might be well in any further discussions which take place on this subject to consider the two questions as separate problems so that, while foul water only is removed in underground sewers, the point of

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sur face drainage may be settled and the proper outfalls for this water into the sea provided for. 6 July 1869 I return your proof, which I have looked through not with regard to literal corrections, however, which I have left entirely to you, but as a whole. As a whole, I think it is excellent. It steers its way very well through the disputed questions without taking one side or another. And yet it will lead men to think in India while affording to them much useful help and immense ground for hope. It is much better than last year’s. And that is saying a great deal in its favour. It is one of the best aggregations of sanitary matter I have ever seen. I have merely looked at the general arrangement and matter. Source: From a progress report for Lord de Grey, Add Mss 43546 ff150-51, draft in Add Mss 45778 f67

[November 1869] Memorandum regarding sanitary progress at home and foreign militar y stations and in India in conformity with the principles and recommendations of the Army Sanitary Commission. One word about India. . . . Writing on 26 May 1869, Mr Crawford, the municipal commissioner of Bombay says: Nothing has struck me more of late than the evident recognition by the more intelligent of the masses huddled in the worst parts of the town, that mortality from certain diseases is due to a want of ordinar y sanitar y precautions, to dirt, foul water and the like. A few years ago treble the present mortality in any quarter of the town from cholera or smallpox would hardly have excited the attention of the inhabitants. Now one death spreads alarm in a neighbourhood, and the aid of the health department is promptly and clamorously invoked. In short the masses are beginning to feel and see that death from these and similar causes is preventible. Let us then do all we can to encourage that feeling by bringing facts constantly and clearly home to all. The next step will follow in good time. The masses, convinced that disease and death are preventible, will speedily begin to insist that the necessary preventive works shall be undertaken by those responsible for the public health. It must be highly gratifying to all connected with the Health Department to know that the hard and earnest work of the past 31⁄2 years has brought about this healthy feeling in the body of the people.

100 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India (If we do not take care, Bombay may outstrip us in England yet in the sanitar y race.) Source: Notes from an interview with Lord Napier for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff39-42

14 December 1869 Lord Napier of Magdala [commander-in-chief ] came here for the afternoon. When I look at those three men (though strangely different), Lord Lawrence, Lord Napier of Magdala and Sir B. Frere, for practical ability, for statesmanlike perception of where the truth lies, what is to be done and who is to do it, for high aim, for noble disinterestedness, I feel that there is not a minister we have in England fit to tie their shoes61 since Sidney Herbert. There is a simplicity and largeness of view and of character about those three men, as about Sidney Herbert, that does not exist in the present ministers, party men—those three are statesmen—S. Herbert made enemies by not being a party man. It gave him such an advantage over them. What do you think they call the duke of Argyll? Famulus [?] Indicus [Indian servant]. But you must not tell this. Lord Napier is aghast at the retrenchments in India. About details of barrack building, Lord Napier says that there is now a reaction in India against what they call our sentimental extravagance and that we shall get nothing for a year. I must put down a few details, while I think of them, of what he recommends. 1. He says all the barracks are deficient and bad in water supply. 2. He says, to make the soldier healthy and a Christian he must have a day room on his ground floor and go to sleep on the upper floor, that is, in the two-storeyed barrack. But even in the two-storeyed barrack, they have crowded up the ground floor with stores and not made the bedroom fit for men to live in by day. He says, they are raising a cry against us!!! now, because they say our barracks are ‘‘too hot’’ and ‘‘the men don’t like them.’’ He says they have made the Allahabad barracks, etc., of pink brick. If they had only painted them white they would have brought down the temperature from 5° to 10° [Fahrenheit]. . . . 3. He gave me the whole account of Peshawar and Allahabad—qua epidemics—the filthy state of the town of Peshawar, no sur face cleans-

61 An allusion to John 1:27.

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ing, the irrigation all about, beds of streams higher than houses. He says they are making a new cantonment which would be healthy. But he understands it is not to be finished. Allahabad: the cholera did not break out in the new barracks. But they are frantic with us!!! because when the cholera men were moved into the new barracks they did not get well directly. He says, the new barracks are dreadfully hot (for the reasons stated). And that’s why the men don’t like them. 4. He says so much has been done in Bombay presidency by giving the soldiers remunerative work. And now all that is put a stop to. He himself saved £90,000 on one work by doing this. But a colonel at Buldanu has done even more: he executed lines making all the tiles and squaring all the stones with his regiment, which Lord Napier says was worth three regiments after that. And what do you think Lord Mayo has done? He wrote Lord Napier a letter with his own hand, thanking him. And now he has written to this unfortunate officer (because the ‘‘dimensions of the lines’’ had been ‘‘slightly exceeded’’) stopping the works, reprimanding the commanding officer and stopping the allowances. And the officers of the regiment have subscribed the money to continue the works. 5. He says the India supreme government consists in turning six into half a dozen and half a dozen back again into six. . . . 6. He says that he laboured with all his might to get a sanitarium for soldiers and one for children, and a prison at a hill station for Bombay. And he can’t get it. They say, a hill station ought to be on a railroad. But there are no railroads in Bombay. Therefore there shall be no hill station. He says he chose obstinately to stay at Mahabaleshwar once. And they were literally washed out—the rain took off his own roof. They were obliged to fly. And several natives were drowned in the flight. 7. He says the jail at Bombay (for long sentences) is disgraceful to humanity—thin roof, intense heat, small cells, no out-of-door labour possible or allowed. (He wanted to move them up to his hill station and employ them out of doors.) He says the prisoners don’t die, but they come out idiotic, hepatitic, mad, crippled. 8. He says that on the Bombay presidency cholera last year he made an inquiry into water, food, clothing, drainage, that the medical officers, many of them, resisted and said cholera depended on contagion and not on water. He says the answers were not exhaustive but, such as they are, he will send them me. They have not been presented to government.

102 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 9. He says that Sir William Mansfield62 is now proposing to abolish the commander-in-chiefship and to create a ministry of war, that seven years ago they tried to do this and offered him, Lord Napier, the office. He refused it and refused to have anything to do with the plan. He says that a minister of war would have no chance with a S. of S. at home against him, a G.G. and majority of Council against him, that he would get nothing, that the only way they get anything is to have a commander-in-chief who complains home, and we make a ‘‘row.’’ 10. Lord Napier says that the improvement of the health of Bombay is mainly owing to two men, Hewlett and Lumsdaine63 (Lumsdaine saved Zoulla under him), and to their surface cleansing. He says that at present the drainage (and until the outlets are completed) does more harm than good and smells worse than it did before. 11. He says that much has been done in Bombay presidency for the wives and children of soldiers, that Mrs Johnson at Buldanu, the wife of that colonel who was reprimanded for saving the state by employing his men industrially, took the little brown girls (sepoys’ daughters) from rolling naked on the seashore, and taught them to work and to illuminate, which they do beautifully. And he, Lord Napier, took their work to show the queen. Last Saturday Lord Napier himself gave a tea to 360 of them and made them sing God save the Queen. He says the poor European orphan children do sadly want a sanitarium. And he had planned one for them at Mount Abu as an ‘‘asylum’’ when he was put a stop to. Source: From a letter to Lord de Grey, Add Mss 43546 ff156-57

28 January 1870 Private. May I be allowed to consult you on a matter which I believe interests you nearly as much as it does me, for it pertains to the Army Sanitar y Commission of which you are in fact the founder? As you are aware, your and our excellent friend, Captain Douglas Galton, is ‘‘abolished,’’ alas! at the War Office and goes to the Board of Works. Captain Galton was on the Army Sanitary Commission, not as an ex-officio member, but was attached to it from the very first by Sidney

62 William Rose Mansfield (1819-76), commander-in-chief in India 1865-70, worked at the reorganization of the army; a letter from him in 1871, by then 1st Baron Sandhurst, shows him arranging to call on Nightingale (letter 8 June 1871, Woodward Biomedical Library B.6). 63 John Lumsdaine (1826-1906), sanitary commissioner of Bombay.

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Herbert, who was its first president, under its then name of ‘‘Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission.’’ Captain Galton was, in fact, one of its four original members. It would seem then as if he would naturally remain on it. But, unless he is asked by the secretar y of state for war to do so, he will, I feel sure, doubt the propriety of remaining a member. And we shall thus lose his valuable services on it. At the last meeting of the general commission, Captain Galton was put on two sub-committees, one of great importance involving the whole future constr uction of barracks and hospitals. He will be summoned as usual. It is essential that he should continue to act as hitherto on the commission. There are questions of constructive sanitary engineering with which, as you know, Captain Galton is far better acquainted than anybody else, which was, in fact, the reason why Sidney Herbert put him on, before he became a member of the War Office at all. We have a very decided opinion as to the necessity of his continuing to act when summoned. And it would also be to the advantage of the Works Department. May I ask your advice how this could be ar ranged with Mr Cardwell?64 A word of explanation would probably be enough to Mr Cardwell. But I have not the acquaintance with him upon which I could presume to offer this. (It is thirteen years since I saw him—at Sidney Herbert’s house.) Captain Galton is gone to Worcestershire to see his wife but returns to his new office on Tuesday. I do not think that he himself will ask Mr Cardwell to be continued on the Army Sanitary Commission. Will you excuse my invoking your aid? Source: Note from an interview with Sir Bartle Frere for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff87-88

24 Februar y 1870 Sir Bartle Frere thinks that we should all see Dr Cuningham and that for some time, and get out of him everything. He says—what I obser ved—Dr C. is full of facts, but he has no propositions to make. Neither he nor any of the reports give any connection of facts. If the Army Sanitary Commission would ask the under secretar y at the India Office in proper terms after they have seen Dr C. for his leave to be prolonged, Sir Bartle says it would be done. Lord Napier of Magdala leaves England on 7 March. By his desire, Sir B. Frere went from here to him, to arrange an appointment between

64 Edward Cardwell (1813-86), secretar y of state for war 1868-74.

104 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India him and me. Sir B.F. advises that I should write to Lord Mayo, as soon as we have agreed upon propositions with Lord Napier, and should prepare Lord Mayo for what Lord Napier may propose, which I am to settle with Lord Napier. He says if Crawford and Hewlett were to leave Bombay tomorrow, the sanitary improvement would cease. He thinks Hewlett will be made sanitary commissioner. He told me a great deal about the octroi and means of levying money. He says that you can levy almost any money on the people, provided they see that it is expended locally to their advantage, but that the supreme government have always made this fatal mistake: after they have declared local levying of taxes impossible, when they find it possible, they say, O that’s ver y nice, we will take those local taxes for the supreme government’s needs, and then the people are not willing to pay. I was to state certain views to Lord Napier; I was to ask him from his experience to tell me what he would advise me to say to Lord Mayo in order that, when he goes out as commander-in-chief, he may aid and abet what I may have proposed to Lord Mayo because he will have great influence on the Council. This is exactly what Sir B. said. Sir B.F. says that commanding officers have actually provided sometimes gun stocks for the men’s sport, without powder. He says that the clerk system has exceeded all bounds under Lord Mayo, that sometimes it is neither Lord Mayo nor any member of Council but it is some clerk low down who stops the way. He says that Lord Mayo writes and writes, and they at this end write and write and their letters are masterly, but nothing ever comes of it. The clerks are the governors general. But, he says, Lord Mayo, though so sensible and clever, falls terribly under the influence of anyone who chooses to exert it. He says, just at this minute, though, nothing will be done by anyone, because they’re thinking of nothing but stinginess. He says, you should recommend to Lord Mayo for persons to make the inquiries—as you inquired at Malta and Gibraltar—any like Hewlett out there, and say, From experience we judge these persons competent.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 105 Source: From a draft letter to Sir Bartle Frere in John Sutherland’s hand, Add Mss 45780 f183

[Febr uary 1870] I have been particularly impressed with the facts mentioned about the village arrangements in your essay on missions.65 It appears as if the absorption of all village administration into departmental administration were inevitable. If this be so, and if there be no prospect of reorganizing the village system, could we suggest to Lord Mayo any steps by which the villagers themselves might do the ordinar y work of cleansing and keeping the ground about in proper order? . . . A periodical visit from an inspector would be useful and perhaps necessary, but there might be some means of doing the local work daily. Could printed handbills telling the people what to do and its importance to health to do it answer a good purpose, or how could we forward these village reforms? Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9004/17

3 March 1870 The British Lion sits in his den and employs the asses to prevent him from doing things. Or to prevent things from being done. Lord Mayo and the duke of Argyll66 are legitimate descendants of the British Lion. But Mr Cardwell is not even this. Even if he is not the British Ass tout pur, he is a ver y spurious offspring of the British Lion. In order not to break my heart, I limit myself now entirely to the business I have undertaken, the sanitary in the War Office. Source: Notes from meeting with Dr James M. Cuningham with comments by Nightingale, for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff106-09

12 March 1870 The native officers are not those whom you could trust. The police are the only officials by which anything could be done. A great deal has been done by circulating handbills on sanitary matters. And these have been well received by the natives. But Bengalis are distr ustful. Politically, Sir J. Lawrence declared entirely against a sanitary or registration crusade in villages; the Pun-

65 Henry Bartle Frere, ‘‘Indian Missions,’’ in A. Weir and W.D. Maclagan, eds., The Church and the Age 315-80. 66 John George Campbell (1823-1900), 8th duke of Argyll, secretar y of state for India 1868-74.

106 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India jab has more of the village organization remaining than Bengal or any other part. And more has been done there than in any other part. The only way [to launch a sanitary crusade] would be to make the district officer, in his cold weather journeys, make a sort of sanitar y inquir y and inspection, and get wells and the rest set to rights on the spot. This would entail very little cost. Much of course depends on the man. If he is a good man, he already orders his collector (a native) to set about the thing directly. He says it would be extremely difficult to inter fere within the natives’ houses about drainage or water supply. Ever y native thinks it his ‘‘privilege’’ to have his own cesspool and his own water well, both inside his house and commonly close together. [FN:] 1. Are there any regulations for the cleansing of native villages? Who carry them out? Could such regulations be carried out under periodical inspection to see whether they are efficiently fulfilled? How would the local costs be paid? 2. Same about surface drainage. He [Dr Cuningham] says, very little at all has been done. Jullundur has just been ‘‘sur faced drained.’’ But he found the whole place under water. Tovey, a capital man of the Bengal staff corps, went to Roorkee College to instruct himself in engineering, and Kanpur, and very well. But he has been handsomely abused. The money was found by borrowing 5 lakhs [500,000] of rupees from the government. But in general there is no money. Amritsar, which is the richest of all, spent I forget what in drainage. The deputy commissioner (European) did it with an engineer. The drains were made to run uphill. It is a total failure; immense sums have been spent and the natives are disheartened for years to come. 3. Same about water sources and distribution. 4. What are the obstacles to the India government carrying out the inspections and improvements of stations as proposed by the royal commission? 5. Seeing that so much has been written and so little done, what would be the best practical administrative steps to carry out improvements? [Cuningham:] Strachey’s plan was to have district municipalities, combining a number of villages. But he never carried it out. The money would be furnished by bridge and ferry tolls which (when across the Ganges) are ver y large. He says the main obstacles are: want of money, jealousies. . . . [FN:] I learnt for the first time what had become of our questions sent to the local governments by Sir J. Lawrence. All the answers had

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 107

come in, except those of Bengal and Oudh. Dr Cuningham, to whom they were referred, thought it better to send them home to the I.O. whole without waiting for Bengal or Oudh. Madras sent home direct. All, without exception, declared against any scheme of sending home engineers for sanitary instr uction. [Cuningham:] The reason why the sanitary commissions failed was that the military and engineering members were men already with too much to do. They could only attend one or two meetings. They could do not one inspection and had time for nothing but quarrelling. He has scarcely anything to propose. He says he himself has had his whole time occupied by Lord Mayo’s cholera inquiry, that he thinks now he might make inspections of stations and take an engineer with him from Calcutta, or get engineering assistance on the spot at the station under inspection. He says at stations if the water is bad the M.O. complains to the C.O., the C.O. to the brigadier commander, he to Headquarters; that is referred to the quartermaster-general, that to the Public Works. And the answer comes back that the water is very good and nothing is wanted. Thus he cannot say that at stations anything is done as to water supply in drainage. But, he says, he cannot admire the young medical officer’s doings. They make a water analysis; they are incapable of saying how the water acts upon health or how to improve the supply. And the water analysis is just thrown aside, and no action is taken. This does not refer to the two young men sent out. [FN:] He won’t have his leave prolonged. He says he must go back. He showed me his notes for today’s meeting. He talked (more than I wished) (1) about the badness of the young doctors. He says, if an epidemic comes upon them the first or second year, they have not an idea what to do. Also that they learn nothing by being with the native corps. He says they want an Indian medical staff; (2) about the necessity of putting the two young doctors (T.R. Lewis and D.D. Cunningham67) directly in communication with himself, and himself directly in communication with yourselves. He says the delay in communicating and distributing reports is beyond all belief, but that they have now a sanitary department as part of the Home Office.

67 Timothy Richards Lewis (1841-86) and David Douglas Cunningham (18431914) worked on the causes of cholera in India.

108 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 f112

[ca. 17 March 1870] If you wish me to see Lord Napier, whom you will not see, and to see Dr Cuningham whom you will see, you must write down the sort of questions I am to ask them. Am I unreasonable in asking this? I exhaust myself and make myself ill for weeks in writing sheets and sheets for you of what Dr C. and Lord Napier and Sir B. Frere say. And you will not take the least trouble to guide me in return. If you say, hear what Dr Cuningham has to say, is not that just what I have done, and for three hours? What is the use of saying that? But am I to agree with him on certain propositions for me to write to Lord Mayo? and if so what? Source: Notes from an interview with Lord Napier for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff113-21

18 March 1870 Lord Napier of Magdala: [he] spent the last hours in England with me. But he told me so much I don’t know where to begin. And the worst of it is, it’s ver y different from Cuningham and from what we have ever heard before. 1. He said a despatch has just come to the duke of Argyll curtailing all the barrack accommodation—all the royal commission’s recommendations—that he has done his best to neutralize its effect with the duke of Argyll, but that Cuningham is for it, Mansfield is for it (who will do more mischief at home than even out there), both the Stracheys are for it. And he said, quite pathetically, they were like Sir I. Newton’s dog68 and knew not the mischief they were doing. The gist of this despatch is twofold: (1) It is to reduce the sleeping accommodation to what it would be without sick and married. Lord Napier says you don’t see the gist of this: when the sick man comes back to barracks he finds his little corner, his pictures all destroyed, and he is crammed in anywhere else or among the married men, which is very wrong. Then if another regiment comes which is not matrimonial, or which has a stronger force, there is too little room for the single men. And this is productive of great harm. The second

68 A reference to a possibly apocryphal story: One day, Isaac Newton’s dog knocked over a candle sitting on his desk. The ensuing fire destroyed the records from years of research. ‘‘O Diamond, Diamond,’’ Newton remarked, sur veying the damage, ‘‘thou little knowest the damage thou hast done.’’

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point of the despatch is: (b) To curtail the day-room accommodation, of course, because the great principle of two-storeyed barracks is that they provide you with a ground floor. Lord Napier’s principle has always been: have above sleeping room for your whole number of men (as if you had no sick); keep the accommodation below for their day rooms, etc. But, he says, if you have onestoreyed barracks, make them cool enough for day and night. And in the hills have fireplaces. 2. About whitewashing, Lord Napier says, you must plaster and whitewash. The red raises the temperature 5° but you must plaster first and then whitewash. 3. He says, the tall arches are right but they have no Venetians; there should be Venetians everywhere. 4. He says, if you were to see (in the single-storeyed barracks) the men dining in the verandahs—the flies, the scraps of meat about all day—you would see that men ought to have a ground floor to dine in, and to live and to sleep upstairs. He laughs to scorn all the arguments against day rooms. He says he never knew a commanding officer who would not, if the commander-in-chief interested himself, look after the men’s day occupations. And he never knew a regiment which would not occupy itself by day if they had but the opportunity. Give them exhibitions too and sale of their things and praise and prizes. You won’t find them fail. He says that’s all nonsense about the (double) punkah [portable or fixed fan] establishments: have your punkahs by day downstairs, occupy the men downstairs, make your sleeping rooms ‘‘as cool as you can even by day’’ (which they don’t do) and let the few men, the few who will choose to do so, be down by day on their beds and then you have also your tatties. 5. He says the authorities are ver y bad about the gardens. The commissariat won’t let the men garden. They say, the men make a mess. Lord Napier doesn’t believe it. He says it’s mere ‘‘parochial’’ jobbing. 6. Sir W. Mansfield has done immense harm by selling ground within the cantonments. Lord Mayo has stopped the sale (at Karachi, etc.), in deference to Lord Napier. Civilians thus get into the cantonments, where they like to be because it exempts them from taxation. But you can’t bring them under regulations, and all sorts of sanitary and worse neglects ensue. And all for £300,000. But this £300,000 Lord Napier employed in steam pumps to lay water on to barracks in Bombay presidency.

110 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 7. Lord Napier says after all (and this is what he particularly wishes represented to Lord Mayo) the grand mistake in the barracks is: no water supply, e.g., Allahabad. Why can’t you have steam pumps, forcing pumps—he put up steam pumps at Pune, Allahabad, etc.—they answer as well as in other latitudes, instead of being found enough, they are always found too little. And so the ‘‘extravagance’’ cry disappears even among those who have raised it. He says you ought to (and you can) have water laid onto every barrack in India by steam or forcing power, with tower and pumps or something. 8. He says, write to Lord Mayo, tell him to pause, tell him you must have sufficient accommodation, day and night, and you must have water supply laid on. He says everything depends upon what is thought in England. We raised the cry of public opinion in England. And that alone is what has saved India. 9. He says you can sur face drain every station in India so as to rid it of all rainwater, that he has done this himself, that he used to reckon 4 percent, he now reckons 10 percent, that you may have tanks, if no other way. 10. He says Lord Mayo’s convictions are violent in proportion as he is weak, that he has quite changed in the last six months, that this cry about taking cost of accommodation out of revenue instead of out of loan is quite preposterous and can’t stand. If you were a settler and saw your children dying, should not you borrow to build and call the interest of the loan house-rent? 11. He says the cleansing police is efficient when the commanding officer and the cantonment magistrate are efficient, that the two things which affect the health of troops are: (1) the condition of the surrounding native population, (2) the water supply, etc. 12. He says you can sell the sewage—that he has done this, that he learnt it in China, that the Chinese are far before us in sewage farms. But he says the authorities are dreadful about this; that they would bur y the latrine matters on the slope of a hill where they were liable to be washed down by the rains, and he could not get Mansfield to go to the farther expense. 13. He says undoubtedly you can dry-crop, dry malaria out and also you can eat up malaria by fast-growing-tree planting. He told me dreadful stories about his surveying parties being eaten up by fever from malaria in valleys three miles from Rawalpindi, when, if they had but gone three miles to Rawalpindi, they would have been quite well.

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14. Lord Napier is extremely keen about the sanitary engineer plan. He says they are trying in India to invent first principles, that he himself, when he came to England, found that he was blind as to first principles of sanitary engineering; he was blind, whereas now he sees;69 that he would have said, send us some sanitary engineers from Chatham,70 but he thinks now (as he is afraid several engineers will be set loose, as they are stopping public works) that he will himself examine these men, select some for sanitary speciality and send them home to learn, like Tulloch. He begged me to write to him. About ‘‘natural head works,’’ Lord Napier says, of course natural head works are a good thing. But really, are steam and forcing pumps to be ignored forever in India? 15. Lord Napier says that ever ything in India depends on the tone of public opinion in England, that the good we did was by arousing the public interest in England on sanitary India (that we overstated the mortality a little and therefore there was a little reaction), that the Times and Pall Mall Gazette have done immense harm by their glib gossip about ‘‘palatial buildings,’’ that those articles were inspired by the Government of India, that, after all, how many ‘‘palatial buildings’’ are there? Perhaps three or four. And the mischief at Allahabad is not because it is a ‘‘palatial building’’ but that there is no water supply, no drainage, no anything. 16. He says Cuningham is gone quite mad about drainage. He says you must bring the water in before you can take it out. I’ll drain fast enough, Lord Napier says. 17. He says books, sanitary books, are what is wanted. He says if a good sanitary book is sent out, it is lent half over India. He instanced your early cholera reports. 18. Lord Napier says that care must be taken not to make imperative on commanding officers ‘‘the evacuation of places’’ threatened by cholera. He says he was always informed (by constant telegraphing, which he took care to enforce) of the movement of cholera, that if you let a commanding officer, because he hears of a case or two which may not be epidemic, move out his men in sun or rains, he may bring about the very epidemic you wish to avoid, either of fever, sunstroke or cholera. 19. The commander-in-chief in India is a member of Council and in some sense a minister of war. Lord Napier told me that Sir

69 An allusion to John 9:25. 70 The Royal Engineers school was at Chatham.

112 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India W. Mansfield had insisted on staying for the budget this next month, but that he, Lord Napier, thinks it as well to be out of the way (though he had intended to be there) in order not to sanction by his presence what he cannot prevent. What I understood Lord Napier to say was this: (1) always have separate dining rooms, either in one or two-storeyed barracks; (2) where you have two-storeyed barracks, one and scarcely a secondary object is that you secure ground-floor accommodation co-extensive with the sleeping accommodation for day rooms, workshops, dining rooms, etc.; (3) where (in the hills both in Bengal and Bombay presidencies) it is undesirable and unnecessary to have two-storeyed barracks, still secure dining rooms and make the one storey comfortable both for day and night; (4) secure cool rooms for sleeping even in the two-storeyed barracks; (5) secure a water supply laid on for ever y barrack (which can be done). The want of this water supply is a main cause of unhealthiness. Yes, and Lord Napier says, don’t be afraid that they won’t take up enough and too much of your ground-floor accommodation for storeys and N.C. [non-commissioned] officers. Lord Napier says, make them comfortable, they’re not too large when divided into stores, day and reading rooms, dining rooms (which should be separate wo r k shops). He says there are a great many more than ‘‘one dozen’’ men on their beds all day. Of course if there’s nothing in the room but a bench, the men won’t go there, not even ‘‘one dozen.’’ Lord Napier thinks more of workshops than of sending the men out shooting, which can only be occasional, whereas you should employ the men always upon making things for sale. I understand you to say that Colonel Greathed’s71 advice is that 70,000 men should go out shooting every day of the 365 days of the year and that barracks should only be used for sleeping and eating. I understand Lord Napier to say that shooting can only be used for the men (as it is for gentlemen) as an amusement (he did not say a word against shooting in the hottest weather) and that profitable, saleable employment must be provided for the men’s daily work as for all other workingmen. He himself never failed in success in this. The men worked at trades and sold their work. And also the wives: £1000 worth of work used to be sold the first day of sale.

71 William Wilber force H. Greathed (1826-78), Royal Engineer, later major general, C.B. He served in India and China, was the directing engineer for the siege of Lucknow and was an expert on irrigation.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 113 Source: From a draft or letter to Lord Mayo, Add Mss 45802 ff126-27

March 1870 Private and confidential. I cannot thank you enough for your letter of 11 January and its true kindness in wishing to bring us into direct communication with Dr Cuningham’s work. You ask me to tell you what I think of Dr Cuningham’s ‘‘ideas and opinions.’’ I think him a most intelligent man, a very ‘‘full’’ man, ready to receive any amount of experience, immensely interested in his work, excellent as a reporting and inspecting officer, not perhaps so good as an executive officer, but not having any very special ideas or opinions on sanitary matters. To illustrate the difference of the talents in this office, Dr Hewlett, the Bombay officer of health, has cleansed Bombay almost by his own personal exertions. His practical energy in this special dirty work is something extraordinar y. John Lumsdaine,72 whom I do not know, who has succeeded Dr Hewlett, is, I am told, a still better man. Either would save immediately more lives than Dr Cuningham and the practical result of their work has been that Bombay is now a comparatively healthy city. Either would make shorter work of your dirty native towns at Allahabad and elsewhere than Dr Cuningham. But so far no one can judge by the work done by all of them. But they both are men of one idea. And neither would do so well as commissioner with the Government of India as Dr Cuningham, who has far more generalizing power, more power of sifting and abstracting reports and tracing causes of disease. But this kind of talent, though indispensable, is not all you want. Dr Cuningham very properly keeps clear of engineering questions (of which he knows nothing), but sanitary engineering questions are amongst the most important and frequent with which you have to deal. Nevertheless, if you were to put the best sanitary engineer in his, Dr Cuningham’s place, the engineer would be lacking in Dr Cuningham’s special knowledge, talent and experience of disease causes. So [it] comes round to the original point that no one man and no number of men ‘‘of one class’’ can improve India. You must have able and experienced engineering work as well as medical opinion. Pardon me this long sentence. I was anxious to answer.

72 Nightingale wrote ‘‘Dr Peter Lumsden,’’ but it should read ‘‘John Lumsdaine.’’ Peter Lumsden was not a sanitary commissioner but a general, later appointed to the India Council.

114 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Notes from an interview with Lord Napier for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff122-23

[ca. 18-19 March 1870] Lord Napier has written to Lord Mayo and shown his letter to the duke of Argyll. He very much regretted not having kept a copy for me. He spoke with great affection of Cuningham, whom he has known since a child. But he says he is a good fellow with ‘‘a little’’ sanitar y knowledge and absolutely no knowledge of the soldier, and that Lord Mayo uses him to back his own ignorance. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9004/25

25 March 1870 I have just sent a letter to Lord Mayo at his own request on the removal of Indian ‘‘nuisances,’’ which took me three days to write!, because our ‘‘nuisances’’ there are 180 millions. Source: An exchange with John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 f132

31 March 1870 Sir Bartle Frere. The main thing he came for was to urge, to pray that we would draw up something like my letter to Lord Mayo [of 24 March 1870] for him to have translated and sent to India for general, even for village use through the India Office. He said that he would have preferred a supplement (in the same style) to my little red book [Obser vations of 1863], as he has often said before. But he now thinks that the easiest thing for me to do would be an adaptation of my letter to Lord Mayo. [Sutherland:] Write down what you propose: to go through the red book, first cutting out such parts as not quite applicable to the present position, also to do the same with the remarks in the Indian report and in the letter recently sent to Lord Mayo. To make such marginal additions or corrections as are necessar y and then to send the whole to Lord L[awrence].

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 115 Source: From a letter to Julius Mohl,73 Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/70/4

1-18 April 1870 I don’t think I have written since I have become the dog and intimate of Sir Robert Napier (Lord Napier of Magdala), who is just gone out to my great joy as commander-in-chief to India. Ah there is a man, a statesman with more practical ability in his little finger than all our ministers have in all their heads. What overgrown schoolboys do Messrs Gladstone,74 Cardwell, Goschen, Lowe75 and Argyll (duke) appear compared with such men as Sir John Lawrence, Sir Robert Napier and even Sir Bartle Frere. What they think they say, what they say, they do. And all three the thinking, the saying, the doing is the ever-increasing result of thirty-forty years’ well used experience and not the momentary battledore and shuttlecock work of party. (As for Mr Gladstone’s two Irish bills, the coercion and the land, they are each just an apple of legal discord thrown down to that unfortunate Erin. No one will reap any benefit from them but the attorneys. And perhaps, I don’t know, Mr Gladstone wished to conciliate the attorneys.) (Mr Maine76 says that the Sikhs are as litigious a people as the Irish and that the whole Punjab would have been converted into nothing but one vast litigation by their land act, if the attorney’s fee had not been fixed at half a rupee. Is that true?) But to return. Sir R. Napier and I were like a brace of lovers on our Indian objects or rather passions and even our rages (which concern—this between ourselves—the things, or many of them, that Lord Mayo has been doing lately about finance and stopping public works, etc.). Lord Mayo is most anxious and disinterested or, it may be, ambitious. He is always consulting us. He sent a man home (the sanitary commissioner with the Government of India) on purpose to consult us just now. He writes and writes, and we write and write, and our letters are masterly. And nothing is done. That is, the work always sticks somewhere, generally at some clerk quite low down. But now Sir

73 Julius Mohl (1800-76), Orientalist, friend. 74 W.E. Gladstone (1809-98), Liberal statesman, chancellor of the Exchequer 1859-66, elected prime minister on four separate occasions between 1868 and 1894. On Gladstone’s relation to India, and Nightingale’s efforts to win him over to her causes, see Society and Politics (5:427-76). 75 Joachim Goschen (1831-1907), former president of the Poor Law Board. 76 Henry James Sumner Maine (1822-88), later Sir, legal expert, member of the Council of India in India.

116 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India R. Napier is gone out, we shall see something done. It is quite extraordinar y, his practical knowledge of and love for the native races. And he knows them in Sind, Punjab, Bengal, Bombay, Gujarat, N.W. Provinces, etc. Anglo-Indians77 all talk of (and to) the native races as we do to children, servants and poor people, with a sort of affected tone of condescension. Not so Sir R. Napier or Sir B. Frere. When Sir R. Napier and [I] fell into our mutual rages (at Indian doings) I felt, ‘‘there’s sympathy,’’ ‘‘there’s more sympathy’’ (don’t you remember Sir John Falstaff’s letter to Mrs Ford—they both like ‘‘sack’’, ‘‘there’s sympathy.’’78) He actually spent his last morning in England with me, starting from this house. And I sent away the commander-in-chief to India without anything to eat! He said he had too much to talk about to waste his time in eating. I wish I could tell you a little of what he said—some day perhaps. There is a man in London now, a Hindu, Keshub Chunder Sen, the leader of the Brahmo Somaj,79 a great writer and preacher about whom I dare say you know a great deal more than I do. Sir B. Frere says he is a real true man in earnest. But he is made a lion of. I forgot to say that your queen of Holland came to see me. I liked her even better than usual. But she asked me for my book again. (Sir Harry Verney took K.C. Sen, the Hindu, to see her.) Now I hope you are near the end of Shah-Nameh.80 Please tell me. Source: From notes on a meeting with Sir William Mansfield for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45754 ff205-12

8 July 1870 1. Sir William Mansfield. Whether he is different with me from what he is with men I don’t know. But he has much less of the controversial and self-opinionated, much more of the humane fibre than I expected. He is gentle and of a coming-on disposition and says he may be mistaken—not at all dictatorial.

77 At the time ‘‘Anglo-Indians’’ meant British expatriates in India and this is the way it is used in the present material. It is only much later that it came to mean ‘‘Eurasians.’’ 78 Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 2, scene 1. 79 Brahmo-Somaj (Church of God), a monotheistic progressive splinter group from Hinduism. 80 A Persian classic of which Julius Mohl published a full French translation.

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New Barracks—their faults. He says that instead of the old sunburnt brick which was cool, they had to build them of solid masonry and red brick in order to support the upper storey, and that the upper floor never cools till the cool season comes again, that some commanding officers have actually occupied the lower floors as dormitories for the men and abandoned the upper floors altogether, that others have moved the men back into the old barracks, as at Jullundur. He says that the men rising at 4 a.m. Siesta is absolutely necessary, that you cannot prevent them from sleeping in their dormitories during the day, that the men, if you do, would drag their beds downstairs and injure the building. He says that dining halls are necessar y, but there are really not 5 percent of the men who work at trades and in workshops, that he thinks the trades rather ‘‘bunkum’’ though he encourages them, that the road-making question is a far more important one. For men never learn a trade after enlisting. It is only those who have been apprenticed before they enter who work at their trades (not 5 percent). In short he thinks the day rooms, except for dining, unworkable. . . . He would have a clause in the Mutiny Act that if the men are offered fair wages, labour should be compulsory. But he is of opinion that labour can only be in the hills. He says the slated roofs of the new barracks are intolerable. Thatch and sunburnt brick the only materials for India. Better to have a few bar racks burnt (with thatch) than to burn off the tops of all the men’s heads. 2. Filthy towns. He says the towns near stations are not so filthy as the other native towns. The day conservancy is very good, that, if you introduce water, you must be very sure of your engineer, there being so seldom a fall in the ground, that steam pumping is so expensive on account of coal, that all these railways are worked with coal from England, and that makes them so expensive, that, in irrigation, they have not succeeded in averting malaria, the fall of the canals. When he went to India for the Mutiny in 1857, he insisted on the Fort of Calcutta (including the Dalhousie Barracks) being drained to the utmost perfection and furnished with the purest water. He says that is the reason why the Fort of Calcutta is now healthy, much healthier than much better stations and much better climates in the N.W. of India, that, as a climate, and not 100 miles from the delta, nothing can be worse than Calcutta, yet the Fort is now one of our healthiest stations (though within a town and not on open ground). But, he says, if you wish to use all the modern appliances (such as are

118 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India used in London), good drainage and sewage, good water supply, steam pumping, gas, etc., you must reduce your cantonments within moderate limits. Or the expense will, in spite of you, defeat and prevent all you wish to do. If you spread the cantonments of one regiment (say 1000) over a space which in London would be occupied by 100,000, you cannot (do what you will) have these modern appliances. Because no country can bear the expense. You must bring space within reasonable limits—those limits to be determined by the necessity for healthiness of applying modern science without insupportable and unreasonable expense. The cities in India are, he says, not more unhealthy—on the contrar y, they are healthier than the county and country villages, just because these modern appliances are, in cities, possible. And stations in cities are actually healthier than cantonments in the country, because of the difficulty of supplying modern appliances over an enormous area of ground. Add to this, the ground the men have to go over in the day in those large cantonments (a sergeant may have ten or twelve miles a day to go over) often induces fever and suchlike. He is of opinion that the square enclosed by buildings is the best sort of barracks. You can then have all your modern appliances, your shelter from the sun, etc., which it is impossible to continue in a cantonment covering perhaps three or four square miles. 3. Hill Stations. Approves of them. Established Chakrata and one other—new hill stations. Thinks however there are now enough. Does not think our troops can work at road-making on the plains. 4. Cholera. Regimental Management. Doctors have done little or nothing for us in discovering the best management. Believes it very dangerous to move regiments and camp them out at the first sporadic case of cholera. All depends on the time of year. From July till November, he believes, from actual experience, that fevers and dysenteries are the consequence of camping out the men to escape cholera. In 1863, Sir Hugh Rose issued a general order (induced by the Cholera Commission) that, on the first cases of cholera occurring, the whole of the troops should be camped out. Fever and dysenteries were the consequence. In Sir W. Mansfield’s Bombay Command (he has been twenty-four years in India) cholera was endemic from January till June: ‘‘If I had moved out the troops the moment these endemic cases occurred, I should have destroyed the men with fevers.’’

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 119

In the N.W. Provinces, the cholera makes the most extraordinar y jumps. It jumped from Amritsar over all the intermediate space to Peshawar. In the valley of Peshawar which is 7 miles wide, it left the whole region at once, Peshawar itself, the camp where the men had been camped out, the cantonments, the villages. And it was in them all at once. Doubts the wisdom of moving the men—as an invariable rule. Doubts whether Peshawar can be abandoned for Attock, until there is a much better communication over the Indus. Allahabad, on the contrary, Sir W. Mansfield has ordered to be abandoned. And there are at this moment but two companies in the fort by his Order. The new barracks he ordered to be abandoned. They were swept with cholera, as well as the camp and city. Primar y Education. Mr Grey and the Bengal party are all for paying universities (which now could very well support themselves—the people who go to them are rich and can quite well pay for their own education)—they oppose primary education. Lord Mayo, Sir W. Mansfield, etc., all for primary education—have won the victory in the last session. But in India where there is not the public opinion which forces even conservative government in England on, and forces them not to undo what has been done—you in India are never safe. You find the old conservative element cropping up and up and recovering its ground when you least expect it. The duke of Argyll now sanctions primary education. But the old members of the Council almost beat him. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9004/100

2 September 1870 The duke of Argyll has decided not to ‘‘expend any part of the Indian revenues’’ for enabling Indian medical officers to volunteer for the [Franco-Pr ussian] war. This of course need not prevent men from volunteering. (This was given me from the India Office as information. And I transmit it to you as such. Of course I did nothing after Colonel L. Lindsay81 decided not to address the duke of Argyll. Indeed the suggestion did not come from me at all but from the I.O.)

81 Robert James Loyd Lindsay (1832-1901), colonel, served with distinction in the Crimean War, Conser vative mp for Berkshire 1865-85, later Sir, then Lord Wantage.

120 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Edwin Chadwick, University College London 1490/36

23 May 1871 Kanpur Drainage. I will tell you—in confidence—why it is so important that men able to bring influence to bear on great Indian questions should know that these original papers exist, so far as that they can be referred to them, in black and white, if necessary—and then leave you to judge (who can judge so much better than I) as to whether you should ask Mr Thornton for them again. About six months ago, I was made aware that these Kanpur plans and estimate for drainage existed. (To you it is not necessary to explain that this is one of the paramount or most important questions of India at the present time.) But, when I referred the India Office to them, I was told that ‘‘the whole India Office had been searched—that no such papers could be found,’’ and it was implied that ‘‘no such papers existed.’’ Of course the evil results of this were great. And of course these evil results are much modified by your not only having seen and examined the (nonexistent) papers but having written a memo on them stamping them with your name. The duke of Argyll, you tell me, has also endorsed your memo ‘‘and it is to be sent out as an enclosure to a despatch.’’ This is most satisfactory and puts the thing on a totally different footing. Still you and I know how much it is necessary, particularly in Indian affairs, to give the weight of public opinion as far as possible to carrying out good principles in drainage and all the rest. (If anything could make this more evident, it is the India Office denying that these papers were there.) Of course, the very first thing when influential men are asked to throw their weight into our scale is for them to say: Let me see the original papers. And the answer is: they can’t be found. . . . (There is, and has been for years, a general order in the India Office to let me have any papers I call for on my own subjects from the I.O. But of course I should not like to use that ‘‘order’’ in a discourteous manner.) N.B. I have no intention to make any use of these papers beyond members of the India Council, the government, or India government. But you know how much difference it makes if persons known to be zealous in the cause are also able to make references to such papers.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 121 Source: Letter to William Clark,82 Cornell Medical Center

26 January 1872 Private and Confidential. Supposing the authorization for your works has not yet arrived (which I most sincerely trust is not the case) could you tell me whether the present impediments lie in the Bengal office, under the lieutenant governor, Mr George Campbell, or in the Financial Department of the Government of India, under Sir Richard Temple and Lord Mayo? or possibly a little in both? I am sorry not to have time or strength to write more by this mail, but would not delay a thing so very near my heart as is the drainage and water supply of your capital . . . I am charmed that this excellent year’s work of yours is so near a conclusion and a happy success.

Viceroyalty of Lord Northbrook, 1872-76 Editor: After Lord Mayo’s death, the British government appointed Lord Northbrook, a Liberal of the Gladstone school, as governor general and viceroy 1872-76. Born Thomas George Baring (1826-1904), he was next created Viscount Baring and later earl of Northbrook. His administration was marked by famine and agrarian uprisings in Bengal. During the Bengal famine of 1874 he visited famine districts and organized relief works. In 1876 he received a directive from the India Office to abolish all import and almost all export duties. He resigned, arguing that such a decision would bring incalculable harm to the Indian economy. Nightingale wrote Lord Northbrook at William Clark’s request83 to arrange for an introduction in Calcutta. His cordial reply to Nightingale reports the great pleasure he had had in seeing Clark, that he had seen his works at Barrackpore and knew of the importance of pure water supplies. He hoped to see his drainage works and had obtained particulars of his plans for catch water from roofs. ‘‘You may be assured of two things, that I fully understand the importance of pure water for the soldiers, and that I shall always receive with pleasure and consider with attention any suggestions which you may kindly give me,’’ both on her ‘‘own account’’ and her association with ‘‘my old master, Lord Herbert.’’84

82 William Clark (1821-80), civil engineer to the municipality of Calcutta. 83 Letter of Clark to Nightingale 25 September 1872, King’s College London BCN3/4/11. 84 Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:214.

122 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to William Clark, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/72/31

13 June 1872 I received with gratitude your able pamphlets on tied arches, etc. They appear to be applicable to many useful purposes, including the formation of water reser voirs. I am of course no judge of the engineering details, which are, I have no doubt, masterly. The questions about this are imperial questions. And I would venture to suggest that you should send copies of your pamphlets and plans officially to the India Office. They would then come before the Army Sanitar y Commission (to whom I may mention that I lent the copies you were so good as to send me, but only privately). I had already asked Dr Sutherland of the Army Sanitary Commission, when I received your note informing me of your arrival, whether he would not profit by your stay in England to see you . . . and I find that Dr W. Muir [director general of the Army Medical Department] has done so too—about your water supply method. Dr Sutherland is most anxious to see you and make your acquaintance. He has already discussed with Mr Rawlinson (the civil engineer member) some points about water filtration for Calcutta which Mr Rawlinson desires to talk over with you. They would then be able to obtain some of your most valuable information by a conference with you, if your pamphlet came before them officially. And I should also profit by your kind permission to write and ask of you any questions. You doubtless know Sir Bartle Frere and have probably seen him already. If not, might I have the pleasure of introducing you? Source: From a letter to Selina Bracebridge,85 Royal College of Nursing, Edinburgh RCN/FN1/6

8 Febr uary 1873 My own work is more a str uggle ever y day. But I have had a nice letter from the new governor general of India [Lord Northbrook], speaking of his wish to help me in it ‘‘for the sake of his old master, Sidney Herbert.’’

85 Selina and Charles Bracebridge, friends. See biographical sketches in European Travels (7:775-76).

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 123 Source: From a letter to William Clark, Wellcome Ms 9088/5

1 October 1873 I have to thank you for your letter of 4 August and for various valuable papers. But I have still more to congratulate you on the amount of work you have done, which, permit me to say, is all the more valuable because you have had to depend so much on yourself and so little on those who ought to have helped you. From the reports it is sufficiently obvious that municipal government is on its trial in India with every appearance of approximate failure, or at all events of small utility, unless the gentlemen who have tacitly undertaken the responsibilities of office do their very best to discharge these by making themselves acquainted with those most important health questions so as to assist to the utmost their officers who are engaged in practically grappling with them. The present time and work have an importance far beyond the execution of sanitary works, important and vitally essential as these are. At the same time, the great amount of work already done shows what the municipality can do if they will only do it. With regard to the drainage of houses, you are right 1000 times. This should be done as part of the whole scheme by the municipality and its officers. There is no other way and the expense can be levied, if not at once, then, as it is here, by small payments extending over many years, until principal and interest are paid. It would establish municipal government as well as sanitary improvement all over India, if the justices would only make up their minds to complete the work, already so far and so well initiated, and make Calcutta a model to be copied. I need scarcely say that we agree with you fully about the method of making house drainage connections. It is worse than useless to lay down main sewers and then to trust the house drainage, requiring most skill of all, to any but the most experienced engineer. That class of house drainage works, which our local boards in England are destroying and replacing by skilled works, would merely be reproduced in India by the committee’s method. Here we spread the cost over, say, thirty years. I may perhaps trouble you with another letter. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson, Lothian Health Board, Edinburgh University LHB1/111/2

9 November 1873 Do you know Colonel Haig, R.E., who has done the irrigation schemes in Bengal? He will be in London for Monday and Tuesday (I don’t know his address here). I have ventured to send by telegraph to him

124 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India asking him to call on you at your office. If he does not know you already, I want him to make your acquaintance and Dr Sutherland’s and Captain Galton’s. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9006/103

11 June 1874 Do you like to take a copy of my India irrigation pamphlet [‘‘Life or Death in India’’] to Mme Bunsen and to the grand duchess of Baden86 (your love)? You see what Lord Salisbur y is doing and I have had an immense correspondence—almost too much—with members of Indian governments out and in, and a most interesting conversation with Sir G. Campbell, who thinks me quite too mild about the zemindars. I believe I shall have a second edition out directly, when I hope to please Sir G. Campbell with added severity (against the same). Source: Postscript to a letter to Henry Bonham Carter, Add Mss 47719 f41

13 June 1874 I am over whelmed with Indian irrigation business. Such a revolution in our favour, as Lord Salisbur y’s mailing his colours to the mast in the House of Lords on Tuesday, I had never hoped for in my wildest dreams. But now is the time to work it out. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Salisbur y, Add Mss 45779 ff25-28

19 January 1875 I cannot thank you enough for your great kindness in sending, nor Lord Northbrook enough for his great consideration of the soldiers’ health question in writing so admirable and thoroughly capital a letter. After such a letter, certainty is doubly sure, though I will not admit that there was any doubt before, that at least under Lord Northbrook’s administration there will be no relaxation of effort. For sanitar y work is never finished. For instance For t William Hospital water supply: ‘‘pure water in carts from the Calcutta Mains.’’ No doubt they will go on to that first requisite for a perfect hospital, pure water in pipes and cisterns ad libitum [as suitable] not in carts like Champagne.

86 Frances von Bunsen (c1791-1876), family friend; Louisa, the grand duchess of Baden (1838-1923), correspondent and visitor on nursing matters.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 125

Alipore: the same to native troops; the water supply is even more important than to Europeans, for they cannot qualify bad water with rum and Porter. Barrackpore: the same. Hazar ybaugh: All honour from thousands of voices and souls to Lord Northbrook for withdrawing the troops from the fever hotbed. Barracks (ought not someone to have had something the reverse of honour for leaving troops so long in such barracks, so often and so long since condemned?) We sanitarians feel, on this side the world, ver y timid—for it is no business of ours, and if it is right to do it it will be done—in saying that Hazarybaugh is just one of the places—a naturally healthy situation, in a good strategical position, in a cheap wellsupplied province, where there ought to be the best of barracks, and in asking whether such might not be built for your moveable reser ves whence you may any day withdraw all your fighting men and leave only women, invalids and children to keep the barracks aired without risk of their being attacked by mobs or insurgents, whereas, in front of great native capitals, can you in troublous times withdraw a man without strong remonstrances from your political agents, and frightening all the non-fighting folk out of their wits. But you will tell the shoemaker not to go beyond his last. Umballa: I know I deserve the same stricture and a great deal more from you for asking about the water supply at this station. Will not the raja of Puttiala give as much water as the queen and all her European troops and subjects in India can drink? and will he ever ask or accept if he can help it a sixpence for the water? for is he not a loyal Indian prince and a gentleman? But are not our engineers charged to send in estimates for none but ‘‘remunerative’’ works meaning waterworks for irrigation? And it is said that Puttiala does not see why his fields and ryots should be deprived of their water to supply ours. It is cutting off my own head, which is crammed full, being an empty head, of irrigation works, to say even thus much against them for the present. But are we not trying to get a good irrigation project out of our soldiers’ drinking water? and must not our men drink good water in order to live? And if the viceroy were to say to his engineer: (postpone irrigation or navigation for the present) send in a project for drinking water for the Umballa Barracks: will not the thing be done? If he says to the raja of Puttiala: ‘‘our Umballa soldiers want water what will you take for your water springs?’’ Will not H.H. say, as the Hittite did to Abraham:

126 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘the land is thine: it is worth so much, but what is that between me and thee?’’87 May not Lord Northbrook then buy the springs, and do what he likes with them? (You will remember how this raja’s grandfather dealt with Sir George Clerk when Lord Ellenborough88 bought Kupowlie Hill to house his troops returned from Kabul. The spirit in which the grandson will act, if rightly handled, is said to be the same.) Peshawar: the most flagrant case in India; what am I to say that will ‘‘sentir della speziera’’ [smell like spices] only as I ought to smell. I must borrow expressions far more abject in their humility than the Hittite’s, as when I heard a Greek peasant on the Salamis shore say to Mr Wyse ‘‘that God Almighty was an Englishmen’’ (no compliment could ever beat that for depth and point and the poor man meant nothing more profane than Homer). In such a flagrant case then as Peshawar, would it be possible to turn the flank of so costly a difficulty? to have your main Punjab frontier garrison reser ve, east of the Indus, say at Rawalpindi, with a good bridge over and tunnel under the Indus—defended by small but strong works at each end—a railway to Peshawar—and no more troops at Peshawar than can hold securely a small strong isolated fort, so strong and small that the garrison can be relieved, weekly if necessar y, by railway, from Cherat, the Indus passage forts or Rawalpindi, a strong moveable force at Cherat or anywhere else where the water is good, and site healthy west of the Indus. Pallas [Greek goddess Athena] herself might well shrink from giving her own opinion in such a case. But this is experienced Indian opinion. If however it ought to be done we know it will be done under the two present heads of the Indian Empire. It is the apparent impossibility of making Peshawar even tolerably healthy except at intolerable cost that causes these suggestions. Also, must not the Afreedies [tribes around the Khyber Pass] and their neighbours be managed so that they shall not carry off your bandmasters for ransom, if they chance to go to sleep on their way home from Mess (a very sensible and healthy proceeding—much more healthy, I have no doubt, than the inside of any building in the cantonment, if only the efreets [demons] were not there.)

87 A paraphrase of Gen 23:15. 88 George Russell Clerk (1800-89), briefly governor of the N.W. Provinces; Lord Ellenborough (1790-1871), governor general 1842-44.

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Kamptee: like Peshawar; what can one ask but something like the above, which is entirely outside the duty of us sanitarians to ask at all? viz., should there not be an entire new arrangement of your force for the whole province? But again, if there should then it will be done. ‘‘The barracks are not good, and the hospital is bad’’ indeed. Will reporting make them better or save them from ultimate condemnation? As regards intemperance: most truly are we to be congratulated that the temperance movement is spreading. For is not spirit drinking the great curse of the British soldier? If he could be weaned from it by supplying him with good tea and coffee and iced water, in his recreation rooms, even at the public expense, the saving in efficiency would amply compensate the public. As regards Mr Clark: we feel assured from experience of him he will be able to save money to the government by pointing out plans for improving the water supply and drainage of stations. It seems impertinent for me to repeat as if I thought it possible for us to be praising Lord Northbrook’s administration how well aware we are that Lord Northbrook has done all that can be done and more without a good working surplus to reform his barracks, to irrigate and a hundred other things of which he sees the necessity more clearly than anyone else and that he need ask none to trust him to do as much as he can possibly find money for, and not to press him too hard because those who have not to find the money do press him for the works. He will never save money from improvements merely to have a surplus. Under him there is no danger lest the great success which has attended the past efforts of the Government of India for the soldier’s benefit should lead to slackness of effort and to saving of outlay which really could not be saved. Source: From two letters to William Clark, University of North Carolina 5/7/61

23 July 1875 With regard to Sir Bartle Frere’s suggestions that I should write to the duke of Buckingham89 about your Madras drainage scheme, it was thought better that I should wait until the plans came home officially: they were expected every week. But still they did not arrive. And

89 Richard Temple-Grenville (1823-89), 3rd duke of Buckingham and Chandos, governor of Madras 1875-80.

128 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India under the circumstances I wrote yesterday to the duke of Buckingham to entertain the scheme kindly. 9 September 1876 I am sure that you will believe it is no mere form of words when I say that your plans and the Madras drainage works are almost as near my heart as they are near your own. I was not aware till I received yours of 31 August that nothing had been done. And I immediately wrote for information as to the present state of the question. This I have received only this morning: I am sor ry to say it is discouraging. I enclose a copy of it. (I assure you that last year I spared no effort either with the governor or with the prince of Wales’s90 party when at Madras, sending out your memo and my own by desire. I know that much passed between Sir Bartle Frere and Sir William Robinson91 upon these; and that Sir William Robinson hoped to get Lord Northbrook, when he met him at Calcutta, to give Madras the required loan, but at Calcutta he was told that a revision of the Madras Municipal Act was a necessary preliminar y and this has yet to be done.) I am advised by Sir Bartle Frere to recommend you to write to Sir William Robinson, and ask for news of the new act and the prospects of work to be sent to you at Sydney. Sir Bartle Frere will write too. At the rate they do things now, I fear you will have drained and watered all Australia before you are wanted to work out your scheme at Madras. Indeed as regards any plan requiring money I have seldom seen prospects less hopeful, but things must mend and probably by the time you have finished your Sydney inquiries, the Madrasis, who seemed thoroughly to appreciate your value, will be prepared to intercept you on your homeward voyage. The enclosed, sent in answer to me, is all I have been able to find on the proceedings of the Madras government regarding their drainage works.

90 The prince of Wales, the future Edward VII (1841-1910), visited India in 1876. 91 William Cleaver Francis Robinson (1834-97), colonial administrator, governor of Western Australia.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 129 Source: From an undated, incomplete letter or draft to Lord Northbrook, Add Mss 45805 f265

. . . make an ex-viceroy secretar y of state for India and when, even in the India Office, the only thing the India Office does not want to hear about is—India.

Sanitar y Reports 1870-75 Source: From seventeen letters to C.C. Plowden, Wellcome Ms 5480/5, 7-10, 12-13, 15-17, 19-21, 23, 28 and 29

31 March 1870 The facts in your digest are of the greatest interest and importance to the public service. And it is eminently well done. Your jail improvements show more than anything else what can be done in India to raise the standard of health. I cannot bear to suggest an increase in your labours. But, for a rather obtuse British public, would it not be advisable to make your report (now) not only an abstract of other reports but also a report on the sanitary question and progress in India? There is a considerable amount of interesting matter, for instance, in the monthly reports 1868-69 from the three presidencies, which you are so good as to send me. And it has occurred to me to suggest that good use might be made of these in raising the interest of your Annual Report. E.g., how remarkable is the experience of the Madras Sewage Farm! . . . A good digest of all these monthly reports, written as you would write it, would excite great interest in the British Lion, who, royal beast, knows very little of what, e.g., China does in this line of agriculture, but who ought to care about his Indian dependencies and will be made to care by you. 27 August 1870 I am extremely obliged to you for sending me the revised copy of your sanitar y report [for June 1869-June 1870?] and abstracts, as well as a list of the papers you propose to constitute the appendix with the two cholera maps. It will prove a most valuable and exhaustive report worthy of the great empire. It is not an easy thing to make so complete a report for an empire of 200 millions of souls. It will undoubtedly require a table of contents and index of reference, since there are such overflowing contents to refer to. I have not had time to look through the whole as I should wish, but I cannot find anything to suggest. And I have read the first twenty pages, which I had not seen before, with much interest. I return the

130 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India copy with many thanks. I am quite satisfied with the addition you have kindly made in my paper [probably the paper on ‘‘Sanitar y Progress in India’’]. 10 October 1870 I am extremely obliged to you for your kind note and for the copy of the Annual Sanitary Blue Book for 1870, which, under the pressure of more urgent work, I have only as yet been able to glance through. The whole volume is excellent and will give a practical direction to Indian work, which is the main thing. You are so good as to ask to whom I should like copies to be sent. If it is not too much to ask for copies to be made up and directed at the India Office, would you send one to each of the following [follow fifteen names and addresses]. . . . and six copies to me, if you will be so good. Do not suppose that I have the audacity to desire that all this trouble should be taken, though I think the copies would be well bestowed. If it is too much to ask the India Office to direct them, please send all the twenty-one copies to me and I will do so. Also, I have no doubt that to some of the first in my list the India Office sends copies of its own free will. I do not think however that a duplicate copy would be wasted on them. The Indians especially complain that, unless copies are sent to them direct (by mail) privately, they do not receive India Office Blue Books for six months or more. But this is a matter for the indulgence of the India Office to determine. I will gladly do it, if sent to me. Pray excuse a hurried note, which a rational being could have made shorter. But I am grinding, grinding, grinding at this awful war [Franco-Pr ussian]—trying to do a little bit of good where no good can be. 14 October 1871 I have just glanced through your Blue Book. It seems to me the best of any I have yet seen, which is saying a great deal. I shall read it carefully. 10 July 1872 If you think I can be of any use in looking at your proofs (Annual Sanitar y Blue Book Abstracts) I shall be most happy and therefore send my present address.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 131

11 October 1872 I have, according to your behest, and only because of your behest (you who have done so much for India ought to command) written a few words for (but then you must say that you asked me—in—) your report. You are quite at liberty to burn, as it deserves, omit or alter, as you please. But I do not think it worth putting in at all. 22 January 1873 I am quite ashamed of myself that I have been so busy and so ill that I have not sooner acknowledged your kind note and the Annual Sanitar y Blue Book. Only last night was I able to look it through. It is quite worthy, and indeed more than worthy, I think, of your former productions. Would that ‘‘promotion’’ in the courts of government here below always went with well-earned success and good work done! But if the saving of millions of lives in the future is any compensation, that is yours. 31 May 1873 Your four abstracts which you were so good as to send me appear to be as valuable and as admirably done as usual, which is saying a great deal. They are in fact too well done. For unfortunately a master of précis writing has to abstract all the errors as well as the truths and so to give the official sanction of your mighty nod to the former (e.g., in Dr Hewlett’s Bombay report . . . and in the Madras abstract [detailed emendations are suggested]). [In the Madras abstract it is said] ‘‘Contagion of cholera ‘conveyed’ to men all at one ‘time.’ ’’ Is this not all fudge? Is there any proof whatever of this? or indeed of the existence of this ‘‘contagion’’? Would you not take this expression out? 19 June 1873 So far as we can see, your abstract ‘‘of the 8th Annual Report of Sanitar y Commissioner with the Government of India’’ gives the facts with your usual economy and fullness and masterly power of abstracting. Our sanitar y commission’s remarks are in the hands of the copyist and are limited to the practical results. And I hope that you will find that you will elucidate each other, when printed in the same Blue Book. 16 September 1873 This is a capital digest and will do much good. We have gone carefully over it and I hereby return it. We have no suggestions to make because it is perfect. . . .

132 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Might it be suggested to you that in all passages where the word ‘‘contagion’’ or ‘‘contagious’’ come in discussions, the India Office should use some expression which will show that they take neither one side nor another, but hold only a judicial position? ‘‘Contagion’’ is the witchcraft and ‘‘contagionists’’ are the witch finders of the nineteenth century, are they not? Can we argue about witchcraft?92 All the India Office can do is not to support the delusion. I am ver y glad that you are going to have a holiday in Scotland. The Gold Coast is salubrious compared to the I.O. and W.O. And with renewed congratulations on your very able draft. 25 Februar y 1874 I am extremely obliged for your kind note and for the copy of your Annual Sanitary Report for 1873. I have just had time to look through the report to see how it shines in its dress coat, having read it all in déshabillé before its toilet was made. It is exceedingly good as usual. You are so good as to offer me copies. I conclude that all our own people and Dr Acland93 of Oxford will receive them and Edwin Chadwick. . . . I think I will ask you kindly to send me six copies. When ministers have a little settled down, I think I will send one copy privately to Lord Derby, who first gave me my India Royal Sanitary Commission and then was its president, to recall the past to him compared with what you have now made it. . . . I will send any copies by overland mail to people in India who would not otherwise get their copies so soon. I thank you for your kind sympathy. I have lost in the last month two homes: my dear father and Mrs Bracebridge who went with me to the Crimean War. And Dr Livingstone’s94 death and that of my dear old friend M Quetelet95 of Brussels, the founder of us all, pain me sorely. . . . Would you also send a copy, please, to Mrs Harriet Martineau, Ambleside.

92 Nightingale’s opposition to the germ theor y of contagion is dealt with in Health in India. 93 Henr y Wentworth Dyke Acland (1815-1900), later Sir, professor of medicine at Oxford. 94 David Livingstone (1813-73), doctor, missionar y and explorer; more on whom is in Society and Politics (5:535-39). 95 L.A.J. Quetelet (1796-1874), leading statistician. See the biographical sketch in Society and Politics (5:827-28).

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 133

Embley Park Romsey, Hampshire 14 April 1874 I can see no objection to your reprinting my little pamphlet, ‘‘How Some People Have Lived and Not Died in India’’ if you wish it, in your this year’s sanitar y Blue Book [for June 1873 to June 1874], with which I wish you all your usual success and trust that you do not mean to threaten me with any changes in the India Office which would affect our great advantages in having you for the most important sanitar y work. I have ‘‘placed’’ all my copies, even my own marked one, of your last year’s sanitar y Blue Book, very profitably, I think, including one to Lord Derby and one to Lord Pembroke, the new young under secretar y at the War Office (Sidney Herbert’s son96). And I think I will ask you to be kind enough to send me a copy now for myself. 7 May 1874 I am so truly sorry that you have not obtained that position at the India Office, which your work so well deserved, that I think I am almost more sorry than you are yourself. But I hope better things. Pray do not ‘‘regret’’ having written your ‘‘last letter’’ but one. Be sure that I have always spoken and always shall speak to those whom it may concern of the high value of your work and, though I do not expect much from my poor efforts, yet I think the work itself must find its level, high as that is. I don’t know what we shall do if we have not you for the Annual Report. I grieve to hear of such serious illness, though I trust it is not hopeless. There is but one father and one mother to each of us; other ties may be replaced, ‘‘but a mother I’ll never see mair.’’ Lea Hurst Matlock 3 October 1874 Your kind letter and abstracts were for warded to me down here and I have set to work on them at once. I hope to cause you no delay, so that you may have the Blue Book ‘‘off your hands’’ by ‘‘the end of the month.’’ . . .

96 George Robert Herbert (1850-95), 13th earl of Pembroke, under secretar y with the Conservative government.

134 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I send you, according to your desire, a copy of my pamphlet ‘‘How Some People Have Lived and Not Died in India.’’ I forget what was my reason for thinking the ‘‘ir rigation’’ addition had better not go into your Blue Book. As I have forgotten it, I presume it was not a very valid one. But there may be an objection to inserting any of it now after a notice which appeared of it in the Times; Harrison & Sons, the War Office publishers, published it. I do not know whether this constitutes an objection. If you do not feel clear about it, would you kindly ask Sir Bartle Frere and I will ask some official authority at my rival Blue Book workshop, the War Office. If you and they say yes, I will try to write a few words of introduction, as you wish. (But I am at this moment lost in zemindars and ‘‘illegal cesses,’’ at Sir G. Campbell’s desire.) I am so glad that even the Blue Book is still in your able hands, that it somewhat (not much) abates my mourning that the work does not, as before, all pass through your hands. I was very sorry to hear of your loss: all other losses may be replaced but the loss of parents seems to carry with it half one’s life, at whatever age one is. Lea Hurst 8 October 1874 Anent your desire to insert my pamphlet into your forthcoming sanitar y volume; my War Office Mughal says that there is ‘‘no objection’’ to its ‘‘going on,’’ irrigation and all, if you wish it, and that its having been published makes no difference. The place for it which you propose, ‘‘at the end of the report,’’ is a ver y good place. And I will try to write a few words of introductor y matter, as you propose. 2. But I am sorry to say that I have a thing of quite other importance to say: Memoranda on the Madras and Bombay Reports for 1873, and on four others, six in all (which came to the Army Sanitary Commission about a month ago), are all ready and have passed the sub-committee. They have to circulate among the other members and then to go formally before a meeting which will be called immediately. Our men describe these memoranda ‘‘as of the utmost importance,’’ as ‘‘contradicting certain false principles,’’ and they attach the greatest value to your noticing them in your report. These memoranda go far to settle the question of Indian fevers and should certainly be printed with the other memoranda of this year. They partly accept certain Indian statements about the prevalence of fevers and suggest inquiry.

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The new ones contain the results and show some statistics to have been untrustworthy. 13 November 1874 I return you my revise in your Blue Book. I have returned to London. I could almost wish to hear that you were gone (since you had to go, which we so much regret) as November is here with all its darkness. ‘‘God bless you and speed you.’’ 26 July 1875 How little there is to be said, for matters seem to me at the India Office to be all in the ‘‘land of promise.’’ And how little I can say how exceedingly sorry I am that you should be obliged to leave the India Office and for such a cause [illness]. We shall be forever grateful to you for your invaluable aid at the initiation of the sanitary work, your aid which we shall, I know, always miss and we hope, more than we expect, that the work may make progress under your successor. My health is not better (you kindly ask), rather worse. But I have had many troubles and a heavy charge in my father’s death, and my strength is not improved by seeing many public matters, for which I would have given my life, as I think, retrograding. I will certainly claim your kind permission to write and not, I hope, to write murmurs, but sor ry I am not to be writing to you at the I.O.

Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton, 1876-80 Editor: Correspondence with the Conservative Lord Lytton (1831-91), viceroy of India 1876-80, was strained by obvious, decided, political differences. A major famine occurred during his viceroyalty, which was exacerbated by the diversion of funds for frontier wars in Afghanistan. But, under his administration a famine commission was appointed, perhaps through the prompting of Lord Salisbur y, then secretar y of state for India; the commission was led by Richard Strachey, and reported in 1880. Source: From copies of two letters to Lord Salisbur y, Add Mss 45779 ff56-57 and 65

26 Februar y 1876 Private. I am afraid that you will think me committing a strange indiscretion in venturing to remind you of your willingness some months ago to take steps for securing accurate results and returns (which can be laid before Parliament and the public with confidence) concern-

136 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ing the general and special facts of irrigation, so as to form a basis for some theory of government duty. I should indeed be inexcusable if (in a subsequent letter) you had not implied that at that particular moment you did not wish to make suggestions on this subject to India. Now that Lord Lytton is going out as viceroy, your kind letter (which gave me leave to ask for inquiry) puts hope into me that you might think it not inopportune to give him your instructions. You will probably remember that, in the last letter which you did me the honour to write me, your idea was that Sir Andrew Clarke97 and the duke of Buckingham (for Madras), both of whom you said were ‘‘masters of detail’’ (a civilian possibly might be added to Sir A. Clarke), might act as ‘‘irrigation inquirers’’ under instructions from the Government of India, under instructions from home. You showed yourself thoroughly dissatisfied with the present position of the question. I could in half an hour out of the letters which you were good enough to address to this ‘‘importunate widow,’’98 and out of the printed documents we have from India, draw up notes to help to show the direction inquir y should take, but am unwilling to trouble you with one word without your orders. 5 June 1877 Madras drainage. Most private. I thank you most gratefully for your very kind note. Its welcome promise that you will take the whole matter into your own consideration encourages me to believe that you will not think it intrusive if I add a piece of information which I have just received, viz., that there is reason to fear that ‘‘the duke’’ (of Buckingham) may commit ‘‘the government’’ to some insufficiently considered scheme and so perhaps render improvement hereafter more difficult than ever. This is of course for yourself alone.

97 Sir Andrew Clarke (1824-1902), engineer, soldier, politician and civil servant, minister of public works in India 1875-80. 98 An allusion to Luke 18:3-5.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 137 Source: From a letter to J.G. Fife,99 Wayne State University (12)

22 Februar y 1877 I trust that you will forgive the impertinence of a stranger applying to you for information on the subject of irrigation in Bombay or Sind, with which your name is so justly connected. I am not however guilty: it is Sir Bartle Frere who urges me to ‘‘indicate’’ to you ‘‘what I want.’’ For several years I have been intensely interested in the irrigation subject, though principally as concerns Bengal and Madras. I will not trouble you further until I know whether you would consider me unwarrantably troublesome in asking for some information. . . . I venture to send a very insignificant pamphlet as an earnest of my interest in the matter. Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff60-61

Lea Hurst Cromford, Derby 7 September 1877 Madras Drainage. Private. I have no copy of the long letter [on indecision of the Madras government in selecting a plan of drainage] which I addressed to Lord Salisbur y on I think 2 June. (I sent it to you, but you were absent.) Lord Salisbur y, it seems, sent it to the duke of Buckingham, who replied in the long letter which Lord Salisbur y sent to me with a note from himself. I send you copies of the duke of Buckingham to Lord Salisbur y, Lord Salisbur y to F.N., the A.G. of Madras to F.N. on the duke’s letter. All are strictly confidential: please return them to me. I shall await your remarks with anxiety. This is a crisis. If you chose to draft me a letter to Lord Salisbur y, I think it would be wise. But it should go in as soon as possible, in order that if there is time to send out (1) first-rate sanitar y advice from England before the drainage scheme is decided upon; (2) a first-rate municipal president—these persons should be sent out at once.

99 James George Fife, royal engineer, later major general.

138 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Lord Salisbur y, Add Mss 45779 ff68-69

September 1877 Madras drainage. I know not how to thank you for your interest in this all-important subject and for your note to me of 22 August. I return the duke of Buckingham’s letter of 24 July with many thanks. May I rush at once into a few observations? From the duke’s letter I gather that both the system to be adopted and the man to be employed to carry it through are still unsettled points. The crime of past governments of Madras is to have dallied with these questions so long and allowed the evils to continue unabated, while the municipality was allowed to wrangle, job, muddle and delay, in fact do all that a bad vestr y was likely to do. . . . It was for the purpose of deciding the very important point [of] ‘‘Clark’s scheme’’ that I thought the services of a highly trained and experienced sanitary official to be essential, as I do not believe there is anyone in Madras with the necessary qualifications for coming to a sound conclusion. The governor of Madras knows more about the subject than anyone in Madras, but is not a really scientific opinion wanted ? . . . As to the first-rate engineer, it is true that no man who has not had considerable Indian experience is fit to judge of drainage works for India. An English sanitary engineer, or all of them put together, might, if sent out fresh, proceed as they would do in London, spend large sums in providing rainfall sewers (no rainfall in India should enter sewers) and the practical result might be that, after all the expenditure, the work would have to be done over again. This is true. But you have one man here who knows all about it: Major Tulloch of the Local Government Board. He is the man to whom alone Mr Clark’s plans could be referred and all the necessary experience could be had from him without his going out at all. Let them submit Mr Clark’s plans to Major Tulloch and Mr Rawlinson. The one will look to see that the leading principles are applicable to India and to Madras; both will help materially with the details. Source: From a draft letter to the duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Add Mss 45804 ff244-48

[1877] Ir rigation and water transit.100 I am deeply grateful to your grace for your kindness in sending me so many valuable observations of your

100 See her published letter in Health in India (9:761-68).

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own on a subject so deeply interesting to me and to the world in your letter dated 31 July. May I submit some consideration to your grace’s great knowledge as the only return I can make for your kindness? The difficulties in the construction of the two canals, one of them from the Coase Canal to Nellore, about fifteen miles in the delta countr y, is not difficult. Your government has been told that the objection to it is that it would require locks and water; it is on the Penner, into which the Tumbuddra empties itself. Could not they have always got the trifling quantity it would have required from the company [Madras Irrigation Company]? But secondly if there was no water in the Penner for two or three months, were they to lose the use of the canal for all the rest of the year on that account? But why don’t they store water? This [is] our very charge against them. They, like ourselves, have often done things by halves, and then said ‘‘didn’t we say so?’’ The Nellore and Cuddapah Canal: it certainly is a line of considerable difficulty. But are we to do nothing but what is easy? Your grace’s whole life has shown us the contrary. The line has been surveyed and estimated over and over again. Is there anything to prevent its being done, except that it will certainly be an expensive work? It is indeed not for me to suggest on this subject, so peculiarly your own. But the expense is, I am told, nothing to compare with that of the railways, which do not produce as well as carry. As to supply of water for it, it is the continuation of the Tumbuddra Canal and, as long as there is water in the Tumbuddra, which might be even now almost if not quite the whole year, it would of course be supplied. But if there is no water in that river why is there not? They don’t provide it. The Company did not do it. In a country like India may not the government step in and provide water, the means of life, for the starving millions? . . . I am sure that the opening of the Northern Canal by Michaelmas will rain blessings on your name; it is to be deplored when you had made such magnificent preparations for its conduce that there was any difficulty about finding labour for it. . . . About the Tumbuddra Canal, it is most certain that the directors have shown themselves incompetent, especially about the navigation, but the government went to the expense of hundreds of thousands of pounds to carry the corn by land; might not they for a tenth part of the money have put boats on the canal? But I will implore your grace not to suspect me of laying down the law. I am unprofessional about details of schemes, always topics of minutes and angry controversy between those specially acquainted

140 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India with the subject. The general drift of my printed letter was simply this, viz., that government must, if it is to avoid catastrophe as dreadful and loss as great as this famine entails: 1. extend irrigation in every possible quarter; 2. insist on the people taking or at any rate paying for the water when brought to their fields in non-famine times; 3. have a much better prepared machinery for organizing relief labour, etc., than at present exists. It is clear that the means now available are wholly inadequate to prevent wholesale loss of life. In all this, I believe that I am only expressing your grace’s own views of the ways, for carrying which out you are so great a master. That your grace is in favour of irrigation and water transit I look upon as one of the greatest blessings which could have been given to India. As to the paragraph in my published letter regarding the delays of government having led to delay in using the Tumbuddra for navigation, etc., all my letter says is that ‘‘the report goes on to complain of their having been prevented, etc., owing to the delays in ‘the proceedings of government.’ ’’ The complaint, if I remember, was that the company, being without the necessary funds, had requested government to assist them in starting navigation, and that the delays of government in disposing of this matter had led to there being no navigation. I merely state that the charge is made, and this is not denied. The manager did not complain that he was prevented by government but that being without funds necessary for a work of public importance, he was not helped by government in due time. Probably your government has already reproved its officials for not doing so. My letter impliedly blames the non-extension of the canal from Cuddapah to Nellore, and your grace does me the honour to show the reasons which have led to the abandonment of this scheme. I will take the earliest opportunity that a letter on the famine to the Illustrated News will give me of saying that this scheme had not been abandoned without good reasons (at the same time earnestly hoping that your grace’s administration may possibly find a way of refuting those reasons) and that any conclusions on famine management in Madras should be read in connection with the fact that the government had at a very early date a great canal work in readiness for the distressed population which might need relief in this way. My published letter was of course in no way intended as a criticism on the famine policy of the Madras government, but merely as indi-

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cating the importance of great works of irrigation, based on facts communicated in the report of the Madras Irrigation Company. I will not take up your grace’s time further than by again thanking you for the great honour you have done me, and may all strength be granted you for your brave and vigorous command of this grand war against destruction and death. . . . Will not the result of this visitation be to force the Government of India to provide much more systematically than hitherto for the recurrence of such times of dearth. And is not a development of the canal system one of the most promising of the means at hand? N.B. I greatly sympathize with your regard for the Constantinople ‘‘dogs.’’ But does not all that we know about drainage works come originally from Greece and Rome? Are not the Greeks of Constantinople as good drainers as our people are, and better in some points? Has not Constantinople been drained more or less completely from its foundation? And is not what they require a good system of outlets and certain lower improvements? ‘‘The dogs’’ are paid for doing nothing except barking at night and amusing the Turks. Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 f75

12 January 1878 I send you two letters of Colonel Yule101 to me (confidential), which please return. They are not very hopeful. Can you suggest anything else to be done? I have had so much correspondence lately on various subjects with Lord Salisbur y that I would rather abstain from writing to him on one which I know he would bestow so little thought upon. Still that is not a reason for doing nothing. Source: From notes probably from a meeting with T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 ff13-15

25 Februar y 1878 Dr Hewlett: two years doing duty as Bombay Presidency’s sanitar y commissioner: second year in famine. By the Village Police Act it has been found that the village patels or headmen can be made use of to enforce various sanitary measures, to conser ve the water, keeping it from pollution (even in Bombay cesspools

101 Henr y Yule (1820-89), Orientalist, engineer in Bengal, member of the Council of India 1875-89, member of the Army Sanitary Commission.

142 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India are allowed to defile the drinking water by percolation so near), to enforce ventilation, to keep up surface cleansing where low caste men are not to be had to remove ordure, have a trench dug for soil, by the Village Police Act. Cholera never touches you; fines can be inflicted for neglect, if thing not done, write to collector: they shall do it; if collector does not do his duty, report him to government. Governments are good—make him do his duty. ‘‘And they must do it then?’’ They shall do it. Sir Richard Temple: very good governor, looks into things himself, examines and annotates reports himself, best governor since Sir B. Frere, very keen in sanitary things. Pedder:102 good man now, like Crawford, gone back to a collectorship; Pedder collector of Colaba now. Engineers have not Army Sanitary Commission’s books, nor Notes on Hospitals, ver y ignorant, build barracks on the ground against a hill, water bursting up under floors, build hospitals with wells all fouled by neighbouring cesspools. One civil surgeon gets all the operations, stone, tumours, etc., into his hospital; another lazy, does nothing, gets none. British Medical Ser vice gets only the leavings of Netley, the rejected of Netley. Indian Medical Service = the best men. Sanitar y commissioners must report to civil authority; twenty years ser vice to be a deputy surgeon general. To raise the people, to save life, to educate the people, to create them—that is the business of a sanitary commissioner; [Hewlett] came home for fever contracted in famine government inspections; wife too ill to stay out and must be with our five children, too young to go out. Municipalities don’t do their duty; natives so frightened of seeing themselves in the papers, won’t do what they think right. I used to have a great man up before the court; if he broke the sanitary rules— fine him 200 rupees; that is the only way; [he] would offer me 1000 rupees to let him off; have him up before the court; he will do right forever after. English press—only press of real influence for good in India. Cholera never touches the places, towns or villages really conserved. As soon as a case occurs in cantonments, march them out two or three miles. I and boys, deputy sanitary commissioners, six (two died of fever, abscess liver, one invalided for life, one dismissed because he

102 W.G. Pedder, revenue secretar y at the India Office, author of ‘‘Famine and Debt in India.’’

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was too slow on cholera); [I] made them travel fifty miles of a night in cholera; men of six or seven years’ standing. I never gave myself more than three hours’ sleep at night, often without food, always without tents, hard time of it—highly enjoyable, day never long enough, always like to have a little more to do than I can. Meat to do the will and to finish the work.103 Source: From a note to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9007/137

29 March 1878 Lord Derby’s resignation and its meaning104 is the worst cloud since the Indian Mutiny broke upon us twenty-one years ago. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet,105 Balliol College, Mallet Papers

13 June 1878 Would you desire the Repor t of the Commission on the Deccan Riots to be sent to me? i.e., a copy on loan. I have now ten-twelve ‘‘administration’’ and provincial reports of late date sent me a month or two ago with a letter signed by Lord G. Hamilton106 for information on the ‘‘indebtedness’’ subject. Source: From notes on famine, probably from a meeting with T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 ff21-27, 31 and 33

3 Febr uary 1879 Mr Hewlett: Patels so frightened, they thought the government wanted the people to die, so frightened lest they should not have deaths enough on the register. Deaths were not under registered during famine in Bombay Presidency, on the contrary the village headmen thought they could not have deaths enough on their registers (village accountants are the registrars). The wretches thought the sirkar wanted the people to die: ‘‘All the sahibs said the first thing directly they arrived: ‘Show us the deaths; show us your registers.’ ’’

103 An allusion to John 4:34. 104 Lord Derby resigned on Disraeli’s ordering of troops to the Dardanelles. As Lord Stanley, he had been a supporter of Nightingale and the Indian cause since the early 1860s. See the biographical sketch inHealth in India (9:983-84). 105 Sir Louis Mallet (1823-90), permanent under secretar y of state for India 1874-83. 106 Lord George Francis Hamilton (1845-1927), Conservative politician, at the time under secretar y of state for India, secretar y of state for India 1895-1903.

144 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India They were more likely to have a death or two too many than not to register all there were, except those who died in the jungles. Roads like marshes after the rains came, no carts possible, could only travel on elephants, swam rivers—no bridges—wrote my reports under a tree on an elephant, sand blowing in my eyes. Travelled on elephant for twenty hours (swam two rivers), went from 10:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. next day, then made my camp at 6 p.m., at 10:30 p.m. called the camp people and off we went; mahouts used to say, elephants can’t do this. I enjoyed it highly; often no biscuit, no grain of any kind; I liked it—officers gave me biscuits, all mouldy, nothing but sardines and potted meats, should have been glad, I know, of this famine diet jowarri [Indian corn] (a millet = a pea). I travelled about inspecting, encouraging, helping district officers. . . . Young Spence (and he was only one out of many) assistant collector, had a famine taluq [subdivision of a district] in Belgaum, not seen a European for four months when I came, a young civilian, worked night and day and so modest, afraid he had not done his best (he wanted a pat on the back), a spectre met me at the station; he had been a fine young man, this was young Spence—a spectre but unflagging. Kaladgi: government orders not carried out—collector of Kaladgi removed; relief did not reach recipients, but he was removed for it. . . . (Madras set themselves against the Government of India: spirit of rebellion and so the people did not work well, did not work their best, do their utmost.) The men worked with a will in Bombay, got more out of them than in Madras, where there was that rebellion against the Government of India . . . The allowance was enough to prevent wasting for all those who had reser ve stores of their own. . . . 1 lb rice not at all equal (in nutriment to 1 lb. jowarri—this Cornish107 should have told Sir R. Temple.) Cornish calculated the ration too much by an European standard, but a tall large man wants more food than a small man. England doesn’t know we work twice as much in India as they do in England or in any other part of the world. Perfect system of famine relief in Bombay, per fectly organized and supervised. . . . We made mistakes, but we learnt by them and we corrected them as soon as we could, had famine well in hand at the beginning; it never came to the point of starvation. . . . We always employed the

107 William Robert Cornish (1828-97), sanitary commissioner for Madras 1870-78.

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men by villages wherever possible so that those should be together who knew one another. . . . Madras: smallpox fruit of relief camps. Bombay, worst in Khandeish and elsewhere where least famine. Famine = diarrhea in Madras, cholera = real cholera in Bombay; [people] carried off in a few hours (doubtless more fatal from previous reduction of strength by famine). Madras: cholera often bowel complaint, the direct result of famine, though sometimes the result of crowding together in unsanitarized relief camps, relief works and relief houses. Bombay fever malarial type, after the rains (I sent Nolan, one of my boys, now invalided in Egypt) to investigate types of fever, generally malarial. Then what were the famine deaths put down to in Bombay? Bombay famine over in November 1877; 150,000 famine deaths the outside, obtained as the excess over registered deaths in ordinar y years. But the increase of population forbidden (ignored) by government; six heads only of death registration allowed by government: cholera, smallpox, fevers, bowel complaints, injuries, other causes. Then what are famine deaths registered under? Anemia, ‘‘other causes.’’ (Madras not over in March 1878; Mysore Januar y 1878 still very bad). . . . Over how many millions did the Bombay famine extend? Did marwaris [merchant bankers] moneylenders suffer from famine? I am afraid they, bloodsuckers, did not. . . . We shall have another Mutiny some day, then God help us if the Maratha peasantry join against us (a fine peasantry. Southern Deccan a fine race of men—I like them very much, but they are profoundly dissatisfied. All that is true about the indebtedness; they did, however, ask me to thank the government for what had been done for them during the famine). There’s mutiny now in and in Sallara—ancestral men all dispossessed by the sowkars [moneylenders]. Poor rate: no poor rate desirable but there must be famine relief. Except in famine, Muhammadans and Hindus keep their own poor, manage it much better than we could possibly do and at no expense to us. But they don’t keep them out of the sowkar’s hands. And do they fall into the sowkar’s hands themselves to supply their own poor? Irrigation rate: Colonel Merriman has a bill before Bombay government for an irrigation rate. It is to take in all the people below the ir rigation work whether they take the water or not. I think it desirable. (Colonel Fife: No, it will bring in so little in proportion to the discontent it will make. And it will make the people discontented.)

146 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From notes probably from a meeting with T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 f38

10 Februar y 1879 It was Sir P. Wodehouse’s Chapman, chief secretar y, first bought up grain. Sir P.W. said it would raise the price; Sir P.W. had the courage to take it, the famine, out of civilians’ (Chapman’s) hands and put it into Sir M. Kennedy’s, then General Kennedy head of Public Works Department. General (Sir M.) Kennedy, head of P.W. Department, taken from there to be put at the head of the famine, a great man, a grand organizer; he would go into his office and think out ever ything, how will this order be executed? how will the executive engineer carry it out? Lord Lytton will confess himself wrong in this matter of great relief works vs. little ones. Large works. Lord Lytton gave in. If anything went wrong, we flew at the place and worked with a will. Sir R. Temple heard a complaint (Solapur); I made it. Relief houses all wrong—he came down without warning. It was in Krishna that I swam the rivers on an elephant, obliged to travel on elephant after the rains set in, impossible then, the tracks one marsh, to travel by tonga [light horse-drawn vehicle]. Collector in Solapur got such a wigging and he deserved it. When relief works suspended on account of rains, he had no relief houses ready—dysenter y and ulcers all heaped up it was in Solapur that I got fever in the jungles. I went there and Mathew helped me at Solapur with matted huts roof ventilation—soon shifted the sick. policy,108

Source: From a letter to James G. Fife, Wayne State University (15)

12 Februar y 1879 Thank you very much for your note about ‘‘Culturable Land,’’ etc. in Sind. What you kindly told me and what you wrote is very valuable to us. I shall hope to see you again next week, but it would hasten and improve our operations very much, if you would be so very good as to see Mr Edward Prinsep, so many years ‘‘settlement commissioner’’ in the Punjab, brother to the Statistical Mr Prinsep in the India Office, who, I believe, filled up the forms which Mr E. Prinsep prepared, of which I showed you some figures when I had the pleasure of seeing you last week.

108 Sir Philip Edmond Wodehouse (1811-87), governor of Bombay 1872-76, against the objections of the governor general, Lord Lytton, used largescale public works to deal with famine in the mid-1870s.

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Mr Edward Prinsep is only in England for a fortnight. He would call upon you any day this week at any hour you would be so good as to appoint, either at your own house or at any place you would fix to meet him. . . . We are anxious to make the most, as you will see, of your invaluable knowledge of the P.W. which are in fact your creation of Sind and Bombay. Have you seen Colonel Merriman’s bill? It is in the Times of India. Source: From a draft letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 ff45-48

12 Februar y 1879 Parliament meets today and, though I hope that there are many members who will bring up these burning Indian questions [famine, famine relief ], and that India will thus force her way to the front, yet our very best must be exerted to interest the people of England even in some small degree in the people of India and that with the smallest delay possible. . . . Perhaps you could also tell me even before you leave England of the way in which the native mamlatdars [native district magistrates], I think you said native (officials) gentlemen, worked so well under Europeans in the famine relief. Though much has been done of late years to bring Englishmen to think a little of their Asiatic countrymen, yet it is astonishing what large masses there still are among us who think of Indians as ‘‘niggers’’ or tigers or as at best purchasers of Manchester cottons. And you are aware that a ‘‘House’’ can never be made to listen to any Indian subject, that Indian questions are systematically shirked by the Cabinet and by a hardly less important body, the Times. I would try to make the best use of any facts you could give me with or without names about native gentlemen officials who have done well in the famine or in sanitary works. Source: From notes on Henry Stewart Cunningham’s109 letter for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff138-41

21 March 1879 About the ‘‘gossip,’’ I never heard one word against Lord Lytton except from you. And that seemed highly improbable. I do not know

109 Henry Stewart Cunningham (1832-1920), India expert in Madras and Calcutta, member of the Famine Commission 1878-80.

148 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India at all to what Mr C[unningham] alludes. As I hear a great deal of Indian conversation, I think him mistaken in supposing ‘‘gossip’’ to be rife against Lord Lytton in England. 2. ‘‘Defense,’’ ‘‘eloquent’’ after a fashion, but the ‘‘eloquence’’ of priests and women who know that they will not be answered without a fact or a shadow of a fact. 3. I for one believe there is a case to be made for Lord Lytton. Then why does he not make it? He has made no case. 4. Last page simply diatribe of a papal power . . . or of ever y despotic government (connu, connu) [known, known]. ‘‘Don’t question what I do or say, I must know best. You have only to listen and submit.’’ All despotism demoralizes. But this process has been singularly rapid. It is not the letter of an Englishman. . . . 5. Sheet 3, side 2. It is said that Lord Lytton’s only policy is to destroy Lord Northbrook’s and especially Lord Lawrence’s. Lord Lawrence’s son-in-law [Henry Cunningham] unconsciously confirms this in a singularly ungraceful manner 6. The paper [?] says that ‘‘to have a strong opinion about it is not to understand it.’’ Does he mean that Lord Lawrence, the highest authority about India, does ‘‘not understand it’’? 7. Sheet 4 is simply Mrs Hominy110 declaiming. Is Lord Lawrence ‘‘ranging far and wide’’ for provender for his political hatred to feed upon? For Mr C[unningham]’s own sake the letter ought to be burnt. N.B. 8. Lastly, what is said about the ‘‘two Stracheys’’ and ‘‘F. Stephen’’111 is begging the whole question. Lord Lytton is to be tr usted because these three men trust him, and these three men trust him because he does with them what he likes. What he likes is the very thing which constitutes the provenance of the charge, if any charge there be, against Lord Lytton, viz., that he has ‘‘enguirlandé’’ [sermonized] a ‘‘clever man like Sir F. Stephen’’ and made him write just what he, Lord Lytton, pleased in the Times. . . . I have no knowledge how the blame is to be distributed between Lord Lytton and Sir J. Strachey (whom I know and admire and should never dream of attacking) as to what is called his famine budget. But it is certain that the appropriation of the famine fund for the war, after Lord Lytton’s most solemn protestations, is a step which would

110 A character in Charles Dickens’s Mar tin Chuzzlewit, that is, an ignorant person. 111 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94), legal member of the Council of India 1869-72, prolific writer.

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ruin the credit of and destroy confidence in any bank or government in the world, and that even India has been so roused by it that the almost unprecedented step is being taken of sending home petitions to Crown and Commons against it. As to General Strachey, he is a diplomat. And he will have to answer enough questions asked of his diplomatship, now he is come home (I am told by the India Office). Pray for the famine commission and Mr Cunningham. Source: From a draft letter to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45805 f158

21 March 1879 May I venture to give you joy, as we give India and ourselves joy, on the noble results of the duke of Buckingham’s wisdom and energy in the Buckingham Canal? Had not the duke honoured me with some correspondence on the subject in 1877, I should scarcely have dared to ask you kindly to take the opportunity of presenting my respectful congratulations to him. It is a boon so wonderful: this having water communication all the way from Madras to Kurnool excepting that short break of eight miles at Feringhee Dibha, which doubtless will also soon be completed and opened. Source: Notes from a meeting with and draft letter to Sir Richard Temple, Add Mss 45805 ff177-81

25 April 1879 Minute of 12 April 1879: Two useful and priceless speeches if they carry fruit to native medical students. Question as to the force which these words of yours ought to bear crowd from my mind: reconnaissance n’est qu’un vif [sentiment des bienfaits futurs]. 1. Might I ask what has actually been completed as to scheme so ably set forth and so much needed for diverting filth from harbour, etc., which you are having carried out? You have put the scheme in so strong a light. May you be able to carry some day to full perfection. 2. Surpassing interest of sanitary remarks in address to students of this March. You tell us that practical sanitary code, such as all may understand, is being circulated ‘‘in the interior.’’ The value of this and the value of fixing the minds of medical students on the paramount importance of hygiene (or preventive medicine) and of making them ‘‘do the work of popular education in hygiene’’ it is impossible to overestimate.

150 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India We hail your noble efforts in this direction, as in so many others, if I may say so without impertinence, and so far from not recognizing with joy the immense strides made by immense India during the last quarter of century in sanitar y things, we admire and reverence and only wish to co-operate and help all we can, if only you will let us, while sharply conscious of our own shortcomings. (Your remarks on vital statistics—though we were in hopes that in Bombay register was farther advanced—and on water supply are simply invaluable.) You blame us for strong description of, e.g., the bad sanitary state of E. London—while in fact London is one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest large city in the world. . . . But Englishmen will be Englishmen and we can’t help it. We paint ourselves so dark that other nations and races who hold back as much as they can about themselves cannot understand us. They think we are darker than the paint over us—we can’t look back—we can’t count what we have won—we must ‘‘press on to the mark of our high calling.’’112 We must think of what is to be done—not of what we have done. Not to do this is not to be Englishmen. After all, there is something fine in it ‘‘Count nothing gained,’’ we cry, ‘‘till no fight remains.’’ Your high authority on the side of ‘‘legislation’’ for ‘‘indebtedness’’: might I ask if the ‘‘Bombay Agricultural Debts Act,’’ 1878, ‘‘providing that no amount of principal debt’’ is car ried or to be carried? Perhaps already civil courts act upon this principle of not awarding those that double the debt. . . . At the same time might it be suggested to you that, if information were more freely afforded, English journals would be much more likely to speak ‘‘the whole truth,’’ as you so justly urge they should. They don’t speak the whole truth because they don’t know it. But they are like children dragging out a secret which they think is being withheld from them and parading their puny knowledge. We know nothing about India. You know all about India. If the high officers of India returning to England would tell England what they know, the interest of England [would be] wisely and correctly excited about India (instead of ‘‘sensationally’’ as you say). . . . (Might not I ask humbly, whereas now a House can hardly be put together to vote upon the most important matters concerning India, and in the Cabinet they are persistently avoided—in Austria the officials and jour-

112 A paraphrase of Phil 3:14.

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nalists are called anti-Austrian if they speak the truth about Bosnia; English are called anti-patriotic, anti-English, not only if they speak, but if they wish even to hear the truth about India. There is nothing we wish so much as to learn the truth about India. But, as you say, it must be the whole truth. And then, are we not the real patriots, the true Englishmen and not those who conceal the truth?) As you say, the ‘‘portraiture’’ drawn by the half truth, ‘‘cannot be recognized by those most nearly concerned.’’ . . . It is said that capital would be forthcoming in England if a sort of philanthropical society were formed and if the shareholders—for of course nothing without a sound commercial basis could stand—had even a moderate but safe investment for their money. (F.N. But government has a first charge on the land, has it not? Are these advances to go before government assessment or rent? And would government ever listen to that?) But then we feel our black ignorance about India. We feel that the ‘‘retired high officials’’ of India don’t help us (not as in other days great men created and led the Anti-Corn Law League, not as in yet further days the anti-slavery men led); they are afraid of being called ‘‘agitators.’’ . . . And we ask, very humbly, can we do nothing to help you great you noble magnates in your Godlike work, instead of being kept like children in the dark?

Gladstone, Fawcett and Indian Finance Editor: Concerted attempts to recr uit W.E. Gladstone to the cause of India have been recounted in Society and Politics (5:439-70) and Health in India 9:106) and further efforts will be reported below. Nightingale had enormous respect for this leader of her own party, four times prime minister and a major Liberal figure. She hoped that he would bring to India the same reforming zeal he had shown in Ireland. Reform in India required money, and the resources needed for infrastructure (sewers, drains, canals and railways) were too often lacking. Money was desperately needed in times of famine for relief and to prevent an early recurrence. Public works were one key way to get money into the hands of famine victims to sow the next crop. Better agricultural methods also required money, especially for agricultural training to increase production and hence help prevent famine in the long term. The vital decisions on these issues were made in London. When troops were sent to Afghanistan, Indians suffered from the diversion of resources. Nightingale often felt that her Liberal friends did not do

152 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India right by India, and even stated that the Conservatives were sometimes better. On the issue of imperialist expansion, however, the Conservatives were the enemy, her Liberal friends advocates for moderation. If Gladstone was Nightingale’s great prospect for Liberal leadership on India, Henry Fawcett113 posed a more complicated challenge. He was an mp who often spoke on India, so much so that he was known as ‘‘the member for India.’’ He was a respected academic economist, although too much a free-market advocate for Nightingale’s liking, but he made exactly the right points, in her opinion, on such crucial matters as British war expenditures. Nightingale made concerted efforts to get him to modify his harmful views on expenditures within India, as we will see notably in the lengthy letter she wrote him—at twenty-five folios it is possibly a record for her. The statements of other mps who took part in these debates also had to be countered. Here we relate the debates in the House of Commons with Nightingale’s letters, both to colleagues about tactics and to Fawcett and Gladstone themselves. In a speech on 28 Februar y 1879, Henry Fawcett insisted that governing India should be efficient, cheap and fair. He proposed a motion in the House of Commons on Indian finance, which was highly critical of ‘‘wasteful’’ expenditures in India. This motion called ‘‘attention to the inadequate control now exercised over the expenditure of the revenues of India’’ and proposed: ‘‘That a select committee be appointed to inquire into and report upon the operation of ‘The Government of India Act 1858’ and the other acts amending the same.’’ He then gave a speech justifying the motion.114 A Conser vative mp, Denzil Roberts Onslow,115 agreed and went one better, making a serious blunder about Nightingale’s involvement in the course of his speech: The waste of money in India was not owing to the extravagance of viceroys or of their councils, but to the pressure brought to bear upon the secretar y of state by honourable members in that House, who compelled him to force the viceroys to spend money on objects which the latter were aware would be of no practical use or, at all events, not so useful as many other projects. Taking the case of the building of the barracks in India: every honourable member in that

113 Henry Fawcett (1833-84), professor of political economy at Cambridge University, Liberal mp. 114 Hansard, Parliamentar y Debates 3, 243 (1878-79) 28 Februar y 1879:1975-85. 115 Denzil Roberts Onslow (1839-1908), later Parliamentary under secretar y for India.

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House respected Miss Nightingale, who had done so much good for our soldiers, but that lady, having gone out to India and seen the condition of the barracks there, had put such pressure upon that House and upon the secretar y of state that no less than £12,000,000 had been spent upon the erection of new barracks there which were practically of very little use and, therefore, that money might be said to have been thrown away in pursuit of this philanthropic object.116

Sir Harry Verney offered to answer Fawcett and Onslow in the Times (he does not seem to have done so) and Nightingale herself considered writing a letter to the newspaper, but did not. Perhaps it had become clear to them that a public answer was not necessary after all. The following letters to John Sutherland indicate how the charges could be answered by demonstrating the good effects of expenditures, while acknowledging unduly excessive expenses at some stations. On 20 May Fawcett came to see Nightingale. Then, on 22 May, he moved in Parliament: ‘‘That this House regards with apprehension the present state of the finances of India, and is of opinion that measures should at once be taken to reduce expenditure.’’ He was referring to widespread discontent in India due to the remittances India was forced to make to England for advances consented, taxes levied on impoverished Indians, the national income diminished by the reduction of import duties upon cotton goods, the cost of the famine fund diverted to military goals and especially the cost of the ‘‘unnecessar y’’ Afghan War, unjustly defrayed out of the revenues of India.117 Nightingale subsequently commented to Dr Sutherland that: Mr Fawcett would himself tell you that his labours in behalf of India were purely in the financial aspect and that he had avoided systematically social questions. . . . But as it is impossible to separate the two, the consequence has been that Mr Fawcett has, not choosing his own advisors or searching out these questions for himself, fallen ver y much into the hands (small blame to him) of paid agents of zemindars in Bengal, of those who could shout the loudest, who were best able and least willing to pay taxes all over India, of a few noisy rich in Bombay, and generally of those in all India who don’t want to be taxed and who are the only people who can bear taxation, and the only people who can make their voices heard.118

116 Hansard, Parliamentar y Debates 3, 243 (1878-79) 28 Februar y 1879:1991-93. 117 Hansard, Parliamentar y Debates 3, 246 (1878-79) 22 May 1879:1071. 118 Note to John Sutherland 23 August 1879, Add Mss 45758 f140.

154 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Be that as it may, Fawcett’s motions proved beneficial in curbing costly imperial policies in India and furthering the right expenditures for education and public works. In that context Nightingale wrote to Fawcett (11 March and 17 April 1880 below), conveying her view that more funds be invested in agricultural education. Fawcett reiterated points on finance and war in a speech on 12 March 1880, insisting that the Afghan War was not truly an Indian war and for that reason England, not India, should be asked to defray its cost. W.E. Gladstone and William Rathbone119 took part in that debate, supporting Fawcett. Source: From four letters to John Sutherland Add Mss 45758 ff128-31 (draft), 123-24, 125 and 135-36. For the first letter there is another draft/notes in Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9007/190

[March 1879] In the debate [in the House of Commons] on Mr Fawcett’s motion on Indian finance on Friday 28 Februar y, Mr Onslow said he believed that ‘‘the waste of money x x in pursuit of this philanthropic object.’’ The barrack and other improvements have (saving the costly character of the buildings) followed from the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army issued by Lord Derby [then Lord Stanley] in 1859, whose report showed that, although the death rate among British troops serving in India had varied year by year, yet in past time it had ‘‘oscillated round 69 per 1000.’’ Since this royal commission was at work, improvements have been in progress. The barracks have been costly on account of a style of constr uction which might well have been avoided. Although all that may be done in site, in construction, in pure water supply and drainage or in sanitary arrangements has by no means yet been done, still the result of the measures taken for the sanitary improvement of the army in India has been a saving of life, stated in a resolution of the Government of India, October 1878, on Dr Bryden’s120 statistical returns as follows:

119 William Rathbone (1819-1902), Liberal mp, member, later chair, of the Nightingale Fund Council. See the biographical sketch in Public Health Care (6:677). 120 Dr J.L. Bryden (1833-80), civil surgeon of the Bengal presidency; he believed in the airborne theory of cholera spread and wrote several cholera reports.

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British Troops: Five Years Death Rate per 1000 1861-65 29.30 1866-70 27.48 1871-75 18.50 These are facts about which there can be no dispute: anybody can calculate the difference in the number of recr uits required to keep up the present strength of 60,000 men at these different death rates, and as every man saved is valued at £100 to the state, the barracks, costly as the architecture has been and need not have been, and the other sanitar y improvements, have paid for themselves. And the saving will be greater as the improvements become more complete. Florence Nightingale was never in India; she was in no sense responsible for the expensive character of the barracks which have been built at some Indian stations. It is true that information on the condition of the barracks and hospitals in India induced her to devote time and thought to the sanitary condition of the army in India. 5 March 1879 Mr Onslow’s statement in the House of Commons. Sir Harry Verney means to answer Mr Onslow in the Times. He says (and I concur with him) that, though he believes ‘‘Mr Onslow to be a member of very little authority, a false statement made in the House of Commons ought not to be left uncontradicted, that the false statement is believed and that people may act upon it. Indeed I think that they are justified in acting on it. I think further that the right construction of barracks is so important and their sanitary arrangements that, whoever may be in fault, the mistake ought not to be ignored; that, on the contrary, for the sake of future bar racks, attention ought to be drawn to the subject’’ x x ‘‘I should insert in the Times a short note to some effect like the enclosed.’’ And he sends me the enclosed, which I transmit to you. It is not exactly to the effect that I intended; I thought something might have been said as to the principles of constructing barracks. Would you kindly look over Sir Harry’s note? I re-enclose my own proposal (which I sent you before) for reference. The last paragraph, page 1 in Sir Harry’s, would have to be corrected somewhat thus: ‘‘And in 1859 Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, secretar y of state for India, appointed the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army, presided over first by Sidney Herbert, then by Lord Stanley, which sent out questions to India (please, arrange this) and thoroughly sifted the subject in the country. The R.C. reported in 1863.’’ ‘‘And the per-

156 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India manent Army Sanitary Commission keeps up the good tradition of principles laid down by the R.C., etc.’’ (Please ar range this.) And I would decidedly put in what the death rate of the army was and is in such and such years. Please send me this at all events for other use. There is no occasion to attack Lord Lawrence or anyone under him. But I think I would draw attention to the Army Sanitary Commission’s Suggestions which no one in India has. Sir Harry sends the Times of Saturday and has marked Mr Onslow’s obser vations. I wish you had kept my Monday’s communication in order to think it over for a day or two (instead of answering it by bearer). But I am afraid I must ask you to return this to day with yo u r remarks, as Sir Harry leaves London tomorrow. yours most faithfully Florence Nightingale Please return me the whole boutique [batch of documents]. I think you will like to see this account of the Madras Junction Canal and the deepening of the river Cooum. But please return it to me today with your remarks. Is the Cooum improved sanitarily? 7 March 1879 Answer to Mr Onslow. Sir Harry Verney insists upon making full answer [in] the Times and from your letter I made the enclosed two drafts for him, of which I think the second is the least objectionable, as not connecting me (as Sir Harry had done in his draft) with the appointing of the royal commission. But I pointed out to him (and he concurred) how very open to controversy the 69 per 1000 was (you remember what Lord Sandhurst [head of the provincial government in Pune] personally said to me about it). I am sure you think so too. More especially as we give, in the same letter, the death rate of 1861 as 29.3 (two years before the royal commission reported). And people will say: how did the royal commission of 1859 manage to get the mortality down from 69 to 29 in 1861? They began [illeg no.] in 1859. Could not you kindly give us the mortality for, say, the two previous five years from [illeg] 1856 to 1860 and from 1851 to 1855? Or, if the Mutiny of 1857 interferes, for some similar period? And alter the two calculations of 4145 recr uits [illeg] and 3030 [recr uits] dependent on the 69 per 1000 accordingly. I have (positively) kept this back till today, on purpose to ask you to do this in great haste as this is my India mail day.

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17 March 1879 I have never had more difficulty in anything than in this little draft for Sir H. Verney. The matter of importance is not whether the royal commission made a ‘‘careful examination,’’ not whether F.N. was ever in India, nor what she has to do with expenditure, but the condition of the men and the progress of the sanitary improvements. You know when we say what a saving there has been, people say where is it? show it me. No doubt you saw this strongly expressed in a leading article of Saturday’s Times (I enclose a copy, which please return). It says ‘‘the army charges never showed any reductions on this account.’’ And this no doubt is tr ue, but should not Sir H. Verney notice this in any letter we draft for him? I enclose a draft I made from yours, before I saw Saturday’s Times. But I own I could not make head or tail on it. Please send your opinion as soon as possible. Source: Two letters, University of Illinois at Chicago, Midwest Nursing History Resource Center, Nos. 7 and 8

11 March 1880 My dear Sir [Henry Fawcett] The consensus of the newspapers about the ‘‘flourishing state of the Indian finances’’ is incomprehensible. Therefore I venture to appeal to you. What makes them ‘‘flourishing’’? Does it come out of the people’s stomachs? What is the improvement due to? Opium and cheese parings? Last year the government made a merit of submitting to your motion for ‘‘retrenchment’’ and economy. ‘‘See how we follow the popular voice: we go further even than it calls,’’ they said. See now what has been their retrenchment. They have cut down the public works, all that constitutes the welfare of the people who have no voice. ‘‘Hit him hard, he’s no friends’’ doomed hundreds of thousands to semi—verysemi—star vation from being turned out of work. They have clapped on for the war expenditure. What? something like 5 millions? I refer to the figures in the Times of Sir John Strachey’s budget. ‘‘Calcutta 24 Februar y. The war expenses in 1878-79 amounted to £676,000, in 1879-80 £3,216,000, in 1880-81 £2,090,000.’’ ‘‘After setting off the increased railway and telegraph revenue the total net war expenditure to the end of 1880-81 is estimated at £5,750,000.’’ ‘‘Calcutta 29 Februar y. The budget estimates for the coming year: The estimated expenditure includes excess of military charges £4,360,000, of which £2,690,000 is for military operations proper and £2,270,000 for frontier railways.’’

158 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The interest is so keen in your coming discussion on the budget that I venture to trouble you. I am not here dwelling upon the cutting down of useful, rather essential, public works expenditure, because all, all in India, from the viceroy, governors, lieutenant governors, down through all the officials who know anything about the people, deplore it as lamentable. But I would gladly ask your permission to mention a few only of the type, cheese parings which come to the knowledge of an Indian drudge alone, like me. Is it not impossible, in a country like India, to separate the social from the finance question? for two reasons: 1. In England finance is governed by Parliamentary majorities, therefore by social majorities. In India social questions do not govern the political or finance question in the least, simply because the enormous bulk of the millions, the agricultural millions, have no voice. 2. Social questions are further let to take care of themselves in India—or rather they never rise to the dignity of questions. In England there is an immense social world of influence quite apart from the small political world of the Cabinet and Parliament. And this can more or less manage its own affairs, thank God. There is a vast world of mercantile, upper and middle, and professional classes and the press—and the public—who treat their social questions apart from the political and administrative machinery. In India there is nothing of the kind. If the ‘‘social questions’’ are not treated by the financial and political authorities, they are not treated at all. There is no society to treat ‘‘social’’ questions. There is no world with a voice outside the infinitesimally small official despotic world. There is no free press (in any sense like the English press). There is no public. In India, wholly unlike England, financial questions are at once kept wholly apart from social questions and at the same time there are no social questions apart from financial ones, i.e., there are no social agencies apart from political ones. Yet political agencies are wholly ungoverned by social interests. Some will call this a paradox and some a truism. But is it not true? In India there is, alike, no world to treat its social questions for itself and no world to influence the treatment of social questions by the political world, whereas in England the social world exercises both functions. However, I can better explain—having no gifts for exposition—by instances. And India being an agricultural country, my type instances should be agricultural.

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In the sole Agricultural College and Model Farm (worth the name) in all India, and to which enterprising students come from very distant parts in other presidencies—come purely with the view of obtaining a professional knowledge of agriculture, not to recommend themselves to government employment, the bane of India—many such students have spent in travelling, in classes, dress, board and lodging, ten times the sum that any could possibly earn in the shape of prizes or scholarships. But referring to scholarships, government, in cutting down expenses (by order), have reduced the number of scholarships from fifteen to five in a division. The result is the saving of a few hundred rupees (under £100 a year) annually and the removal of an encouragement which in England is afforded to all students under technical education, whether in the Science and Art Departments of Kensington or elsewhere. The expenses of students at the Agricultural College in India in question from distant parts are great and the 10 Rs. a month that might be earned by gaining a scholarship did something to lessen that cost. No promises of appointments either are held out to students as is done in engineering and medical colleges. Now, if this were a class for astronomy instead of agriculture, it would matter nothing. Or if India were a rich country like England, it would matter nothing. Rich people or societies would put students to the Agricultural College. But it matters very much under the circumstances of India. And that is why we cannot separate the social from the financial side, can we? If you but knew the letters which reach me from India: ‘‘The policy appears to be to put every possible hindrance in our way.’’ (And all for £100 a year!) The revenue officials—this is what is believed—know well that, when the agricultural population is better educated and trained, they will not be content as things now are, they will demand new roads, irrigation works, tree planting, drainage, etc., to be carried out with some of the £20,000,000 that is yearly drawn from agriculture. They prefer (this is what is believed) ignorance to intelligence as a rule: the ignorant ryot gives no trouble; he submits to the village headman; better educated men would worry the English officials to have irrigation works, or roads, or repairs, or new appliances, etc. It is so common to say: ‘‘Oh the ryots don’t care about irrigation, they won’t take the water if we give it.’’ We give them no practical instruction. If we did, they would call out for irrigation most inconveniently loud to us. Please God they may yet! Just let them come to know what Mr Caird121 tells us, viz., 121 Sir James Caird (1816-92), English representative on the Famine Commission.

160 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India that Egyptian cotton, which is a ‘‘wet’’ crop, is from six to twelve times the value of Indian cotton which is a ‘‘dr y’’ crop. Lord Hartington’s122 allusion to Indian ‘‘public’’ works in his address of this morning warms my heart. If this is electioneering, then may God bless electioneering! But it is a proof that Englishmen will not long deny India justice, when such a topic can find place in an address to constituents by the leader of the Opposition at a general election. To return to agricultural model farms: in Ireland a large number of students are educated and boarded and lodged at the agricultural schools and colleges almost entirely at the expense of the state. But in India not only has the small encouragement we were able to afford to deser ving students been greatly restricted, but the buildings, promised over and over again, for carrying on the educational work have been again, for cost reasons, left and not yet begun. Under such treatment can it be expected that the better class of natives will join an institution? Yet of what incalculable importance is it to encourage agricultural enterprise in India? of what incalculable importance that landlords’ estates should be centres and nuclei of improvement, examples to peasant proprietors! It would not signify if these were classes for English poetry. It signifies more, I believe, than anything you can conceive—and is more (justly) commented upon—that drawing £20 millions a year from the land (‘‘land revenue’’), government does little or nothing for agriculture. Is it any answer to say to this that finance cannot deal with ‘‘social’’ questions? Finance in India is agriculture and agriculture is the ‘‘social question.’’ Finance is the ‘‘social question.’’ A single show of our Royal Agricultural Society here costs more than government spends over all India in efforts at agricultural reform, and in Great Britain there are hundreds of agricultural shows, local and countr y, there being in England the ‘‘social’’ world, the public, besides government, which there is not in India. The allowance for the Kew Gardens is larger than the whole sum allowed for agricultural shows, farms, colleges, etc., in British India. I wish Kew were India or India Kew. But the government says: India is poor, therefore she shall be poor. And from her that hath little shall be taken away even that which she hath.123 122 Spencer Compton Cavendish (1833-1908), marquess of Hartington, from 1891 duke of Devonshire, secretar y of state for India 1880-85. He held many high positions and refused the office of prime minister three times. 123 A paraphrase of Matt 13:12.

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Yet I have known young men actually cross India to learn manures, rotation of crops, etc., at this one and much tried Agricultural College, knowing that they can only learn these from European-trained men. All the best men of its first class of trained students (the only class yet trained) have got employment at fair salaries. Unfortunately the natives of India are to the Government of India—in one sense, that of dependence—a great deal too much like soldiers to military authorities. And ‘‘retrenchment’’ in India has been far too like a commissariat retrenching its bakeries, reading rooms left intact and ordnance and arms increased. Here is another small project—concerning a countr y only two and a half times the size of England, and of which the capital is the first town in the empire after London—a project carefully matured and zealously advocated by its government. Its remarkable, though not first, object was to make practical agricultural knowledge an essential not only for the native revenue and other officers, but also for the village headmen and village accountants, in an empire where almost all is agriculture. It is almost impossible to calculate the reform which might gradually have been worked, could this scheme have been set agoing and thoroughly carried out. It comprised the opening of six high school classes in agriculture, two of which were to be in that province which sent students to an agricultural college, exactly on the other side [of] the Indian empire: such is its thirst for knowledge in scientific agriculture, the teachers of which, it knows, must have been trained in Europe. It comprised the taking of an university degree in scientific agriculture after a three years’ course, including practical out-of-doors farming instruction. It comprised the taking of ‘‘school certificates’’ for proficiency in agriculture after a two years’ course and of ‘‘college certificates’’ after a further two years’ course. Land was provided for the ‘‘outdoor curriculum’’ for a vernacular class in the middle schools, for each of the high school agricultural classes, for the university degree course. Now it can scarcely be said that this bears any comparison at all in its supreme importance (India being an agricultural country) with any other college in India’s world—not with law, not with English literature, scarcely even with medicine and engineering. Let us live first, afterwards we will doctor and engineer ourselves. Yet this scheme was disapproved by the secretar y of state [Lord Hartington]; he objected to the cost which was considerably under £1000 a year for the whole presidency, 21⁄2 times larger than England. It was as if the

162 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India whole trade and commerce of Great Britain had (unhappily) depended on government—government drawing from it the bulk of its revenue. And as if government had refused a petty £1000 a year to give the first elements of progress in it, for the livelihood of the poor, for the instruction of the officials in whose hands is the livelihood of the poor and for the indication to those poor of the methods by which they might make themselves rich and to the few rich of the methods by which they might profitably invest capital and show enterprise in the way in which we pretend that we wish, of all others, capital should be invested. It is a sine qua non that village headmen and ‘‘village accountants’’ in India should have to ‘‘pass’’ in agriculture; it is a ‘‘reductio ad absurdum’’ that they should not. All this was negatived for £1000 a year and under. We are often told (and most truly told) that we cannot judge for India here. But here was a scheme carefully matured and zealously urged by a government in India and a governor who is the man of greatest (living) experience now in India [Lord Lytton]. And we negative it at home for the saving of a paltry sum which there is many a society in England would have been thankful to give and many a rich man in England who would never have missed. Indians may indeed truly say: ‘‘We do not care for them.’’ And— not truly but naturally—they infer, as said before, that we prefer to keep them ignorant and poor, that they may not give us trouble. I have given only two instances of this horrible petty cheese paring in order to appear to be following out the ‘‘House of Commons’’ ‘‘cr y for economy’’ while adding £5,000,000 to military expenditures. Few know as you do, few labour as you do, knowing what that is for India, where the five millions pounds have literally to be made up out of the ‘‘coarse grain’’ of the poor, the daily food of the people. And the Government of India is ostentatiously declaring, as if Sir John Strachey were a Cavour,124 or Lord Lytton a V. Emmanuel,125 that ‘‘India farà da se’’ [India will do it on its own]. Therefore I wish your discussion ‘‘Godspeed’’ from the very bottom of my heart. But I have plunged into a subject of which there are whole branches in which only Anglo-Indians of great experience—the race is dying

124 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-61), early leader in the Italian independence movement. 125 Victor Emmanuel II (1820-78), king of Sardinia 1849, then king of Italy 1861.

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out—can instruct us. One is the tendency of native India to pass the most admirable examinations in what they know nothing at all about. Another is that scientific agriculture does not as yet exist in the agricultural empire called India. A third is that neither do any landlords make their estates centres and examples of agricultural improvement, nor do we, the government, upon whom all depends, make the least effort to encourage them to do so. Rather we may say we prevent their doing so. (It is well known that, in India, what the natives think the government does not care for, they will not care for themselves.) 1. and 2. Scientific husbandry does not exist in India; the science has not yet been solidly founded on experiment and induction; axioms of agricultural science there are, supposed to be generally applicable, such as men might learn and reproduce who never saw a field of tobacco or sugar cane or indigo or rice or cotton. (Please remember what we know about the inferiority of Indian cotton.) The basis of agricultural knowledge is laid in about two corners— literally corners—of an empire nearly the size of Europe and with 200 millions of people. And meanwhile we are told, on authority which cannot be successfully challenged that the soil of India is becoming more exhausted every year. If courses of speculative agricultural instr uction are opened and government insists on the tehsildars [minor officials in charge of collections], mamlatdars [native district magistrates] and revenue and other officers frequenting these classes and ‘‘passing’’ in this science, any number will do so and pass the most admirable examinations and write papers in the most ‘‘luxuriant phraseology.’’ And some good might thus be done by leading to a more intelligent local study and observation of the popular agriculture and to the dissemination of some ideas. Government does sanction—at least it has just sanctioned and made compulsor y—an agricultural primer, a sanitar y primer. And the latter is to be a subject in all government scholarship examinations. The results will be that both schoolmaster and children will learn the primer beautifully by rote, and neither the one nor the other have the least idea of applying either the one or the other to ‘‘my father’s land,’’ or ‘‘my father’s house, water supply, drainage, etc.’’ Without the palpable exhibition of practical results in local model and experimental farms—deliberately ascertaining the various methods of rotations, manures, etc., that can be profitably adopted—the new productions that can be usefully introduced—the new or improved machines that can be economically employed—the improvements

164 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India practicable in the breeds of sheep and cattle—the result will be next to nothing. N.B. On a very small scale, of course, an outdoor curriculum was provided in the (£1000 a year) scheme which was negatived. Show all these things on the ground, open shops and sales, institute shows and exhibitions. And the result would be astounding. You who are going to give us improved water supply in London will think of water supplies in India. With regard to the sanitary primer, then, unless the students can be taken to the ground (as Dr Acland does in Oxfordshire and [Edward] Buck with his students, as we do with our district nurses in London), unless they can be shown these things on the ground, ‘‘Look on this village and on that’’; this village has a stupid headman, it is a model of bad water, bad air, dirt and dirt diseases; that [village] has a selected headman, it is a model of cleanliness, good water, good air; cholera and fever never touch it. And if the children of headmen, the future headmen, could in this way be instructed, it is not exaggerating to say that it would be the saving of millions, for Hindus are always either under fever or the consequences of fever, just as famine lasts in the constitutions of the living for years after the dead have been counted. 3. You know by Mr [Lalmohun] Ghose,126 that Bengali, who was merely a paid agent of the zemindars, who came to England to cry up the Permanent Settlement and meetings were got up for him both in London and Birmingham, and even Mr Bright127 spoke for him. He, Ghose, made a (or perhaps it was his dress) a great impression here. (That is the misery in England: our ignorance. We think we are listening to a representative of the people of India, we are listening only to an attorney of the zemindars.) But, you know, by these Bengal zemindars and by the writings of the Poona Sar vajanik Sabha (national association), which again pretend to represent the people and merely represent the moneylenders, officials and a few effete Maratha landlords, what a stir is being made in Bombay as well as Bengal to further ‘‘Permanent Settlements’’ in favour of landlords. But when they write to me, I venture to answer back and tell them that the estates of gentlemen-landlords ought to be centres and models

126 Lalmohun Ghose (1849-1909), lawyer, lobbied 1879 in England for the repeal of the Vernacular Press Act. Unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Deptford. Later he became president of the Indian National Congress. 127 John Bright (1811-89), Liberal mp, Cabinet minister under Gladstone, member of the British India Society.

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of improvements, examples to the peasant proprietors and that it should be their aim to prove that a peasant is better off as the tenant of an improving and intelligent landlord than as a proprietor who has to stand by himself. You know it is just the contrary. The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, a very power ful association, urge upon our government that there are so few gentlemen landlords in Western India that most of the land is held direct from government by the cultivators, and that this is the reason of agricultural backwardness, poverty, etc. You know that the gentlemen landlords do do nothing for the soil or for improvement. All that is done is done by the tenant, cultivator or peasant. What the Poona S. Sabha urge is a measure like the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, creating a landlord class, handing over to them half existing rents and all future increments of rent and making all the peasantr y their tenants. (‘‘Set the example, show us the improving landlords,’’ I venture to say.) (I trust the House of Commons will never listen to this scheme.) But what do the government do to inform, reform, inspire with knowledge and practice of agricultural improvements either landlord, peasant or revenue official, native or European? They themselves say that we would rather they were ignorant. And in the meantime the soil is deteriorating year by year. And our remedy is English law!! The only fault in our plans for India is that we leave out the people. The financial question is India without the Indians. I have written far more than I ought. But your questions are so keenly interesting I venture to say my say. The government says that India must bear the cost of the war because otherwise the Government of India would be ‘‘so reckless in making war.’’ It is much nearer the truth to say that England must bear the cost of the war, because England has been ‘‘so reckless in making’’ India’s war. With many apologies, pray believe me, my dear Sir, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale 17 April 1880 Thank you for your brief note about the letter of deplorable length, with which I troubled you, upon certain matters of Indian finance just before the elections. I did not expect that you could attend to these matters then. But the time for taking some steps about the ryots appears to have come. The zemindars have sent an agent over to plead nominally the cause of the people of India. But this means of course of the zemindars of Bengal. It is curious and strange how this

166 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India man has the ear of what are called the radicals here. The alliance between Liberals and zemindars must rest on the most wonderful misconception on our parts. It is a question now by what means we can best uphold the rayats (r yots), is it not? Is not their unrepresented and defenceless state the great point? The glorious spirit of the Liberal elections, in which the defeats may have been as great a success as the victories—principle versus beer— shows that England is again herself, twice herself. Mr Rathbone writes: ‘‘It is sufficiently glorious for me to have been even among the slain in such a fight.’’ This uprising of the English people for freedom and justice for themselves and for freedom and right to be promoted by England throughout the world is so solemn and the consequences so momentous, for Europe as for England, and for India too, that one asks: Has there been any greater crisis since the Commonwealth? We have Mr Gladstone as a sort of Cromwell—mutatis mutandis. Can we foresee much more what the march of things will be than they could when they had got rid of the king? Twelve years hence, shall you see the restoration of a charter? and then look forward, not much more than twice that time ahead, to the ‘‘Glorious Revolution’’?128 Could but Milton and Lord Lawrence have looked forward! O that men, administrative men may rise to the height and width and fullness and greatness of this time! And we must never forget that in no ministr y have Indian questions been so systematically ignored or shunted as in Mr Gladstone’s. Somebody prayed for only ‘‘one pulse’s beat’’ of omniscience; O for only ‘‘one pulse’s beat’’ (say I) of Mr Gladstone as chancellor of the Exchequer for India! (If a verse of ‘‘God save the Queen’’ could be given to India, it would make how great a difference in the national feeling for India.) Yet it is the logical consequence of empress!129

128 Charles I was beheaded in 1649. The Civil War (1642-52) was followed by a Puritan government under Cromwell, lord protector of the Commonwealth. Monarchy was re-established after Cromwell’s death in 1659. The ‘‘Glorious Revolution’’ of 1688-89 succeeded in sending James II into exile and in bringing in constitutional restraints on the monarch. 129 Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India 1 January 1877, a decision of the Conservative government of Disraeli.

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You will soon be immersed in business. Might I pray, not that you will reread my letter on some points of Indian finance, but that these points may receive a far wider attention than I could possibly draw in a letter at your hands. And if I might be commissioned to procure any information for you from India, I should be only too highly honoured. Take it for what it is worth. Pray believe me, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale In India must we ever forget that we cannot attain the people’s good without the people? This seems a paradox but Indian finance is always attempting it, is it not? F.N. Editor: Fawcett’s speech of 22 May 1879 (see p 153 above) offered Nightingale a fresh opportunity to write to Gladstone, and once again attempt to recr uit him as a collaborator in the India work, as well as to plead for larger investment in public works. Gladstone had been a close friend of Sidney Herbert, and had met Nightingale through him. Most of Nightingale’s cor respondence with Gladstone is found in Society and Politics (5:427-76). It began in August 1861, when she sent him information on Sidney Herbert, who had just died, after Gladstone had requested her to provide him with details of Herbert’s career to be used in a possible eulogy (5:429-34). In that letter she encouraged Gladstone to bring Herbert’s War Office reforms to completion, but he was reluctant to promote departmental reforms from his position at the Treasur y. In 1862 (5:437-39) she expressed her opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts to him, which imposed police regulation on prostitutes in order to reduce the cases of syphilis in the Army and Navy. Gladstone was, again, reluctant to intervene and remained evasive. The acts were passed. Nightingale’s opposition to them, and her work for their repeal, are covered in Women (8:411-515). However, in 1863 (5:435-36), she asked Gladstone to support the nomination of Lord de Grey (later Lord Ripon) as secretar y of state for war and he apparently did not oppose the nomination. In 1864 Nightingale sent Gladstone her ‘‘pamphlet,’’ presumably ‘‘How People May Live and Not Die in India,’’ calling on his compassion to help improve the conditions of the Indian Army, and drawing upon his esteem for Sidney Herbert and John Lawrence (whom she called the ‘‘hero’’ she was proud to call her ‘‘noble friend’’) (5:440-41). Gladstone evidently replied, although the letter is not extant, but it

168 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India seems he got some things wrong, which needed correcting, about soldiers’ lives. Nightingale pursued her case, still confined to the condition of soldiers in India, explaining what was wrong with the current life and diet of soldiers. ‘‘We hope to put an end to this and to make the soldier in India a self-acting and thinking being, make him help himself, as John Lawrence himself wrote to me—give him back his state of activity and even more than he has at home’’ (5:441). When famines hit India in 1876-79, Nightingale made a more concerted attempt to gain Gladstone’s support. In fact, 1879 marks the high point of her relationship with him, and the major topic of their correspondence was India. He paid her two visits. She wrote numerous letters to him (5:442-65), extensively correcting his statements on deaths due to famine, deploring the stoppage of government works she saw as a disaster for ‘‘one hundred thousand labourers’’ and ‘‘making recover y from famine impossible,’’ outlining concrete measures in aid of the suffering Indians and proposing an ‘‘Indian Agricultural National Bank,’’ a new social institution, which she believed Indian nationals were as capable to manage as they were to run their own economy (5:451-52). On John Lawrence’s death in 1879 Nightingale again took the occasion to approach Gladstone. He had attended Lawrence’s funeral. She wrote offering to relate ‘‘the story of his last days . . . from one who has been privileged to know and serve with two such men as Sidney Herbert and John Lawrence—ver y different but alike in the ‘one thing needful’ ’’130 (5:459-62). Whatever reaction to her pleading she might have received from Gladstone, however, Nightingale felt disappointed in his government. ‘‘We must never forget,’’ she declared in 1880, ‘‘that under no government have Indian questions been so systematically ignored as under Mr Gladstone’s’’ (5:465). Yet she was still hopeful and could write in the same year: ‘‘I am appalled to hear that Mr Gladstone may not be in the new ministry. I can’t believe it. A ministry without Gladstone is like an engine without steam. O that he could be chancellor of the Exchequer, for but one year, for India.’’131

130 An allusion to Luke 10:42. 131 Society and Politics 5:474.

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In a letter written 4 December 1884, Nightingale expressed her regret at having missed his call the day before, eager as she was ‘‘to hear a word from you on India and Lord Ripon’s policy.’’ She then went into precisely those topics: the Bengal Rent Law Bill, land tenure problems in Oudh, Bombay Land Revenue, land banks, Local SelfGovernment Acts, elementary education, questions of the civil service, encouragement of native arts and industries, promotion of Indian nationals, and so on. In short, she related the major concerns of her India work. ‘‘Did not our hearts bound within us132 when we saw Mr Gladstone’s Liberal principles applied by Lord Ripon’s honesty, mutatis mutandis, on this the grandest theatre of the world?’’ (5:469). Thus the correspondence ended on a positive note of shared concerns. We reproduce here only one letter, of which only a draft was published in Health in India. Its context was provided by Fawcett’s resolutions and its content covers most of the issues referred to in the present section. Source: Letter, Add Mss 44460 ff90-97, draft letter in Society and Politics (5:455-59)

10 South Street Park Lane, W. 28 May 1879 India. Privat e . My dear Sir [W.E. Gladstone] I remember your words that the day of India must come even through the very means taken to increase her burdens and to ‘‘poison’’ our minds. I pray that it may and believe that it has come. But it may be a dreadful day. You see however that you and Mr Fawcett have not only convinced the House: you have convinced the government also. Why were they not convinced before? In Bombay the reins of government seem almost to have fallen out of their hands (as in Russia). When we have taken them up again, God grant we may have learnt our new lesson! We have a new language to learn, a new alphabet even to make, to write and to speak about India. But Sir R. Temple himself admits dire distress in the Deccan. This burning down the government offices in the Bombay (country) capi-

132 A paraphrase of Luke 24:32.

170 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tal, Pune, and the manifesto, which the armed gangs sent to government, have lighted up with an awful light our broken promises to the poor indebted people who rose four years ago against the oppressions of the moneylenders. We promised to redress their grievances and we have done nothing—nothing but report and lay fresh ones now on. Those who knew prophesied that when the public works, essential to employ the people now in this second scarcity, were stopped and there is no work, no natural work, to be had before July or August, the people would squat before their huts, then they would steal a little, then they would join the armed gangs and those who were unsuccessful as robbers would starve and come upon famine relief. So the last state would be worse and more costly than the first.133 It was prophesied by those who knew that, if this were done, the ground-down people would rise at last. And this much enduring, patient Maratha peasantry have risen at last—twice: this is the second time. It is now prophesied by those who know that, should there be another sepoy mutiny (and there will be, I suppose), the Maratha peasantr y, formerly our staunch friends, will join it to a man. This is prophesied. May it not be so. May we learn in time. As for Mr Fawcett’s debate, it is only adjourned. I rejoice with ‘‘silent delight.’’ I mean to live till 12 June to read your speech. Might not ‘‘Home’’ charges, might not military expenditure be cut down much more than Mr Stanhope134 says? Sir R. Airey135—Lord Airey, I mean—will not do much for us, if he is president of the commission for the Indian Army. O that Sidney Herbert were here now. I bear in mind what you said, that Mr Fawcett’s motion will be the prelude to much greater things—retrenchment but retrenchment to spend more wisely and more well. Meantime the accounts from the east and from the west, from the North and from the South of India are terrible. It is a dreadful day that is come. In the East one fifth of the whole cultivated land of Madras was let out of cultivation in 1877-78. What would it be if one fifth of the corn lands of eastern Europe dropped from poverty out of cultivation? Yet we should not like to be compared to Russia or Austria. In the West of India there are these awful riots, real ‘‘agrarian’’ disturbances, what-

133 A paraphrase of Matt 12:45. 134 Edward Stanhope (1840-93), under secretar y of state for India. 135 Sir Richard Airey (1803-81), quartermaster-general in Crimea, first president of the Army Sanitary Commission.

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ever Sir R. Temple may say at the very seat of government. We are horrified at the communist destruction in Paris. But what is this? Bengal has a terrible year before it. The government has been obliged to shelve for another year an ‘‘Arrears of Rent Realization Bill.’’ Some leaders of the ryots wrote to me, declaring this bill to be in favour of the zemindars, which it was, though it professed, like the ‘‘Greeks,’’ to be ‘‘bringing gifts’’ to the ryots. I dare not take up your time with describing this bill. I have a delightful account from Muzaffarpur (Bihar) where the landlords (zemindars) had by a certain act to go and record in a magistrate’s court the rents they received from their ryots. I need not say that these were generally put down at a much lower figure than the truth. The ryots got wind of this registration (at least some of their leaders did who could read and write). They came trooping in from every part of the district, paid their inspection fee and took certified copies of the rents at which they were said to hold their lands. And not a man has paid a rupee more than that amount from that time. This is the true reform. (This would not have astonished one in Eastern Bengal, where one in five or six of the ryots’ sons learns to read and write. But in Bihar and other parts, where not one in twelve or thirteen of the boy ryots goes to school, it is truly refreshing.) There is some use at last to India from education, after all. But in Bombay it is a mere cruel irony to talk of our educating the peasantry. I saw a despatch from Lord Cranbrook136 br ushing up Bombay about this. And it was time. But what can be done when the people have nothing? It is the moneylenders and our own government that want educating. The schools are shut because the people can’t pay the cess. The people can’t pay the cess because every pie is screwed out of them to pay for the war. (More going to moneylenders), more usur y. A man [Chatfield] high in Bombay wrote to me: To us in India it appears that what is really wanted is more liberal treatment for India in England, e.g., a reduction of the home charges (by economy, by the guarantee of the debt, by a different system of

136 Gathorne Hardy (1814-1906), Lord Cranbrook, then secretar y of state for war; Nightingale’s dealings with this Conservative Cabinet minister of workhouse infirmaries are in Public Health Care (6:357-58 and 399-402).

172 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India militar y ser vice and by less interference with the government in India). More liberal treatment would enable the government here to carry out a system of public works and to complete the half measures taken for the education (in a wide sense) of the people. At present these half measures are probably nearly as costly as whole measures would be, because there is a permanent staff which could do much more work and because of the waste of capital which results from the slow growth of large undertakings.

The licence tax, worse than any income tax, is screwed out of them, not to pay for famine but to pay for war (more going to moneylenders). To pay it the wicked salt tax is raised 40 percent and just in this famine time. (Lord Lawrence says that this salt tax grinds down the people, weakens the cattle and strangles manufactures.) More would be so, and it has been so. O poor indebted Deccan peasantry, can nothing be done for this fine people? It does not signify whether an assessment is light or heavy, for they have nothing. They are obliged to go to the moneylenders to pay it. That makes them slaves. But such were the exigencies of the Government of India that, whereas the ‘‘remissions’’ were enormous, and necessarily so, in Madras, in Bombay the government boasted that it would make no ‘‘remissions,’’ only ‘‘suspensions,’’ and would finally collect nearly all the revenue. And it has done so. An official writing to me from the east of India says of the Famine Commission: ‘‘These are the men who, with one or two exceptions, are directly responsible (for the poverty and famine) because they have reported for years that ‘the country was flourishing’ and ‘the people prosperous.’ They ought to be on their trial instead of being the judges.’’ Thank you for introducing me to the Chronicles of Budgepore. I got it and read it at once. It is too true. But I have to acknowledge very humbly a stupid blunder. I fancied you were speaking of the Chronicles of Dustypore.137 This gives me the pleasure of asking your pardon, but the duty also of repeating the warning. Mr Justice Cunningham, one of the famine commissioners, the author of this, was a ver y good man, like Mr Prichard, but is now ‘‘enguirlandé’’ [sermonized] by the viceroy. O that we had an Indian Dickens or a Daily News (Bulgarian)

137 The former by Henry Stewart Cunningham, Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society, 1877, the latter by Iltudus Thomas Prichard, The Chronicles of Budgepore; or, Sketches of Life in Upper India, 1875.

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correspondent in India! But an Indian Dickens would be hung in a fortnight. And an English ‘‘correspondent’’ would not know the languages. The Times correspondent, or rather general of the Times correspondents, General Vaughan,138 now at Gandamak, denies in private letters—on the faith of what he sees in his railway journeys—all the poverty and says: ‘‘India is quite well off. And it is quite a mistake to say the contrary.’’!! Once more, pardon me and believe me, ever your devoted servant Florence Nightingale

The Native Army Hospital Corps Editor: Not until 1881 did a governor general, Lord Ripon, act on a recommendation of the royal commission to institute a system of trained orderlies for the care of soldiers in hospital, to end the traditional practice of having a friend assigned to help the sick man. Nightingale responded enthusiastically to news of this ‘‘wise and beneficent measure’’ (see p 177 below). She consulted Douglas Galton and Dr Sutherland, as usual, before giving her advice on it, raising such pertinent issues as ‘‘Who is to train the trainers?’’ (see p 181 below). Source: From a letter to George Evatt,139 International Museum of Surgical Science M1957.395.1-2

8 Febr uary 1881 I am greatly indebted to you for your note of 2 Februar y and its enclosure, your ‘‘Notes on a Native Army Hospital Corps for India.’’ Your first note of 15 December spoke of your wish to ‘‘give’’ me ‘‘some particulars as to the actual condition’’ of the ‘‘nursing’’ ‘‘for the European soldier when sick,’’ and I own that I was in hopes that your communication would be on the actual facts of the present state of the nursing. . . . Even the Section 2 on ‘‘The existing condition’’ gives no facts as to the patients, what they want and don’t have, what you have obser ved as to actual neglects, and the sufferings, slow recoveries, or

138 John Luther Vaughan (1820-1911), CB, Bengal Staff Corps. 139 George Joseph Hamilton Evatt (d. 1921), later Sir, cor respondent and visitor, surgeon major, member of the Army Medical Service 1865, involved in the Afghan War 1878-80; he drew up a scheme for the Army Nursing Service Reserve.

174 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India no recoveries, and death caused by such total absence of nursing. You will pardon me for observing that it would be quite impossible to arouse the interest necessary to get anything done without making out a detailed case (which I know to be a very strong one) of the evils the patients suffer, first, with ‘‘chapter and verse’’ of some type cases, their names and dates. In all the inquiries we have made as to the sanitary state of the army, etc., and they have been many, we have made out our case first and then, and not till then, have followed our recommendations. I know no other way to secure attention. If you could kindly send me some of the numerous facts which must have fallen under your experienced observation about sick and wounded men in hospital, I would go over these and then claim your kind offer of a visit. It is difficult enough to arouse attention at any time, but without such facts it is impossible. I feel as if I could scarcely undertake anything more without doing injustice to the two pressing duties I have undertaken already. For I am always overworked and I am entirely a prisoner to my room from illness. But if you could kindly ‘‘start’’ me with some facts in writing, I would then try to appoint some afternoon that would be convenient to you to hear more. ever your and the sick’s faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter and its draft to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff158-65, draft Add Mss 45778 ff75-81

14 April 1881 Private. Confidential. Native Army Hospital Corps. May I venture to recall to your kind remembrance one Florence Nightingale, and to ask you a favour for ‘‘auld lang syne’’ at the War Office? With joy I have heard of your measure, so much needed, viz., the creation of a Native Army Hospital Corps. The wants of the present system, or no system, of hospital attendance in the Indian Army were so enormous, the name even of nursing was such a farce, the ward coolies, who are the nurses at 4 rupees a month and are not even enlisted—any day they may desert and do always desert in time of war—seem to be there merely to be ‘‘kicked’’ by the European soldier, who, if rebuked, says and says truly, ‘‘he didn’t know who the native was.’’ For they wear no uniform and cannot be recognized in the bazaar, if absent there, as they always are. Then there is the mehter, or sweeper, of a yet lower caste, who, sweeper as he is, does all the most necessary work about the sick sol-

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dier. Alike, ward coolie or sweeper, they are, of course, utterly untrained. There is absolutely no supervision of these nurses: the Indian hospital is forsaken when the medical officer is not there. You hear, ‘‘coolie! coolie! coolie!’’ called, but no coolie is there. The ward coolie who washes and nurses the patients is worse paid than the ‘‘shop’’ coolie who washes the bottles. The better paid offices, the ‘‘compounders’’ and the ‘‘dressers’’ (so-called) are all in the dispensar y and none in the wards. The coolie nurse has no one to overlook him. And even when in the wards, he seems to be there only to be gentle and to be bullied by the patients, whom he is to nurse. This is the real state of things in a military hospital in India in time of peace. It is not known to inspection, because, when the hospital is inspected, of course it is not there. Then everything is in order and prepared to be inspected (and praised), but the best medical officers are those who knew most of it and who most anxiously looked out for a remedy. The British Army in India is the worst nursed of any army in the world, if indeed it can be said to be nursed at all. This is the state of things where there are few and ordinar y sick. When a patient is dangerously ill, a regimental comrade is sent for to nurse him—the old system condemned by Sidney Herbert at home, twenty years ago, of taking an untrained comrade from the ranks to nurse the worst cases, and still more to be deplored in India where there is the aggravation of the language. The regimental comrade nurses the patient by beating the ward coolie, who does not understand him and who, says the Briton, ‘‘ought to understand.’’ In India it is often a matter of life or death if a man can be attended within an hour of his first seizure. The (so-called) ‘‘Subordinate Medical Department’’ is supposed to be always there at the hospitals for this purpose. But a man may go to the hospital sick and knock and there be no one to open to him140 and a life be lost in consequence. Such is the lack of regular organization that the hospital may be shut up with none but patients in it. This is the state of things with a native crowd of untrained, unenlisted hospital servants (supplemented by a regimental comrade) in ordinar y times, some sixty to a regimental hospital, perhaps six times that number to, say, 130 or 150 patients in non-ordinar y times. In times of cholera and epidemics, what the hospitals become in point of

140 A paraphrase of Matt 7:7.

176 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India nursing can neither be told nor imagined. And yet these poor natives are most sober, most kind, most tender—excellent stuff for nurses if only trained, supervised and organized, of all of which there is at present not even the shadow, much less the substance. The medical officer has to do all the ward nursing, if it is to be done at all. And upon whether it is done depends the patient’s life. In time of war it is yet worse (especially in the recent campaign). Then the natives desert en masse. Then hospital servants—one can’t call them nurses—are not to be had at all. And the medical officer has had to ‘‘scramble’’ his dooly bearers into nurses, thus improvising attendance on the sick at the critical time when anything improvised must be a failure. And the medical officers die of it. These ward coolies or nurses may be children of ten, old men of eighty, cripples, blind, anyone, in short, who will come for 4 rupees a month. No other inducement is given: no promotion, no reward, no good conduct pay, no increase of pay for long service, no ‘‘camp equipage.’’ The nurses’ shelter is to lie in the bitterest nights under the hospital tent walls to be either roasted or drowned in a cholera camp in the monsoon, having no uniform and not enough pay to feed them, to be perhaps seized for entering their own lines. But it would be too indiscreet to enlarge to you upon these things. In a word: There is no training of native hospital nurses, no ranking, no uniform, no supervision, no responsibility, no selection, no organization and very little pay—of course, no esprit de corps, no interest in one another, no pride in the reputation of their body: there cannot be. There is nothing constituted, nothing that is not haphazard. And this for the most critical and essential of all minor duties, because it has to do with life or death. 2. No steps had been taken to attach the new representatives of the old regimental orderly, viz., trained Army Hospital Corps men, to Indian regiments (providing for the language difficulty). The nursing may well be the worst nursing in any existing army, threatening too often to become no nursing at all. And the cooking is as bad. N.B. For what share of the drinking in our army well and sick in India the bad, untrained cooks are accountable, no one tells, no one knows. But want of digestible food and want of employment are surely the two great incentives to drink. These are the reasons not only for enlisting but yet more for training and for organizing a regular corps of native hospital nurses out of this untrained crowd—sixty for a regimental hospital, but often 600 or 700 for, say, 130-50 sick on the march.

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On what these ward coolies are depends the whole nursing and, more or less, the life of the sick soldier in hospital in India, whether in peace or in war. But in war, for which the soldier exists, we might, as things were, be left without any—either nurses or untrained coolies. All this was pointed out before the Royal Commission on the Sanitar y State of the Army in India (Sidney Herbert’s, afterwards Lord Stanley’s). And they recommended . . . : 1. Training of hospital attendants; 2. European hospital orderlies; 3. Female nurses at large station hospitals; 4. Properly trained cooks. But no one has taken it up but you. You have come to India. It has been left to you to save them from all this misery. All this will now be altered by your truly wise and beneficent measure. And the favour I have now to ask is whether you will be so very good as to let me see, if I may, what are to be the fur ther ar rangements and particulars of your new Army Hospital Corps; I mean, the details of the system, perhaps a copy of the Regulations, but especially, if possible, what is the proposed system of ward training, what the organization, what the supervision—if I may be so venturesome as thus to trouble you. It seems like a godsend that you should have taken up this mean, though large and important and difficult subject to work out—difficult, pre-eminently in India, because of caste. One thing, indeed many things, may be said for the poor mehters: they are invariably sober, they are physically strong, they and the Chumars [untouchables], from whom the ward coolies, cooks and dressers, etc., are taken, are gentle and tender, often do devoted but ignorant service in time of cholera. The material is good, but unorganized, untrained material is like bricks unbuilt or indeed bricks unburnt. May God speed your great, your immense, work in India, over 200 millions of our fellow creatures. May its immensity be your opportunity. I cannot say what I feel about this. All England is with you, but none so much as, dear Lord Ripon, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale 14 April 1881 . . . The nursing is the worst nursing in any existing army [and] threatens often to become no nursing at all. The cooking is as bad. But all this will now be altered by your beneficent measure. Might I ask you to be so very good as to send me the further arrangements and particulars

178 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of your new Army Hospital Corps? I mean the details of the system, perhaps a copy of the regulations, but especially what is the proposed system of ward training? what the organization? what the supervision? if I may be so daring as to trouble you with this. May I remind you of recommendations 26, 27, 28 of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India, of which Sidney Herbert first and Lord Stanley (Lord Derby) next was the head, and which reported in 1863: That trained hospital attendants be introduced into all hospitals in India; female nurses at large station hospitals; European hospital orderlies ‘‘to provide personal attendance for the sick’’; x x hospitals to be supplied with properly trained cooks. Source: From two letters (of the same date) to George Evatt, International Museum of Surgical Science M1957.392 and 393

14 April 1881 Private and Confidential. I cannot thank you enough for all your invaluable information, both by word of mouth and by letter and book post. It will all be most important to me. I hope to write to you further questions upon it or to ask you these questions by word of mouth. One of them will be, is purveying now under the doctors? in India? at home? And what form does it take? Is the purveyor, e.g., a subordinate commissariat officer, under the doctors in India? At home are the purveyors members of the Army Hospital Corps under the medical officers? Another question would be, would you, when you have seen more of militar y hospitals at home, tell me whether you consider that the Army Hospital Corps requires any further training? These are two of the questions which occur to me at once. But all your three papers and above all your viva voce information are immensely interesting. I have been unhappily obliged to delay thanking you. But I have written the letter to India we proposed. 14 April 1881 Private. In reference to our conversation you told me that, as we know, in India it is often a matter of life or death if a man can be attended within an hour of his first seizure. That the ‘‘Subordinate Medical Department’’ (who are Eurasians) are supposed to be always there at the hospitals for this purpose, but that a man may go to the hospital sick and knock, and there be no one to open to him, and a life be lost in consequence; that such is the lack of regular organization that the hospital may be shut up with none but patients in it. But are these medical ‘‘subordinates’’ not to be depended upon to attend at the hos-

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pital to receive the patients? any that may come? And do they not exercise any supervision or care over the ward coolies (nurses) or patients? I mean, in the matter of training and overlooking the nursing? Another question in connection with my asking you—after you have seen the hospitals, to say whether you think any further training necessar y for the orderlies—is, do the medical officers teach and look after the orderlies, in the sense of the current supervision which exists in the best civil hospitals and civil training schools for their female nurses and probationers? Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45765 ff22 and 26-27

20 June 1881 Native Army Hospital Corps in India. I send you Lord Ripon’s answer (which I ought to have done some ten days ago) to the letter which you kindly revised for me on the creation of an Army Hospital Corps of natives in India. You see how kind the answer is, but I had rather he should have distinctly said he would send me the ‘‘Regulations’’ for criticism or the proposed, if any is proposed, plan of training for suggestion, or something of that sort. Please return it to me with your comment. 22 June 1881 6 a.m. Native Army Hospital Corps. Thank you for your criticism, which is ver y just. On rereading by its light Lord Ripon’s letter, it str uck me that it is framed in order to give me the opportunity to write to him again what occurs as suggestions on details, that he expects it (he says ‘‘with your assistance.’’ This is not meant out of civility). What shall I say? (If I do not write, I doubt his sending me ‘‘Regulations’’ when they come out.) What do you say? Source: From a letter to George Evatt, International Museum of Surgical Science M1957.391

24 June 1881 Private. I am much obliged to you for your note and its enclosures. I think I will send you Lord Ripon’s order-in-council (Native Army Hospital Corps). Please return it to me with your criticisms. It relates to the material, not the moral arrangement of the force. No systematic training is and hardly can be compatible. The promotion seems to be intended to be made according to the districts, and each deputy sur-

180 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India geon general of district is to promote on recommendation of medical officer of hospital in which the man is. The system will not be uniform. Nor could it be with district promotion. Training is nowhere suggested. ‘‘Female sweepers’’ are mentioned at p 8. Are ‘‘female sweepers’’ employed in military hospitals in India? I shall hope to be able to avail myself of your kind offer to come and see me in about a fortnight. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45765 ff28-29

16 July 1881 New Native Army Hospital Corps and Village Sanitation. India. Lord Ripon. I have prepared an answer to Lord Ripon with suggestions on the Native Army Hospital Corps, according to your advice. I should like of course to show it you. I am preparing a letter to him on the other subject, village sanitation in India, which we discussed together. This too I should like to show you of course. Shall I send them you? or may I hope to see you soon? or both? Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff150-51

18 July 1881 New Native Army Hospital Corps. Answer to Lord Ripon, six sheets. Enclosed is my reply to Lord Ripon, written as you suggested. Please to look it over very carefully and let me have it back tonight, not cr umpled, with your suggestions, to be shown to Captain Galton, and then you can see it again if you please. Probably it would be better you should. (But I must make the letter ‘‘do’’ as far as I can without copying.) Please look over par ticularly [numbered items]. This is Dr Evatt’s suggestion, in consequence of my telling him how bad and untrained the home Army Hospital Corps is. But criticize generally as severely as you can. I have put in Dr Evatt’s minor suggestions, as you wished. But they seem not exactly things for me to write to the viceroy about. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff166-68 and 174-75, draft Add Mss 45778 ff82-84

28 July 1881 Private and Confidential. New Native Army Hospital Corps. I cannot thank you enough for your kind letter of 12 May accompanied by the orderin-council of 31 January relating to the new Native Army Hospital Corps. Your very great kindness authorizes me to write again and to ask if I might see the Subsidiar y and Departmental Orders, which proba-

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bly have been by this time issued relating to the Instruction of the men. These Regulations—the Standing Orders or internal Corps Regulations for the Organization—would be very important and perhaps you might kindly desire a copy to be sent me. . . . It were easy to state the points on which training is indispensable. But who is to train the trainers? Will not there always be a want of system if there is not a definite central hospital chosen as a school for training these hospital servants? Lucknow or Meerut might, might they not? be good centres, where a central training school for these men might be established—not alas! Calcutta, for in a town like that, the men lose as much in conduct as they gain in learning. Should there not be three or four of such central hospitals for Bengal, such as for instance Lucknow or Kanpur, Meer ut, Umballa or Lahore, or even the dreaded Calcutta, if necessary? One or two for Madras and also for Bombay presidency, such as Pune, Secunderabad, Madras? [Editor: a list of practical proposals follows.] The extreme kindness of your letter seemed to call for an answer. I feel rather scrupulous at having entered into details which after all are mere details. The two principles of real importance about which I have ventured to ask are: (1) central hospitals as training schools for this new Native Army Hospital Corps to teach them to nurse; (2) small backbones of European soldier nurses—also to be trained in India in the central training schools for nursing—to live in the hospitals, to be nurses and to work with the natives actually at the nursing. Might there not be four or six such trained Britons in each hospital, eligible to be promoted as ‘‘warrant officers’’ in their own career of nursing? I have no doubt that, when I see the subsidiary orders or Internal Corps Regulations, if you are so ver y good as to have them sent me, most of these things will be seen to have been anticipated, far better than in any way I could suggest. And may success attend all your undertakings for the good of these 200 millions of our fellow creatures committed to your care. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff194-95

14 April 1882 Private. I received a message of such extreme kindness (through my brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney) from you, saying that you ‘‘owed’’ me ‘‘a letter,’’ that I cannot but venture to thank you for it. And knowing how your time is more than occupied with the most important subjects that can concern 200 millions of people, I venture to ask

182 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India whether (without troubling you to write) you would be so very good as to direct a few lines of information to be written to me as to what has been done concerning the two matters: your creation of the Native Army Hospital Corps, about which you have already favoured me with some correspondence; what has been done about an organized system of training these men at some central hospital or hospitals; and might I see the regulations? Source: From a note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff164-65

27 November 1882 Indian Contingent. Native Portion. Whether there was food and forage for man and horse especially during the first three days, what were the advantages and what the disadvantages in practice of the commissariat and transport arrangements and especially what were the hospital ar rangements? As to medical comfort, food and cooking, transport and tents and most especially as to sanitar y arrangements, were there pioneers to cleanse the ground round the hospitals? How did the new (enlisted) Native Army Hospital Corps act and were all the stores landed with each regiment and separate transport with each regiment and each field hospital?

Changes in and Later Work of the Sanitar y Commissions Editor: From this point on, Nightingale’s correspondence and notes, which deal with various matters of sanitary reform, the work of the Army Sanitar y Commission and later changes in its structure, resume. The subject matter ranges from the need for sewers and drains to improved administrative structures. The prevention of famine and epidemic disease are recurrent concerns. Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5070

11 Februar y 1881 Private. I sent in, last week, to the secretar y of state for India, Lord Hartington, a statement of your services (and your sacrifice), which I had the greatest pleasure in making. And I earnestly hope that you may have the Star of India, as you deserve. I sent my letter by my brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, who has been forty years in the House of Commons on the side of the present government, and has

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stood ten contested elections for them. You may possibly remember his sister, Mrs Cunningham, at Harrow. I should much like to know something about your work at Karachi. Godspeed. In great haste. Source: From three letters to Robert Rawlinson, Boston University 1/6/78, 79 and 80

25 August 1881 I send the reports, as desired, to Dr Sutherland. And pray be so good as to write to me both of you [what] to do on the subject. I have written to Dr Sutherland that I entreat you and him to do the best for Madras that you can by sending me a joint brief, well-considered, distinct recommendation as to what Mr Grant-Duff 141 is to do. Major Tulloch’s report is very full and every time I look at it I think it more admirable than before. But unhappily also it is full of argument, which implies that it has opponents, and that weakens it as an authoritative document to an ignorant man. It would hardly do, would it? simply to give it to Mr Grant-Duff to read. But I depend upon you and Dr Sutherland for sending me here what I ought to communicate to Mr Grant-Duff on the subject. God bless you and God bless poor Madras. 2 September 1881 Thank you very much for all your memoranda, remarks and notes on the Madras sewerage, drainage and water supply schemes, and for Mr Jones’s report. You are kind enough to permit me to ask you any further questions. May I ask whether, notwithstanding your last letter, I may still advise in terms of your minute that Major Tulloch’s plan should be pressed on the attention of the governor of Madras? . . . Your note to me about the surface drainage report appears to set aside the principles on which Tulloch’s scheme rests. The question is an engineering one. And you appear virtually to have decided in favour of the surface scheme. The duke of Buckingham writes a long letter, in answer to my queries, entirely in favour of it, and saying that the Madras sun with evenly high temperature does the work of a disinfector and desiccator,

141 Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff (1829-1906), later Sir, Liberal mp, Parliamentar y under secretar y of state for India 1868-74 and for the colonies 1880-81, governor of Madras 1881-86.

184 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ignoring all about sanitary sewerage of drainage (not mere gutter drainage) and the facts on which it rests. 29 April 1882 You ask me to tell you ‘‘as to what is doing with the sewerage and draining of Madras.’’ I wish I could. I only know that they are doing something different from any of the plans which have been discussed. I thought that your Army Sanitary Commission was kept informed. I have seldom been so grieved and discouraged as at not having been able to give an unanimous opinion and advice from yourselves to Mr Grant-Duff, who was honestly anxious to be advised in this vital subject. I was in hopes that you and Dr Sutherland and Captain Galton came to an unanimous decision on these things whenever submitted to the commission. Source: From three letters to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff159, 160-61 and 166-67

28 June 1882 Privat e. They are going to elect a professor of physiology at Oxford, either Professor Gamgee142 of Edinburgh (brother of the veterinary) or Dr Burdon-Sanderson.143 It is a matter of great importance at Oxford because this professor ought to give sanitar y lectures to the civil service candidates for India. Which is best? Can you recommend a lecturer on sanitar y engineering for the same? Not to make them engineers, but to show the candidates the importance of sanitation for India. 30 June 1882 The following question relates to the civil service candidates for India. Is it better for men to go to India at the ages of twenty and twenty-one or at the ages of twenty-three and twenty-four? As you know, the maximum age at which these young men can enter now as candidates is nineteen years—most enter at seventeen or eighteen. The course is 21⁄2 years. This brings most of them to India under twenty or twenty-one, and the maximum 211⁄2 years old. It is strongly desired now, and Lord Hartington has been sounded upon it (but Dr Andrew Clark refuses to give an opinion) it is strongly desired, in which I take an active

142 Dr Joseph Sampson Gamgee (1828-86), both a doctor and a veterinarian, brother of Joseph Gamgee, veterinarian. 143 John Scott Burdon-Sanderson (1828-1905), first Wayneflete professor of physiology at Oxford, 1882-95.

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part, to make the maximum age for entering twenty years, minimum eighteen, and to make the course three years and four months. This would make for arriving in India maximum age, 231⁄3 years, average 221⁄3. What do you say to this? . . . For the Indian royal sanitary commission, we had an ample discussion as to best age for arriving in India for acclimatization, etc., as I need not remind you. 5 Januar y 1883 Strictly Confidential. In the strictest confidence I send you Dr Marston’s144 evidence before the committee of inquiry [on Army Hospital Corps]. Please read particularly those parts which refer to his sanitary duties (a little bit of bread to an ‘‘intolerable deal of sack’’). And please give me your remarks upon the sanitary business, so important: how it has been done, how it has been neglected, what ought to have been done, what ought not to have been done? Please return me the whole this evening and mention to no one that you have seen this evidence. You remember of course your capital letter to me on the sanitary subject. I send you a letter of Grant-Duff’s. Please let me have it tomorrow or Monday with your remarks. Have you seen the despatch he refers to? Source: From a letter to M.E. Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32

28 November 1884 First of all, let me give Madras joy, which we all do with all our hearts, of the third anniversar y of your wise and beneficent rule, on 5 November (also the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Inkermann). How can I thank you enough for your kind note and for the valuable paper of the ‘‘requests’’ of the ruled, and of the answers of the ruler to each individual request, which I should have by heart by this time but that, unluckily for me, not only I but what is much worse, my eyes are quite laid up at this time. But it will not be many days before I have mastered it. Yes, the reports of which I see so many often remind me of our ‘‘requisitions’’ at Scutari, which whether they were answered or not (and the negatives were in those first months in by far the larger majority) were all filed as the vouchers for our supplies, where we have ourselves found them in the Purveyor’s Office.

144 Dr J. Marston, later paid member of the Army Sanitary Commission.

186 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India You have done now (I believe, for the first time in history, as you say) that which shows what the rulers have done in answer to what the people have said they wanted. May the people praise thee, o Governor! Source: From a letter to George Evatt, Boston University 1/8/112

5 September 1886 This is only a line to say what I cannot say: greeting and good speed to your work out on the voyage to India and in India, where your work is so much needed, and - - wherever you are. We shall miss you sorely in England, where there is no one to take up your mantle. But India is such a grand field for you. And a great work you will do wherever you are. The green fields of the Emerald Isle would weary you in a few weeks, however tempting they may look. We would have kept you in England if we could. But India calls you. Source: From a letter and a draft letter to Lord Cross,145 Add Mss 51277 ff104-07 (draft in 45807 ff227-28) and a draft without the final letter, Add Mss 45807 229-32

3 December 1886 Private. Confidential. Sanitary. In your extreme kindness you desired me to write to you (privately) about your sanitary great Indian affairs. And you kindly said that you were writing to Lord Dufferin146 by this mail on these. It occurred to me to suggest whether you would think well to tell him your views against the measure proposed by the finance committee (in at least one presidency), viz. (1) that the sanitar y commissioner should be abolished, or rather amalgamated with the surgeon general, which is worse—mixing up the preventive with the curative, or rather destroying the preventive service. (2) that the deputy sanitary commissioners’ salaries should be cut down; in which case it would be impossible, would it not? to keep good men in the department. (3) that the number of deputy sanitary commissioners should be reduced, when there are so few already for the work. Should you think well to notice that, as the deputy sanitary commissioners have had repeated hopes held out to them by the S. of State

145 R. Assheton Cross (1823-1914), 1st Viscount Cross, Conservative politician, secretar y of state for India 1882-85, 1886 and 1892-94, then secretar y of state for foreign affairs 1894-95. 146 Frederick Temple Blackwood (1826-1902), 1st marquess of Dufferin and Ava, diplomat and author, governor general of Canada 1872-78, governor general and viceroy of India 1884-88.

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for India that the sanitary commissioner would be chosen from among them, this (finance committee’s) proceeding has already unsettled the work to an unfortunate degree? and that, as the present remuneration has secured good sanitarians, and inferior men would be worse than nothing, your views are that this (too small) Sanitary Department should not be meddled with? There is the other point, connected with this same subject and mooted already in Sir James Fergusson’s147 time in Bombay, but fortunately negatived by him, viz., that the sanitary super vision of barracks and troops should be taken away from the sanitary commissioners, and given to the surgeon general, H.M.’s Forces, who has neither time nor knowledge for it, and as you said it is most important that the sanitary condition of barracks and troops should be reported on by the sanitary commissioner. . . . Would it be deemed an impertinence if I were again to ask as a great favour that any inquiry for information ordered by you, any expression of your views, or any steps made by you, should be made entirely in your own name, without any reference whatever to poor me, or any mention at all of me? . . . your devoted servant Florence Nightingale 9 December 1886 You will know better than I whether legislation for a presidency has to be approved of by the Governor-General-in-Council and whether you would think well to impress your views on Lord Dufferin in this matter. . . . Would it be deemed an impertinence if I were again to ask as a favour that any inquiry for information ordered by you, any expression of your views, or any steps, made or taken by you should be entirely in your own name, without any reference whatever to poor me, or any mention whatever of me? But as the sanitary commissioners have shown, for nearly 200 millions of our fellow subjects nothing of much consequence has been done, and India suffers enormous death and property losses from epidemics. The executive is wanting, and the present function of the sanitary commissioners is really to tell us how many people die of preventible diseases. Still the union of the two offices, medical and sanitary, would be the first step downwards to non-entity. It would be better if they would discuss whether a sanitary executive could not now be appointed.

147 Sir James Fergusson (1832-1907), governor of Bombay 1880-85.

188 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The step downwards would be that there would be no necessary sanitar y knowledge among the successive principal medical officers appointed. And there would be no continuity of knowledge. Every new man would have to learn not only sanitary work but its peculiarities in his district. And so little money would be saved, while the people would be swept away, and there would be increase of epidemics among the troops. And every life lost would cost India £100. But the sanitar y engineer [breaks off] Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff8-9

9 June 1887 You see in today’s Times Mr Henry Cunningham’s letter and the leading article. You see the great impetus he might give to our cause, because he believes in it and is energetic and writes well. We must reckon with him and act with him. Or he will reckon against us, and it will tell against us. I hope he has seen you. I sent him what you said the day after I saw you, though he had not then returned to London (142 Sloane St.). And he answered: hoping to see you, and sending me his terrible memo on contagious diseases of the army. Shall I send you this? and the first part of the report of the Calcutta Public Health Society, of which Mr Cunningham is president, has been sent me by someone. Will you have it? He is active, while we are doing nothing. I am afraid he will steal a march upon us. He has not answered my question about Colonel Brownlow, whether he had been to Ahmedabad. Shall I send your criticism to R. Chotalall 148 of Ahmedabad by tomor row’s mail without waiting for Mr Cunningham? . . . I have had another letter from Dr Hewlett. The army doctors are fighting him. He says the influence of the duke of Connaught149 must be sought to save the sanitar y commissioner of Bombay. But I have no means of reaching H.R.H. [the duke of Connaught]. Grant-Duff tells me that the sanitary commissioner of Madras is not threatened. ever yours most truly F. Nightingale So pressed by seeing people from India, quite laid up about Lady Dufferin’s Fund, etc.

148 Runchorelal Chotalall (1823-98), president of Ahmedabad municipality, member of the Bombay Legislative Council, worked for water and drainage works in Ahmedabad. 149 Arthur (1850-1942), duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria; joined the British Army, ser ved in India 1886-90.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 189 Source: From an incomplete letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff22-23

[July 1887] There should be a ‘‘scientific’’ person at each provincial government to criticize the municipal report, etc., that the local government boards should be independent of government. But probably you have cor rected much of this in him [Cunningham’s report]. His statement of ‘‘our case’’ (end of his letter) is not to the point, because what the Government of India and the I.O. deprecate is not ‘‘the expenditure of imperial funds’’ but the local taxation of natives. And this, Mr Cunningham never offers anything to meet. The way to meet it is, as in Bombay, to take the natives into your confidence, not because you are afraid of them but from a hearty sympathy and desire for their co-operation, without which indeed all your ‘‘acts’’ fall useless. No one (in Bombay at least) is more willing to be taxed than a native, especially for water supply and education, when he has been made to understand them. But of this Mr Cunningham does not appear to think, though Bengal is far more easily led than Bombay. What he says about (see end) ‘‘unpopularity’’ is the same. It is not from the ‘‘worst press,’’ but from all educated natives that we incur ‘‘unpopularity’’ and inevitably so, if we will never take the trouble to explain ourselves. But a native will come halfway to meet you, far more than any Englishman, if you do. And then you gain popularity, instead of ‘‘unpopularity,’’ for your measures and your rule. Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff36-41 (both from Claydon House)

26 August 1887 P.S. It is such an enormous thing to ask for executive sanitary boards in India, that I do not like to ask to see Lord Cross till you magnates have distinctly decided what you mean to ask for. For if this despatch (proposed) misses fire, it will be very difficult to resume the subject. E.g., it will not do to ask, as Mr Cunningham does, for the ‘‘recommendation of the royal commission to be carried out’’ until we know why it failed after sufficient trial in Lord Lawrence’s time. Please therefore advise as to course of conduct, including my seeing Lord Cross. 4 September 1887 Private. Thank you very much for Dr Sutherland’s letter in answer to my ‘‘question’’ as to ‘‘the plan of the royal commission having been tried in India.’’ It is hopeful, inasmuch as we are not asking for a repetition of an experiment that has failed. . . .

190 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Will you not—perhaps you have—define exactly what you want in the ‘‘Note’’ ‘‘to be signed by’’ you? I have seen nothing yet—neither the manuscript memo which Mr Cunningham furnished to Dr Sutherland and which you kindly promised me and which I ought to see, at the same time as the proof with his (and your) emendations which you promise me. . . . When did you and he do these emendations? before he went to Scotland? Sir John Strachey was, if I remember, the first chairman of the ‘‘people,’’ as Dr Sutherland calls them, of the first Bengal sanitar y executive (or non-executive) board. He would be the person to get hold of to tell us all about it and why it failed. . . . Private. I have just received from Mr Cunningham the health officer of Calcutta’s report for the second quarter of the year, in which he describes his view of the dismissal of the special establishment which had been appointed to deal with the cholera epidemic of the winter. (But oh! so different from Dr Hewlett of Bombay when health officer. The Calcutta health officer wants not to be the head of the ‘‘conservancy establishment.’’ Dr Hewlett was the ‘‘conser vancy establishment’’ in himself. He was a sanitarily engineered town in himself.) And then comes the usual pesting against the ‘‘natives’’ and their ‘‘incapacity for local self-government,’’ whereas it appears—from an (other wise) excellent letter to himself which Mr Cunningham sends me ‘‘from the best of the European commissioners’’ on the subject of the health officer’s ‘‘advice’’ as to disallowing a dangerous ‘‘nuisance being set aside’’ and from a newspaper report of the meeting held on this—that ‘‘the head and front of the offending’’ was the late health officer himself, Dr Sanders (acting in the teeth of his own reports), who led and stimulated the natives. . . . Most Private. Lastly, Mr Cunningham sends me a note of Colonel Yule, reporting progress, or no progress: Mr Cunningham’s ‘‘memo has been long in Lord Cross’s hands,’’ who says he is ‘‘making inquiries.’’ And this is all. I return to 10 South St. on Tuesday, mainly on this account though I have not the shadow of an idea what to say to Lord Cross. . . . I should think Lord Cross safe to come up for the Indian budget. . . . When you have a moment, give me your idea (unless I may see you or before I may see you) on what I should say to Lord Cross. Give me your comments too on the subjects of this letter, returning me the letter, if it will save you trouble. Success to the cause.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 191 Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton150 after Lord Cross’s visit, Add Mss 45766 ff48-50

15 September 1887 Private and confidential. Progress is being made. . . . Lord Cross, if I understood him aright, has given orders for the preparation of a kind of draft despatch, to be forwarded to him in a week or two, but has not yet quite made up his mind what is to be put in it. He asked me to write anything we had to say for his consideration within the next week or so, particularly, I believe, anent the personnel, powers and where the funds were to come from, of the proposed executive sanitary boards for the three presidencies. But here comes the rub: though he was more than well disposed to all we urge, he says that the government cannot borrow in India except at enormous rates of interest; if they borrow in England for India there is the unlucky rupee’s depreciation to reckon with; he does not suppose (in a grim joke) that the municipalities who are to enjoy the loans will be willing to pay the difference of the exchange. This is so very different from what the Anglo-Indian world suppose and especially from what Mr Cunningham’s and your papers are based upon. I must alter what I was thinking of writing to him (one can’t gainsay a secretar y of state). What are we to say? Upon all other things connected with our wishes he was most favourable. . . . (You will understand, I am sure, that all this is strictly between you and me, and indeed the fact of Lord Cross having been here at all.) Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff261-62

19 September 1887 Private. Mr Hill has just sent me the Annual Sanitary Blue Book, marks it ‘‘urgent’’ and asks me to make remarks. I am sorry to see your addendum, signed D. Galton, in such very small print. Could you kindly point out to me what additions were made after the proof was sent in to the I.O.? And if you are dissatisfied with anything, or think any remarks could be enforced with advantage, here is an opportunity by which you can strengthen any you have made or wish made through me. I was rather in hopes that there would have been stronger reprobation of Calcutta, some notice of the terrible increase of venereal dis-

150 A nearly identical letter was sent to Henry Yule on the same day; see Add Mss 45807 ff277-80. For Nightingale’s letter to Lord Cross see Health in India (9:930-34).

192 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ease, and above all a stronger advocacy of executive boards, call them what you will. Please suggest to me what I shall say to strengthen any part. I have been back in London some little time but overwhelmed with business. Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff53-54 and 55-56

17 September 1887 Private. The matter of Lord Cross’s proposed despatch is one of very great importance. And its fate will be settled, as he told me himself, ‘‘in a week or two.’’ But I hear from the India Office today that he put Henr y Cunningham’s papers into the hands of Sir John Strachey. And Sir John Strachey, who has not been in India since all the great local government changes have been made, i.e., not for eight years, says that, because when he was lieutenant governor of North West Provinces (which must be ten years ago) he could not ‘‘see his way’’ to such an executive sanitary board as we ask for, therefore it can’t be now. And he is going to write to Lord Cross to this effect. . . . To be brief: here the matter hangs. And if it were to hang till November, small harm would there be. But if it is to be settled by Sir John Strachey . . . the whole thing is lost for no one knows how long. And yet Lord Cross is so willing. . . . And I have no one to advise me how to write. 28 November 1887 Strictly confidential. I do not know where to begin, for I do not know where we left off—it is so long ago. The letter I had then to write to the secretar y of state for India (when you left) was written, his objections answered. The despatch is now being written. Dr Sutherland has, as you possibly may not know, been in extremis. He is now slightly better but I believe it is impossible that he will ever do another day’s work. The governor general of India [Lord Dufferin] has sent me the ‘‘resolution’’ [proposing executive boards in presidencies] he has issued to local governments and a memorandum. Neither have yet reached the India Office. He has written to me twice. And I have answered pointing out that the ‘‘resolution’’ will not do without a sanitar y executive administration in India. . . . Something must be done about the Army Sanitary Commission at this end, as you said yourself, in consequence of the changes of the War Office, even if it were not for the ‘‘great change’’ preparing for Dr Sutherland. . . . Could you kindly bring this note with you if (when) you come?

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 193 Source: From an incomplete letter to Henry Stewart Cunningham, Add Mss 45808 ff51-52

29 Februar y 1888 Private. Burn. As to Lord Dufferin’s ‘‘intentions,’’ he had none but to urge the provincial governments to do what they have done before. You know what his ‘‘intentions’’ are (he writes in his usual style about my ‘‘eloquent’’ letters, says that the fact is the provincial government must do all, this supreme government can do so little, but that he will not be quite so busy and while in Calcutta means to look into sanitary things). ‘‘The first is’’ that this would have been the very nick of time for our despatch. But now he will have left Calcutta before it goes out not perhaps to return before the year is out. I did not answer the printed paper, which I re-inclose, because I thought it better that the despatch, your Society of Arts paper and my letter should go out pretty nearly together and yet have no apparent connection. It is so much better that he should think there is a great movement in England from different quarters. But now in desperation I entreat you, who are so power ful with the pen, to give me [a draft of despatch?] if possible by tomorrow (Thursday) morning. May I send for it? that I may write by Friday’s mail (forgive me this trouble) a sketch of what you would have me say to Lord Dufferin in acknowledging (and combatting) this last printed paper. It should be as distinct as possible from any other papers, printed or otherwise, he may receive or has received, though of course referring to any not confidential. It will only just reach him before he leaves Calcutta. Our situation is agonizing, because it was so hopeful. The S. of S. came to see me just before the Christmas holidays, spoke of the despatch and asked me to see him again after the Christmas holidays about the despatch, that is about six weeks ago. I have not claimed his visit, what could I say? I could not do with the despatch like Rosina in the Barbiera di Siviglia when Figaro asks her to write a ‘‘piccolo biglietto’’ [a short note] to the count, answer ‘‘Un biglietto, eccolo qua’’ [a short note, here it is] pulling it out of her bosom.151

151 Nightingale’s annotated opera score shows that she saw the opera in 1840, in European Travels (7:625).

194 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff88-91

17 June 1888 Mr Hewlett returned last Monday and is eager for employment. . . . He has sent me the proof of his contribution, done in accordance with our wishes, to his successor’s annual report to the Bombay government. . . . Have you done anything in the matter of the reorganization of the Army Sanitar y Commission? so important. . . . Colonel Yule is come back to London, but not to office—no better. He has heard nothing about the progress or no-progress of ‘‘the despatch.’’ Nothing seems doing. . . . Colonel Yule’s delay in the despatch, which was drawn up for him and which ought to have reached Lord Dufferin in January last, was maddening. I am afraid his last day’s work is done. But then, if he resigned, his successor at the India Office might be altogether against us. Source; From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C187

9 July 1888 Private. I don’t know that I ever had a more anxious problem. I have taken advice. But it is too difficult—between the immense desire to secure your invaluable help for work connected with India, your unique fitness for it and the impossibility of promising the appointment which rests with two secretaries of state—to say what is best for you. It is a matter of great regret that the offer of Dr [F.G.] Mouat’s post should have turned up just at this moment, a moment of such uncertainty that one cannot say: ‘‘Refuse the bird in hand because there is such a bird in the bush which is of far greater interest.’’ At the same time, if it were cer tain that the Army Sanitary Commission would be reconstituted, we should certainly beg you to wait. We suppose it to be pretty certain. Then, alas! I am bound to say that the successor to Dr Sutherland’s post will have no bed of roses (only roses too have thorns) with the Royal Engineer Department even here. And strong good views must be dressed in heavenly expressions for them to accept. You see how I am torn in pieces. It will break my heart if we lose your work for India. But it would be unpardonable of me if I were to advise you to renounce Dr Mouat’s post when we cannot certify even that the other—the one connected with Indian work—will be created.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 195 Source: From notes for and from a meeting with Lord Lansdowne,152 Add Mss 45778 ff171-77

18 July 1888 Private. Confidential. ‘‘The principal questions which a governor general (of India) should consider and perhaps the titles of some books which he should read, e.g., irrigation, instruction in agriculture.’’153 1. Finance. 2. The early probability of famine. Past experience has shown that there are about nine considerable famines in a century or one in eleven years. The last was in 1877-78, between ten and eleven years ago. Books: bearing on both subjects the Famine Commission’s report [1881] on the last great famine (two large Blue Books, very carefully indexed and divided under specific heads treating of the history and treatment of famines), and going into the financial position of India, the increase of its populations and its natural resources. Such parts of this report can be studied as may be more specially needed without going into the details of famine treatment. The brothers’ (Sir John and General Strachey’s) book on India,154 containing in small space notice of the more important subjects of government. N.B. A plan of light railway, invented by the English engineers of one of the native princes, which can be quickly laid on a common road for the rapid conveyance of food into a famine district; Sir James Caird drew Lord Dufferin’s attention to this. By the viceroy’s order it was tried. Should this not be attended to, so that the plan may be in such readiness as to be utilized if an early need for it? Reports of Irrigation Commission and of correspondence which grew out of it (it has all been laid before Parliament) would inform anyone anxious to know about these matters. Home government still refuses changes recommended by Government of India. We now know that the real cause of poverty in India is the inferior physique of much of the population, and this has already been dis-

152 Henry Charles Keith Petty-FitzMaurice (1845-1927), 5th marquess of Lansdowne, governor general of Canada 1883-88 before becoming viceroy of India in 1888. 153 Suggestions for the ‘‘education’’ of Lord Lansdowne, 22 March 1888, by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), master of Balliol College and a friend of Nightingale. Balliol was the major centre for the education of Indian nationals in England. 154 Richard and John Strachey, The Finances and Public Works of India, 1882.

196 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tinctly traced to disease causes, which ought not to exist in any wellgoverned state. In many districts, the whole population is laid aside by fever for weeks and even months in every year. Diseases, their local causes and remedies, are quite well known. Unhappily up to the present there has been no executive to deal with them. Reports of Army Sanitary Commission; Annual Sanitary Blue Books of the India Office, books such as might be useful, shall be collected, if desired, and placed at the disposal of anyone anxious to learn. There are no books on drainage and irrigation which would be of much use in India. All such questions must be worked out on the spot by specially selected for competency officials. Local self-government (in municipalities, villages, districts . . . ). The great danger is that, unless the viceroy keeps a watchful eye and a steady pressure of hand on the local governments, they will go on. Land tenure: Bengal, Oudh, Punjab, Bombay, Madras. Get rid as much as possible of resettlements and aim at giving the ryot the utmost degree of decency compatible with financial safety. Civil administration: employment of natives, age and education of civil service candidates. Primar y education in India; book to be used in primary schools, including short lessons on agriculture, astronomy and the like, on health, etc., gradually combatting belief in astrology, superstitions, belief in demons. . . . Technical education, especially in agriculture; proficiency in this to be made a means of advancement and promotion (as well as of appointment) for the petty native revenue inspector— speaking particularly of Madras presidency. Agricultural College at Saidapet, near Madras (Mr Robertson, principal). . . . Introduction: a governor general has to consider almost every conceivable question connected with government in the larger sense of the word. The relative importance of different questions varies very much from time to time. This is what people see. They think that we have, e.g., educated the babus and let alone or not as we pleased all the special advisor y. . . . put native princes on commissions with each other, etc., and take up questions when we please or not as we please, whereas all the special questions which have produced such outcries came naturally. Ir rigation: consider putting distribution of water into communities’ hands, as in the new irrigation canal works opened by Lord Ripon in the Punjab, to avoid the well-known petty corruption and bribery of the small ill-paid native officials.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 197

N.B. One great object in the new local district boards everywhere was to substitute for the universal petty tyranny and corruption of these ill-paid natives in almost every department the action of decent villagers. Reform of the legislative councils, a question of the future viceroys. . . . Finance, in connection with expenditures most pressing question of the [day]. If military expenditure not reduced, no money available for civil expenditures: education, sanitary measures, improvements, etc., now grievously starved for money. Cannot be got ‘‘from taxation,’’ must be got from reduction of expenditure—this is to great extent key of whole situation. . . . Home government still refuses changes recommended by Government of India. . . . N.B. The sanitary commissioner (of each province and presidency) has no executive power and is too much of a mere disease reporter. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Dufferin, Add Mss 45808 ff183-84

3 August 1888 Will you graciously accept our humble joy at your beneficent Simla resolution on sanitary things, a telegraphic summary of which appeared in the Times of last Monday, 30 July? It has carried rejoicing and eager expectations into our hearts. We thirst to see the resolution itself. We long to know what powers your sanitary boards will have and under what acts they will work? We are ignorant and we long to know how funds are to be provided for the improvement of villages. The telegram naturally gives no information as to the ways and means for monitoring. The resolution, so far as the telegraphic summary enables one to judge, concedes the two principal points contended for and you have given the cause the most important success as yet achieved. The Government of India has anticipated the municipal reforms which were to be recommended from here. This is wanted and until this subject is discussed in its full bearings and a course determined upon, little will be done. Will the old village organizations be fostered, in Bombay? cleanliness in villages? and will means be given to the village scavengers? and the condition of the village mahal [residence, palace] improved? and an executive sanitary department made? We trust in your arranging to appoint good sanitarians on your sanitar y boards before you leave India. You will have, we fear, extreme difficulty in [it] if not impossibility. Private. Lord Lansdowne appears to be much interested in the question of sanitary reform and seems as if he would give all the help he

198 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India can finding good sanitary engineers in India. The fear is lest the ordinar y engineer should carry the day against the skilled expert, if such should be had for England. In Bombay the present divisional commissioners are not alive to the necessity for sanitation. The opinions published by government of the civil officers show some want of appreciation of the subject. Source: From a note for Henry Yule, Add Mss 45808 ff194-97

27 August 1888 Received from Lord Dufferin the ‘‘resolution,’’ ‘‘Proceedings of Government of India Home Department (sanitary) Simla, July 1888.’’ It appears to give us (generally) all we want. But I am always of a grabbing disposition and want more. . . . I won’t analyze the resolution. Is it at India Office? What do you think of it? How did we get it? Does it do what you wish? It seems to give all that Colonel Yule’s first ‘‘alternative’’ draft despatch asked. What is thought of it at the India Office? Sir J. Strachey and Sir J. Forst [Gorst?] must be rather puzzled. I seek information from you. Give me a copy from India Office. Resolution revivifies us both. What effect will this have for or against the reorganization of Army Sanitary Commission here? Such a resolution makes the home machiner y doubly important, does it not? Incentive to practical applications will come from home, rather than from India? They certainly will not come from the sanitar y commissioner with the Government of India! Dr Sutherland’s ‘‘retirement’’ settled, about £700 a year. Hewlett, ex-sanitar y commissioner of Bombay, best we ever had, is at home ready for work. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Dufferin, Add Mss 45808 ff206-11

6 September 1888 Private and confidential. I cannot thank you too much for your great kindness in sending me your sanitary resolution, Government of India, Home Department Service, Proceedings, Simla, July 1888. We can never thank you enough for the great step forward and beginning [illeg] in the right direction in pledging the Government of India to the two most important principles of sanitary progress at this moment in India, viz., efficient central control and provision by government of the necessary loans. . . . The blessings of 250 millions of your poor natives will go with you. Would it be too presumptuous of me if I remind even your great expe-

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 199

rience that the degree in which these reforms are likely to produce useful practical results must depend on the way in which the Government of India will now regard the question and is willing to turn the new machinery to good account? The Government of India works under such great difficulties, difficulties from the want of seriousness or intelligence among its own higher servants, difficulties from the formidable instr ument of delay and obstruction at home in that sacred and [illeg] body, the council at the I.O., that these or any other reforms are likely to be coldly received and feebly worked. . . . The sanitary commissioners, with some memorable exceptions, are not altogether unlike, perhaps, second-rate surgeons, weary with the profitless task of recording evils which no one moves to remedy and suggesting reforms which no one cares to carry out. The best of all the memorable exceptions has retired and come home, where he will probably be employed [T.G. Hewlett]; the second best also has come home [J.M. Cuningham?]. Officials who value their career and their peace are possibly not wholly unlike other men in not caring to risk either by encountering the objurgations of the noisy coteries who control sometimes municipal actions. Sanitary engineers are absolutely non-existent in India. You have however splendid instances of enlightened and public-spirited native heads of municipalities, one especially in Bombay presidency [R. Chotalall?], who have [illeg] the ignorant members (majority) of their own councils and carried their sanitary reforms of water supply and sewerage against Anglo-Indian and native opposition alike. And are there not [illeg] town councils in Britain? The coteries are said to have at their command a press corrupt and foul-mouthed, which the hubbub of Parliamentary English fanatics here may perhaps sometimes rival. The Army Sanitary Commission here, of which your resolution quotes the able ‘‘practical minds for the sanitary improvement of the smaller municipal towns and of villages’’ so much wanted and which might be done at so little cost, will, I suppose, be suppressed . . . but to be, we trust and believe, rearranged. Of course if it is replaced by a really energetic and competent body, men who know what modern sanitation means and are affected by no tincture of idleness or cowardice . . . the assistance given to Indian sanitation will be immense. A word from you would stimulate this reorganization. Lord Lansdowne is well inclined towards sanitar y progress in India. If you think well to give him your views and intentions as to carrying out what this resolution so nobly begins, he will, it can

200 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hardly be doubted, follow your excellency’s lead, and I can only again offer our earnest gratitude for the initiation of such a beneficent policy. Source: From a note to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff151-52

9 September 1888 Confidential. Private ‘‘information has been sent me that Colonel Yule has quite made up his mind to resign his seat in the India Council at an early date.’’ x x It is ‘‘feared that government may take advantage of the vacancy to elude renewing the appointment unless’’ we ‘‘act in time’’ and have our ‘‘candidate ready.’’ ‘‘General Sir Peter Lumsden’’ is recommended as ‘‘not having his equal’’ on the India Council’’ for knowledge of the ‘‘requirements’’ and ‘‘conditions’’ of the ‘‘present Indian Army. He was QMG when Lord Napier was carrying out his sanitary reforms.’’ x x ‘‘He is thoroughly practical and makes the best of tangible possibilities.’’ Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff161-64 and 165-67 (both from Claydon House)

18 September 1888 Immediate. Private. Mr Hill, of the I.O., has sent me this morning, as he does every year, his proof of the annual sanitary Blue Book to ‘‘criticize.’’ He says, of course, that they ‘‘have received no Army Sanitary Commission memoranda’’ and that he ‘‘cannot say whether any arrangements will be made for their resumption,’’ with a well-deserved compliment to Dr Sutherland. I think I must not lose this opportunity of doing my little possible to keep the door open for the reorganization of the A.S.C., as I have received more than one hint from different persons in the I.O. that the thing will be allowed to lapse, that it will go by default. It was indeed a cruel fate that, upon Dr Sutherland’s retirement, we were not ready with our reorganization and our successor to Dr Sutherland. At the end of the proof is a printed sentence about ‘‘no memoranda by the A.S.C.’’ having ‘‘been received,’’ ‘‘in consequence of a change in its constitution,’’ not a nasty sentence. (Lord Dufferin’s new sanitary ‘‘resolution,’’ just received, is printed at p 38 which I am very glad of. But the pages it quotes out of the A.S.C. are not reprinted.) Please tell me: 1. What I am at liberty to say to Mr Hill about the reorganization; 2. What I am at liberty to say to him about the memoranda. Lastly, I have not time or strength here . . . to criticize the report and abstracts as I used to do after consulting with Dr Sutherland. Do you think I should be at liberty to send the proof to Mr Hewlett and ask him to send me a criticism of it? (I shall, of course, be obliged to tone down his fiery ‘‘periods.’’)

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 201

5 October 1888 Private. Is Mr Hewlett at liberty to mention to Sir James Peile155 who is (returned from leave to the I.O.) that Dr Sutherland has retired and that he, Hewlett, hoped to get the appointment as he (Sir J. Peile) would work for him. Sir J. Peile is, as you know, on the Council of India and has charge of the sanitar y department. He is a very strong friend of Hewlett’s, is, they say, a man of ability though H. Cunningham, the ‘‘frondeur’’ [banterer], says not. He is said to stand high with Lord Cross and he knows Hewlett’s work in India thoroughly. Mr Hewlett saw him a day or two ago, was afraid of breaking faith with us, so did not tell or ask him anything or allude in any way to ‘‘the appointment.’’ But he asks me the above question. . . . I suppose Mr Hewlett must not mention to Peile the hoped for reorganization? . . . Have you heard anything of Mr Stanhope? I am on tenterhooks. . . . Am I at liberty to say, e.g., to Mr Hill of the I.O., that you have sent in your memorandum on the Repor t of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India? To whom did it go in? To Mr Frederick, as the secretar y of the A.S.C.? Source: From three letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5072 and 5073, the second letter, Woodward Biomedical Library A.63, all from Claydon House

3 October 1888 Private. How can I thank you enough for your two most valuable letters and papers? the one on the drainage and water supply of Ahmedabad, and the other a critique on the annual Sanitary Blue Book proof. I have sent in my papers on the latter, including every point in yours. And I wrote a letter to Mr Runchorelal,156 which I trust will answer the purpose. I was well aware that you had inspired every step he had taken. And I wished to be in the same ‘‘stor y’’ as yourself and to say what you would have said. I hope he will send full plans and details to Colonel Ducat,157 and take his advice in combination with yours. . . .

155 James Braithwaite Peile (1833-1906), member of the Council of India 1887-1902. 156 Nightingale had an extensive correspondence with Runchorelal Chotalall about practical reforms, but only references to it, not the letters themselves, survive. 157 Colonel Claude Malet Ducat, consulting engineer on the Bombay Sanitary Commission.

202 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I think it is well to represent the ‘‘resolution’’ as a great step forward and to rest our exhortations on that as a beginning. 7 October 1888 Privat e . I wrote immediately to ask your question (I am as anxious as yourself that everything should be done that can be done) as to what you might be ‘‘permitted’’ to say to Sir James Peile and put on the envelope ‘‘Immediate. Please forward.’’ Scarcely anyone seems in London yet to stay. They seem to come up two or three times a week for work. I scarcely hope for an answer before Tuesday. 2. I think you might certainly ‘‘apply to Dr Sutherland for a certificate.’’ But he is so infirm and suffering now that he intends to answer and often does not. Perhaps he will dictate it to Mrs Sutherland.158 At all events he should be ‘‘applied to.’’ (Some months ago, he wrote me a letter, to be used officially, if I found occasion, recommending you as his successor in the Army Sanitar y Commission, but that has not been reorganized yet!) His address is Oakleigh, Alleyn Park, Dulwich, London, S.E. 3. Certainly, I would also ‘‘write to Sir H. Acland’’ but he has gone a voyage to New York (and back) for his health. He will be back on the 23rd. He was here last month and much better and intends setting to his work again at Oxford courageously. 4. Yes: I will try and ‘‘write something’’ for you (I could not say enough) if you think it will be of the least use ‘‘with Mr Ritchie,’’159 though I think it presuming. Yes, indeed, I wish the Village Conservancy Bill could be submitted to you in the draft. Could you not ask Sir R. West160 yourself, or ask Sir J. Peile to ask him? It is mere common sense—no favour. Pray believe me, how kind of you to offer. 9 October 1888 Private. I have this moment received an answer to your question, which is: there cannot be ‘‘the slightest objection to Mr Hewlett asking Sir J. Peile (or anyone likely to assist him) to work to get him Dr Sutherland’s place. In fact x x he had better take any steps he thinks

158 Sarah Elizabeth Sutherland (c1808-95), wife of John Sutherland, see the biographical sketch in Women (8:1037-38). 159 Richmond Ritchie (1854-1912), later Sir, clerk at the India Office, later permanent under secretar y of state for India. 160 Sir Raymond West (1832-1911), vice-president of the Royal Asiatic Society, member of the select committee examining the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, author of A Digest of the Hindu Law of Inheritance, Partition and Adoption: Embodying the Replies of the Sâstris.

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will best avail him.’’ ‘‘Dr Sutherland’s retirement is quite known at the War Office and probably also at the India Office.’’ x x Mr Stanhope has not yet returned to work, I am sorry to hear. If you hear whether the ‘‘5 percent loan’’ for the water supply of Ahmedabad was all taken up, locally and ‘‘above par value’’ by ‘‘1 September,’’ please tell me. I trust it has. Source: Letter of reference, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5074

London 10 October 1888 I have been asked to give my testimony to the work of Mr Thomas Gillham Hewlett, C.I.E., deputy surgeon general in H.M.’s Indian Service, late sanitary commissioner for the Government of Bombay. I have known him for many years. I have known his work well whether as health officer of Bombay city, or in the famine, or as sanitar y commissioner. I have been in the constant habit of consulting him on all sanitary subjects, to which his life has been devoted, head and heart and body and soul, whether his work lay among our troops, European and native, or among the native populations, gentle or simple, men, women or children. He was the first health officer of Bombay. And, for upwards of seven years, he was a sanitarily engineered city in himself: up at 2 or 3 a.m. himself leading and organizing his army of scavengers. In this war against the death rate, it fell from 35 to 23 per 1000. And cholera in its intensity almost disappeared. He was the sanitary missionar y of the famine of 1876-78, while acting as sanitary commissioner, travelling often for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, without tents, sometimes without food, organizing, arranging, supervising, advising, providing health for the relief camps and centres, truly a noble work and which added immensely to his experience of the rural inhabitants. He was the sanitary missionar y of the presidency, as sanitar y commissioner, for the last five years, and on two previous occasions, for several years, instructing, teaching the people, whether native gentlemen, who might be presidents of municipalities or panchayats, headmen, villagers, as to the causes of death and disease among them, and how to remove these causes of the sad degeneration of their physical strength. Without this, without the engaging the people themselves on our side, without convincing them of what is their own interest, we may pass what sanitary acts we please, but they remain a dead letter: we may have the most exact knowledge of what is wanted, but we can-

204 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India not carry it out. Mr Hewlett has the most remarkable influence over the people from his unrivalled practical experience, his knowledge of the customs and habits of townsmen and villagers, his sympathy and insight not only as to the cities but as to the villages where live the greater part of an Indian population. As to water supply, conser vancy, sewerage and drainage, surface and subsoil, as to building and ventilation, his practical knowledge is unequalled; his powers of work are unrivalled. No expert knows better how a sanitary bill for villages should be drafted. No writings or reports give more essential practical information. No man is better versed, perhaps no man is practically so well versed in all sanitary problems and details, and how to deal with them: his is no mere theoretical knowledge, and he has the requisite sanitary engineering knowledge to tell the engineer what he wants to be done. As I have spoken of Mr Hewlett’s great influence with the people, I may perhaps mention a curious instance—one out of many. When he began work in Bombay, the people might die of cholera at the rate of 200 or 300 a day, and none would take any notice except to scold the goddess of cholera or smallpox. Now they will cry out, if there are two or three deaths by cholera: Bestir yourselves, gentlemen, don’t you see we are all dead? This is a great step. But that of bestirring themselves is a greater and one begun by Mr Hewlett. I give the government joy which enlists his services whether for home or for India. Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff214-15, stylized copy Add Mss 45778 ff134-36

24 October 1888 Private. Do you remember kindly looking over the draft of an India Office despatch on a sanitary executive for India? That despatch never had the vitality to go. But Lord Dufferin has not waited for it, but has been so good as to give us what we wanted, as far as he could. The ‘‘resolution’’ is now no longer a secret. But I venture to enclose a copy only for your convenience of reference, if you are so good as to consider it. It is no doubt a great step forward that the Government of India should adopt the two most important principles we have fought for, viz., efficient central control and executive agency, provision by government of the necessary loans. The degree in which these reforms are likely to produce useful practical results must depend of course on the way in which the Gov-

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ernment of India regards the question and is willing to turn the new machiner y to good account. But if the higher authorities in India are too busy, or too little serious to care, the I.O. council too being so formidable an instrument of delay and obstruction, then these reforms are likely to be coldly received and feebly worked. The sanitary commissioner with the Government of India is a time ser ver, but if energy is the favourite policy of the moment, this is of course in our favour and I have observed of late in his reports the foreshadowing of executive boards and of the loan policy. Perhaps the thing most against us is the present low stamp of sanitary commissioners in India—the no stamp of sanitary engineers there and that the reorganization of the Army Sanitary Commission here—rendered necessar y by the retirement from age and illness of Dr Sutherland, its working member. Lord Dufferin kindly reminds me in order, as he says, to ‘‘prevent disappointment,’’ that the Government of India does not administer directly and that all it can do is to lay down lines of policy, and to recommend those lines to the subordinate administrations. He is evidently in earnest in laying down those lines. I am sure your interest does not desert your twofold child, big India. Or I should not venture to trouble you so much. Source: From five letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5075-77, 5079 and 5081

Claydon House Winslow, Bucks 11 October 1888 Private. I received your note this morning saying that you would ‘‘send in an application to the War Office’’ at once ‘‘for Dr Sutherland’s appointment’’ x x and ‘‘as soon as I have applied!!! I will write to Sir J. Peile.’’ I telegraphed to you at once, asking you not to write to ‘‘War Office’’ till you heard from me. I think there must be some mistake, unless you have received advice from some other reliable quarter to apply to the W.O. Your question of 3 October to me was: ‘‘as soon as it is known (i.e., Dr Sutherland’s retirement) or I am permitted to speak of it, I am quite sure it would be for my interest to let Sir James Peile know x x, etc. as he would, I know, work for me,’’ etc., adding that you did not feel at liberty, etc. I immediately asked advice and information (as for myself, indeed I believe I am almost more anxious than you are

206 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India that you should be on the reorganized Army Sanitar y Commission) in the following terms: ‘‘Is Mr Hewlett at liberty to mention to Sir James Peile that Dr Sutherland has retired and that he, Mr Hewlett, hoped to get the appointment, as he, Sir J. Peile, would work for him?’’ The answer came to this effect, which I copied and sent you: ‘‘I cannot see the slightest objection to Mr Hewlett asking Sir J. Peile (or anyone likely to assist him) to work to get him Sutherland’s place. In fact I should think he Mr Hewlett had better take any steps he thinks will assist him.’’ Then (in answer to a remark of mine, viz., ‘‘they must know at the I.O. of Dr Sutherland’s retirement’’) ‘‘Dr Sutherland’s retirement is quite known at the W.O., so I imagine also at the I.O.’’ You will perhaps remember that we have uniformly received the same answer as to the wisdom of your applying to the W.O. now, to the effect that the answer from the secretar y of state for war would (the A.S.C. not being yet organized) probably be: ‘‘The appointment is not to be filled up,’’ and that this would be a severe check to us. Quite recently, about other things, e.g., the putting forward Sir D. Galton’s Memorandum for the I.O. Annual Sanitary Blue Book, which Memorandum has been sent in (on which Blue Book you were so good as to contribute your invaluable notes) and other things, I have always been told, ‘‘Ever ything had better wait,’’ x x, that is, ‘‘till Mr Stanhope has made up his mind.’’ With regard to the answer to your question, and to your question, I understood it to mean that, failing the reorganization of the A.S.C. (which failure may the Gods avert!), it would still be desirable to set on foot any influence at the I.O., because it was possible that the India Office might make an appointment of its own of a sanitary advisor, now that there are to be these central executive boards in India, which might induce the India Office to think an Army Sanitary Commission (of which however the W.O. has hitherto borne the whole expense and will no longer) here unnecessar y or invidious. And they could have no such good man as yourself for such a post. But I know nothing of this. I have only had a few words about it with one of my advisors. And it comforted me to have ‘‘two strings to our bow.’’ I have only to add what I have so often said before, that I will always get you the best information in my power (as for myself, indeed it is for myself), but then I pray you to act according to your own best judgment and perhaps you have other information than mine. Only kindly tell me what you do. Your letter of the 3rd, I understood strictly to

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mean that you were (wisely) collecting ‘‘certificates’’ for Mr Ritchie and that you wished for mine (which I posted to you yesterday) for Mr Ritchie. It would never do for you to [write to] the W.O. (take it for what it is worth) when I am expressly advised to ‘‘wait.’’ And I mentioned to you that I held in my hands a letter from Dr Sutherland recommending you as his successor on the reorganized A.S.C., but that I could make no use of it at present as the A.S.C. was not ‘‘reorganized.’’ Nonetheless do I hope that you will get a ‘‘certificate’’ from Dr Sutherland while he is still able to write one, which may not be long. (You proposed to get one for Mr Ritchie from him.) I think I have only to add that I did not say ‘‘the question’’ of ‘‘reorganization’’ was to be referred to a committee but that I was told it might possibly be. Many thanks for the welcome information about Ahmedabad. Good speed. Make way with Sir J. Peile. . . . I will send you back your draft to S. of S. for war immediately if you wish it. Indeed I felt I ought to have sent it back at once. 17 October 1888 Most Private. (‘‘Resolution’’ of Government of India.) I received on Monday a letter from Simla saying: ‘‘We are, however, now engaged in remedying this defect’’ (viz., ‘‘defect’’ in ‘‘fostering the village organization in Bombay,’’ and in ‘‘establishing an executive agency’’) ‘‘and I have at present under consideration a proposal for the introduction into the Bombay Council of an act which not only provides for sanitation in villages, and establishes that executive agency to which you refer, but will also link the village community to the larger territorial area under the control of the local and district boards.’’ I feel so very anxious as to whether this ‘‘prospect’’ is practically satisfactor y. Can you tell what it is? It must be something, I suppose, on the lines of which Sir Raymond West is to draft the bill of which you told me. Lord Dufferin is evidently in earnest in laying down those lines—in pursuance of his ‘‘resolution’’—for the ‘‘subordinate administration’’ to work on, as far as he can, in preparation for his successor. 2. I am reminded that the ‘‘recently recast municipal acts’’ confer large powers ‘‘for promoting sanitary and other improvements’’ and for ‘‘enter taining the agencies necessary for these purposes.’’ In the municipalities in Bombay presidency are you satisfied with these ‘‘powers’’ and these ‘‘agencies’’? Or is Ahmedabad the only municipality which uses them properly? 3. In the same letter from Simla he refers again, in answer to the question ‘‘how funds are to be provided for the sanitation of villages,’’

208 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to the fact that some of the local government acts ‘‘give power to impose taxation locally for local purposes.’’ And that Madras especially exercises it and that others (other local governments), I suppose, Bombay, are being ‘‘urged to arm themselves with it.’’ Copies of the Madras and Bombay acts (of which last you kindly sent me an abstract), of the N.W.P. Act, of the Punjab Act, of their Central Provinces Act and of the Bengal Act are sent me from Simla. I have glanced through them, but do not find them very satisfactor y. I always remember what you told me that ‘‘villagers’’ do not so much object to be taxed as to find that nothing is done in their own villages of what they have paid for. Only in one act (Madras) do I find a provision even of this sort, viz., that each taluk shall receive back from the district fund for certain approved purposes at least half of the amount of taxes/taxation said taluk has paid. However I have had time to look but cursorily at these acts. And I had much rather hear your opinion of these things. . . . I bear in mind your excellent notes on the ‘‘resolution’’ itself—how to work it out. What other province has a village organization workable like that of Bombay? 25 October 1888 I am in ver y deed grieved and astonished and aghast at the uncalled for ‘‘resolution’’ on your last Annual Report which you have enclosed to me. The ‘‘young civilian’’ is taking his revenge. You cannot consult anyone better than Sir James Peile, as you propose. But I will, on my side, take advice as to what you had better do—as you ask. The account of your ‘‘visits to a Deccan village and a Gujarat town’’ is one of the best and most useful illustrations of how a sanitary commissioner’s duties are per formed in the highest sense that even you have ever written. It is a most singular and unprovoked attack—the attack of ill temper. But I confess I wish that, in no Annual Report, was a word allowed that could even form an excuse for a forward young gentleman to write such an attack. I was quite struck down by it last night. But I trust that you will not allow it to prey upon your mind or disturb your health. Such things are sure to find their right level. And in the meantime we must find out what is best to be done so that the cause which you justly call ‘‘sacred’’ may not suffer. You will not delay writing to Sir James Peile? God bless you. . . . I keep the ‘‘resolution’’ for a day or two.

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4 November 1888 Private. I am extremely grateful to you for your great kindness in sending me such a valuable paper on that abominable little draft, which yet we must try to make as good as we can, as a stepping-stone to something better. You will see a sanitary department yet in Bombay, though I shall not. As you kindly offer it, I shall telegraph to you first thing tomorrow morning to ask you to send me by 12 o’clock post, or earlier, if there is any, Mr Crawford’s [director general of the Army Medical Department] (confidential) letter of 21 August 1885 and his Draft Village Conser vancy Bill, of which I saw a copy at the time. 2. I am anxious to understand exactly why you think the proposed cognizance (in this bill) of the committee (panchayat) of offences against the bill will be an ‘‘engine of private spite’’on the part of the members of the committee and why Mr Crawford’s bill would not have been. Is it because the ‘‘inhabitants’’ might ‘‘establish’’ Mr Crawford’s panchayat and the one proposed now would be selected and appointed by the collector? Also 3. What are the names of the districts where there are no hereditar y officers and no government land granted to Mhars [members of a low caste]? Are they the Konkurs and Kumaon? Please write the names clearly. Also 4. I presume, Part 2, the ‘‘magistrates’’ are native ‘‘magistrates.’’ Are they what you call mamlatdars? I presume they are incorruptible but know nothing necessarily of sanitation. 5. Why will this bill be such an ‘‘inter ference’’ and so ‘‘irritating’’ to the people, while the others, though much fuller, would not be? I agree that it will but should like to be able to put it in a correct manner to carry conviction, as you would do. . . . I think I trouble you enough in giving me information and advice. 8 December 1888 I am extremely obliged to you for all your letters, which I have made considerable, though confidential use of. There is a printed paper by the ex-officer of health of Bombay, Macarty [MacRur y],161 I think, is his name, which is on the state of the port of Bombay. He has sent it to the president of our Army Sanitary Commission, and also to Sir

161 Dr C.W. MacRur y, Bombay sanitary commissioner after Hewlett.

210 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Douglas Galton. I should be very much obliged, if you could let me see a copy. With regard to the reorganization of the Army Sanitary Commission you must not forget how very slow we are in England. I should let you know of course the instant we heard anything decisive, whether it were satisfactor y or the reverse. The subject is not dropped, but it is not by any means decided. I hope you will take patience. I shall trust to see you before ver y long, but I am not able to just at present. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson, Boston University 1/9/118

6 December 1888 Private. I am deeply concerned about the Madras works. (I have not however seen the papers.) Scarcely a mail has passed lately without our hearing of some sanitary catastrophe in India, impending or completed, owing to there being no guiding hand here. Were the Army Sanitar y Commission reorganized and revived, these things would not so easily happen. Source: Recommendations in H.S. Cunningham’s Confidential Note on ‘‘Sanitar y Administration in India,’’ Add Mss 45836 ff63-64

[1888] Mr Cunningham reverts to the recommendation of the royal commission, viz., a kind of executive board in each presidency, consisting of civil, military, engineering, sanitary and medical members, apparently unaware that it was tried by his father-in-law, Lord Lawrence, who if ever viceroy was, was intent on carrying out the sanitary recommendations of the royal commission, and that it was abandoned because it failed. Dr Sutherland also, a member of this royal commission and of all the other sanitary commissions, has repeatedly complained that the royal commission recommendation was not adopted, and recommended its adoption as the only panacea, ignoring entirely that it had been adopted, tried (certainly for two or three years, its minutes were always forwarded to us) and had to be abandoned. (The Saxon is always said never to learn by experience, but to try each new thing or old thing over again, without inquiry.) Without hazarding any opinion as to this failure, is it not imperative to inquire into its causes, whether they are still existent, how they can be obviated, if the same machinery is to be tried again?

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 211 Source: From three dictated letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, two with handwritten insertions by Nightingale, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5082, 5083 and 5094

10 December 1888 Thank you very much for your kind note. Will you kindly tell me what you hear about the probability of having a famine in Western India? We have heard so many threatenings this year. Another private bulky report ‘‘on the sanitary condition of the city of Madras,’’ which possibly you may not have heard of, has come in to the president of our Army Sanitary Commission. This looks as if India meant business. The sanitary state of Madras is represented as abominable. I have never known so many appeals to the Army Sanitary Commission come in direct. I will write again in a day or two. 15 December 1888 I have written to a member of the Army Sanitary Commission to send me his copy of the report of the Bombay port you wish to see, and I hope you will see it at this house next week. Pray do not torture yourself with conjectures of what is most improbable in the meantime. There are tortures enough in this world already. [FN hand:] I am so glad to hear the good account of your health and of the blessings you find in your family. 18 December 1888 Would it be possible for me to obtain your leave to use Colonel Ducat’s letter? This is asked not only by me but by the one person to whom you allowed me to show the extract. He thinks it essential and says: ‘‘Colonel Ducat has left the service, has he not? and is now established in England. Could it do him any harm? If we cannot use his name it is so difficult to do anything, we must have authority for what we urge.’’ 2. May I write to Mr Runchorelal Chotalall and tell him that it would be far cheaper to employ a good sanitary engineer from England, such as young Chadwick,162 at 5 percent, than to take a man to do the work who has had no experience in sanitary work, although he pays him only two and a half percent, that the saving on the superintendence will be ver y soon eaten up by the extra cost entailed by the cheaper man hav-

162 Presumably Osbert Chadwick (d. 1913), son of Edwin Chadwick, appointed the first Chadwick Professor of Municipal Engineering at University College London in 1898.

212 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ing to gain his experience at their expense. (Possibly this might be put so as to compromise neither Colonel Ducat nor anyone else.) At the same time it is almost a ridiculous position for me to say this on my own authority. Of course Mr Runchorelal must consult his municipality before he can do it. And he ought to be able, if he is to influence them against the local people, Doig and Co., to quote professional authority. 3. But to do anything in England or at the India Office is simply impossible without having Colonel Ducat’s high authority to quote, so my advisor and yours tells me. [FN hand:] We are ver y busy. Affairs are ver y anxious. Excuse these brief notes. Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Woodward Biomedical Library A.66

20 [26] December 1888 Strictly Private. Ahmedabad. I have written to a member of the India Office about Ahmedabad (without mentioning Colonel Ducat’s name) and will ask him to ask the question Colonel Ducat so wisely proposes: ‘‘who is’’ to be the engineer appointed? etc. (It is a matter of amazing importance not only to Ahmedabad but to all western India.) But my friend of the India Office answers (to my written letter) that he ‘‘knows nothing’’ of Ahmedabad, nor of the ‘‘local engineer,’’ nor of ‘‘Runchorelal’’ that he must get his information from the India Office, as he could not ‘‘take up a side without personal knowledge,’’ etc. I have written to two persons without success for papers about Ahmedabad sewerage and water supply without success. ‘‘The shortest course’’ is for me to ask you and Colonel Ducat to lend them to me as soon as possible and for me to send them to my India Office friend, so I am told. Will you be so good? and also to ask Colonel Ducat to be so good? We shall then get one step forward in this matter, I hope. Strictly Private. Army Sanitary Commission. I have asked Sir Douglas Galton to give you a letter of introduction to Sir Ralph Thompson [Parliamentar y under secretar y for war]. But he says that you do not need one, that you should send in your card and that in your interest he had better not be mixed up yet with your application (in which you and I shall both think he is right). 2. You will not have forgotten that you and Sir J. Fayrer163 are rather at cross purposes when he speaks to you of ‘‘Dr Sutherland’s

163 Sir Joseph Fayrer (1824-1907), physician at the India Office, member of the Army Sanitary Commission from 1890.

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successor.’’ Sir J. Fayrer has said, he ‘‘hopes the Army Sanitary Commission will cease.’’ (I believe he makes no secret of this, but you must not quote me, of course.) In that case you see the War Office will have nothing to do with ‘‘Dr Sutherland’s successor’’ at the India Office. You are perfectly right to take any measures you think well. I only wish to remind you of what has passed several times between us two already. The matter of the Army Sanitar y Commission is still being actively considered not hung up at the War Office. The I.O. has not yet received any answer from the W.O. But neither is the question of the reorganization of Army Sanitar y Commission hung up at the India Office. A proposal has been or will be mooted from a member of the I.O. that there shall be ‘‘not two commissions but two repor ting members of the commission,’’ one for India and one for imperial forces (that is, if the Army Sanitary Commission is to have all the Home and Colonial business. As well as the India business which has constituted lately its main work.) But all this is, of course, strictly Private. I only wish that you should know all that is going on. Source: From a note on Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 f213

[1888-89] The statute creating a municipality should contain some provision like this: £20,000 a year should be spent on water works, supply, on sewerage, on scavengering, etc. They must not do nothing or do a great deal all their own way, and the plans must be inspected by experts, and inspected afterwards by experts and continuously and the health officer should be an officer of government and not of the municipality. And the chairman of the municipality must be appointed and removable by government. Source: From two letters to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff234-37 and 241-43

2 Febr uary 1889 Private and confidential. No. 3. What a budget I am now troubling you with, without which I cannot however explain our present crisis. I cannot apologize; your kindness must apologize for me, for my not even condensing and rewriting it for you now. Packets Nos. 1 and 2 were sent in November to your house in London. But finding you were absent and not likely to return soon, at least not before Lord Lansdowne left England, I suppressed them, not

214 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India wishing to trouble you without urgent need, and I returned them to my ‘‘safe’’ box here. But we are now in a discouraging crisis at both War Office and India Office which looks as though it would end in a defeat of your (and Sidney Herbert’s) sanitary arrangements and measures, unless you could think well to intervene with your powerful help. . . . It is needless to say that it is impossible to expect mofussil natives to carry out sanitation or even vaccination without an efficient supervising establishment, and the present strength is not half what it ought to be to be efficient. It is something like saying: the Sanitary Department has told us how many millions of people die annually from preventible disease causes: let these millions go on dying. 16 Februar y 1889 Private. You kindly desired me to send you the Original Instructions to the ‘‘Army Sanitar y Commission’’ of Sidne y Herber t. I for ward a copy of the ‘‘General Report’’ of the ‘‘Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission’’ of which Sidney Herbert was president but who, before the report was presented, became secretar y of state for war. The instr uctions to this commission will be found at page 7 and were issued by Lord Panmure164 in 1857. On the reconstitution of the commission in 1862, Sir G.C. Lewis said the new commission was to be guided generally by the instructions given to the former commission, excepting in regard to paras. 10, 11 and 12, in place of which the commission were to make their recommendations direct to the S. of S. for war, who would give orders for the preparation of estimates and the execution of works. All plans for new buildings for the accommodation of men and horses were to be submitted to the commission for the consideration of sanitary details, and they were also to give their attention to the sanitary details of buildings under construction. These instructions are not printed and are only to be found in the Office records. In December 1863 you gave instructions to the commission to consider all plans and proposals referred to it by the India Office. This also was not printed. And in March 1865 the title was altered to ‘‘Army Sanitar y Committee.’’ (It has always been a committee so far as W.O. work was concerned, and a commission as regards India work, they tell me.)

164 Fox Maule-Ramsey, Lord Panmure (1801-74), secretar y of state for war 1855-58, later 11th earl of Dalhousie.

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Under your scheme did you not desire that the Q.M.G. as president of A.S.C. was to have brought under his cognizance all matters connected with the health of barracks or camps, or clothing or food, and that therefore he should have at hand advisors to consult on sanitary matters, on the framing, e.g., of diets as on drains and so forth? And was not this your plan of a sanitary committee under the Q.M.G.? I am obliged to trouble you with this long story, because I am afraid your idea of the ‘‘original instructions’’ was more full than those are which I now explain. Would you be so very good as to return the accompanying report, which I have to return to the office? They have only one or two copies and can get no more. It is impossible to overvalue the service which you are kind enough to render in urging forward the reconstitution of the Army Sanitary Committee at the W.O. and I.O. And I cannot be too grateful for your kind visit. I shall look anxiously to this next week’s success. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff196-97

22 Februar y 1889 Private and C[onfidential]. You were so ver y kind as to ask me to write to you, if there were anything I might solicit to submit to you. This if, I am afraid, I should make a very large ‘‘if.’’ But at least I have refrained from troubling you hitherto at the very outset. But the first ‘‘if ’’ which is seemingly ‘‘if I now venture to submit to you a very small thing though a very important and immediate thing to us.’’ It is a thing that Lord Dufferin believed that he had prevented and kindly wrote to me that he had saved the Sanitary Department of Bombay from any reduction. But the Government of Bombay is or conceives itself to be much pressed by the Government of India for retrenchment. And therefore it seems a proper subject to lay before you if you think well to entertain it. The present strength of the Bombay Sanitary Department is not half what it ought to be in order to be efficient. It consists of one sanitar y commissioner over all and of six deputy sanitary commissioners, with each a very large district under him. Under this small supervising establishment is vaccination, sanitation, and of course all that belongs to it over the great mofussil. The Government of Bombay has asked its surgeon general to reduce the ‘‘medical budget’’ by 1,25,000 Rs, including the Sanitar y Depar tment. It is thought that two deputy sanitary commissioners (out

216 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of six) may go, that Eastern and Western Gujarat may be united under one, and that the overworked sanitary commissioner (of the whole presidency) may hold a district!! 2. It is needless to say that it is impossible to expect mofussil natives to carry out sanitation or even vaccination without an efficient supervising establishment. And this cadre or skeleton of one it is now proposed to reduce. (It was hoped that the Bombay Sanitary Department had so far weathered the financial storm. But this it seems is not to be.) It is something like saying: the Sanitary Department has told us how many millions of people die annually from preventable disease causes: let these millions go on dying. Editor: After Lord Ripon’s inter vention, the Army Sanitary Commission (A.S.C.) was not abolished but reorganized in 1890. Central executive boards were created in each presidency (1888), as reported in Health in India. Nightingale made great efforts to save the A.S.C., convinced that the commission was essential if reports recommending measures were to be implemented. Good staffing was also important in her mind, and she was keen to have Hewlett succeed Sutherland on the commission. Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur A 278

30 April 1889 Private. How long it is since I have heard or written. How many questions I have to ask you. 1. What can you tell me about your health, which I trust gives now no uneasiness to your many friends, of whom I am one of the most earnest. 2. It was understood some little time ago that the S. of S. for India would be disposed to appoint a commission at the I.O., IF the War Office did not reappoint theirs (the Army Sanitary Commission). Might I ask if you have heard from Sir J. Peile or otherwise anything about it? or if you could learn from him? 3. What, if anything, have you heard from the Bombay government in answer to your remonstrance? It is well that you wrote it anyhow, if written with dignity. Governments do not usually make an amende. But the remonstrance having been received, the remonstrator can then, if he choose, write to the S. of S. who can then interfere officially, which he could not do without. But perhaps all this is settled.

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4. What do you hear from the Local Government Board about any employment? I am told that it is possible that in time the county councils will give employment. And it could always be thrown up again. 5. What is the present state of our friend, Mr Runchorelal Chotalall of Ahmedabad? It was impossible to have anything done then from home, as there was no plea for official interference. Did you ask (or advise to be asked) Mr Runchorelal whether he could induce his municipality to call in a good engineer from England? Would such a one take 5 percent? Because if he would, upon a work of which the expense would be £30,000? or £40,000, it would be hardly worthwhile, would it? to save ‘‘21⁄2 percent’’ by employing a less competent Bombay government engineer. I did not write again to Mr R.C., because you did not advise me what to say. And I do not know the present state of things at Ahmedabad, which I hope to hear from you. 6. Has anything been done about reducing the number of the Bombay existing deputy sanitary commissioners by two, when they are too few already? I trust not. This has been mentioned in the proper quarter, and Lord Dufferin’s promise cited. 7. What possibility would there be of putting the Bombay Sanitary Department under the collectors, i.e., the Revenue Department? instead of the Judicial Department? The collectors would then take a pride in making the Sanitary Department efficient, instead of its being attacked from outside? But this is a matter in which viceroys cannot interfere. I am sadly in arrears of information. I should be so glad of any information from you. I regret that I have not written earlier, but ill and overworked and with much serious anxiety in our family, I have been always waiting to know something definite before writing, and have had more time to be anxious about you and about all these things than to write about them. God bless you. I trust Mrs Hewlett and your children are well. And has the event in your daughter’s life been happily accomplished? Or is it soon to be?

218 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Lord Cross, Add Mss 51278 ff84-86165

4 May 1889 Confidential. Your extreme kindness to me in matters that lie so near my heart as the sanitary interests of India encourage me to venture once more to trouble you with a question: Might I trespass upon you so far as to ask if you have decided yet what steps are to be taken to preser ve some control over the sanitation of India? Would it not in any case take some time to bring Lord Dufferin’s proposal—the sanitary ‘‘Resolution of the Government of India’’ [Simla, 27 July 1888]—even if it be carried out, into working order in the several presidencies and provinces? And, until it be in working order, will you not retain the important power of using some means to criticize sanitary reports from India such as was afforded by the Army Sanitar y Committee, and of quickening too these means? Was it ever more important in India than now? It would be in the last degree impertinent of me to be suggesting considerations to you, did I not believe that I am only echoing your own view in asking: would not an ‘‘expert’’ be an ‘‘uncanny’’ substitute at the W.O. for the reorganized committee—to include, as heretofore, representatives of the different aspects of sanitary questions, medical, engineering, general and especially Indian? And, should a solitar y ‘‘expert’’ at the W.O. be permitted to exercise the same super vision over Indian reports. Would not the least evil be that it should come to nothing? (The W.O. ‘‘expert’’ may be quite without Indian experience or the capacity to review Indian conditions.) Except as the same echo, it also would be too presumptuous of me to ask: is not your view that, if the W.O. were to abolish the Army Sanitar y Committee, you would yourself appoint one for India, the only right and safe one? Forgive my intrusion. It is your own kindness that is in fault. I need hardly say that it would be my highest privilege if you could spare one quarter of an hour, and would be so very good as to make an appointment to see me some afternoon on these matters. But I am not so unprincipled as to look for it in these your busy times.

165 Draft letter in Society and Politics (5:686-87).

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 219 Source: From a draft letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5085

20 May 1889 Most Private. Reduction of sanitary staff. I hope that your conclusion on the ground that Dr (I cannot read the name, is it ‘‘MacRur y’’?) told you ‘‘that the Government of India had ordered the medical budget, including the Sanitary Department to be reduced by 125,000 rupees’’—inferring therefrom that the order for dismissing two deputy sanitary commissioners was actually issued for the 1st of last month, 1 April?—is not absolutely legitimate. For it was on that ground which you kindly told me, some five or six months ago, that on 22 Februar y I wrote to Lord Lansdowne. On 27 April he writes to me that he has ascertained from his Home Department, which has charge of these questions, that it is not aware of any present intention of the Bombay government to reduce the number of deputy sanitary commissioners, that what happened was this: the finance committee recommended that the number, which was five, should be reduced to three (was it six and four?) and this view was accepted by the Government of India. The Bombay government thereupon moved the Government of India to reconsider its decision, upon the ground that the difficulty of carrying out sanitar y measures would be greatly increased should the staff available for sanitar y super vision be curtailed, that the Government of India yielded to this representation and determined not to press for the reduction, that it is, however, possible that the Bombay government may, of its own accord, be contemplating a reduction of the staff. x x If, however, it has an intention of taking such a step, it will have to apply to the Government of India before carrying it out and directions have been given that, should this take place, the papers are to be sent to the viceroy, who will do all he can for us. x x (This is dated 27 April.) I trust to your kindness not to be mentioned to Dr MacRury or to anyone, to burn this. I only send this because I am as anxious about the matter as you are. And I would fain hope that your fears are not confirmed. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, National Library of Scotland Ms 10088 ff35-36

14 May 1889 You will remember my friend, Deputy Surgeon General Hewlett, of the Bombay Medical Service, from which he had to retire last year, after twenty-five to thirty years constant work, and come home, as full of energy as ever. He was one of the best sanitary officers in India, if

220 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India not the best. He was health officer for Bombay, when he was a sanitarily engineered city in himself. But alas! they did not keep it up, after he was removed to a higher appointment. He was sanitary commissioner for Bombay presidency, both during the famine of 1877-78, when he did a great work (I wrote a little account of it in Good Words (see p 265 below), which I mention only to show that I have known his career for years and years) and during the last five or seven years. He is now most anxious for work here. He applied for the medical officership of the London County Council, but was too late. And they have three good men of English experience. He has now applied for the assistant health officership, and if he could have a free hand in the east of London, within two years, please God, they should see a change. Do you think Lord Roseber y166 would allow me or you to give Mr Hewlett an introduction to him? I have not of course told Mr Hewlett that I would ask Lord Roseber y this. But I think Lord Roseber y would be pleased with Mr Hewlett’s energy and thoroughness of knowledge, experience and work. Few men would be so valuable under the County Council. And he is too a man of rare devotedness, indefatigable and of the very highest character. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Roseber y, National Library of Scotland 10088 f41, copy Add Mss 45809 f151

30 May 1889 You had the goodness to appoint Mr Hewlett, ex-sanitary commissioner of Bombay, wishing to be assistant officer of health to your county council, to see you today at noon at your office. I grieve to have to say that he has had a sudden attack of serious illness and his doctor will not allow him to stir. It is his wife who writes to me. I trust that so valuable and good a man will soon be restored and that I may still have leave to ask your kindness to give him time to wait upon you.

166 Archibald Philip Primrose (1847-1929), 5th earl of Rosebery, Liberal, prime minister 1894-95.

Implementing Sanitary Reform / 221 Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff198-99

7 June 1889 How can I thank you enough for your most kind letter of 27 April, going so carefully with your Home Department into the question of threatened reduction of the number of deputy sanitary commissioners for Bombay presidency and saying that as the Bombay government will have to apply to you before carrying it out, you have kindly given directions that, should this take place, the papers are to be sent to you yourself. In a letter from Bombay which reached England on 27 May, it is stated that Dr Colah, who is a Parsi and deputy sanitary commissioner for Eastern Gujarat Circle, has had to take over charge of the Western Gujarat office, although the sanction of the Government of India has not yet been received for the abolition of that appointment. The inadequacy of the staff available for sanitary super vision and the necessity for increasing instead of diminishing it was being pointed out by the sanitar y commissioner, Dr MacRur y. It appears by the orders in the Bombay government Gazette published in Times of India of 17 May, that ‘‘Surgeon W.H. Quiche and Dr M.B. Colah respectively delivered over and received charge of the Office of Superintendent of Vaccination, Western Gujarat at Circle on 5 May 1889.’’ It is therefore done. The superintendent of vaccination W.G. Circle Headquarters were [was] at Rajkot and he had under him the vaccination establishments maintained by native chiefs in Kathiawar, Palampur and the adjacent petty native state. ‘‘It is simply impossible for Dr Colah to attend to even the vaccination work in his own circle, let alone that new one and the whole thing is a farce.’’ The sanitary work disappears altogether. Such is the information we have received. These matters are matters of life and death to the Bombay presidency villages. . . . I feel most deeply that it is quite unfair [to set in motion so great a power as the viceroy] yet the interest you take in the sanitar y affairs of your vast empire encourages me. 2. You are so good as to send me an account of Sir Raymond West’s speech in introducing the bill for rural sanitation in Bombay. I have seen the draft Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, 1889. I scarcely know how I venture to send you a copy of a letter which I have addressed to the leading native associations, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Bombay Presidency Association upon it. It has been translated [breaks off]

222 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Note, Add Mss 45827 f176

27 June 1889 Dr Murdoch:167 Disease in India: to propitiate some offended deity, the goddess of smallpox, to offer sacrifices—not to remove the cause. (F.N.: not unlike the cholera in Edinburgh. Lord Palmerston: They wished to propitiate the offended deity by fasting, he to observe the laws of God and mend the drains.) Source: From two letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5089 and 5090

22 June 1889 Private and Confidential. You suggested some time ago that the viceroy should be asked to ‘‘lay down a rule that no money would be sanctioned, or that permission to borrow money on loan would not be granted to municipal bodies, unless the Government of India approved or the engineer to whom the work would be entrusted.’’ I have only lately recovered my answer. The India Office does ‘‘not see that any interference with local action in the selection of executive instr uments could be carried out.’’ (This is from a friend.) In the course of now more than thirty years’ confidential intercourse with India and the I.O. on sanitary matters, I have always found the greatest prudence and caution necessary in order to carry our good objects, e.g., not to propose or suggest (or even to ask questions upon) measures diametrically opposite to what one knows to be the policy of the day, when founded on great principles, however otherwise desirable. A recent instance is this: the settled policy (and on the whole is it not a good one?) necessitated by the times in which we live is evidently to de-centralize. Lord Dufferin’s ‘‘resolution’’ of 27 July 1888 for sanitary boards in the several presidencies is an example of this. Do you think they would go back upon this, and let the Government of India make sanitary rules for the whole of India? instead of the local government? By the way, could you kindly tell me what you hear of the position of the proposed sanitary board in Bombay presidency? Has it been organized? and how? . . .

167 John Murdoch (1819-1904), Christian evangelist and author of a number of publications on sanitation. He helped found the Christian Literature Society for India and was secretar y of the Christian Vernacular Education Society in India.

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Probably you have heard from India on this subject. Or perhaps you have heard from Sir J. Peile at home? viz., how the sanitary boards as proposed by Lord Dufferin in India (or at least in Bombay) are being organized. 29 June 1889 Thank God that Sir M. Mackenzie has given what we cannot but call a favourable view of your case. I do thank God and His loving kindness and that you have been able to accomplish this trying ordeal and to be safely landed at Harrow, which I hope is ‘‘dr y and bracing.’’ Thank you so much for writing to me. Before I had your kind note, I wrote today to Bedford about the proposed ‘‘pamphlet,’’dwelling upon its importance. God bless you. . . . Pray don’t worry about any of these things. It is only because you are so good as to write to me about them that I do to you. I have been hearing of the great distress in Ganjam and particularly of the state of the tanks and the cholera supervening. They do want sanitary super vision; for less urgent times, the little sanitary tract proposal for domestic popular use, on ‘‘cholera,’’ which I mentioned yesterday as planned in Madras, might be useful. But I don’t want to urge you on to use your head. Source: From notes for T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 f59

29 June 1889 Write pamphlet on village sanitation; absolute necessity of sanitary missionarizing in the country in India, without which any government bill of no effect. A Madras man (Murdoch) publishes small cheap tracts for natives, culled from best sources, remarkable sale for India, translated [into] Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu. For example, ‘‘Sanitar y reform’’: object being to turn them away from their superstitions thinking disease the doing of an offended deity, to be cured by propitiating her by sacrifices, to seeing cause of disease in sanitary neglects and teaching how to avoid these. Christian Vernacular Society: native colporteurs all over India. Wishes to write simple tract on village sanitation. What but this pamphlet for authority? Do you recommend calf vaccination? how practised? Natives prefer it so much. They think it then a sacred rite. Subjects for tracts for village people?

224 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a dictated letter, with corrections, to Sir Raymond West, Add Mss 45809 f178

29 July 1889 I am sure you will be sorry to hear that poor Dr Hewlett is in a critical condition on account of a very serious affection of the throat. The doctors have just held a consultation and regard the situation as grave. I trust therefore you will excuse me mentioning that, in his weak condition, the censure he has received from government weighs heavily on his mind. No doubt he has been wanting in discretion, but his zeal, if mistaken, had no selfish object. Without altering the decision passed on his report, could not a resolution be issued recognizing in general terms his long service and zeal in the cause of sanitation? This would I am sure relieve his mind from much fanciful despondency. I do not at all know if such a course would be possible, but if you thought so, might I venture to ask you kindly to mention the subject to Lord Reay?168 Source: From a letter to Sir William Wedderburn,169 Add Mss 45809 ff190-91

11 August 1889 Dr Hewlett is, I rejoice to say, much better. We are told that an acknowledgment for his India work from the Bombay government might prolong his life and powers of work. . . . I received your most kind answer to my supplication on 1 August and wrote to Sir R. West (almost in your words, which I enclose for reference) on Friday 2 August, i.e., last Friday week. I wish for an acknowledgment more than ever of his [Hewlett’s] services by the Bombay government. But I am in this dilemma, that it would certainly do him much harm if Sir R. West were to represent him as in an almost hopeless condition from which nature and treatment seem to have released him. It might perhaps prevent his employment here, which would probably kill him. I think I ought to telegraph to Sir R. West. But how to put it and when to send it so as to meet my letter without which he would not understand it, and how to put it so that everyone else may not understand it? I do not know how to frame without your kind advice. Editor: Dr Hewlett returned to England in June 1888, and died in September 1889. An undated draft letter Nightingale wrote him dur-

168 Donald James Mackay, Lord Reay (1839-1921), governor of Bombay 1885-90. 169 William Wedderburn (1838-1918). See the biographical sketch in Appendix A below.

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ing a great disappointment on his impact includes a high tribute. It begins with Nightingale’s being grieved as much as he was by the setback, but assures him: Your name will live in the work you have done, in the hearts of the people and of all those who know what a pioneer they have in you—the discoverer of America, Columbus, Gordon.170 Your work is not a failure. It is theirs, the government’s work, that is a failure. But we cannot be saved by departments. Departments are not the way to the kingdom of heaven either here or there, as I once heard an Indian official say. Christ’s work actually seemed a failure at his death. There was but one who believed in Him then and that was a penitent thief. The man is almost greater who is unacknowledged except by his work done.171 Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff209-12

August 1889 Private. I cannot thank you enough for your letter of 18 July. I am most deeply interested in hearing what your goodness tells about these provincial sanitary executive boards. The Government of India under you deserves unmitigated praise if it be not impertinent to say so, for what it has done. And knowing what India and the provincial governments are it has not been ‘‘slow’’ but fast. And if they can only have engineers who give their whole time to the work, as you so wisely point out in the matter of Bengal, this would be the means in time of training up a school of sanitary engineers. Good men will hail what you have done and, I need not say, will think best what you judge best. The knowledge of sanitation is a very special branch in engineering. It takes a lifetime to make a sanitarian. In the constitution of these boards should not those engineers be selected who have in some measure studied the subject? Engineers have not necessarily sanitar y experience. They do not derive it from their innermost ‘‘I.’’ Also engineers who have not been thoroughly educated in sanitation but who, at the same time that they are appointed to look after sanitary matters, are obliged to give a large share of their attention to important works of altogether another nature, would not be able to study

170 Charles Gordon (1833-85), ‘‘Gordon of Khartoum’’; for correspondence with him see Society and Politics (5:490-512). 171 Draft letter, Add Mss 45815 f195. See also her comments in Health in India (9:982).

226 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the life and death sanitary questions with which Indian sanitation abounds, so as to fulfill the object aimed at in the provincial board, that, as you suggest, the sanitary commissioners selected to act on these boards be, at all events for the present, required to devote themselves wholly to it, because there are now scarcely any engineers in India who know the sanitary problems enough to enable them to take rank as sanitary engineers, but they are all enough grounded in engineering to make it certain that if they continuously apply themselves to these problems, they will in a reasonable time develop into sanitary engineers. And others too will study for the position. Would not the ideal constitution be: an experienced sanitary commissioner and an experienced sanitary engineer who would give themselves wholly to the work, associated with such officers as seemed desirable to the government for controlling the finance and the questions where sanitation touches upon the function of the administrators of the revenue? Should not there be on each board the sanitary commissioner whose whole energies are given up to the medical side of the question, and an engineer whose whole energies are equally given up to the engineering side of sanitary problems? This view seems to have been adopted in the sanitary board of Burma. In Madras the arrangement to be adopted appears also to coincide with this view. There the board is to consist of the sanitary commissioner and of a special sanitary engineer who, it is to be assumed, gives all his time. In Bengal the same system will be adopted, if the engineer does give his whole time. The proposals for the Central Provinces do not seem to be equally satisfactor y for the reason given, namely, that it is absolutely essential, if sanitary knowledge is to be developed among the engineers, that they should be whole time officers. . . . Your government [is] a blessing to our crowded millions. May the blesser be blessed. Source: From a letter to Parthenope Ver ney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9012/246

19 October 1889 I have had a second letter from Mrs Hewlett, the widow of our Hewlett; I think he was the most disinterested and heroic man I ever knew, always excepting Gordon. I think the way she takes his death is quite heroic. . . . He had only been home about a year and a quarter; he came to see me on his arrival from India 21 June 1888 (last year). He was engaged till his last moment in writing that pamphlet on ‘‘Village Sanitation in India’’ and was so glad to have finished it in the last weeks of his life. He worked

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all these years till his death. I am afraid they must be left badly off, as I believe his pension ends with his life, but she says nothing about this. There are three sons and two daughters; the sons are at Harrow, Bedford School and Sandhurst. In India he had been, as you know, through the Mutiny, the great famine and years of going about the country; he was the first man who travelled without tents and without elephants and made all his tours in a tonga, an open village cart with a pony. Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney,172 Add Mss 68887 ff56-59

11 March 1892 Private. I was rather appalled by your last note, dated Delhi 10 Februar y . . . saying that you mean to put off all action about appointing the Bangkok doctor till you return to England. The unqualified opinion of the experts I consulted, including Sir T. Crawford and Sir W. Wedderburn (though clearly against some natural prepossessions) was: ‘‘Don’t choose in England, choose in India; consult the Government of India, ask them to recommend and lend you one,’’ and this was embodied in my telegram of 26 January, Sir T. Crawford adding to me ‘‘even if Hayes is available,’’ and both of them saying: ‘‘Why, Mr F. Verney is on the very spot in India to have a choice of experienced good men.’’ (‘‘Hayes’’ will not be ‘‘available’’ till autumn.) On 2 March I telegraphed again the same words to c/o Siamese Consulate, Calcutta: ‘‘Would Government India lend medical officer experienced, civil; political employ liked by natives?’’ Then I heard you would be gone to Darjeeling, which I was very glad of. . . . Strictly private. We are making an effort to bring the case of that splendid woman, Miss Hurford173 of Pune, before Lord Cross, so that he may get support for her from the Government of Bombay. She has written to Sir W. Wedderburn. Source: From a note on a letter of Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff231-32

[after 1 August 1893] Lord Lansdowne’s letter. We don’t want more ‘‘super vision’’; that means somebody who must be hard and who will oppress; we want to carry the natives with us by means of good and sympathetic district officers who will explain to and influence the natives—not by means

172 Frederick W. Verney (1846-1913), youngest son of Harry Verney. He accompanied Prince Damrong to India in 1891. 173 Miss Hurford, headmistress of the government school for native girls in Pune.

228 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of departments who know nothing about them and whom they know nothing about. The English government is like Sangrado,174 more bleeding and more hot water. The district officer: we want a good and sympathetic Englishman with a council? of natives. . . . They can’t be always repelling and insulting these people and then ask for their help, their money and their lecturers—for them to do the work of the government in short. [He] thinks an Indian village very like an English one—had quite as soon have to manage an Indian as an English one and much sooner an Indian than a Scotch village. Source: From a letter to Dr C.W. MacRur y, Add Mss 45812 ff42-43

20 October 1893 Private. Refer ring to our conversation in which you said that a consulting engineer was wanted for Bombay municipality, and that two you mentioned were off the cards: if you want someone only to go out to Bombay to advise, for a couple of months or so, why do you not ask Sir Douglas Galton to go? . . . Arrangements however you may already have made with ‘‘Santo Crimp,’’175 who as you know was an assistant engineer at Barking Sewage Works, also has had management of Wimbledon Sewage Farm. He is thought a sensible man and knows about sewage and has written about utilization of sewage. I wish you every, the highest, success in your ‘‘cold-weather’’ tour, and always, for Bombay wants you sorely. Source: From a letter to Arthur Clough,176 Boston University 5/20/25

29 January 1894 Mr Babington Smith. I have had a serious, good and, as far as it can be, satisfactory note from Mr H. Babington Smith [secretar y to Lord Elgin177], posted at Modane. This I have no doubt I owe to you. You

174 In Alain-René Lesage’s romance, Gil Blas, the character of Dr Sangrado, a satire on Helvétius, prescribed warm water and bleeding for every ailment. 175 Joseph Santo Crimp (1853-1901), a leading sanitary engineer. 176 Arthur Hugh Clough, Jr (1859-1943), son of poet A.H. Clough and Nightingale’s cousin Blanche Smith, an executor of Nightingale’s estate. 177 Victor Alexander Bruce (1849-1917), 9th earl of Elgin, viceroy 1894-99, son of the 8th earl of Elgin who was viceroy 1862-63.

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were so good as to say that you would ‘‘report’’ to me the result of your interview. . . . Mr B. Smith and Lord Elgin are gone out to a Herculean task with so many new elements in it. May they prosper! and take the great natives in, whom they cannot do without. Source: From a letter to Sir Thomas Crawford, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/95/13

17 April 1895 Private. May I come again to your kindness for the most valuable help which none but you can give? May I enter at once into the matter in hand? I have lately received from the Government of India, through the I.O., some fresh and good sanitary material in answer to some questions of mine, referring chiefly to the conference at Belvedere of engineering and sanitary experts with representative natives of Bengal, and a bill for drainage works in Bengal, etc.; also to the result of inquiries made in the Punjab as to the connection between a water-logged soil and malarial fever; also as to the organization of village unions. These papers are extremely interesting. And not the least interesting are some by native vice-chairmen of municipalities, one especially on the scarcity of water in Bengal, which is almost a history of native views. The Government of India gives its consent to these papers being presented to Parliament. And what we are anxious to obtain is an article reviewing these papers, but not published till they are presented. There is no one who would do it with anything like the power of yourself, if you would be so ver y good as to undertake it. Don’t say nay. You are such a good friend. It would be well to publish it in The Nineteenth Century or some such periodical if they will take it, rather than in the medical papers. . . . Confidential. I have also received dated 8 March from Lord Elgin a circular (and list of questions) to the governments of India about a proposed ‘‘Village Sanitary Inspection Book.’’ But it will be doubtful whether this can be included in the article, as it does not seem to have reached the I.O. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff134-35

21 April 1895 I wrote to Sir Thomas Crawford about undertaking the article on the Government of India sanitary papers which you saw. And after a short delay he answered that he was incapable of any literary exertion because of his wife’s death. I had not heard of it and am so sorry for him. I wish our wants had been a little later, when I think it might have done him good to rouse him.

230 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India What are we to do now? Dr Cuningham? (I have sent my letter to Mr Fowler,178 so there is not much time.) You were so good as to look at Dr Hewlett’s pamphlet. As it tells on the subject of the list of questions which you have kindly criticized (which came from Lord Elgin) I have been asked to send a copy to Lord E.’s private secretar y and to mark ‘‘passages which seemed of interest.’’ Could you kindly do this? I send a copy, hoping you will do so and return it to me. It is not necessary to mark it all through, pledging yourself to it, as it were. Source: From a letter to Elizabeth Oke Buckland Gordon, Library of the Nursing Education Center, Japanese Nursing Association, Tokyo

19 May 1896 Please excuse my delay. I hope I am not too late. We think the best place would be, if your son would prepare—perhaps he has prepared—the report of the Government General Hospital, at Calcutta, suggested by you, and send it to me. I take for granted that it will be signed by himself. The signature of a scientific man carries weight, when the evidence is exact and important. I would carefully read it, and am asked to write the covering letter. Then it would be privately sent on to the secretar y of state by a mp I know who cared for the matter. And the secretar y of state shall be asked to get the matter put to rights. He will be grateful for its being done privately and will probably use his great influence with India. This would be more likely to do good than anything done publicly in the House, which might have the effect of putting the authorities into an antagonistic attitude. They like to do a right thing when discretion is used in the urging it. We have however other means if these fail. Editor: A letter later that year to Mrs Gordon gave condolences on the death of her son. Nightingale told her ‘‘confidentially,’’ that she had been informed ‘‘on the best authority that careful inquiry has been made and that steps will be taken for the reconstr uction of the hospital (Government General Hospital, Calcutta).’’179 Further on the hospital appears on p 795.

178 Sir Henr y Hartley Fowler (1830-1911), later 1st Viscount Wolverhampton, Liberal mp, secretar y of state for India in 1894. 179 Letter 21 November 1896, British Library rp 5333.

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hroughout her decades of work on India, Nightingale was concerned that sufficient attention be given to the sanitary condition of villages and towns. While her own work had begun with the army, she ‘‘always believed that unless the sanitation of towns and villages in India could be achieved, army sanitation would be meaningless.’’1 Many problems of village sanitation were similar to those of cities, but enough was sufficiently different that special measures were required. Infrastructure improvements in the large cities, such as sewers and drains, were already underway when Nightingale began to work on India. But she insisted on the necessity of building adequate sewage and drainage facilities in villages, securing good water and paying attention to hygiene, which sometimes meant changing traditional ways of conducting daily activities. India was ‘‘essentially a country of villages’’ (see p 248 below), peopled by peasant farmers who, mainly but not exclusively, practised subsistence agriculture, in stark contrast with England’s more commercialized system of agriculture.2 The realities of peasant farming in India had great implications for Indian public health: for instance, ryots were not aware that they were polluting the subsoil with excrement, and thereby fouling their drinking water and causing disease. Nightingale could write: ‘‘It is no exaggeration to say that the subsoil round every village home in India is saturated with human filth or decomposing organic matter. We hear a great deal about cholera being so ‘mysterious,’ so ‘erratic.’ The ‘mystery’ of cholera, the ‘myster y’ of fever is in the filth-sodden soil’’ (see p 657 below). Moreover, the manure wasted in the subsoil could be put to use to fertilize the soil. Nightingale learned much about healthy and produc-

1 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 176. 2 See David Ludden, Peasant History in South India and An Agrarian History of South Asia.

/ 231

232 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tive farming, farming methods, implements, subsoil and manure, and could come up with concrete proposals. For example: ‘‘Are not the two great wants of Indian agriculture manure and improved agricultural implements?’’ she said in one instance. ‘‘With regard to the latter, the great English firms are but too anxious, as a mere matter of business, to find out what will suit India and at what price, for the purpose of supplying it’’ (see p 688 below). Nightingale wanted sanitary measures to be clear and comprehensive, as her correspondence relating to the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill shows (see p 336 below). She consistently asked to be informed of the situation and of the progress made, and her usual eagerness to read the annual reports of health officers and the minutes of the presidencies’ commissions is clearly evident in her letters. Her publications and correspondence abundantly show the care she gave to improving living conditions in villages, her insistence on the practical actions to be taken and the importance she attributed to the role of women in the enterprise. She was in tune with the most enlightened promoters of public health, who shared the growing conviction that sanitation was the ‘‘basic function of municipal government,’’ including ‘‘conser vancy, the provision of piped clean water, sewerage and drainage,’’ and eventually ‘‘the maintenance of hospitals and dispensaries, vaccination, the regulation of markets, slaughterhouses, burning ghats and burial grounds.’’3 In other words, she encouraged Indian municipalities to take responsibility for promoting their own improvement in public health and to construct an adequate sanitar y infrastr ucture. In 1880 Nightingale began to call towns and villages, significantly, her new ‘‘clients’’ (see p 298 below). The material collected in this section on village and town sanitation illustrates the evolution of Nightingale’s concerns (shared by her collaborators and correspondents) throughout her India work, from her preoccupation with the well-being of the army, British and Indian, to her focus on the conditions of peasants living in villages; from the application of sanitary measures for the benefit of soldiers to the improvement of the social lot of the ryots; from hygiene to politics, education and law. Nightingale’s contribution to this work was increasingly full of and motivated by her desire to give voice to Indian nationals, and to ‘‘get

3 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Centur y India 274. Ghats are steps to the river, a ‘‘burning ghat’’ for cremation.

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ever ything done by the people themselves’’ (see p 255 below). In 1888 she thought that ‘‘what is wanted in India ultimately is an act to enable the people to organize themselves in the villages, to be their own local (rural) government, under strict government control and super vision, of course’’ (see p 337 below). The work reported here, on village and town sanitation, is background for the material later in this volume on local self-government. In this section it will be plain that, while the topic of sanitation persists in Nightingale’s writing, it becomes more and more subordinated to the issue of social change, which was, to her, the key to all and any improvement of Indian life. Later sections will make that shift still more evident when the plight of the ryots, the need for land reform and the political empowerment of Indian citizens become the subjects of her work.

‘‘Letter to the Bengal Social Science Association,’’ 1870 Editor: The Bengal Social Science Association, a learned society, was formed in 1867 by Justice J.B. Phear with the Rev James Long,4 assisted by Mary Carpenter.5 It included British and Indian members and aimed to promote social development in the Bengal presidency. Nightingale was made an honorary member in 1869, at the same time as Carpenter and Phear, by then the past president of the association. The association was dissolved in 1878.6 The short letter below acknowledges Nightingale’s election as honorary member of the association. She followed up her initial letter with a longer, substantive, letter for publication, which, at her request, was translated into Bengali. Writing for an association whose members might be tempted to rest satisfied with a detached study of society, Nightingale was keen to turn their attention to concrete issues, and so observed that there is a ‘‘constant relation between the health of a people and their social civilization’’ (see p 237 below). The control and elimination of cholera was a social issue, she declared, and called upon the association to

4 James Long (1814-87), missionary, founder of the Bengal Social Science Association. 5 Mar y Carpenter (1807-77), Unitarian philanthropist. She visited India four times and agitated for female normal schools, aid to juvenile delinquents and prison reform in India. 6 See Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 10, 91-106.

234 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India support the implementation of sanitary measures. Nightingale then listed those measures, which included sanitary work in villages. She invited the association to bring its ‘‘enlightened personal influence’’ ‘‘to bear at once on the improvement of a few villages by way of trial,’’ knowing that the villagers can ‘‘find among themselves all the labour required for keeping themselves clean and in health’’ (see p 241 below) if only they were encouraged to do so. Nightingale used the occasion of her election as honorary member of the association to send a copy of her address to the viceroy, Lord Mayo, saying that the paper dealt with ‘‘what the native races could do for themselves in sanitary things’’ (see p 244 below). It seems that this is the first piece of writing that Nightingale addressed directly to Indian nationals. They had honoured her; she replied with an exhortation to do more to improve the health conditions of their people. The step taken marks a significant transition. There would be many more. It is noteworthy that Nightingale in these particular writings changed her usual references to God to ‘‘the Eternal and Perfect One’’ and the ‘‘One Perfect’’ (see p 239 below), evidently an attempt to meet adherents of other faiths on their own terms. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Letter’’ to the Council of the Bengal Social Science Association, 25 May 1870, in Transactions of the Bengal Social Science Association (Calcutta 1870) 4:xiv-xv

London 25 May 1870 Gentlemen, Pray accept my warmest thanks and tender them for me to the Bengal Social Science Association for the honour you have done me in electing me an honorary member. Believe me, it touches me the more deeply the less I am able to express it. For I am a poor woman, overwhelmed with business and illness. For eleven years past, what little I could do for India, for the conditions on which the Eternal has made to depend the lives and healths and social happiness of men, as well native as European, has been the constant object of my thoughts by day and my thoughts by night. These efforts on my part have been humble indeed, but if the Almighty has blessed them in some measure and if they are recognized by you who have done so much more in the same cause—and we in England also recognize with admiration and shame that the native gentlemen of India have sometimes surpassed ourselves in progress in this matter— it is a source of the deepest thankfulness. May increasing success be granted!

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The task before India is truly gigantic. But men have done greater things than these. What would you say, for instance, to draining and cultivating the great endemic area of cholera from the seaboard to the Himalaya where the waters of the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Mahanuddy flow out, and from which endemic district the great epidemics of cholera rush forth to afflict the world? As well, you will say, try to put a girdle round the world! But a girdle has been put round the world by the electric cable7 and the day may come when you will have brought the waters of this great area under some control, when you will have drained its marshes, cultivated its rich provinces, exchanged its desolating malaria for useful production and possibly extinguished cholera as a scourge for mankind as well as for India. If the work is a work for heroes, it is the more worthy of your ambition. I beg to acknowledge a copy of the society’s Transactions. I may perhaps be permitted to offer the society a few books and, as my small contribution for a membership I so much prize, shall beg to enclose 100 rupees to your order. Pray believe me, gentlemen, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale P.S. Encouraged by your kindness, I may perhaps venture to write to you again in more detail but will not delay sending my poor thanks by this mail.

‘‘On Indian Sanitation,’’ 1870 Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘On Indian Sanitation,’’ in Transactions of the Bengal Social Science Association (Calcutta 1870) 4:1-9, together with her covering letter dated 24 June 1870 to H. Beverley, Esq., and Babu Peary Chand Mittra, honorar y secretaries to the Bengal Social Science Association, also in the British Librar y, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 6/27, F130/2413

24 June 1870 Gentlemen, You have done me an honour which I deeply feel in choosing me to be a member of your Social Science Association. I must try to do my little best to deserve that honour, since I, like yourselves, have never been accustomed to be a ‘‘sleeping partner.’’ I look at your name (‘‘Social’’)—which may I now venture to call our name?—and I think that perhaps what is most wanted, and most acceptable to you now, is the social aspect of the Indian public health

7 An allusion to the invention of the telegraph and its spread around the world.

236 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India problem, in other words, placing it before the peoples in their own languages, so that they may understand so much of the subject as may enable them to co-operate with the government in protecting their own health. I am aware that this has engaged your attention, who are able to bring to it far more ability and experience than I can bring. But I venture to send you my very humble contribution. Alas! I know no Indian language. I must therefore trust to your good offices to make what I write known to those of your members who do not speak and read English in Calcutta and the North West Provinces. And I trust that I have your permission to do the same through other friends in other parts of India. I shall send a copy of my little paper enclosed, with your leave, to Lord Mayo who sometimes honours me with his commands on these subjects. Pray believe me, gentlemen, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale P.S. I feel most unwilling that my ignorance of Indian languages should entail any expense on the funds of the association. I should esteem it a favour if you would allow me to contribute further for the translation, if you do have it translated, of this humble little paper not only, but of other and better works which you translate for the peoples of India. F.N. The best proof of my feeling of gratitude for the honour which you, the Calcutta [Bengal] Social Science Association, have offered me of membership, is to show myself a member in spirit, however unworthy, and to send a few remarks, however imperfect, with reference to the health and habits of the great populations inhabiting India, which you know and understand so much better than I do. Yet still I shall succeed, if in nothing else, in showing the great interest now felt by public opinion in England in the health, both physical and social, of those to whom we truly feel as to our beloved brother-and-sister subjects in India. Since our queen first directed an inquiry to be made into the health of her people in India, very much has been done by the government to give effect to the recommendations of the royal commission which conducted that inquiry. But the work increases in importance year by year. I have the privilege of hearing frequently of the proceedings in India. And while on the one side no one subject has more attention than this branch of the social condition of the Indian

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peasantr y and dwellers in towns, on the other, no one subject seems to loom greater and greater still and more immeasurable and important, as you approach it, like your own great Himalayas, as you come nearer to them. There is so constant a relation between the health of a people and their social civilization that alas! one of the best, if not the best, indication of the social state of populations is afforded by the numbers who die year by year. Not only this—but the Almighty has so linked together the happiness or misery of all His creatures, that we in Europe can almost anticipate whether Indian cholera is to devastate the nations of the West by the number of people who are dying of it in lower Bengal. If we are not linked together in love and mutual help, as we ought to be, of our own free will, we shall be linked together by mutual injur y—the injur y inflicted by mutual ignorance and prejudice, and this by the laws of the Eternal Perfect One, who thus leads His children in the East and in the West to know and follow after the right. To come to the practical: It is scarcely too much to say that the future advance of Indian social civilization and the question of cholera or no cholera are little else than one and the same thing. For if you in India ever succeed in eradicating this scourge, the whole tone of Indian domestic and social habits will be raised in the process. But if this scourge be left to follow its own course, the social condition of the people, it needs no prophet to tell us, must inevitably decline. Cholera, it is true, is not our only scourge. But where cholera disappears, diminished by sanitary measures, there is no fear but that fever, diarrhea, dysentery and the like will disappear faster than cholera itself. Here several questions arise to us. What can the people do individually to prevent cholera? Have they any power to do so? What are they to do? Or can government alone do the work for them? The work is twofold, as we all know. Part of it is so great that it is quite beyond the power of private individuals to do it. But another part of it is so great that no government can do it and it can only be done by the people, acting for their own safety. Take Calcutta. The municipal authorities are draining Calcutta and supplying it with waterworks beyond the power of private individuals. But the authorities can never by any process ensure that the people shall attend to the minute cleanliness of their houses, clothes, persons and habits, which is just as essential a sanitary business, believe me, as any engineering works, however costly.

238 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India All that a municipal government can do by engineering works is, in most cases, to give the people the greatest possible facilities for keeping their dwellings, habits and persons pure and clean, and for obtaining wholesome water. Ever ything else must depend on their own exertions. Take another instance. In a most important report on cholera (Dr Br yden’s Repor t on Epidemic Cholera in Bengal), we have been shown that in all probability this pestilence is a product of the wet, drying-up subsoil of lower Bengal, that the whole country, including the deltas of the Mahanuddy, the Hugli and the Brahmaputra, is the perennial home of cholera, and that this is mainly due to neglected subsoil and unused riches. Here then is a noble field for government to work in. To drain, to regulate the rivers, to encourage better agriculture and to introduce improved implements, would be to add another province to India and to do a great work in eradicating India’s opprobrium. But although these advantages could not be obtained without public works, advantages of equal importance would still have to be won by the people themselves. The cultivators of a country are its real health improvers. There is work enough and to spare for both government and people in this enormous field of usefulness. While those, therefore, who like you are leading this movement should help in forming public opinion, as to introducing arterial drainage works in malaria districts, in spreading over India improved agricultural methods and better agricultural implements, in forwarding municipal improvements of drainage, water supply, cleansing, etc., in cities and towns, there is still a greater work to be done in training the tens of millions of India in improved domestic and social habits. Silver and gold and stone and bricks and steam and cotton are easy to work with in comparison. But men’s hearts and minds, their ignorance and their cleverness, their prejudices and their enthusiasm, are not easy to work with and require a far higher order of genius in those who have to deal with them. So much the more honour to those whose wisdom and devotion are such that they may be called the leaders of mankind. For, ah! mankind often abuses the permission to be a fool. And as we find in all history and true fable that the meanest causes, universally multiplied, produce the greatest effects, let us not think it other than a fitting sacrifice to the Eternal and Perfect One to look into the lowest habits of great peoples in order, if we may, to awaken them to a sense of the injury they are doing themselves and the good they might do themselves.

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For instance, is it not true that, in many houses, the accumulated filth of the whole household is scarcely ever removed? Is it not true that, in or near to many houses, there are private tanks used for all purposes, washing, bathing and such like, and the water afterwards used for drinking or cooking? Is it not true that there are religious ideas prevailing among certain people which favour the drinking of foul water? (And would not the pure religion of the One Perfect rather lead the other way?) Is it not true that, in many private houses, the privy and the well are close to each other? Is it not true that the blood and offal of slaughtered animals are kept within the dwelling places of those who slaughter them or are left to fester and generate disease round places of sacrifice? Is it not true that many houses of the poorer class are so crowded at night that the air is poisonous? Is it not true that the surface drains intended to carry off the rain are made places of deposit for every kind of filth? Of course every one of you gentlemen could multiply and multiply these instances, being so far better informed than I am. I myself could suggest many more. Perhaps I have not even suggested those which are the most destructive to health. I have given these merely as instances where government can do little or nothing, where the people can do everything. It is impossible to read much of the present voluminous ‘‘repor ting’’ literature from India without being struck (1) with the state in which so many of the people in India live, and (2) with their great intelligence (surpassing that of many of the Western nations), the great opening and willingness among so many for education, for improvement, for knowledge. No doubt much of the willingness for education is due to the fact appreciated by them that education makes money. But would not the same appreciation, if enlightened, show them that loss of health, loss of strength, loss of life, is loss of money, the greatest loss of money we know, and we may truly say that every sanitar y improvement which saves health and life is wor th its weight in gold? (as is the phrase). An unhealthy people is always a poor people, a dirty people is always an unhealthy people. Take for instance the Central Provinces (and I must just allude to the fact that what is called a province in India has often twice the population of what is called a kingdom in Europe). We find from a very able report on cholera (Dr Townsend’s8

8 F.C. Townsend, sanitary commissioner of the Central Provinces, 1869-72.

240 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Repor t on Cholera in the Central Provinces, 1869) that, in the limited district attacked, there are no fewer than 30,135 towns and villages, containing a population of nearly 8 millions; 4100 of these villages with a population of upwards of 2 millions were attacked and 47,848 people died. Something about these villages we learn—just enough to show that ever y one of them is worthy of a separate social study. The people (men, women and children) and animals appear to live together in many cases. The villages generally are in a most filthy condition. They appear never to be cleansed and the people are as filthy as their dwellings, the water generally bad and unfit for use, filth of all kinds washed into the shallow ponds and shallow wells or into the drying-up riverbeds from which the people take water almost poisonous. The domestic habits of many of these men, women and children seem little better than those of the lowest class of animals. Is it any wonder that nature, in avenging her laws, decimates those who transgress them in this way? But worse than this. A long course of bad domestic habits brings moral blindness. The hard and fast link between pestilence and its determining causes is first lost sight of, next ignored, and then denied. Cholera is a bad thing. But there is a worse thing than cholera even. And that is that people should feel that nothing need be done— that nothing can be done—that what has always been is best. Even the native doctors, who ought to know better, have fallen into this marsh of stupidity, we are told in one report. Consider these eight millions of people in the Central Provinces, living in 30,000 groups. Take in the rest of India, what a vast social problem it is! But there is one good hopeful point and this is that small groups of population, of a few hundreds living in separate villages, are far more easily kept in health and improved in habits than great masses of population living in cities. It is perhaps not too much to say that the problem of keeping London in health with its three and a quarter millions is ten times as great and difficult as that of the eight millions of the Central Provinces. Yet this has been solved, though much remains to be done. And it has been solved too with your own great city of Bombay, though much remains to be done. Bombay is at this time healthier than London. The people are awake to all the causes of unhealthiness and cry out when cholera, fever and smallpox appear even in single deaths, that the causes ought to be removed; whereas formerly half the population might be swept off and the other half think it ‘‘all right.’’

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Your own Calcutta, though not healthier than London, is healthier than Manchester or Liverpool, since you have introduced your great works. Shall we have solved the harder problem and shall we give up the easier in despair? Never—God forbid! Let us make model villages, as in England we make model dwelling houses (in which good work the great husband of our beloved queen laboured more than we all). In these Indian villages little or no skilled labour appears to be necessary except indeed where populations live on ground requiring extensive drainage works. There is perhaps scarcely a village in India, the inhabitants of which might not find among themselves all the labour required for keeping themselves clean and in health. It is, after all, mainly a question of cleanliness and pure water. It is a true saying that ‘‘all smell indicates disease and all smell indicates loss of money’’ (for it proves the loss of valuable manure). Sanitar y work in these villages would appear to be simple enough and government is providing efficient district sanitary inspectors, who could easily help the people by giving a proper direction to improvements. At first it is to be feared that little good would be done without frequent inspection, without calling dirty people to account and persuading them to do better. Could you not, gentlemen, who have formed this social science organization—perhaps by means of enlightened natives of India—direct the attention of their countrymen on the spot to the need of personal exertion and personal help in improving the condition of towns, villages and houses? Merely to tell people what to do, though useful no doubt, is not all that is required. Enlightened personal influence is, above all, needed as in the West so in the East. Bring influence to bear at once on the improvement of a few villages by way of trial. A little real work, as we shall all agree, is worth any amount almost of discussion or writing. We shall also agree on a few main improvements, such as might be introduced at once. 1. Drain away all stagnant water in and about the villages. 2. Fill up all holes and level the ground. 3. Make and improve the roads and lanes in the villages and in their neighbourhood, so that surface water may run off easily. 4. Dig a well or two in clean new ground away from the houses and deep enough to obtain good drinking water. Build up the well inside and raise a coping all round the mouth of it to keep surface drainage from running back into it. Cover the mouth of the well and pave or

242 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India concrete the ground about the mouth. If a pump cannot be had, draw the water by a windlass and iron bucket and chain. The water skin is a dangerous abomination. 5. One of the most filthy and injurious habits in India is fouling the ground in compounds of houses by cesspits, and the ground in the neighbourhood of villages for purposes of manure. This foul habit is one of the principal causes of cholera and other epidemics. There is only one way to deal with it and this is to make the people see that their present practice pollutes air, earth and water, and kills themselves, while the proper use of all manure is to afford nourishment for vegetable life and by so doing to keep man and beast alive. Covering and cropping ground which has been used for these purposes, or removing all filth daily and digging it into ground as manure for crops, would remove one of the most serious causes not only of ill health but also of social degradation. 6. Some arrangement should be made for removing dung heaps to a safe distance from villages—and animals from the neighbourhood of dwelling houses. 7. Could a few model dwellings, with proper sanitary appliances, be introduced here and there as examples of what might be done in the construction of healthy houses? Example is the best teacher and enlightened native gentlemen, especially landowners, who have influence among the working population in town and country, might work miracles. The munificence in charity of native men of rank in India is well known. Here is an equally noble and patriotic way of exercising charity. In most country villages, there is said to be provision of some kind for cleansing which might be extended and made more systematic. To interest the existing races in social questions of this kind, a power ful engine might be found through the schools. Is there any reason why Indian schools should not give some elementary instr uction in physiology and the law of health, but especially with reference to the destr uctive consequences of present filthy habits, to the binding character of natural laws—nature never forgives—and the duty and benefit and absolute necessity of acting in conformity with what these laws require, if we are to live and not degenerate, but improve? The object is that of all true lovers of their country, their God and mankind. It is no less than rooting out of the vast empire of Indian soil pestilences like those which in former times scourged the world. The work is still in progress everywhere. Nowhere is it completed.

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The whole problem is not peculiar to India. Whole regions of the earth which were formerly devastated by fever, pestilences and dysenteries have long since been free from them, except in the milder forms in which they now occasion part of the ordinar y mortality and, guided by the light of experience, we see no reason why India should form any exception to the rule, that in proportion as the conditions of health become better known and complied with, these diseases, the opprobria of imperfect civilization, should diminish both in frequency and malignity. (Repor t of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army)

Florence Nightingale, honorary member of the Bengal Social Science Association Source: From two letters to Lord Mayo, University Library, Cambridge, Mayo Collection Add Mss 132/15 and 12

24 June 1870 Private. May I venture to take up my yarn about a subject in which you interest yourself so vigorously, the public health problem. I have been elected a member of your Calcutta [Bengal] Social Science Association. I accepted because for the last twelve years what little I could do for Indian health has never been far from my thoughts, sleeping or waking. I have sent them a paper on the relation of the Indian civil sanitar y question to the habits and customs of the people. That which strikes anyone reading over the reports which you send to England, which are as multitudinous and able as ever, is what a vast amount of sanitar y work there is ready to be done, on the shortest notice, which the most active government could not touch and which might be done offhand by the people themselves, aided and influenced by their own native chiefs and headmen and aided in greater works by the government when the government has money. I have written my very humble little paper on this text [‘‘On Indian Sanitation’’]. Possibly it might prove some little use in opening this division of a great subject, if translated and circulated among natives. I hope that it will not be disagreeable to you if I enclose a copy to you (you need not read it). For if what I have done should have your approval, any countenance you would kindly give would wing my poor little paper to reach the hearts of the people—which you have won. 8 July 1870 Private. I cannot thank you enough for the kindness of your note of 27 May and for that of thinking of sending me two white, soft, appropri-

244 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ate shawls, which are, as my old Italian nurse used to say, ‘‘proprio pomposo,’’ and just the thing for an invalid. It is very kind of you to think of it in the midst of your vast empire. I troubled you a mail or two ago by sending you a copy of a humble little paper of mine, chiefly on what the native races could do for themselves in sanitary things, written for the Bengal Social Science Association who have made me a member. I will not now encroach upon your time by a long letter, though I feel inclined, after the Arabic method, to cover your shawl with embroidered inscriptions representing the greatness of your power and of that power for good over the native as well as the European races under your charge. Your slave awaits with anxious yet humble impatience the promised ‘‘reply’’ which you have been so very good as to lead her to expect upon these matters. The India Office people have asked me for a ‘‘view’’ on the present position of the public health question. Though I am not ‘‘viewy,’’ I suppose I shall have to do this and hope that I shall meet your approval in what I say. Public opinion is very much with you in England, as you know, in these things. But you must have a horror of the sight of my handwriting, so that I will not at present say more than that I am, dear Lord Mayo, ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale

‘‘Sanitar y Progress in India,’’ 1870 Editor: Nightingale’s ‘‘Sanitar y Progress in India,’’ 1870, met with the criticism of Dr W.C. Maclean of Netley Hospital. He perceived in Nightingale’s writing a tendency to deprecate the role of theory in medical research, and feared that her views might jeopardize the course of the cholera inquiry. That perception was founded in a statement in her paper, where Nightingale stated: The public health question is not a question of opinion. It is a question of what is fact? of what is practicable and expedient? However ingenious a theory may be, the wisest thing is never to expend public money on it. . . . No speculative matter should ever peep out of or creep into public health reports intended to lead to practical action.’’ [See p 249 below.]

Maclean published his criticism in the 19 October 1870 issue of The Lancet, saying that theoretical investigations should not be ridiculed and discouraged; they were worthy of praise for the grounding they

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offered to practical actions. In her reply,9 Nightingale renewed her support for cholera investigations but reiterated that her ‘‘object’’ was ‘‘purely practical. It was to deprecate . . . the tendency to base sanitary proceedings on theory,’’ not to throw cold water on the cholera inquir y, which she advocated and supported. The practical approach she took in the paper was shaped by her wide experience in sanitary matters. Moreover there was still a great divergence in views on the causes of cholera and Nightingale had no ambition to contribute to that topic. Characteristically, her paper dealt with concrete sanitary questions: the social conditions of the Indian people, hygiene, clean water supply, diseases and their control, village sanitation, health and sanitary engineering, all questions calling for practical action based on facts and firm implementation of sanitar y measures. Faced with the deplorable state of municipalities, Nightingale, faithful to her method, recommended the gradual introduction of sanitary reforms. ‘‘Let some one city be completely set to rights as an example, and let the government encourage such a work’’ (see p 254 below). The paper was reproduced in an appendix to her letter of 24 June 1870 to the Bengal Social Science Association. Two years later Nightingale produced a further brief progress report (below), again included in the official Repor t. There is a noticeable difference in emphasis between this paper and that of the previous year, as the former was more firmly grounded in the top-down measures of the royal commission and the latter more focused on a ground-up approach. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Paper on Sanitary Progress in India,’’ in Repor t on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India from June 1869 to June 1870, together with Abstracts of Sanitary Reports For warded from Bengal, Madras and Bombay, printed by order of the Secretar y-of-State-for-India-in-Council (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1870) 40-46

London 1870 I have been asked to say a few words on the present aspect of the work of sanitary improvement in British India, having had the privilege of being allowed some share in it, ever since the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army first collected its evidence from

9 The Lancet (19 November 1870) 96:725, reproduced in Health in India 9:916-18).

246 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ever y station in India, and I was desired to give my opinion on that evidence, both as regards her majesty’s troops and the civil and native populations. Without farther apology, then, and as the evidence now coming in on the native populations is infinitely fuller than ever it has been before, I will try to say my few words as follows.

1 1. Much need not be said on the difficulties of beginning to improve. The question in its practical shape was new. But it was not the less grappled with at once by the Government of India, rather tentatively, as was fitting, the administrative recommendations of the royal commission were at first adopted, but as the practical action contemplated in these recommendations was not followed up, several changes in the arrangements were made—further changes appear to be under discussion. At present the work is to a large extent inspectorial and reporting, although much real work has been done nevertheless. The inspectors are gradually bringing to light what is the real social state of the mass of the Indian peoples. And it is difficult not to feel that, next to education, if not before education, stands the great and useful work for the Indian government and people which these inspections raise up and present before our eyes to be done. Their reports have removed any veil of romance woven by poets over Hindustan and show us peoples to be numbered by tens of millions living under social and domestic conditions quite other than paradisiacal. 2. These reports reveal to us great nations and races, subjects of the same queen, after a social existence of twenty centuries, less or more, living amidst their own filth, infecting the air with it, poisoning the ground with it and polluting water they drink with it. (Some of them even think it a holy thing to drink filth.) Habits of cleanliness are inculcated as matters of doctrine by most Eastern religions. Have these habits degenerated in India into mere ‘‘washing of cups and platters and such like things,’’ while all the weightier precepts of the laws of health are passed over with little or no notice? For many ages the people of India were more civilized and more cleanly than almost any nations of Europe. Why has this condition of things been in later days reversed? Now they are generally as bad as, sometimes worse than, the worst of our own people here in Europe. Not only habits of personal cleanliness, but the provision by the state or by private charity of pure air and pure water, and of means of

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keeping the earth pure and wholesome, are inculcated by most Eastern religions, however much they may vary in other respects. Why should these precepts of personal and social purity, which are universally true and useful, be forgotten? They have no necessary connection with any contested questions of moral or intellectual belief. 3. There are great tracts of country, especially in lower Bengal, liable to all manner of irregularities in the relations of land and water to each other. This is well known. But the hand of man appears to have introduced few or no compensating processes or works. The only escape from pestilence appears to be when the country is under water. As soon as the land begins to appear, pestilence appears with it. And so on year after year. Must we not sum up the results, so far as health is concerned, by the words perennial cholera, dysentery, fever, sometimes like plague, affecting first the people on the spot, then overflowing into unaffected districts and stations, decimating the troops, passing the boundaries of India and devastating Asia, Europe and Africa? (Is not this the histor y of the great cholera pestilences at least?) To judge from the reports, this seems the established chain of events at the present time. Cholera intensifies itself. At first it scarcely attracts attention. After a time it covers more ground and becomes more fatal. Then it overflows its accustomed limits and spares neither race, class, age nor sex. It becomes the deadly connecting link between the filthy habits of the lowest classes in Bengal and the highest civilization of the Western nations. It comes into existence among the hot moist vapours of the wet, undrained, uncultivated deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and it spreads and spreads till it ultimately claims its victims in almost every climate in the world. 4. It is always well to know the worst. And this inspecting work should be continued until the state of every village in India is laid bare (although the Bombay health officer, all honour be to him and to his activity, does make a piteous appeal to us to let him work and not report). The sheer logic of facts, if nothing else, will compel our selfishness to help forwards a higher civilization in that vast empire. But I should be wrong if I seemed to appeal merely to selfishness; the force of public opinion in England, particularly in a strong interest in the affairs which concern the health of our Indian native fellow subjects, has been steadily growing here for the last twelve years. 5. At first sight the problem to be dealt with appears to be of such vast extent that its solution is almost hopeless. But the very extent of

248 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the problem results from the great subdivision of its parts and this subdivision is of immense advantage in dealing with it. With numerous large and populous cities and towns, India is nevertheless essentially a country of villages. In all jungly parts of the countr y, many sanitary difficulties are habitually settled by bodily removing the village to a new site, and this habit often continues long after the people have ceased to be what their more settled neighbours would call ‘‘real junglees.’’ If the children or the chickens die, or ‘‘mother smallpox’’ or ‘‘mother great plague’’ visit the village, the people disperse, the elders burn the huts and when they reassemble select a new site for the village. Even in Calcutta, the general conflagration of whole ‘‘bustees’’ (the collection of native mat huts which are interspersed among the brick palaces) was, and is perhaps still, looked on as the natural and wholesome mode of making a clearance. And certainly the great fire of London, two centuries ago, though we had not sense enough to look at it in this way, was really the sanitary improver which did in our place, in a more summar y manner, what we ought to have done. It was a sanitary blessing and the only way to avoid greater evils. But in these days, although Charles Lamb10 did tell us that the Chinese burn down a house to roast a sucking pig, we should not exactly recommend, if London, Calcutta or any town or village were in a bad sanitary state, as the only sanitary remedy: burn it! Our Indian inspectors tell us much of the conditions, fatal to health, under which population exists in both towns and villages. 6. The town populations are neither better nor worse than are the villagers so far as their habits are concerned, but the town populations have not the same facilities for preser ving health as the villagers might have. Towns everywhere require certain classes of works which individual householders have no power to execute. Many of these Indian cities and towns have municipalities, but many municipalities have no money. In one or two instances, do not parts of the great drainage city-works appear to have been more or less copied from the so-called ‘‘cloaca maxima’’ at Rome?11 and is not that the most useless, costly

10 Charles Lamb, a long-time employee of the East India Company, described how the cooking of pork was discovered by someone burning down a house; see ‘‘A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,’’ in Essays of Elia. 11 A sewer discharging into the Tiber, constr ucted by Tarquinius Priscus in the 6th century bce.

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and mischievous of all ancient sanitary models which time has spared? Hence there is ‘‘no balance at the bankers.’’ A negative result is often a very good thing, if only it compels people to think and not to copy bad models in future. But alas! in the meantime a large extent of Calcutta has to be left undrained. Bombay appears to have been frightened, and have not certain professional people proposed to deal with these cities as if they were villages? Lo! is there not such an art as sanitar y engineering?

2 Also, has not some uncertainty been thrown over the whole subject of Indian public health questions by intruding into it theories of disease? The intention is of course to obtain some central principle of action. But as no two people in search of such a principle ever probably ar rived at the same, the general result of this method of dealing with public health questions is to amaze practical people and to afford a good reason for doing as little as possible. The public health question is not a question of opinion. It is a question (1) of what is fact? (2) of what is practicable and expedient? However ingenious a theory may be, the wisest thing is never to expend public money on it. Are not the theories we have had, too, not of Indian produce but of European manufacture? And have they in reality anything whatever to do with public health problems? The questions to be dealt with are either questions of fact or they are nothing. No speculative matter should ever peep out of or creep into public health reports intended to lead to practical action. (From any quarter which will help us to understand questions of public health, light is welcome, but is not the usual procedure of disease theories to take some one fact and to found a whole chain of consequences upon it, leaving out all other facts and the consequences which follow from them? Then, as there are people who know these other facts, these people, not deficient in intelligence, put in an inconvenient oar and call in question the authority of the onefact philosophies and their conclusions. May I just say that recent reports afford striking illustrations of this; e.g., one German professor tells us that cholera is a fungoid disease, another, that it springs from some special condition of the ground water. The government has an inquiry instituted and the first result is that there are no special cholera fungi in India, the second, that cholera has assumed great intensity where there is no ground water at

250 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India all. Others state explicitly that cholera excreta are the special foci of cholera. But then we find cholera spreading in great intensity where cholera excreta are dealt with in conformity with this theory, and not spreading at all—as in the hospitals of Calcutta—where they have not been so dealt with. Another lays all the blame on cholera poison getting into water, unconscious, apparently, that cholera has committed ravages where no such occurrence could possibly have taken place. These are but a few flowers from the garden of theories, but should these gardens be cultivated at all where the struggle with cholera is a dreadful, too dreadful reality and not a book theory? Now, may I give an instance of wise reser ve from Dr Smith’s report on Bengal, where one of the medical officers teaches us a lesson we all should learn? ‘‘Perhaps after the epidemic which has prevailed lately among cattle in England and the experience which has been gained therefrom, but which led to no better result than an order for the indiscriminate slaughter of all beasts affected with it, more allowance will be made for the difficulties and honest doubts of those whose lot it is to treat cholera in its chosen home. I hope especially that a confession of ignorance will not be taken as an admission of stupidity.’’)

3 1. None of the reports received here, so far as we know, except those for Calcutta and Bombay, give engineering proposals for improving the public health among the larger groups of population, especially as regards the introduction of works and methods of procedure long familiar in Europe. Some of them recognize more or less fully the advantages which would arise from such works, but what is really wanted is this: progress repor ts, such as those of the municipal authorities of Calcutta, showing (1) the increase of sewering and draining, (2) improvements in water supply and distribution, (3) surface drainage, filling up ditches, etc., and the like, or else cleansing reports like those of the Bombay officer of health, showing the real amount of work done. We want progress repor ts from every part of India, for stations, cities and villages. 2. The improvement of Indian military stations, as has long since been shown, involves the consideration of questions of surface and subsoil drainage, water supply, removal of sewage from buildings, improved barrack and hospital construction, improvements in existing barracks and hospitals and last, though by no means least, sanitary improvement of native towns and bazaars in the vicinity of military stations.

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Referring to these health requirements, the Army Sanitary Commission, in their ‘‘Suggestions for the Sanitary Improvement of Indian Stations,’’ nearly seven years ago, laid down the following general principle: ‘‘No improvement in barrack or hospital accommodation will compensate for a malarious subsoil or for bad water; and on the other hand, no improvements in drainage and water supply will neutralize the influence of an ill-ventilated, badly constructed, overcrowded barrack and hospital. And even if these works were carried out, much removable sickness would still exist, unless the men’s leisure were profitably occupied and the sanitary police of bazaars [markets] and town efficiently attended to.’’ In the documents received here no reference is to be found to the sur face or subsoil drainage of stations, no reference to sewering of buildings. Dry-earth conser vancy is apparently the only thing attended to, although is it not simply a matter of common knowledge that the dry-earth system makes little difference in the amount of dangerous impurity contained in the fluid sewage of a station or town? There is no reference to improved water sources or improved methods of distribution for any military station. But Bengal presidency has done the next best thing, in having had an exhaustive examination made of many of its water sources, and the result is this: very few can be depended on for pure water; some are extremely impure and consequently dangerous. There is no reference to cleansing measures for filthy native towns near stations, except such reference as shows how excessively filthy these towns are. Some of them, indeed, appear never to be free of cholera, and then people wonder that cholera attacks troops who live near them or frequent them. The one measure which has been extensively carried out is building new barracks—some of them apparently on a more costly scale than necessary for the station or climate, all of them apparently without the necessary ground measures, without which no new building is of much use. There can be no doubt that at many stations new barracks were necessar y and that they will eventually prove of the greatest benefit to the public service, but ought not more care to have been bestowed in keeping them cool? And is one rigid plan and rule of constr uction ever ywhere necessar y? or would it not, financially, have been better to have had the stations carefully examined one by one, on the ground principles mentioned above? and, then, a general plan of improvement laid down for each station, having special reference to the class of works required to remove disease causes?

252 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India We are afraid that the result shows that this would have been the wiser plan, for these new barracks have not been free (nor could it have been expected) from miasmatic diseases, incident not specially to the old barracks—although no doubt bad barrack accommodation added to the mischief—but to undrained locality, to malaria-generating countr y near the station, to filthy native towns in the vicinity or to bad water. 3. There are perhaps very few stations, except those in low, flat, wet, alluvial plains, where malaria proceeds from unregulated waters or water-logged subsoils and bad agriculture, which might not be readily placed in healthy condition, if the energetic powers of Indian administrators, with a governor general and commander-in-chief, zealous and able, were to be applied to this work. Our recent cholera experience, indeed, proves that there is no time to be lost. We cannot endure to see die a regiment a year by cholera in the Bengal presidency, especially with such an experience before us as that of Madras presidency, viz., that places of pilgrimage which used to be the continual foci of cholera have been for years kept free of the disease by sanitary measures. The prisons of northern India afford similar experience, and not an hour should be lost in dealing with the military stations. 4. If there must be stations close to unhealthy towns, one of two things must follow: either towns as well as stations must be put into a safe sanitary state or British soldiers must die of cholera. There is no third way possible, as all agree. With such unhealthy stations and towns as Allahabad, it might be worthwhile, if practicable, to hold someone responsible for putting the whole place to rights, vesting him with absolute powers. If this cannot be done, then what other alternative is there but to remove the troops to the nearest spot that is safe, if Allahabad cannot be given up as a station? The same may be said of Peshawar, where so many of the finest troops in the British Army have been destroyed. It is admitted now by our highest authorities that a station placed near enough to a native town to be injured by it, or by a village too large for entire removal, is badly placed, strategically and politically, and should be moved. Most of our stations have been placed haphazard, hence many are close to such towns or villages and should be moved. In the case both of Peshawar and Allahabad, the evils complained of should be corrected at once, whatever the expense. It is believed that the last commander-in-chief most wisely ordered all troops out of Allahabad except two companies in the fort. The mis-

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take of trying to keep more than a strong outpost at Peshawar, if the communication across the Indus can be perfected, is admitted in theor y, though not yet recognized practically. 5. Has not much of the mischief resulted from want of sanitary engineering? And sanitary engineering is a speciality. It does not come by nature. No one expects a first-rate physician to be a first-rate operative surgeon, although he knows surger y. Though there are engineers in India, the work of the sanitary engineer is not done. A sanitar y engineer does not use open unprotected wells, dug in foul subsoil, for supplying troops with water, as in some places. And scarcely does he bring water by open cuts in the ground, as in other places. Nor does he leave the stations without so primitive a contrivance for drawing water as a hand pump, let alone a steam pump, as in all places. May a single fact in last year’s Bombay presidency sanitary report be quoted as an instance of the condition of water supply? All the drownings reported, 1608 in number, took place in wells and tanks. No fewer than 1100 dead bodies were taken out of wells during the year in this presidency alone. What too becomes of the liquid sewage of stations: does it not go into the subsoil? And it stays there, because it has nowhere else to go. A sanitar y engineer would scarcely run his sewage or allow it to run into the subsoil. Is it too much to ask, and if we don’t ask the question, Nature asks it so loud that we must answer—she asks that the stations be subsoil-drained, properly sewered, sufficiently supplied with good water for all purposes of health; she asks that the bazaars and native towns near be cleansed and kept clean. This question she goes on asking and it is not a sufficient answer to her to build barracks. She does not take this answer, but just goes on levying her own cess [tax] in her own way till we give her the answer she requires. She does not care about agents but only about results. If there are agents there who can do the work, she says: ‘‘Set them to work.’’ If there are not, ‘‘Send for them.’’ The work to be done is great and will be costly. But a beginning might be made. The worst stations are well known and might be grappled with in detail.

4 1. However extensive the stational improvements required may be, they are but a small matter when compared with those required for the civil population. How great a work there is before the Govern-

254 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ment of India! But the work is so great that the government cannot accomplish it by itself. In two capitals, Calcutta and Bombay, much has been already done, and the death rate actually reduced to below that of London in the case of Bombay, below that of Manchester or Liverpool in the case of Calcutta. Madras has not been so active. She endures herself a high death rate by not doing for herself what she has done for her pilgrims, and her abominable river is still more abominable than ever. In other large cities there are active municipalities all more or less engaged in improvements. But the true key to sanitary progress in cities is water supply and sewerage. No city can be purified sufficiently by mere hand labour in fetching and carrying. As civilization has advanced, people have always enlisted natural forces or machinery to supplant hand labour, as being much less costly and greatly more efficient. The Army Sanitary Commission have shown in their ‘‘Suggestions’’ that the steam engines belonging to London water companies will do as much work for a shilling as 900 men can do in a day of eight hours. Shall a shilling’s worth of work continue to be done in India by 900 men in a day or by one man in 900 days? Other boards and other ‘‘guardians’’ have, however, been unwilling to change. More unwilling perhaps than energetic India. But they have had to change. No one can stay behind when once public opinion and the march of events say, Move. Indian municipalities are moving. Let some one city be completely set to rights as an example, and let the government encourage such a work. Pune is a good example of the need of action: a large city of 70,000 or 80,000 people, a camp bazaar of nearly 20,000 more, many villages and smaller camp bazaars about, and two large military stations; good natural climate, good water to be had and good soil. Dr Leith showed what was needed by an excellent report years ago, viz., (1) drain city, camps and villages, not into the reser voir which supplies the great part of Pune’s water; (2) open good streets; (3) give good water; (4) improve the barracks. Something is being done to give good water and barracks, but nothing to drain. The great town and camp still drain into the subsoil or into the reser voirs of water for the poor people. 2. The most enormous work will, after all, lie with the villages, and it is in the villages that unhealthy conditions appear to exist almost in greatest intensity. Read the details given in Dr Smith’s report on Ben-

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gal, in Dr De Renzy’s report on the Punjab, Mr Planck’s on the North West Provinces, Dr Townsend’s on cholera in the Central Provinces! Do not they show why cholera weighs so heavily on these village populations? Dr Townsend tells us that only last year 4100 villages in his district, having a population of over 2,000,000, were attacked with cholera, which carried off 47,848 of the inhabitants—a mortality of 22 per 1000 from cholera alone. Bearing in mind that these cholera epidemics are constantly doing their destructive work in India, we may form some idea of the immense suffering and loss inflicted. Bearing in mind the enormous number of villages in India, we may see that no government could do the work required, although no people could do it without the government. All that a government can do in such circumstances is to collect and make known the facts, to bring them and their consequences to the knowledge of the people, to help them with advice and to encourage their efforts by examples. But the people themselves will have to do the work. Fortunately, little engineering is required for villages. Is not the main thing wanted a good cleaning out to begin with, then some local means of keeping the villages clean? Arrangements for storing the manure of each house and cattle stand at the village outskirts would be required, but these need only be of a very primitive kind. Roads through villages require to be repaired, the surface to be levelled and drained, holes to be filled up, new and properly constructed wells to be dug and better methods of drawing and distributing water to be provided. The people might be required to find the labour. A few model dwellings or even a model village in each district would do much good among peoples who are essentially imitative. A few simple rules for keeping their villages healthy might be drawn up. (An octavo volume is not wanted; a dozen lines may be made to hold much wisdom.) If these things were done and if government provides inspection, with the occasional advice of a sanitary engineer where required, it is certain that the good results would be immediate and in time the people would be able to look after their own health. The work is easiest of all in villages dealt with individually. A good collector or commissioner, with power to order and to spend a little money, patience and a good native prime minister, might get everything done by the people themselves. The work is one of health, but it is also a work of education and civilization. Would it not be well to introduce some elementary knowledge of physiology and the laws of health into the teaching of government schools? especially as regards social and domestic habit. Would it not

256 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India do good in two ways—as acting on parents (and villages) through their children and on the children themselves in afterlife? We learn from the highest authority that at Bombay it was the young medical students of the Grant Medical College and their friends in the Elphinstone College who made the sanitary improvement of Bombay possible. And at a recent meeting held in Calcutta for discussing a report on cholera by Dr Murray, the most comprehensive and practical treatment of the whole subject was contained in an address by a native Indian physician.

5 A great work of a certain kind has nevertheless been accomplished in India—astonishing when one realizes the conditions of that vast empire—a work of giants. And indeed our great Indian administrators are giants, even in these days. Great things have been done in sanitary legislation in the last years. Many commissioners have been zealous in doing their difficult duty to the people over whose interest they are placed. Inspectors and medical officers have made signal efforts in the same direction. The work of municipalities must not be forgotten nor the large sums spent by them in improving the public health, nor the building of new barracks and hospitals nor the other improvements at military stations, which have been carried out at a great cost and on an extensive scale. There is life where there was none before. There is increasing interest in the work of protecting the public health. And a large amount of the most indispensable information is being collected by the sanitary commissioners. What is wanted now, as we shall all agree, is practical work. The people themselves must help. There is plenty, too, for the higher powers to do. The texts from the reports received are many and admirable. We could preach from them for a year. But we would rather work from them. Are not the simple facts that India is a hotbed of malaria and the Ganges delta the breeding ground of cholera sufficient to show in what direction the Government of India should work for the public health, a work in which it is certain that the people can do little or nothing for themselves? Are not the simple facts that in India whole provinces, which in Europe would be kingdoms, are living in habits little higher than those of the lowest class of animals, sufficient to show how the people, encouraged and instructed by their own landowners

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as well as by British authorities, might work for their own health—a work in which it is certain that no government can do much for them? Source: From a letter to William Clark, King’s College, London, RBNA/BCN3/3

10 August 1871 Private. I have to thank you for a most kind and instructive letter, and for copies of the Calcutta Municipal Report for 1870, and two papers of your own, one on ‘‘bustee improvement,’’ one on the drainage of small houses and huts—all most valuable. Although the cost of works has been large, and although a large outlay must still be incurred, the evidence in the papers which you have been kind enough to send me is more than enough to show that your work is bearing the best of fruits. You are quite right, in the opinion of the most experienced, in opposing all separation in the elements of the sewage. The same drains which carry away foul water can carry away everything. If sewers and drains be laid with perfectly close joints, and all communications trapped outside the houses—and if all sewers and drains be ventilated—the objections against them are purely theoretical and may be disregarded, may not they? What too often happens is this: a badly constructed work (for which the contractor ought to have been punished) causes disease— ergo, say the doctors, there should be no works except the dry earth system. It is like so much other reasoning in practical things—discussion without practical wisdom—and not worth a thought. Interference with engineering questions by medical opinions is as unwise as it would be for engineers, however able, to interfere in purely medical questions. It rejoices us to see you dealing with the drainage of ‘‘bustees’’ in reference to future improved plans and construction. In this country no two lines of huts would be allowed to approach nearer to each other than to a distance between their outer walls equal to the height of the ridge above the ground. Would this do for Calcutta? It is right and expedient to do as you do in not pressing forwards too fast. But we trust that you will be enabled to do great good by completely improving a block of ‘‘bustees’’ situated near an existing line of sewer so as to show an example to the people. Might we hope that the time is not far distant when the whole sewage of Calcutta will be used for agricultural purposes (and Dr David Smith’s objections removed)?

258 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 2. I have gone through the Calcutta Municipality Report—it is full of important points. It may be most truly affirmed that the report shows very satisfactor y progress in sanitary work. And we are all delighted to see that so much has been done. All that you have to do (alas! what a great ‘‘all’’!) in order to make Calcutta a complete example of good sanitary work is to go on cautiously but steadily in the same direction, doing, of course, all you can to carry the people with you, and, wherever you cannot step in to improve an entire native district, selecting a corner of it and attacking it in detail. In this way you will show the people what can be done and win their confidence. (And even the great ‘‘all’’ will be yours.) We trust that you will be able to proceed with your wonted activity with your reclamation work at the salt water lake outfall, and apply the whole sewage to agriculture as speedily as possible. (That is a charming story of Indian, Calcutta life, viz., the fear that the people would not use the new water because of prejudices, the bheesties finding the standpipes so much more convenient than going to the Ganges that they filled their mussicks at them—so that the people found out all of a sudden that they have been committing heresy—the religious chiefs then declaring the water orthodox—but the bheesties in supplying the clear pure water to the orthodox heads having taken care to scrape road mud up and put it into the mussicks (and then, ending like a fair y tale) everybody now uses the good water who can get it. Instr uctive stories of the same kind, though none as good as that, I could tell from England. For we too have our castes, our orthodoxies, our heresies, our prejudices, in sanitary matters, where they ought never to come. Above all, do not mind medical theories. ‘‘Tis true, ’tis pity, but pity ’tis, ’tis true.’’

‘‘Obser vations on Sanitary Progress,’’ 1872 Editor: The following brief progress report was requested by C.C. Plowden for the official Repor t on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India from June 1871 to June 1872. Besides the printed version below there is a pen-written draft/copy of the original in Ms 5480/12/1-3. It contains a section on what Nightingale called ‘‘fetish worship,’’ which she thought might offend Indian readers and proposed to omit. Plowden omitted it.

Village and Town Sanitation / 259 Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Obser vations on Sanitary Progress in India,’’ 11 October 1872, contributed by request to the Repor t on Measures Adopted for Sanitar y Improvements in India from June 1871 to June 1872, together with Abstracts of Sanitary Reports for 1870, forwarded from Bengal, Madras and Bombay (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode 1872) 48-49; draft in Wellcome Ms 5480/12

London 11 October 1872 Two years ago the privilege was given me of making a few observations on Indian sanitary progress.12 Since that time an immense number of reports of current work have passed through my hands. I have been asked now to give my small opinion. What is most striking in these documents is the strong and living interest taken by the authorities in India and their officers in improving the people’s sanitar y condition, as well as the practical character, increasing happily year by year, of the work done. Are not the old helpless days of the ‘‘old Indians’’ (in sanitary things, of ‘‘untutored mind’’) nearly gone? and has not the great discovery been made in India that the diseases of which so many of these ‘‘poor Indians’’ had, alas! died, are largely mitigable or entirely preventible? Indeed, has not Dr Fayrer shown that even, of all places in the world, at Calcutta, orphan infant life is by no means the frail plant supposed, if only reared in due conformity with the laws of the Supreme Being? ‘‘The very small mortality,’’ he says, ‘‘as well as the small amount of sickness, proves that the European child, under proper hygienic conditions and careful physical training, may live and thrive in the plains of Bengal almost as well as in its native country,’’ and he is even able to add, ‘‘It is not merely in the absence of any serious disease and in the low death rate that this is manifested, but in the vigorous healthy appearance of the children generally.’’ Now children are, as it is well known, the very touchstone, the live tests of sanitary conditions or, sadly but too often, the dying and dead tests of insanitary conditions. What good hope for the future here! Although a little unnecessary theor y still crops up now and then in the strata of Indian reports, is there not growing, and most vigorously, evidence that the enormous Indian problems are being dealt with on their practical side? as has been already done in the home army and among the home civil population. Do not some of the results now

12 Repor t on Measures Adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India from June 1869 to June 1870 40-46 (above).

260 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India obtained, and eminently so at Calcutta, at Bombay and in many villages, show that many causes of ill health are as easily removable in India as elsewhere? It is true that sanitary works and measures for India must generally be somewhat bigger than elsewhere. Last year (1871) the death rate among British troops serving in India was only 171⁄3 per 1000, but there was little cholera. Alas! there is one great exception to progress—need it be said that it is the Burdwan fever?—the causes of which are well known, but remain unremoved, while the people are dying off by hundreds, as in former times, so in these. Here is a case indeed in which it would be well worthwhile to try, even an experiment, in removing a disease cause (though experiment it would not be). The Bengal government has done all in its power to alleviate, and with but very partial success, the sufferings of the people. The one thing not done has been to remove the fever cause by improving the natural drainage of the countr y, by supplying good water and the like needful measures. What appears now most required in all these Indian reports is an annual summary of works car ried out. The absence of this information might give a most imperfect idea of what has been done, indeed, an impression that because no ‘‘progress’’ is reported, there has been no ‘‘progress’’ to report. Taking these annual documents as a whole, there can be no two opinions as to their great value and, when compared with sanitary reports in which scientific considerations have sometimes—it may, indeed, be said unintentionally—taken precedence of saving of life, this value is a splendid gain. May the end, without too much impertinence, be of this little homily—the repeating, as emphatically as possible, that in this matter of improving public health, as in so many others, larger but none weightier, the Government of India is well served by its officers. And there can be no shadow of a doubt that this, joined with the increasing interest taken by the native population in that subject of paramount importance to their lives—an interest which is indeed only a revival, for there was a time when the Oriental was far away ahead of the Saxon in sanitary as in metaphysical things—there can, we need not say, be no doubt that these motive powers will before long show their results in the abatement of disease all over the country.

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‘‘A Missionary Health Officer for India,’’ 1879 Editor: In 1879 Nightingale wrote an article, in three parts, describing the role of the sanitary commissioner and his special contribution in relation to Indian famine relief. She referred to the work done during the 1876-79 ‘‘Great Famine’’ and considered such relief work an eminent case of the ‘‘missionar y spirit’’ (see p 265 below) acting on India. In the course of preparing the article new information became available to Nightingale, which she wanted to include. The accompanying three letters, which are given here as a preamble to the article itself, indicate that the editor was inclined to curtail important parts of the article for reasons of space, and without referring it back to the writer. With a certain irritation Nightingale made proposals to remedy the situation. The article as a whole highlights the most painful aspects of the Great Famine: relief houses, peculation, moneylending, riots and other evils. However, Nightingale also gives attention to sanitary details, education and leadership as promising a better future. The main focus of the first article is on the role of the sanitary commissioner, the very type of health missioner. In her outline of the missioner’s heroic work Nightingale had persons such as T.G. Hewlett and John Lawrence in mind: they were the ‘‘famine heroes’’ (see p 278 below), the ‘‘sanitar y heroes’’ (see p 295 below). Her description fits Hewlett particularly well. The second part deals with the mismanagement of the crisis in Mysore during the same period, and the painful state of relief houses. Part three expounds upon the general duties of the health officer. Nightingale, it might be recalled, never travelled to India, yet her writing on famine has the tone of a direct witness. Although she could only read the reports of those who had been there, she was able to create a lively impression, thanks in part to her use of biblical imagery and literary references to the plague. Her travels in Egypt and Sudan in 1849-50 at least acquainted her with peasant poverty, although not directly with starvation. This three-part article on the duties of the ‘‘missionar y health officer’’ is placed in this section because it aptly describes Nightingale’s own role in the cause of India and, at the same time, gives an idea of the contacts she developed in the course of her work. It will be noted that the publisher’s difficulty in incorporating Part 1 (continued) was probably due to Nightingale’s being carried away from a description of the activities of a health officer to the burning topic of the plight of the peasant. Much of that material

262 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India shows similarities with ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot,’’ from which it might have been condensed. At the end of the second part Nightingale comes forth as an early environmental advocate. She argued that while irrigation was needed, rainfall would be more ‘‘equalized’’ with tree planting, resulting in a lessening of danger from both floods and drought. ‘‘We [are] so stupid’’ as to ‘‘go on cutting down wood without replacing it,’’ she stated (see p 293 below). The journal in which the material was published, Good Words, was a popular Victorian monthly magazine that appeared from 1860 to 1906. It was launched by the Scottish publisher, Alexander Strahan, and aimed to recr uit the numerous evangelical readers of magazines. Its editor, Norman Macleod, a Church of Scotland minister, was credited with making the journal both relevant and instructive. Good Words also published Nightingale’s plea for workhouse nurses, ‘‘Una and the Lion’’ (in Public Health Care 6:290-301). Source: From three (not-for-publication) letters to the editor of Good Words, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 5483/22, 23 and 24

17 June 1879 Sir. In reference to the ‘‘Note’’ or ‘‘P.S.’’ at the end of my paper with the above title [‘‘A Missionary Health Officer in India’’] to be published in your next No., in which ‘‘Note’’ it is stated that the Pune fires form part and parcel of the present agrarian Deccan riots; you will have seen by the telegram in yesterday’s Times that the ‘‘incendiaries’’ have been tried and have ‘‘confessed’’ that they were defaulting clerks, who burned the palaces to destroy the proofs of their guilt and that they had nothing to do with the dacoits [armed robber gangs]. I believe those who are best informed consider that this ‘‘confession’’ means nothing beyond the everyday experience in India, viz., that any amount of false witness can be had, even at the cost of their own lives (which will not be the case in the present af fair) from witnesses for the sake of their ‘‘caste’’ or their league, ‘‘agrarian’’ or otherwise, and that the Pune business and the Deccan riots are from the same source, viz., agrarian ‘‘indebtedness’’ and agrarian troubles. But as the judges on the trial have found otherwise, and as my ‘‘Note’’ may possibly give rise to some disagreeable correspondence for you, I write to ask whether you would wish me to make some alterations (a few words would do it) before the type is broken up and the number

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published, in order that there may be no statement in the paper which can be successfully challenged. Pray believe me, your faithful servant Florence Nightingale 26 June 1879 A Missionar y Health Officer in India. In answer to your kind note, may I say that I am not ‘‘disappointed’’ at the curtailing of my article by you, who are the only person to decide on these matters. But may I also say that I cannot but be ‘‘ver y much disappointed’’ at its having been thought right to curtail a paper without referring it back to the writer, who is the only person to say how it is to be curtailed? Is it usual for an editor to take another course than, when he wishes a paper in any way recast, to return the proof to the writer, with his own remarks and wishes noted upon the margin? No instance recalls itself to my remembrance of a different course and I need not say that, in every case, the editor’s wishes were scr upulously obeyed. To me this article was not so much an article as a means of calling popular attention to one of the most burning of India’s burning questions. And this was the cause of its being published for July. Yet that ver y part is left out, rendering it useless for my purpose. And in August it will be too late and the ‘‘Note’’ or P.S., calling attention to the stoppage of public works out of date and out of place. Would you be so good as to inform me what space is available for Part 2, as you wish to have it? I could not write a paper (especially under the severe stress of overwork and illness under which I always am) without knowing what I may expect to be inserted. And I am sure that you will not only pardon but agree with me in saying this. Would you be so good as to send me the revise of the whole ‘‘81⁄2 pp,’’ from which the present article was abridged? I need hardly remark to your experience that it is impossible to give any account of a sanitary commissioner’s annual work (which was to have been the subject of the second part) worthy of Good Words, in 11⁄2 pp; and the ‘‘Note’’ or P.S., with other parts, in the first, will have to be entirely recast for the second. Pray believe me, Sir, your faithful servant Florence Nightingale

264 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 30 June 1879 6 a.m. ‘‘A Missionary Health Officer in India.’’ I am obliged to you for your kind note. I am sorry for your troubles with ‘‘publishers’’ and ‘‘contributors.’’ I beg to return the parts—not inserted—recast and enlarged (for your August No., if you wish). It is impossible, as you will see, to hook on to this ‘‘Note’’ Part 2, which is a narrative of some years’ sanitary labours previous to the famine, the only unity of which with Part 1 is that they are labours of the same man and in the same country, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the Deccan famine or the Deccan riots. In fact, the only reason for putting Part 1 (which is Part 2 in point of time) first, was because it seemed important to have that about the Deccan riots now in the July number, when people are startled by them. (Else, Part 1 and Part 2, when you see it, might as well, as you will observe, appear next month or next year.) I will give you Part 2 for a subsequent number, if you wish. Would you be so good as to let me have a revise (or proof ), as soon as possible, of this? And, if you would be so good as to let me see any alterations that you propose making, I shall be truly obliged. I ver y much regret that, entirely a prisoner to my room from illness and unable to see any but with long-standing claims of business upon me, whose name is ‘‘Legion,’’13 it is impossible to me to make an appointment to see you [bottom of page cut off]. . . . Any changes or curtailments made before they go in as any papers I write are merely an offset from my other work and I can ill spare the time, but I cannot spare it at all except for a practical object. Begging that you will excuse this explanation and hoping that I have met your wishes and the wishes of your ‘‘space,’’ [bottom of page cut out]

13 An allusion to Mark 5:9.

Village and Town Sanitation / 265 Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘A Missionary Health Officer in India,’’ Good Words, Part 1 (July 1879) 492-96; [cont’d.] (August 1879) 565-71; Part 2 (September 1879) 635-40, ellipses in printed article

Part 1 For years he did duty as the minister of the laws of God for life and death: the last year was the year of the great famine. Was there a man dismay’d? Not tho’ the soldier knew, Someone had blunder’d.14

Throughout all the blunders, these soldiers of the cross indeed—that is, soldiers of the famine—stood to their posts, or rather rushed from post to post; if anything went wrong in the famine relief machinery they flew at the place and worked with a will; yes, through illness ending in death, or infirmity worse than death. They died of fever, hard work and jungles; they were invalided for life, but, as long as breath lasted, they stood to their work. And the mamlatdars, the native magistrates, and public works overseers, the native gentlemen, inspired by their devotion, helped them. That was the best part of it. The missionary spirit spread. He [Hewlett] never gave himself more than three hours’ sleep at night: in weariness often, in watchings often;15 often without food, always without tents. He swam the rivers on an elephant: that was after the rains set in. The tracks were one marsh; they could only travel on elephants; no carts were possible; there were no bridges. He used to travel on an elephant for twenty hours, from ten in the evening to six in the evening the next day, swimming two rivers perhaps on his way, then made his camp at six o’clock, called the camp people at half-past ten, and off again. The mahouts [drivers of elephants] used to say, ‘‘Elephants can’t stand this.’’ He enjoyed it highly—in painfulness often—he liked it; often no biscuit, no grain of any kind; in fastings often. He would have been glad of the famine diet—millet. Englishmen behaved like Englishmen, worked like Englishmen, and carried the native officials with them. In the beginning, while the drought still lasted, he set out in a tonga with ponies, no roads, crossing rivers by fords; the first thing was to

14 Alfred Tennyson, ‘‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’’ 15 An allusion to 2 Cor 11:27.

266 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India stick fast in the ford on a stone; they had to get out and push the tonga through; the native servant said he was touched by the sun and could do nothing; the master had to cook his own food and make his own bed. Then nothing but dust. His reports he had to write under a tree, or on his tonga, with the dust blowing in his eyes. He used to travel from midnight till six in the morning, then till nine or ten at night; prepared his own meal; slept for an hour or two, then off again at midnight. A hard time of it—‘‘highly enjoyable’’—the day was never long enough. 2. The Maratha peasantry, in the Deccan, is one of the finest peasantries in the world: resolute in the spirit of self-help and self-management, in fortitude and patience, frugal and industrious; they neither expect nor come upon relief, public or private. Englishmen look down upon them; they might look up to them in many respects. To this peasantry came the almost utter destruction of their whole crops for the agricultural year 1876-77, and the jeopardy of their following harvest for the two critical months of 1877-78. Yet, notwithstanding this vast loss of crops, the mass of the ryots or peasant proprietors, ‘‘the real backbone of the agricultural community,’’ supported themselves, their old people and their children—or died—and never came upon relief at all. No peasantry in the world could have behaved better. Without help from government they imported for themselves grain enough to keep the markets supplied for several millions. (How much of this was done by the moneylenders, and how much it has therefore tightened the grasp of the moneylenders on the people, we have yet to learn.) Of the eight millions who suffered—five millions who suffered severely—under drought in the Deccan, only one in ten was in the receipt of any kind of government relief. This is not much. In Pune, a district where moneylending has reached a virulent pitch, the proportion was nearly one in four. In Kaladgi, a district more remote than any other of the distressed districts, and where food prices rose excessively, the proportion was little more than one in five. And when the rain came at last, in September 1877, ‘‘the rapidity with which the people of Kaladgi left the relief works was most creditable to all concerned.’’ Read Sir Richard Temple’s too-brief minute on the ‘‘Famine of 1876 and 1877 in the Bombay Presidency,’’ dated 24 December 1877, for an account most interesting, in spite of its necessary absence of detail, of these transactions. In this ‘‘large and grave case’’ those who received relief were chiefly of the humbler castes of the Hindu commu-

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nity, and field labourers, rude artisans and village menials. ‘‘The anxiety of the authorities to exact work from all who could perform it, and to prevent anyone receiving relief in idleness’’ made the numbers on gratuitous relief much smaller than the numbers on public relief works. The public works for relief were of two sorts: those under civil agency—little works, consisting of cross village roads or village tanks— not of very great use; those under the Public Works Department, consisting of irrigation and trunk roads, and one railway. Sir Richard Temple states that the irrigation works were of the highest utility. These were artificial reser voirs, called tanks, with their channels for irrigation, and three large canals—the Moota, the Neera and the Gokak. The Moota draws its supply from Lake Fife—called after its author, General [James George] Fife, R.E. (the Kharakvasla Lake). This magnificent reser voir has an area of about 7 square miles and is nearly 90 feet deep at the deepest part. The dam is of masonry; its greatest height is 107 feet; its length is 5036 feet. There are two canals, 99 and 14 miles in length, to distribute the water for irrigation. It also supplies water to the military stations of Pune and Kirkee, and to the city of Pune, by means of pipes. Useful Lake Fife availed itself of the stream in the larger canal to pump water to the higher levels by means of a Poncelet’s wheel. Turbines are provided at the dam of the reser voir to utilize about 150 horsepower generated by the passage of the water through the sluices—another use of Lake Fife to make its water power available for mills. General Fife may well be called the father of the storage-tank system in the Bombay Deccan. He is also the author of the Ekrook Tank, 71⁄2 square mile, which, besides irrigating, supplies the large town of Solapur with water. The famine work was for extending the canal on the banks of the Moota River near Pune. The Neera works are on the Pune and Satara borders. The Gokak works are in Belgaum. All these will be remunerative—they will permanently improve agriculture and protect against famine, says Sir Richard Temple, if only they can be finished. In the Bombay Deccan where, as will be seen, so much death arose from there being no water to be had but what was unfit for drinking, this was of paramount importance. Railways may do much in transporting grain where there is grain sufficient in India to supply India, but railways cannot produce grain as canals can. Railways cannot make money for the cultivators. And the famines from which India suffers are at least as much money famines as grain famines. And can railways carry water to drink?

268 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In Madras, at least, the rains of May 1877 were lost because the tanks were left unfinished in the autumn of 1876, the order having been issued for the stoppage of all public works. And millions of tons of precious water so ran to waste. Sir Richard Temple says that the roads rank only second in usefulness to the canals. Over three thousand miles of roads were made, chiefly of earthwork, sometimes of metalling; many were left unfinished. These roads were to connect the eastern and outlying parts of the Kaladgi and the Southern Deccan (Belgaum and Dharwad) with the great Indian Peninsula Railway and with the passes leading through the Western Ghat Mountains down to the Konkan, and were to act as feeders to the railway. We realize the want of transport and of roads in wartime as affecting almost our imperial power in the present Zulu War.16 We cannot realize the want of cheap water carriage, of roads, of communications, dear or cheap, in peacetime, if we can call that peace which is war with famine—as affecting markets, as affecting life or death, as affecting almost our imperial power in India. In Western India the country is either hilly or cut up with jungles, the population is scattered, and in some parts inveterate wanderers. In the Northern Deccan, roads were less wanted, but irrigation more. Not to be wearisome with a list of names, besides the three canals mentioned, and one other, fourteen tanks or reser voirs—plans and estimates for which had previously been prepared by General Fife, and were in readiness—with an area of about twenty-two thousand acres, with a length of canals and channels of about five hundred miles, and an extent of irrigable land of nearly seven hundred thousand acres, were (not completed but) in various stages of completion. ‘‘The means of providing the money hereafter for such completion is being separately considered in connection with our provincial finance.’’ But such are the financial exigencies of the Government of India that, in obedience to orders from thence, all public works have now been stopped, that could by any possibility be stopped; hundreds of thousands have now been thrown out of employment, with, if not tens, fives of hundreds of thousands, that is, including their children and old people, always religiously supported by the Hindu (and with-

16 In the Zulu War of 1879, the British, with fewer numbers but greatly superior weapons, defeated the Zulus in South Africa.

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out a Poor Law), given up to want, and no employment—no natural employment—to be had till July or even August. ‘‘It will be seen,’’ says Sir Richard Temple, ‘‘how large a foundation has been laid by the relief operations for the protection of the countr y by means of irrigation against famine in future.’’ Alas! How large a foundation! How little to be built upon! And we must not say these Deccan irrigation works will have no water to give just when it is most wanted. The Deccan canals are not, it is true, like the canals of Northern India, supplied by the regions of perpetual snow, but they are supplied by rivers from the Western Ghat Mountains, where the monsoons (or periodical rains) never fail. The large tanks only become empty during the third year of continuous drought—a calamity possible, indeed, but never known, never probable. Without supervision by Europeans, says Sir Richard Temple, relief works are most demoralizing: the abuses prevail, the good fails and the very lives are lost which the government is striving to save. Let this never be forgotten in the hurry of marshalling our forces to meet the enemy, famine, pressing on. The famine relief labourers liked petty works close at home, disliked making roads under professional supervision, and hated being put on the irrigation works, because they hated the control and discipline of the organization which was essential to these. ‘‘Their dread of marching on command to any distance from home’’ was such that they often preferred starving rather than submit to the most simple order. And this was the case too with the peasantry and yeomanry. Rather than have ‘‘to fulfill tasks, to march about, to bivouac on the plain,’’ they would starve. But how little is this to be wondered at! These poor people do not know us, excepting as the Jews knew the Romans, as their publicans or tax collectors, and as their civil courts, aiding and abetting the oppression of their moneylenders. They do know their own headmen, accountants, native petty officials. And these almost to a man set their faces against the works and propagated false reports to set the people against them. One must know India to understand how these false reports could be believed. The patels (village headmen) oppose any system, all relief works, which take the people away from their homes. The headmen found their own interest in doing so, their own petty profits, and they have been known even to bring their people to the brink of starvation in order to create a ‘‘row,’’ an alarm, so that malpractices might continue undetected and undisturbed.

270 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The people who deserted from the relief works had leaders of their own, both from among themselves and from among the petty native officials whose employment lay in the village works and ceased when these ceased. The people thus went ‘‘on strike,’’ as we should call it, except that their object was not so much to have wages raised as to get back to the village works where control was slight and work easy. Many of these poor people, after wandering about, returned to their own villages, and their fate can hardly be recorded here but in a few words. The simple village works which can always be opened without any preparation were opened for people urgently needing help, ‘‘strong enough to do light work near home.’’ ‘‘If they be permitted to have their own way, and to labour on petty works not properly controlled, their work will be nominal, and they will become almost much demoralized as if they had been granted relief without work.’’ Irrigation works, the most essential, could not always be created near the famine districts. They must be where they can be. To march relief labourers to a distance from their homes is, as has been said, the thing they most dislike. Then, for seven months, from November to June, in Bombay presidency, there is no rain: the people can be marched about, and their employment on good public works is comparatively easy. But from June till November, although there may be drought, rain may come at any moment and the people must be ready to begin work again in their own fields. And then also the ground is too damp for encamping. The deaths were not so much underregistered during the Bombay Deccan famine as they were elsewhere. For the patels thought they could not have deaths enough on their registers. They said, ‘‘All the sahibs, the first thing, directly they arrive’’ (on the tours of famine inspection), ‘‘say: ‘Show us your registers: show us the deaths.’ ’’ They thought the government wanted the people to die; they were frightened lest their registers should not show sufficient deaths. As a rule, natives are as slow to understand our actions as they are quick to obser ve them. They cannot in the least trace the connection between what we do or say, and what we think, or intend, or wish in doing or saying it. (3) But, in taking a cursory general view of the famine, we have left our health missionary, or rather life and death missionary, not wrecked on the stone in the ford—we may be very sure he was not wrecked there or anywhere—but away, away, away—cheerily dragging his tonga through, or urging it along, night and day: inspecting, or-

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ganizing, reporting, overcoming—never overcome—on his famine relief tour. Let us attend him on his way. Here is a young engineer, riding up and down, directing his five or six miles of works. If a breach of his sanitary rules were allowed by his native subordinates, he finds it out at once; down upon them he is directly, singling out the offending subordinate and remedying the neglect. The consequence was that, instead of cholera or smallpox breaking out, the people are actually healthier on the works than in their own homes. The sanitary rules are so splendidly enforced that the natives are better off than they are in their own unventilated, undrained huts, often without good water. And this brings us to a terrible feature of this famine. In the 1874 famine of Bengal and Bihar—alas! that we must name the years by famine in India—there was no disease or death from want of good drinking water. The streams of ever-living, ever-pure water came down from the everlasting hills, the eternal snows of the Himalayas; one wonders why these are not more turned to account to prevent by irrigation famines altogether. Ever y part of the drought-stricken tracts was intersected with streams, and, though the people hungered, they did not thirst. Far otherwise in Bombay and Madras presidencies: want of water aggravated the cruel sufferings of want of food. Out of the half-putrid dregs of dried-up tanks, they collected their scanty drinking water. No wonder they died of disease before they could die of starvation. In the relief camps, the engineers studied the water supplies, ‘‘followed’’ the water. Here is another young engineer superintending his dam, a relief work about two miles long. Mothers, as well as men, are at work. But he has put up grass huts for the babies every three hundred or four hundred yards. The mothers leave their infants here with an old nurse to look after them. (An elephant who can push an artillery field-gun, which twenty pairs of bullocks cannot move, over a bad bit, sometimes does duty, and does it well, as a nurse over infants. But in this case, I believe, it was an old woman who was doing duty.) The mothers pop in for a minute to see the children. We always employed the men by villages wherever possible, so that those should be together who knew one another. And then there was a grass hut for babies to every village. Here is another engineer who has even provided chapaties to be sold to the people on the works; he had a trader to sell them, that the exhausted people might not have to cook their own food.

272 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The district officers worked like Englishmen, behaved like Englishmen. All they wanted was a word of encouragement, of sympathy. Here is a young civilian, an assistant collector, and he was only one out of many; he had a famine taluk. He has not seen a white face for four months; he has been working night and day and is only afraid he has not done his best, so modest he cannot think but that he might have done more. The encouraging missionary officer at last reaches the place. A spectre meets him at the station. This is the young civilian; he had been a fine, stalwart young fellow. Now he is a spectre, but still unflagging. No thought has he of leaving his work. England does not know how her sons work in India twice as much as they do in England, as in England we fondly suppose we work twice as much as human beings in any other part of the world. Another, a young engineer, pays all the people himself on his irrigation relief works, in his strong desire to prevent fraud. But as a rule this was impossible, yet fraud was prevented. There may be as much corruption among the petty native officials in Bombay presidency as elsewhere in India—we cannot trust them, though there are some whom we might trust with gold untold—but they could not be corrupt, there was too much super vision; such constant English superintendence made native peculation impossible. There was too good an organization. Natives are not good at organizing; they cannot even execute an order to the spirit and not to the letter. It is this same difficulty of theirs in connecting what we mean with what we do; they are not elastic; we must give them the letter. As for the wage-paying, the people were placed in rows and a Briton or a native gentleman saw the money or food given into their hands. No corruption was possible. Every farthing was paid in the presence of an European or of a native gentleman. This is a mere glimpse at the famine relief works. The Bombay men worked with a will. More was got out of them than could have been believed possible for flesh and blood. In the relief houses, where was gratuitous relief for those who could not work, we were obliged to have the children eat not only out of reach but out of sight of the parents, who would snatch the food from the little ones. If the parents kept their eyes fixed upon the children, the children would not eat; no, not even if they had been starving for days. Love of children died out with the famine. Many, like wild beasts, were always wanting to wander home to die. At first the people had no seventh-day wage. This was disastrous. But we had ‘‘special treatment’’ for the worst cases. The relief was

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organized after this manner. First, when they were ver y low, they might be ordered ‘‘special treatment,’’ and many, many were picked up, having wandered about and not applied for relief, mere skeletons, and too far gone even for ‘‘special treatment’’ to do any good. ‘‘Special treatment’’ gave any food the doctors ordered that could be had: soup, milk and the like. But it was most difficult to get milk in some places, even for the starving children, owing to the want of fodder for the milch kine [cows]—milch kine no longer, for they were star ving too. When a little restored by ‘‘special treatment,’’ they were put upon pay with only nominal work, then pay with real work. Then we had the allowance for all children under seven years; these had nothing before. The relief was enough to prevent wasting, but some had private stores of their own. People who came for relief, or were picked up for relief only when star vation stared them in the face, could not eat or digest the food even when it was given them, and when it was eatable and digestible. These poor creatures were dying when they came. But it was impossible to pick up all the poor wandering skeletons. In Bengal every village, road and even every by-path could be kept under our eye. In the Deccan hills and jungles this is hopeless. The wandering skeletons would run the risk of death, and the certainty of death, sooner than submit to the simplest system. They would not even go to the relief camps, where food could be had without work. And if they do not understand us, certainly we do not understand them. One cannot but warmly admire the self-respect which undoubtedly prevented many from going to the poorhouse. And Sir R. Temple himself declared in March 1877, ‘‘the number on charitable relief is large indeed, but . . . I should be glad to see it larger.’’

Part 1 [continued] We have come now to the most painful part of the famine relief in all Indian famines, namely, the relief houses. The report by Mr Elliott for Mysore of this same famine of 1876-78 reads like Defoe’s Histor y of the Plague.17 The people of Mysore are

17 Daniel Defoe, a child during the Great Plague of London, 1665, wrote A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722, based mainly on his father’s and older brother’s experiences.

274 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India quite as independent and industrious as those of the Deccan, a few of whose sufferings we have told, and a few of the truly missionary efforts made to save them, and there are other similar features in the two cases. But the relief in Mysore was mismanaged and the loss of population from famine is actually put at one in four, or one million and a quarter out of a population of five millions. But this Mysore tragedy should be made the subject of a separate paper, and it is only referred to here as furnishing a striking illustration, both of the terrors and agonies of the people in the relief houses, and of the unreasoning reasons, the causeless causes, which induced them to escape from relief. The miseries they had gone through had degraded most of them almost below the level of reasoning creatures. The pangs of long-endured hunger, the constant dread of a horrible death kept off from day to day, as it were by accident, but always imminent and near, the anxiety lest in the often confused and disorderly distribution of food they should be excluded altogether, or put off with half a ration, or have their food stolen from them by stronger paupers, the depressing effect of sitting day after day in a row to be fed, the feeling of degradation through beggary and of loneliness in a crowd: all these influences combined to destroy the morale of the famine-stricken mass and to reduce them a prey to the wildest rumours and the most causeless panics. There was no feeling of gratitude or allegiance to those who were feeding them at such expense of labour and money—only an ever-present distrust and suspicion, their hatred of themselves reflecting itself, as it were . . . upon the officials who dealt with them and who tried (often, no doubt, imperfectly, impatiently and even roughly) to reduce them to order and discipline. The prevailing belief was that the government meant to deport them to the Andamans and the slightest circumstances served to awaken and give colour to this delusion. On one occasion, when the chief commissioner drove down to see them fed, followed by his mounted orderlies, the noise of the wheels and clatter of the horses broke suddenly upon them as such awful import that they rose up in terror, leaving their meal, and rushed to the gate to escape, cr ushing several of the weaker ones to death in the flight. On a later occasion, when the viceroy visited one of the largest kitchens, the same panic seized them. They did not then attempt to flee, but sat in long lines weeping loudly and large tears rolled down their cheeks into the food they were eating. Such a sight was sufficient to convince anyone that it would not be easy to control or to reason with people so miserable.

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This was in Mysore. It is feared that, in some outlying districts of Bombay presidency, scenes somewhat similar could at one time have been seen. But where they were the officials were changed or set right. If it was found that the relief did not reach those who were to be reached, officers were removed. Relief did not always reach the mouths of the intended recipients, nor wages their hands. Native pilfering and peculation reign. Everything depends on how far these can be prevented. These cannot be prevented unless the superior supervision, native as well as European, is large enough, is absolutely devoted and can absolutely be depended upon. In a sister presidency the petty native official has practically placed in his hands the collection of the taxes, as well as the assessment of those very taxes he collects. He is also the returning officer for the census and property estimates. He may also be the moneylender. The corruption resulting is something quite appalling, while the revenue and judicial duties of the collector are such that he has little or no personal acquaintance with the state of the cultivators in their homes, and is often never known or seen by these, whose only impression of the English government is derived from this petty native official. The Deccan people did, however, ask the missionary of health to send their thanks to government for what had been done for them during the famine. Nevertheless, suspicions and mistrust were to be found cropping up everywhere. Did the moneylenders suffer from the famine? I am afraid they did not. They are the curse of our Deccan. (5) But corruption was not universal. The native gentlemen were enlisted and helped us greatly not only in the tasks of superintendence, but by their private benevolence. They subscribed, they formed committees for relief and managed relief camps at some of our largest stations, or established relief houses of their own. Europeans and natives co-operated alike. ‘‘Reverend missionaries’’ were among the good Samaritans.18 There was hardly a town, great or small, where native benevolence was not shown—‘‘not wisely, but too well,’’19 must

18 An allusion to Luke 10:33. 19 Shakespeare, Othello, Act 5, scene 2.

276 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sometimes be admitted. The princely grants made by native chiefs were not used, but abused, by being lavished on idle Brahmins and professional beggars. The poor starving labourers and artisans often had nothing from these grants, while the able-bodied and those who could go to two or three relief houses in a day were demoralized. In the city of Bombay, where, though there was no famine, famine sufferers flocked in, they were relieved by the charitable organization set on foot by Europeans and natives, without any aid from government. As has been explained, it was impossible always to have European super vision over the daily pay or daily relief. But the higher native officials are men of honour. They would as soon take a bribe as we should. To these we could intrust the supervision. The mamlatdars (the native magistrates) rank after the deputy collectors, who are generally natives. They are native gentlemen. They acted exceedingly well in managing relief houses. The public works overseers (not the petty irrigation overseers) are educated men. We were afraid of the petty native officials taking a bribe from the people for going on works and for receiving relief—indeed, for everything. But we made the native gentlemen look after this well. But for all we could do, many, especially of the low-caste Mhars and Mangs, would sooner live on carrion than go upon relief works or be fed in relief houses. Even when put into carts, with cooked food in their hands, to go to a relief house, they would crawl back, or attempt to crawl back, to their villages. A collector, after having tried to induce some Mhars to go to a famine relief work close by, who refused, looking over a wall saw two of them devouring a dead dog. Many owners of cattle wandered with their cattle, seeking fodder and finding none, into the jungles and died there, or on their road there, or returned so reduced by fever that they only reached home to die. (These journeys in search of grass, as much else in Indian life, remind one of the old patriarchs in the Bible.) From the native states the destitute people used to flock in, past doing anything for, past all chance of recover y. It is well again to point out how wide was the difference between the result of the Bengal famine of 1874 and that of western India in 1877-78, as following on the difference in character between the people and races. In Bengal the country is one unbroken sheet of inhabited and cultivated land. The people stand thicker on the ground than perhaps in any other part of the world. There is scarcely an acre

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without its men, women and children. It is a country of villages, close together. You look abroad, and all around you are clumps of trees— under each its village. The people are stay-at-homes, and if the people can be kept at home, the prevention of sickness and starvation is a mere matter of good administration. In Bombay and Madras presidencies it was far otherwise—in the hills or jungles, among the scanty or scattered population. In Bombay they are independent, self-helping or wanderers, not stay-at-homes. They escape from the hands of those who would help them and give them work and food. The peasantry and yeomanry are too enduring and resolute; the lower castes are too wandering and disorganized, and preferred refuse to relief. We have the highest official evidence that the sick, infirm, cripples and bedridden did not come upon our hands early in the distress, but were fed by their friends as long as possible. Ever y man, woman and child in India has silver ornaments. It is their way of hoarding and cherishing wives and descendants. They do not put into savings banks. And savings banks are few and far between. But these cherished ornaments were parted with in the famine. Before 1876 the tender of silver ornaments at the Bombay Mint is stated as averaging £600 a month. In November 1876, it reached £7000, and in December it increased to £100,000. It then rose steadily until September 1877, when their value is stated to have been £189,754. In 1877 and 1878 the value of ornaments tendered at the Bombay Mint alone is given as £1,946,158, and the value of ornaments and disused coins together as exceeding two and a quarter million sterling. But the people had now parted with everything: they were without fuel; they had sold even their poor little cooking pots. They ate raw grains unfit for food; they drank the foulest remains of water, when water was water no longer but putrid mud. And when the thriceprayed-for20 rain came, it came with such violence that abominations were stirred up, and fatal fever followed. Causes enough of death indeed there were, and death came. In July and August there was a serious recurring crisis of distress in the eastern parts of the famine districts. And the state of the relief houses for a time came near to what has been described as happening in Mysore. But then came inspection—rushing on the mission of

20 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘‘Hymn to the Night.’’

278 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India mercy from post to post, travelling day and night, swimming rivers on elephants, and the wrong was set right. For instance, when relief works had to be suspended on account of the rains, no relief houses were ready. Dysenter y and ulcers had been all heaped up together. But matted huts were now run up, roof ventilation and cleanliness enforced, good water provided. Soon we shifted the sick and matters improved. But even their own Hindu overseers fail sometimes to meet their prejudices. A Hindu overseer, a most intelligent man, put up some capital huts for the labourers, but because these were made of the brab palm, the labourers would not occupy them. Date matting for huts they consider unobjectionable. Gratuitous relief was given at home to those who were unable to move. But this could only be done through the village headmen (patels), though over each circle was placed a special inspector, an European officer, with his native subordinates to patrol the villages, and among other things to see that the village headmen did bring forward ever yone who really needed it. Over the village headman was placed the village inspector, over the village inspector the native district officer, over him the European district officer. For, from the village headmen, some had had nothing, some too much. Altogether the patels did not justify the position we have assigned to them under the ryotwari settlement. But the famine was now well in hand. Such were a few of the difficulties with which our famine heroes had to struggle. Such were some of our heroes who had to struggle against odds so overwhelming. Such were a ver y few of the terrible famine sufferings, which all but destroyed hundreds of thousands of our poor natives—would have annihilated them but for these heroes. I could tell much more. Only one presidency has been taken here. A neighbouring presidency, where the difficulties and the area affected in 1876-78 were greater still, where famine overtook twenty millions of people, and seventeen millions severely—this claims a history to itself. Its heroes must have their own tale and meed [reward] of honour for such labours. (6) But first we must ask a portentous question: where is this enduring Maratha peasantry now? Have we heard of Deccan agrarian crime? Even while I write a terrible commentary is going on—a second scarcity—a second riot. Four years ago, ground down by the usury and oppressions of the moneylenders, the cultivators, chiefly in two or three Deccan collec-

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torates, rose against them. Of these Deccan riots I have given an account elsewhere. The Deccan is the great central plateau of India: the Bombay Deccan forms a large division of the Bombay presidency, which has nearly 125,000 square miles under the direct administration of government. In this presidency as in Madras the proprietar y body is no mere class out of the people. The peasantry is the nation, or almost so. Nothing even in France can compare either with the general distribution of land or with the subdivision of farms in the Deccan. What is more, our revenue is chiefly dependent upon the land, whether we call it rent, assessment or taxation, and without a well-affected peasantr y or body of cultivators (ryots) we could not hold India. The riots which occurred in 1875, when the peasantry attacked the obnoxious moneylenders, burning their bonds, were the first since the Deccan came under our rule, indeed, with one exception, the Sonthal rebellion of 1855, the first in all India. The pressure of indebtedness had never before shown itself either by attacks on the sowkars (moneylenders), or on the government authorities. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the peasantry were our last friends, and without them we could not have won. Have we now, instead of finding the peasantry on our side, to bring up soldiers to prevent them from joining the dacoits, the armed gangs of robbers? It is true that, in some parts of India, debtors who had been evicted by our courts made profit of the Mutiny by taking possession again of their ancestral fields, of which they were considered the true proprietors, alike by themselves and their neighbours. But they considered this a doing of justice and they stood by us manfully and saved our people in many cases from annihilation. There are those well acquainted with India who believe that the desperate state of things prevailing in the Deccan prevails also in other parts of India, and will, if not changed, produce the same fruits, that ‘‘agrarian riots will become the normal state of things throughout India.’’ And what will it be someday to keep down discontented millions, where formerly our strength lay in this, that the millions were all for our rule? The ryots feel that they are being sacrificed to the moneylenders. And so they are. What is this desperate state of things? We have granted, in Bombay presidency, of which we are now speaking, from the highest motive, our desire for the prosperity of the petty landholders, ‘‘absolute proprietar y rights in land, with corresponding responsibilities.’’ But our

280 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India gift has been a fatal one. The village banker (sowkar, moneylender, call him what we will) was before our rule a valuable and indispensable member of the community. He was the community’s purse. His object was not to ruin but to raise the agriculturist. If he were inclined to extort, he stopped to consider what his prey could afford to pay from the profits of the land. The prey could not be deprived of his land, on which alone he lived. We changed all that. ‘‘We gave to men unfit to manage their money matters the absolute rights of property,’’ but we took from these men—men who were children in all these things—what was of infinitely more value—what was their sole protection against extortion—their ‘‘non-liability to ouster.’’ Now, the moneylender and the agriculturist are no longer allies but enemies. They have no longer a common interest. Indebtedness is no longer a friendly transaction; it is a bondage. Supported by our justice, our courts of law, the injustice of the moneylender robs the ryot of all he holds dear—his land. Famine has made this bondage harder and evictions have very greatly increased. We have allowed the landlord powers of government to be ‘‘retransferred to a class with none of the traditions of the hereditar y landholder, and probably the least fitted in the civilized world to use them.’’ Is the Deccan ryot to be handed over to such landlords as the Marwari moneylenders? Can it be that a bankrupt nation, a starving people plotting against each other, are to be the future of India? Or else that the land is to be ‘‘in the hands of a succession of paupers?’’ ‘‘And so silent are these people in their distress that the settlement officer, who had been two months encamped on the land, had not observed any particular poverty, nor had become aware either that the people were in a state of famine, or dying of it.’’ I quote Mr Caird, though writing of a different part of India. I will give one or two typical instances of Deccan cultivators from the Deccan Riots Report. Rowji Soocraji Kowray’s grandfather was patel of Parner. Rowji’s father had 80 bighas [measures of land areas] of land, all gone into the hands of moneylenders. His own share of 40 bighas was sold under a decree by Rajmull Marwari. He borrowed 200 rupees from Rajmull eleven years ago, paid on the first bond 150 rupees, passed a second bond for 100, paid 24 yearly for three years, then 64 rupees. Was sued, and a decree for (he thinks) 388 rupees passed. Paid 50, but the decree was executed, and his land, house, etc., were sold. Having nothing left, he went away with his two young sons and his wife’s mother to her village, where he works for his livelihood.

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Awdaee, widow of Baba Kowray: her husband borrowed 20 rupees from Toolaram Marwari and used to give him his produce. The widow gave him her bullocks of 30 rupees, a field of 15.4 rupees’ assessment, also half of a house. (‘‘They devour widows’ houses.’’21) She borrowed 250 rupees from Vittoo Marwari, mortgaging her land and house, and gave it to Toolaram besides 100 rupees from her house. Total paid Toolaram: 350 rupees, besides bullocks, etc. The woman repays 100 rupees to Vittoo, who gives her no receipt. She pays the interest—24 percent—yet Vittoo got his decree for possession of the mortgaged land and took possession, having previously taken her produce without account. It is said that this indebtedness is the result of heavy assessments, but this hardly appears to be the case. It is more the result of the high rate of usury. In many places the amount of interest paid by the ryots to sowkars exceeds that of the whole amount of land revenue paid to the state. It is also the way in which assessments are recovered in bad years, though not increased in good years (but that outlook is beyond the ryot’s horizon), more than the rate of assessment, which bears so heavily on the ryot. He is compelled to have recourse to the village banker to pay, and then farewell to independence. He is bound hand and foot for life and in the sowkar’s power. The two, the cultivator and the moneylender, are not on an equality, the fiction of our courts of law. Cleverness, education, arithmetic, or rather the abuse of arithmetic, are altogether on one side, the moneylender’s. And the ryot does not know when he has a defence. Then all the payments made by the ryot’s wife at the village shop, which is generally the village banker’s (oh, for a co-operative store!), are always made in kind. And of course the ryot is always a loser in payments made in grain, and the wife is always cheated at the truck shop. Thus fares it with the ‘‘sowkar-ridden’’ peasantr y. Yet there is so much that is fair in their lives. The ryot is always generous and simple about his grain, which he grows himself. A poet might write ‘‘Idyls of the Deccan’’—how the ryot has never to hire labour, his wife and children labouring with him in the field, his neighbours help him and are helped by him in turn; his children

21 A paraphrase of Matt 23:14.

282 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tend the cattle; his cattle give him milk, manure and fuel (for unhappily in India cow dung is burnt as fuel), and butter and ghee (clarified butter), which fetch a good price in the neighbouring town, where this is not a ruined one; he grows cucumbers and vegetables in his fields, which his wife sells. (‘‘Such is, in fact, the ruined state of many towns’’ in parts of the Deccan that they look as if they had been ‘‘devastated only five or six years ago by pindaris [brigands] and other marauders instead of having for fifty or sixty years enjoyed the blessings of profound peace and of one of the best governments in the whole world.’’ Repor t of the Deccan Riots Commission.) He sells his young buffaloes, and I have not reckoned the straw. In cotton districts his wife picks cotton and is paid in kind. She spins the cotton and sells the yarn, and clothes the family. Not much clothing is needed. Every woman and child has a bangle. Whoever has seen in the glorious light of an Egyptian sunset— where all glows with colour, not like that of birds and flowers, but like transparent emeralds and sapphires and rubies and amethysts, the gold and jewels and precious stones of the Revelations22—the herds wending their way home on the plain of Thebes by the colossal pair of sitting statues, followed by the stately woman in her one draped garment, plying her distaff, a naked lovely little brown child riding on her shoulder, and another on a buffalo,23 can conjure up something of the ideal of the ryot’s family life in India. But, alas! under and over all this lies the frightful usury—‘‘frightful’’ is not too strong a word—converting the necessary and useful village banker into an engine of untold oppression, untold by its victims, unknown to us, though not to English officials in India, who are, however, helpless to prevent fraud, because of our law of justice, not equity. In the report on the Deccan Riots of 1875, cases whose name is Legion24 are given officially, and repeated till one’s heart sinks, of bonds forged by sowkars, accounts falsified, old bonds, discharged and overdischarged, tendered as new. As for evidence (which is of course false), that may be contracted for to any amount by the moneylenders. As for receipts given for repayment by the unfortunate bor-

22 An allusion to Rev 21:19. 23 From Nightingale’s trip on the Nile, recounted in Mysticism and Eastern Religions (4:235-36). 24 An allusion to Mark 5:9.

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rower, they are almost unheard of, except where they are given for sums infinitely less than the sums repaid. It is not uncommon for a moneylender to keep a debtor, and his wife too, working without payment for life for sums borrowed which have been repaid over and over again. While we make a boast of our justice and our civil courts, we have absolutely failed in one of the first functions of government, the prevention of fraud. We have failed to protect the borrowing classes against robber y and extortion. While we make a boast of our education, it is bitter irony to suppose that we can wait for it to remedy evils—that more than one in ten, say, of the boy ryots goes to school—the schools their fathers pay for, for the school cess is entirely upon land. And less than that of the father ryots can read or write. They put their mark to bonds of the contents of which they have no more idea than the Fiji Islander has of Aristotle. The ryot executes a deed of which he has no explanation, no copy and, where the value is under 100 rupees, no registr y. No registration system then tells him what he has done. And of course moneylenders can easily have separate bonds for separate sums each under 100 rupees. He signs a contract which he does not and cannot understand. And these children—children in fact if not in law (and they ought to be considered minors in law)—are held to be equal contractors in the eyes of the law which knows no equity, with the sharp-witted, highly educated moneylenders, highly educated in the knowledge of fraud, as in the knowledge of law. The law merely asks the borrower, ‘‘Is that your mark?’’—perhaps a hook. If it is, the law can do no more; it hands him over to the sowkar, even though he may have only received, as often happens, say, 10 rupees instead of 50, and offers to prove it. These are our civil courts, instead of the old village panchayat, or council of elders, before which in former days disputes concerning land, moneylending cases, etc., were settled, which, being on the spot, could hear oral evidence on the spot and distinguish between true and false. Universal compulsory registration of moneylending transactions before the panchayat, none being legal but those so registered, and proof of receipt of consideration, this in itself would, it is said on high authority, make a wonderful difference. It is stated that in 1877, out of 144,412 suits in the rural districts of Bombay, 128,261 were for money, and of these 80 percent were on written obligations or accounts involving sums less than £50. The fees of these courts, it is stated, exceeded £100,000 in the same year. And

284 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the costs of litigation amount in many cases for the unfortunate peasant to almost as much the original debt. Fleeced in every way, in 1875, then, these poor exasperated sheep rose at last against their wolves and torturers, the moneylenders. On our promise to look into their, alas! too just grievances, to redress their wrongs, only too visible, audible and palpable, they ‘‘were cajoled into submission.’’ Their wrongs were inquired into and it was made too an imperial, not a local, inquiry. This was three years ago. For three years they patiently waited the fulfillment of our solemn pledges. But nothing has been done. The people were after wards, as usual, declared ‘‘prosperous,’’ and the country ‘‘flourishing.’’ So of course nothing has been done. But since then, poorer and more oppressed than before by moneylenders, who, emboldened by our delay, did not shrink of course from becoming yet more extortionate, famine following upon moneylenders, and a plague of rats devouring the granaries, as debt devours the people, following upon famine, they rise again, and in a wider and fiercer riot than before, against the oppressive moneylenders. In fact no such rising as this of the year of grace 1879 has been known since the Mutiny, which was purely military. Close to the Bombay Deccan capital, Pune, the seat of the old Maratha power, the dacoits, or armed gangs of robbers, send a manifesto to the Government of Bombay in the name of Sivaji II. It speaks of the great distress and threatens that ‘‘unless extensive public works are at once opened, employment provided for the people, native trades encouraged, taxes reduced and the salaries of highly paid Europeans cut down,’’ they will not cease to plunder, but will extend to Europeans what they have hitherto confined to natives: that they will stir up another mutiny. It is very naturally suggested in the House of Commons that ‘‘there was a great deal more than mere dacoity here.’’ The magistrates’ court in one palace, and the Government High School and Education Department offices with all the books of the government depôt in another, and all the records in both are burnt by incendiaries. This in one of the largest military cantonments in India. We are horrified at the communists’ destructions in Paris. But what is this? It was hinted, indeed, that those Pune fires light up with an awful light our broken promises to the poor indebted people who rose four years ago, not against our rule, but against that of the moneylenders, enforced by our civil courts. However this may be, we promised to redress their

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grievances, and we have done nothing—nothing but report and lay fresh ones on. Those who knew prophesied that when the public works essential to employ the people, now in this second scarcity, were stopped, and there is no work—no agricultural work—to be had before July or August, the people would squat in despair before their huts, they would certainly steal a little, then they would join the armed gangs. And those who were unsuccessful as robbers would starve or come upon famine relief. So the last state would be worse and more costly than the first.25 It was prophesied that it would be so, and it has been so. It signifies little if an assessment be light or heavy, if they have nothing to pay it with. They must go to the moneylender to pay it. That makes them bondsmen: literally enslaved by bonds. But such were the revenue necessities of the Government of India that, whereas the ‘‘remissions’’ in collecting revenue in the famine were enormous, and necessarily so in Madras presidency, in Bombay the government boasted that it would make no ‘‘remissions,’’ only ‘‘suspensions,’’ and that it would finally collect most of the revenue. And it has done so. Upon the back of this came the licence tax—worse than any income tax—screwed out of incomes down to £10 a year—not to pay for famine, but for war. And had it been to pay for famine, are the famine-stricken to pay for feeding themselves? Are paupers to pay the poor rates? More going to moneylenders to pay it. And not only this, but the salt tax was raised 40 percent, and just in this scarcity time. More moneylending to pay for the necessaries of life—higher usury. It was prophesied by those who knew that, if this were done, the ground-down people would rise at last. And this much-enduring, patient Maratha peasantry have risen at last—twice. This is the second time. In parts of the Bombay Deccan the ancestral cultivators are almost dispossessed by the moneylenders. These men know nothing of agriculture, care nothing for it or for aught but rack-renting, and their acquired estates are worse farmed than by the ryot. They have no agricultural enterprise, though they have capital. Are we so ver y sure that we shall never have another mutiny? Then God help us, if the Maratha peasantry—the peasantry all over India

25 An allusion to Matt 12:45.

286 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India were our staunch friends—join against us. This has been prophesied by some, and in the House of Commons by a right honourable member who has not only been in the India Office but in India, and who has seen with his own eyes ‘‘serious disaffection’’ in the Deccan. This is prophesied. But Englishmen learn wisdom in time. This will not be so. Tr uth is told about our errors in the government of our Indian empire, not because that government betrays signs of decay or instability; rather the contrary, because our errors betray our impatient vigour in doing good. This is why Englishmen always dare to tell the tr uth to themselves and, characteristically, tell perhaps a little worse than the truth to others. Englishmen would not be Englishmen if they did not grumble furiously at their own shortcomings in their zeal to do right and publish their grumblings over the world. This is one result of their ‘‘pluck,’’ one secret of their capacity for progress. Least of all can we despair, least of all can we avoid hopefully telling the truth, when John Lawrence lies dead before us—the man of truth and of all the manly virtues, the resolute Indian statesman, the saviour of the Indian empire, the defender of India’s poor, highest of our day as a leader of men, the righter of wrongs—great John Lawrence, who died in harness, working for India till three days before his death. He beckons us on to follow in his steps; he, being dead, yet speaketh.26 ‘‘Who follows in his train?’’27 Is not the daystar of the East rising28 in the West for India?

Part 2 We have seen our health missionary doing duty during the famine, with what effect in God’s ser vice has been told too briefly. We must now give a yet briefer sketch of his work at his ordinar y duty. What is the work of a health missionary? To raise the people; to save life; to educate the people to know and practise the first elements of living a sound and healthy life; to indoctrinate the people with something like a new moral sense; to recreate them, in fact—it is not too strong a word—that is the business of a sanitary commissioner; that is the work put into his hands by God. These are ‘‘good words.’’

26 A paraphrase of Heb 11:4. 27 From Reginald Heber’s hymn, ‘‘The Son of God Goes Forth to War,’’ sung at Nightingale’s own burial. 28 An allusion to 2 Pet 1:19.

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Can they be made good deeds and facts? How can he enlist the people to raise and recreate themselves according to God’s laws? To conser ve the water, keeping it from pollution—even in the second capital of the British empire, Bombay itself, cesspools are allowed to defile the drinking water by percolation; to enforce ventilation; to keep up sur face cleansing: if all these and similar measures be taken, cholera never touches us. This is one great element in recreating the people. In the rural districts, at first the people thought it all a caprice of the English sahib: the English sahib did not like to see the dirt, they would sweep it into a corner. This was all that came of it at first. The native is personally clean. Inside his hut is very clean. But just outside there will be a great steaming cesspool. Now he is learning. Cholera, as has been said, never touches the places, the towns or villages which are really conserved. In cantonments, as soon as a case occurs march the men out. The sanitary commissioner educated deputy sanitary commissioners to help him—men of several years’ standing. ‘‘I and my boys,’’ as he used to call them. In cholera he would make them travel fifty miles of a night. They flew at the spot where the mischief was. Out of six two died of fever, one was invalided for life, one left because he was too slow in cholera. More sprang up to take the place and the dangers of these nameless men. ‘‘O gran bontà de cavalieri antichi!’’ [O the immense kindness of knights of old!] exclaims the poet.29 Here are the antique times of heroism come again inspired by modern sanitar y knowledge. Who shall say that the heroic ages are a thing of the past? This was an awful time, but just such a time as real Christian chivalr y delights to cope with. The day was never long enough for him. He always liked to have a little more to do than he could do— often without food. Truly his meat was to do the will and to finish the work of the Father.30 1. But how in the great towns? We cannot give a sanitary treatise here; there is not room. Let us take one or two of the great old famous cities where he did his work, either as health officer or sanitar y commissioner.31

29 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso I, 22, v1. 30 A paraphrase of John 4:34. 31 This seems again to refer to Hewlett, who filled those positions in Bombay.

288 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Bombay has for years done everything to drain itself, except doing it. In the meantime he, the most vigorous of health officers—now, alas! no longer at that post—did, at a quite incredible cost of time and energy, organize and personally superintend an immense system of hand labour. He was, as it were, the constantly present head of this enormous organization of hands, in exactly the same sense that one’s head directs one’s two hands. He saved Bombay from cholera epidemics, and did that for them single-handed, or rather single-headed, which should have been better done by the civilized hand of engineering and machinery. He has been a sanitarily engineered city in himself: the reports of his work are his best witnesses. When the health missionary began, the death rate was 28 per 1000; then it was brought down to 14 or 16 per 1000. But it has been up at 34 per 1000 since, for Bombay is dirty now, perhaps dirtier than ever. People cannot sleep on their roofs for the smell. He used to go up the gullies himself, never later than half-past three in the morning, on the daily cleansing work of the health missionary. The death rate was halved. Is it too strong a word to say that this was a recreation of the people according to the laws of God? When he began, the people did not care if there were a hundred or two of cholera deaths a week. They thought it all right. Now we have taught them this: if there are one or two cholera deaths, people come: it is all wrong, what is to be done? Bestir yourselves, gentlemen; don’t you see we are all dead? They begin to connect cholera with uncleanliness. They had no idea of the connection before. There is now a drainage scheme suitable for Bombay city, after some fifteen years’ wrangling. There was some difficulty in settling the financial part of the plan, but the work has begun, and will advance in due course. And the increased water supply, so much needed, is in progress. Ahmedabad, the ancient capital of Gujarat, a walled city, river on one side, railway now on the other—how many vicissitudes it has gone through!—a Muhammadan burial ground, two and three tiers of graves deep, ruined mosques and tombs, recall to us the time of the Muhammadan rule, when only Muhammadans were allowed to reside within the city: the Hindus were compelled to live in hamlets outside. Inside the city beautiful trees give an idea of luxuriance, but through the western gate you see one of the saddest sights in India: a constant stream of women painfully toiling across the heavy sand to fill their water vessels. About two square miles are enclosed within the walls, and about 112,000 people.

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To give an idea of the overcrowding—in London there are fortyone persons to an acre, in Bombay fifty-two, in Ahmedabad city eightythree, but in its walled hamlet of Saraspur 99.9 to an acre. And in one division of Ahmedabad 114 persons to an acre. About 70 percent of the population are Hindus, 20 percent Muhammadans, 10 percent Buddhists. And how many Christians to these 112,000 people? Nominal, or otherwise, the Christians, the rulers, are only 264. And even this is a large proportion. Taking India all over, is not one British official to 200,000 inhabitants the average? Tr uly it may be said that England’s attempt to govern India is the greatest fact and the greatest experiment in modern histor y. But we must descend from the regions of political history to the lowest details of sanitary work. The khalkoowa, which holds a large place in Ahmedabad history, although deep below the earth and never seen—and this is the peculiarity of sanitary histor y: that which we never see or hear of or touch but only smell, gives death or life, commands the death rate, as it is supposed God only can—is the supreme arbiter of fate, as kings and emperors cannot be. But it is this by God’s laws. What is the khalkoowa? An avenging angel? A Hindu goddess? A force of nature? It is a pit, three feet in diameter and twenty feet deep, dug under or beside the house for the night soil, and cleaned out only once in thirty or forty years. The well water throughout the town had become so bad, as we shall not be surprised to hear, that positively it cannot be used for gardens, for flowers watered with it die. And do not the children die? The terrible death rate speaks louder than we can of the awful havoc the contaminated subsoil is making in Ahmedabad. And it was the native secretar y to the municipality himself who said that it was the filth accumulated in the khalkoowas which caused the epidemic which depopulated the ancient capital of Gujarat, this being the offended goddess to whose wrath Hindu traditions ascribed the calamity. And surely such an epidemic will again sweep through Ahmedabad if we do not take action to prevent it. Ahmedabad is, after Bombay, the largest city in the presidency. Its death rate from fever is three times that of Bombay, where our missionar y health officer had been for years at work; in fact, it is higher than the Bombay rate from all causes, and the total death rate is nearly double that of Bombay. And we must never forget the amount of sickness, the feebleness and degeneration of the human being which such a death rate and gradual depopulation of the city represent.

290 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Why, as the sanitary commissioner asks, should forty-five or forty-six persons die in Ahmedabad in every thousand when only twenty-three die in the much greater city Bombay? In ten years 26,690 lives have been lost in Ahmedabad, not to speak of health and strength sacrificed in vain, which would not have been lost with even the common sanitar y precautions of Bombay, which has so much less natural advantages than Ahmedabad. The old proverb of Ahmedabad says that it hangs by three threads, meaning that it is dependent on the weaving in cotton, silk and gold. Alas for the poor weavers! Their fate does not hang over their heads by a thread, but is beneath their feet. Forty years ago a water supply was given, drawn from the worst place that could be found, in the river below the town, polluted by cantonment people, by steeping of hemp, by ashes of the dead, by washing of clothes, worst of all by percolation from khalkoowas, by offensive trades, jutes and dyers included, and during the monsoon by unspeakable contamination and dead bodies washed out of their graves. The amount of salt and sulphuric acid in the water would be incredible if it were not impossible that it should be otherwise. The filthy water ran through jute and human manure. What wonder if the flowers watered with it died, that the people should die too! And there was excellent water a few hundred yards off. The conservancy and surface cleansing system is now very actively carried out on under the secretar y to the municipality already spoken of. But essential reforms are the provision of a pure water supply, the abolition of the deadly khalkoowa system, the prohibition of the burial of the dead in the riverbed, the removal of certain trades from inside the walls and several others. All these reforms have been ‘‘earnestly asked’’ and schemes pointed out for executing them by the health missionary, who is unfortunately no longer at that post. Let us trust that a succession of health missionaries will save Ahmedabad. 2. And this brings us to the great part which municipalities should play and do play in the health reform. It cannot quite be said that they all yet do their duty. Native gentlemen are too much frightened at seeing themselves in the newspapers; they will not always do what they think right. You must have a great man up before the court if he breaks sanitary rules, and fine him 200 rupees. It is the only way. He will offer you 1000 rupees to let him off, but have him up before the court, he will do right forever after. India seemed scarcely ripe for municipalities. Was it a capital error making health officers municipal appointments? As long as the health

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officer neglects his duty and calls for no expense, is he retained? But, if he makes himself disagreeable, he can be dismissed without appeal to government. Should not these appointments be at least so far government ones as that the holders cannot be dismissed without government sanction? There are, however, grand exceptions of zealous municipalities and their secretaries, and we cannot quite say that the evil above mentioned is wholly absent in England. Space fails us to tell of Ahmadnagar or Bijapur, with an old Muhammadan dome larger than that of St Paul’s. We must say another word about the rural districts. How can the people be enlisted to raise and recreate themselves according to God’s laws? 3. Should not the secretar y of state for India order local governments to see after the sanitation of the country—the domestic cleanliness? Should not he make local governments responsible for the high rural death rate? Should not local governments charge the collectors, the district officers, with this care? They can, if they will. And what higher or greater charge than this raising of the people, than that the people should live? It has been found that, by the Village Police Act, the village patels, or headmen, can be made use of to enforce various sanitary measures, to conserve the water, to enforce ventilation, to keep up surface cleansing. By the Village Police Act fines can be inflicted for neglect. It was intended, had the sanitary commissioner remained at his post, for him to go round to selected collectors—these to have selected patels—and to try the experiment with these select headmen, how they could be made responsible for the domestic sanitation of their villages. There is this law, enforcing it by penalties, by which they could be made so. We were to have tried the experiment. It is said, and it is true, that collectors and high officials are so over worked that they cannot attend to these or, indeed, to what seem higher things. But people must live in order to be governed. And what higher thing is there than life, to save life from death? Our health missionary says, ‘‘Systematic endeavours should be made to teach the people to help themselves. The patel should have authority given him by law to compel the people to clean the village.’’ He then explains, for the collection and removal of night soil, ‘‘the shallow earth trench system,’’ which has been ‘‘successfully worked at ever y famine relief camp where it has been properly supervised.’’ He shows that ‘‘there is nothing to interfere with their caste prejudices.’’ He gives other instructions and adds, ‘‘I have seen this done in villages near Ahmedabad, and if it can be done in Gujarat, why should not the order be enforced in the Deccan?’’

292 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In an admirable resolution of government upon this, dated Bombay Castle, 7 January 1878, it is acknowledged that ‘‘this is certainly a matter which closely concerns the public health and safety,’’ and that ‘‘it cannot but be that in many villages the patel is an intelligent man, who might with great benefit be entrusted with powers under the Bombay Village Police Act of 1869.’’ Then have these powers remained in abeyance? ‘‘The Governor-in-Council desires that all collectors will cause careful inquiries to be made in their districts with a view to ascertaining what patels can be invested with these powers, and hopes that the experiment may have a full trial at an early date. There is no class of men in the whole country so well qualified as the village patels to advance sanitary reform, if happily they be favourably disposed on this behalf. It should be the object of every collector to persuade and to convince them of its importance.’’ Since the health missionary’s departure, has this all-important ‘‘experiment’’ been carried out? Will it be thought too serious if we speak of the ‘‘earnest expectation’’ waiting ‘‘upon the manifestation of the sons of God,’’ as the dean of Westminster said, in his noble funeral sermon on Lord Lawrence, that our ‘‘earnest expectation’’ waited on the heroes who were ‘‘manifested’’32 in the Mutiny of 1857? And can any ‘‘manifestation’’ be more godlike than that of recreating the people to health and decency and morality? Alas! is it known how great is the immorality among these people, and how terrible is the effect upon the ‘‘rising generation,’’ which is said to be ‘‘ver y rapidly deteriorating from the effects of this poison’’? ‘‘Dispensaries’’ are recommended, and ‘‘the Grant Medical College is year by year sending out highly educated young men, who are beginning to establish themselves in towns in the mofussil.’’ And ‘‘to their exertions,’’ it is said, ‘‘we must look for aid.’’ 4. The Hindus are either high caste or vegetarians, middle caste or flesh-eaters, low caste or carrion-eaters (no Hindu will eat beef), low castes, not outcastes. (Is it the young gentlemen of the secretariat who compile reports? Do they confuse outcaste with low caste? Do they know the difference?) The government makes us divide them into Hindus, Muhammadans, Christians, ‘‘all others.’’ The health missionary wishes government to let us divide the Hindus at least into high caste and low

32 An allusion to Rom 8:19.

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caste. The low castes are fine intelligent fellows, but they drink. They live outside in the suburbs. They are not allowed to come within the towns and must not enter the villages. Their death rate is very high indeed, from the horrible conditions under which they live—bad water and the rest. Now this ought to be shown. Let us have the death rate of the low castes registered, separately, and then amend their conditions. 5. One word upon tree planting as a supplement to irrigation. Irrigation is the present necessity, but it is not too much to say that with tree planting properly carried out there would be equalized rainfall. We are so stupid, so like children: we go on cutting down wood without replacing it, and for [a] great part of the year the heavens become as brass and roads are not wanted in India during the dry season, for the whole country is a hard road. Then the rain, which is sure to come, destroys everything. This was the beginning of scarcity in Madras, followed by the want of rain for many months, which stopped production. But there are other consequences of equal importance. The relation of this irregular rainfall in Madras to the enormous fever and cholera death rate can be shown by statistical facts. Scarcity, as was said before, is but one of the death causes in famine times. Plants die, animals die and men die. But it is not all from want of food. Tree planting would do much both to bring rainfall and to arrest floods. Has not America been denuding herself of wood? And already people are beginning to scent the coming end. 6. Full sixty-six thousand persons are at this moment receiving relief in the Bombay presidency, though the present monsoon is favourable. I recall the indebted condition of the Deccan ryot, which occasioned the riots of 1875. I recall how the rioters submitted, on our promise to look into their grievances—how nothing was done till this year, 1879, when the riots blazed out afresh and more seriously, how Mr Hope’s bill, now before the Government of Simla, is based upon the proposals never acted on, which were made by the Deccan Riots Commission appointed in 1875 and upon the secretar y of state’s dispatch, which dates from last December only. Indebted Deccan does not wait for secretar y of state or viceroy. Agrarian discontent is not impatient, but sure. All history tells us that it may smoulder, but will not be extinguished till it blazes out in fire and sword, or till its causes are removed. Our promise to them to remove these causes never was fulfilled. And referring to these causes in the last number for August, we shall be able to understand and to rejoice in some of the provisions in Mr Hope’s bill:

294 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 1. That no bond should be valid unless written by or under the superintendence of the village registrar and attested by him, that he should endorse on the original whether consideration was paid before him. 2. That the moneylender should be required, under a penalty, to grant the debtor written receipts, annual statements of account and a passbook, to be written up from time to time. Further, non-judicial officers, to be styled ‘‘conciliators,’’ should be appointed. No litigation without a certificate from the conciliator of having been called in and failed, ‘‘panchayats,’’ or arbitration by non-official bodies, to be considered. In parts of Bengal it is said that ‘‘the very men who in court take up the position of partisans, and deliberately tell whole strings of falsehoods, would in their own villages settle the disputes in a perfectly fair and proper manner.’’ ‘‘A native who will lie to any extent in court will act most fairly as an arbitrator.’’ (This is true for all India.) Further, law courts to be made more absolute, less technical, less dilator y and less expensive. Competent village headmen to be village ‘‘munsifs’’ [magistrates], with final jurisdiction in money cases up to 10 rupees. ‘‘A more efficient insolvency law is also necessary, and, before applying English principles, it must be remembered that while in England fraud by the debtor was the chief thing to be guarded against, the danger here lay rather in fraud by the creditor.’’ ‘‘It is made obligatory on courts in all contested cases to go behind the bond and inquire into the whole history of the transactions between the parties and, even where the debt was admitted, the court might make this inquiry if it suspected collusion.’’ (To substitute some degree of equity for law is indeed a grand thing.) It must never be forgotten that these bonds are always a nominal, never a real transaction; no money passes at all between moneylender and borrower. But the bond, representing a fiction, is produced as evidence. The sowkar’s business is not really moneylending; it is barter. The sowkar is not a moneylender, he is a produce buyer and seller. Mr Hope’s bill proposes that ‘‘all implements of husbandry and such cattle as might be necessary to enable the debtor to earn a living as an agriculturist should be exempted from arrest, and imprisonment for debt would be abolished, except in cases of proved fraud.’’ It ‘‘exempts land from attachment and sale, unless specifically pledged for repayment of debt.’’

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May it not be that the bill does not go far enough and, on the other hand, that one or two provisions in it are useless? (a) Village registration: may this not only be another arm in the sowkar’s hands? Suppose a bond of the sowkar to give the ryot 125 rupees; if for greater security a zealous village registrar makes the sowkar give the money in his presence, the ryot has to give it back once they are outside the door. Then it appears on the registrar’s records, against the ryot, that he has received 125 rupees, of which he has received nothing. (b) The village headmen to be ‘‘munsif.’’ Now we know that, if he owes anything himself to the sowkar, he will give judgment in favour of the sowkar. I wish I had space for more. God speed all real remedies is all we can say at present. 7. And who can forget, in writing of sanitary heroes, him the greatest hero of all, foremost in all defence of life, John Lawrence, to whom was due the appointment of the first sanitary commissions to initiate the work advised by the royal commission of 1859, before which he gave his evidence on the importance of Indian sanitary reform. On the appointment of commissions, which dealt not only with military but with civil questions of health, and began the great improvements in stations and towns, necessarily followed the framing of acts for the creation of municipalities having sanitary powers all over India. The last year (1877) of which the returns have come in shows a death rate among troops in India of 12.71 per 1000, the lowest yet attained. He organized it all when he went out as governor general in December 1863, and other men have entered into his labours as he intended. How little is he known in England! We are to raise him a monument—as little unworthy of him as we can. But when his work is made known, this will be his true monument. Oh for a Macaulay to write of him a ‘‘biographical essay,’’33 imperishable as his own labours! But his work should be written by those, above Macaulays, who were sharers in those great deeds. Yet who survives to tell us? How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Who is there to show us that last great man, that he may not be the last, while we still as it were discern the path of light left by ‘‘the chariot of Israel and the horsemen

33 Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59), British historian and statesman, an author Nightingale much cited; his biographies of William Pitt, Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Samuel Johnson, and other notables, were collected into Biographical and Historical Sketches, 1857.

296 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India thereof ’’34 bearing away our ‘‘father’’ from us into the immediate presence of his and our heavenly Father? Upon whom has the mantle fallen? upon whom? It shall not be ‘‘her last great man’’ sad India now deplores. Who will tell us of the spirit which inspired those great deeds of his while his name may still be made one of England’s and India’s ‘‘Good Words’’?—his name not only to be the history for all time, but not to be our ‘‘Household Word’’ [also the name of a periodical]. We reverence in our hero about the last of the great race of statesmen who came out of the old Company’s ser vice: we reverence him most of all in these days of danger, when statesmen seem to form themselves on strange elections of constituencies and to dabble in unheroic squabbles—misnamed politics. Those were not John Lawrence’s politics. To deliver and raise the subject—to subdue the oppressors, and not only this but to bring them over to be themselves the stoutest defenders of the right—these were the politics, this the work of John Lawrence. This was the missionary statesman, the ancient Roman in mould, the Christian servant of God in spirit. Editor: From this point on, Nightingale’s correspondence resumes its focus on problems of sanitation: hygiene, house drainage and water supply, field irrigation, engineering works and the duties of health officers. Where her letters refer to sanitary works in cities, the specific problems mentioned are problems of infrastructure, and so are ver y similar to those in villages. It should also be kept in mind that, when Nightingale mentions Bombay, Madras or Calcutta, she normally means the whole presidency, including cities and countryside. The long letter below that she wrote to Lord Ripon at the beginning of his viceroyalty contains references to a number of specific problems of village sanitation, and advice to him on sanitary works Nightingale deemed important to perform in India, and expresses her confidence that he was the right person to undertake them. After emphasizing that ‘‘the local government’’ and especially the panchayat should be responsible ‘‘to frame the rules best suited to the locality for carrying out’’ sanitar y measures (see p 303 below), she concluded with a word of encouragement to Ripon: ‘‘It would seem providential that you should be in India to crown your own work’’ (see p 303 below). Nightingale’s

34 2 Kings 2:12.

Village and Town Sanitation / 297

high hopes for Ripon were based upon her having seen him at work in the past in London and having witnessed his achievements. Source: Note, Add Mss 45805 f239

1 August 1879 Sir Richard Temple [governor of Bombay]. Thanked for his letter of 3 July. . . . As you say, so ‘‘much may be done with the village headmen’’ as a class in most parts of India. It is this that makes the Bombay Village Police Act and the resolution of government so hopeful. Would it not be possible, without making ‘‘government take place of moneylender,’’ to relax a little stringency of rates which prevent peasants from taking advances offered by government? Source: Letter, Add Mss 43546 ff178-93

12 August 188035

Private and Confidential. Village sanitation. Dear Lord Ripon Your immense kindness to me encourages me to submit to you another, an immense subject, which it is scarcely presumptuous to hope will interest you, because it is yours. It is the great sanitar y subject in India. At the time that you were S. of S. for war, you created the Army Sanitar y Commission and took the first practical step to enable the recommendations of Sidney Herbert’s Royal Commission on the Sanitar y State of the Indian Army to be carried out, by obtaining the appointment of Sir Ranald Martin and Sir Proby Cautley to serve as members to represent the Indian Council on your Army Sanitary Commission. 2. One of the instructions to your commission was that it should advise on all questions regarding Indian sanitary work submitted to it by the Secretar y-of-State-for-India-in-Council. But it was soon found that the whole work had to be initiated, and the Secretar y-of-State-forIndia-in-Council therefore desired your commission, in December 1863 and May 1864, to prepare the Suggestions in Regard to Sanitar y

35 1880 could be read as 1881, since on 16 July 1881 she wrote to Douglas Galton that she was ‘‘preparing a letter to him [Lord Ripon] on . . . village sanitation in India’’ (see p 180 above), which might well be the present letter. However, Ripon started his work in India on 8 June 1880, which makes the date 1880 for the present letter at least plausible.

298 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Works, sent to the India Office in July 1864, which were printed and circulated all over India. The first object of these Suggestions was the sanitary improvement of stations, but they included the main sanitary principles applicable to towns and villages, and also proposals for establishing a system of registration all over India, besides draft regulations for medical sanitary duties. (It is particularly on behalf of village sanitation that I am now tr usting to enlist your imperial power, and that you will put a crowning stone to your edifice.) 3. For several years after this, questions were referred to your commission, but as no return had been made to show the results of the work already done, Sir Stafford Northcote, when he was secretar y of state for India, called for information on the subject, the result of which was a despatch from the Government of India enclosing papers and reports, dated Februar y 1870, showing that a beginning had been made in conducting local inquiries and drawing up reports, that the Suggestions of your commission had been accepted by local authorities, and that some of these, magistrates and others, had interested themselves in the work of local improvement. 4. From this time your commission has received from the India Office and advised on a great number of subjects concerning the sanitar y improvement of barracks, stations and municipal towns, including the drainage, water supply and general improvement of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. They have had to criticize plans of works and of procedure in reference to all municipalities, and to lay down from time to time such principles as were wanted to meet specific cases, and lately they prepared a special code of ‘‘suggestions’’ for improving the smaller municipal towns and villages (who are now my clients). The annual reports of sanitary commissioners and officers of health, etc., have furnished the Army Sanitary Commission with information as to the local progress made in sanitary works, and have enabled your commission to keep the whole in hand and to exercise its influence over the work done so as to secure uniformity as far as practicable in (good and not in bad) procedure. The general result may be summed up as follows: (1) Much good work has been done at stations of British troops, but much remains to be done; (2) Much still requires to be done at stations of native troops; (3) Great improvements are required in many jails; (4) In the three capitals, after considerable delay, work has been done, except in Madras, which has not yet followed Calcutta and Bombay in its

Village and Town Sanitation / 299

drainage and water supply; (5) In a large number of municipal towns inexpensive local improvements have been carried out, and experience has been decidedly gained to show that these towns under vigorous local administration can be made quite healthy. 5. The great blot however in the sanitary histor y of India is the condition of my poor clients, the villages. They are now known to be the foci of Indian epidemics and the most unhealthy spots in the whole countr y. The facts show that in epidemics the first thing for the village people to do is to get out of their villages, but happily the facts also show that under proper care even an Indian village may be made quite healthy. As this letter is to an ‘‘expert’’ as well as to a governor general, one may briefly say that most of the work required is included under cleanliness of houses, of compounds and cattle stalls, removal of cattle out of houses, cleanliness of streets, but above all protecting water from pollution. May it be added that every village, at least in Madras presidency, appears to contain an official whose statutory duty it is to see these things done, if he would only do it? In the other presidencies and provinces, whilst in some cases the villages have a headman who could be made to perform these duties, must it be said that in others there appears to be no one who has as yet been made responsible for them? In Bengal, under the Cornwallis Settlement,36 as it would be equitable to make all our sanitation compulsory on the zemindars, would it be in any way possible? possible to make the zemindars do the duties which it was intended they should perform when that system was introduced into Bengal? (We have actually had to impose cesses on the people to do some of the very things for which lands or the large proportion of the land revenue were assigned to the zemindar, for the ver y purpose of repaying him to do them.) Might I venture to ask, how far should you think it possible to impose on the zemindar some of the duties, either actually intended or in a corresponding form to the duties which it was intended that he should perform by the Permanent Settlement, might I ask? May it then be said that the case stands thus: in Madras it is the statutory duty

36 On Cornwallis’s Permanent Settlement see ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear; or, the Ryot, the Zemindar and the Government’’ and ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill’’ below. Lord Cornwallis (1738-1805) was governor general 1785-93 and in 1805.

300 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of the village headman to carry on village sanitation; in Bombay the machiner y exists by which it could be made the duty of the village headman (see the ‘‘Bombay Village Police Act’’ of 1869 and the Government Resolution of January 1878). In the Punjab the village organization is very complete; could therefore the duties be enforced by the existing machinery? In the Nor th West Provinces it appears that in certain districts rules have been framed, and the ‘‘lumberdars’’ and ‘‘zemindars’’ are held personally responsible for the cleanliness of their villages, and that cases of persistent neglect are punished under the Indian Penal Code. In Bengal would it be necessary to create a village functionary—as done in the ‘‘Road Cess Act’’ or in some other manner—to do what the zemindar is bound to do but does not? I do not venture to say more, because it must rest with the viceroy to do it in the way in which he, and he only, can judge how it can be done. But this is the present Indian sanitary problem which asks for a solution. 6. It appears that sanitation should be made obligator y upon ever y person (man or woman) throughout the villages. Is legislation necessar y for this purpose? In each village must you not have some person upon whom you have a hold on account of his interest in the land to be at the head of the sweepers, etc., and to compel ever y adult throughout the villages to ‘‘sanitate’’? (it remains for Lord Ripon to coin the word, as he is coining the thing). Who is to put the village officer for sanitation in motion, that is, to compel obedience on his part? Is it the district officer? (collector or deputy commissioner)? Who is to advise the district officer? the sanitar y commissioner? Throughout India, the district officer appears to be the executive. But it seems that there must be some legislation (?) to keep the village machinery in operation, some reorganization of the village arrangements, even in Madras where it is the village officer’s statutor y duty; should not every local government frame distinct, good, workable rules for this purpose, the local government to carry them out? In village sanitation you will say that there is the legislative difficulty, the financial difficulty, the political difficulty, the vis inertiae [resistance to change] difficulty. But with regard to the just and immense unwillingness to increase local burdens (our imperial taxation is tight, our ‘‘illegal exactions’’ are much lighter than under old native rule, but our local burdens are heavy—if we make them heavier, then, you will say, we shall have the political difficulty). But cannot a large part of village sanitation be done by every household with little or no expense?

Village and Town Sanitation / 301

It is true that, e.g., for wells or tanks, etc., aid may be wanted. But there are instances, one, a village in Madras, where £93 were granted, and the villagers doubled the sum by subscriptions. Also many AngloIndians say: ‘‘The mischief-making power of petty officials is something inconceivable. Native naughtiness is still an unknown element. Don’t let loose a whole machinery of petty oppression over the poor village people.’’ We have instances where a native vaccination and sanitar y inspector, who was directed to inspect villages and report, went to the headmen and extorted bribes to the extent of £40, I believe, for not reporting them. (He had eighteen months’ imprisonment.) But would not this sort of allegation tell against every kind of reform? One might as well not use the railways because some engineer had run off the line. Or England might as well give up representative government because there has been frightful corruption at elections. You will say that it is not impossible so to educate and raise our headmen and our native officials, as that the former shall understand that their people’s life and death depends on sanitation and that the latter shall defer to our honesty, not we to their dishonesty. The vis iner tiae difficulty is, it is true, immense. But you have done greater things than this. The vis inertiae difficulty, in the case of the volunteers, was not small. Why cannot the native in India do for himself what the native in China does for himself? The great old provincial governors tell me there is no reason against it in India. 7. This is the present village Indian sanitary problem, then, which asks for a solution, the outskirts only of which have been touched. And this is the problem which will never be solved, we fear, if the Indian governments do not actively take it up. It has been tried successfully in Madras by local Brahmin proprietors, which shows the great advantage of local influence. It has been tried successfully by local magistrates in the North West Provinces and elsewhere—another similar experience. The great difficulty is indeed local apathy and torpor, and the want of some ordering head. The collector magistrates are over worked. The vaccination inspecting officers are now trying the results of personal influence in getting the people to improve their villages. But all that has been done has been but a drop in the ocean. The question of how to give the much required spur to the work is one, of course, which the governor general only can answer. But the statistics of mortality show year by year that it is a vital or mortal question, which is now answered by death. Is not all that is wanted simply

302 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to set existing methods in motion by law, and then the local authorities to keep the machine going? For instance, if an Indian fair is to be held, the local magistrate consults with his people and issues orders for protecting the public health. These are carried out. Where formerly ever y fair was little else than a focus of cholera, now the largest fairs have been held even in cholera districts, and yet no case of cholera has occurred among people that had attended the fair. The people are protected and there is an end of the procedure until next fair. Is not what we want simply that what is done for the fairs periodically should be done for the villages under legal sanction continuously? 8. The officers being there, can any act be passed to make them do their duty? The Bombay ‘‘Village Police Act’’ of 1869, under a resolution of the Bombay government of 1878, was to have been put in force thus. Selected collectors were to have selected ‘‘patels’’ (village headmen) and they were to be entr usted with powers under the act to compel the people to clean their villages. But this, so far as we know, was never carried out. For the government to set to rights the villages of 200 millions of people is simply impossible, of course. No government in the world could stand such an expense. And over so vast a country probably no one act would meet all the cases. Could an enabling act be passed by the Government of India, or by the local legislative councils, with suitable clauses empowering local governments to frame sanitar y rules for giving effect to the purposes of this act? and to apply them on their own responsibility? Or could the viceroy do this better by means of his own personal influence? The most prominent points are (but I know how above all things you are averse from minute criticism, from legislation in matters of detail): (1) first and foremost impure water supply (the cause of the very largest proportion of village Indian sickness and death): (a) village and house wells so near cesspits as to be polluted by subsoil infiltration; (b) foul tanks for supplying water in some places; (2) unwholesome trades also fouling the water; (3) want of outside cleansing; (4) ruinous huts with filth; (5) water holes in or near villages; (6) foul ditches; (7) irregular, broken surfaces in roads and lanes of villages and no surface drainage; (8) foul houses and compounds; (9) cattle stalled close to living rooms or even under them; (10) fouling of roads and outskirts of villages by sewage; (11) manure heaps close to houses; (12) want of ventilation in houses (‘‘my house is like a box,’’ says the Bombay villager with pride).

Village and Town Sanitation / 303

Many of these defects could be removed by the people themselves without sanitary works, except in the case of new wells, etc., filling up holes and ditches, especially in Bengal, removing ruinous huts, road surfaces, etc. In all civilized countries agricultural populations attend more or less to these things, but in India, where there are officers to attend to them, everybody seems to neglect them. Would it meet the case if an act would recite these sanitary measures which are to be carried out and simply by an applying clause enable the local government to frame rules best suited to the locality for carrying them out? the local government to designate the officers and their responsibilities, the whole procedure to be linked with the sanitar y commissioners’ inspecting work. It would seem providential that you should be in India to crown your own work. I feel ashamed of having detained you at such length. If what is proposed be feasible, you will have done it or be now doing it. If it be only feasible in some other way, this long story will perhaps have been troubling you in vain. But I know that you will believe me, dear Lord Ripon, ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45765 ff6-9, 22-23

23 May 1881 Rural Water Supply. India. Sir Richard Temple, possibly the only retired Indian who feels as great a call to urge India’s affairs in England after his thirty years’ service as to manage them in India during the same, is extremely anxious to bring before the Army Sanitary Commission rural sanitar y affairs, which he thoroughly knows not only in Bombay but in Bengal and almost all over India, particularly water supply, contaminated water supply, to which he attributes cholera and much of all disease in India as you do. He recognizes what has been done for the water supply in large towns and what has been done by the Army Sanitar y Commission. But the protection of the sources of water supply in villages and rural districts he says is almost unknown. He gave a great many instances of this, such as the fouling by natives themselves of the drinking water by washing, etc., beasts, etc., percolation from cesspits, etc., sewage, etc., poured on above instead of below points where drinking water is drawn on streams. (In an article I wrote in [the] National Indian Association Journal, October 1879, which I can scarcely ask you to take the trouble to read, I have a good many of these causes of rural ill health [see Part 3, p 654 below].)

304 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Sir Richard Temple says that everything depends in India on public opinion in England; he wants us to write and agitate on this rural water supply question (India being a country of villages) but above all he says: ‘‘Why does not the Army Sanitary Commission call men recently returned from India, like me, and cross-examine them? Ask me to name cases; my knowledge is in my head, actual experience acquired on my tours. Gladly would I be cross-examined.’’ This is not the Army Sanitar y Commission mode of action but pray think how it could be done. It is not often that we have a man who knows all parts of India except Oudh—other men know India only in part—so eager to be subjected to cross-examination. I shall write to Dr Sutherland about this. But pray do you consider it. . . . Sir Richard Temple could be utilized, especially before the Army Sanitary Commission, and more particularly on this subject of rural water supply. It would be of immense service. Also tell me what is doing now as to the remedying defects in rural water supply and generally what is known at home. I read the reports and I see much noticed and little done. 20 June 1881 I have had two long interviews with Sir Richard Temple (he is very discursive). You remember you kindly wrote: ‘‘If he could suggest to yo u practical ways in which the village sanitation and conservancy could be effected,’’ ‘‘ways which I apprehend must differ in ever y part of India,’’ ‘‘I think yo u (or Dr Sutherland or I possibly) (but not the Army Sanitary Committee qua committee) could make the suggestion to Lord Ripon and get him to push it in India.’’ (I copy you verbatim et literatim.) I have now got it all down on paper and will send it you if you are in London whenever you have time to look over it. You will see he thinks legislation necessar y, an ‘‘imperial’’ act on the viceroy’s part; he thinks the viceroy’s hands should be strengthened by the government, the S. of S., at home; he thinks little or nothing has been done in sanitation, except in towns, in India. But I will not anticipate—you will find the ‘‘reading’’ startling enough. It is an immense scheme—almost as great as when we first started.

Village and Town Sanitation / 305 Source: From three letters to Robert Rawlinson, Boston University 1/6/77, 78 and 80

23 August 1881 6 a.m. Madras Drainage. Mr Grant-Duff. I have found all Major Tulloch’s reports that I have, viz., Repor t for Drainage of Madras (and on Drainage of Bombay). . . . But, as to Madras, I very much fear that we cannot give preciseinformation or advice without running the risk of putting Mr Grant-Duff [governor of Madras] in a false position, especially as he knows nothing and cares little about the details of drainage schemes. He may feel very confused when he gets out to Madras if, as you suggest, we recommend to him to follow Bombay or to adopt Major Tulloch’s admirable scheme—may he not?—whilst it is possible that the scheme of Mr Jones is in progress. With our present imperfect knowledge, what is to be done? It might almost be wiser to limit oneself to recommending Mr GrantDuff to push forward the drainage of the town, on any scheme that is being adopted, if the works are well done, though one is very unwilling to make such a ‘‘lame and impotent’’ conclusion. Pray see Dr Sutherland and Major Tulloch about it, as you kindly proposed. And I have asked Captain Galton to see you. Four such great men should come to some wise conclusion about poor Madras. I have written to try and get the duke of Buckingham’s information as to Hardwar Fair. ‘‘Mr Jones’s scheme’’ is advanced. When Dr Sutherland wrote to me, he must have forgotten his own strong minute against ‘‘Mr Jones’s scheme,’’ for he appeared to think there is nothing to do but to ‘‘raise money’’ for the drainage. 25 August 1881 I have written to Dr Sutherland that I entreat you and him to do the best for Madras that you can by sending me a joint, brief, well-considered distinct recommendation as to what Mr Grant-Duff is to do. Major Tulloch’s report is very full and every time I look at it I think it more admirable than before. But unhappily also it is full of argument, which implies that it has opponents, and that weakens it as an authoritative document to an ignorant man. It would hardly do, would it? simply to give it to Mr Grant-Duff to read. But I depend upon you and Dr Sutherland for sending me here what I ought to communicate to Mr Grant-Duff on the subject. God bless you and God bless poor Madras.

306 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 29 April 1882 Thank you very much for your two notes about Pune drainage and sewerage. But it is you whom I want if you do not like to give such a verdict as would be useful to my correspondent to ask questions—not me. If you will kindly return me the documents I sent you with such opinion and such questions as you think I ought to send to ask I will do so. And I will also ask your question, ‘‘How will the money be obtained to pay for sewering Pune?’’ for that is just what I want to know. . . . You ask me to tell you ‘‘as to what is doing with the sewerage and draining of Madras.’’ I wish I could. I only know that they are doing something different from any of the plans which have been discussed. I thought that your Army Sanitary Commission was kept informed. I have seldom been so grieved and discouraged as at not having been able to give a unanimous opinion and advice from yourselves to Mr Grant-Duff, who was honestly anxious to be advised on this vital subject. I was in hopes that you and Dr Sutherland and Captain Galton came to an unanimous decision on these things, whenever submitted to the commission. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff195-96

14 April 1882 Private. Sanitation of villages: whether an enabling act could be passed by the Government of India or by local legislative councils empowering local governments to frame sanitary rules for giving effect to the purposes of this act? All that is wanted is to set existing methods in motion by law, and then the local authorities to keep the machine going. Or has the viceroy done it better by his own personal influence? What is done for fairs periodically should be done for villages under legal sanction continuously. By the Bombay Village Police Act of 1869 [and] under a resolution of the Bombay government of 1878, selected collectors were to have selected village headmen entrusted with powers to compel the people to clean their villages. But it was not followed up. The officers being there, can any act be passed to make them do their duty? Headmen have bribed inspectors not to report them. N.B. The mischief-making power of petty officials is something inconceivable. What has been done to keep this in check?

Village and Town Sanitation / 307 Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff185-91

23 January 1885 Lord Reay. Bombay. A thousand thanks for yours of the 16th on the subject of incensing Lord Reay [governor of Bombay]. I hope you are now very much better. You were so kind as to say that you would ‘‘refer’’ me ‘‘to the facts’’ ‘‘in the XVI Volume of the India Office reports’’ as soon as you received your copies. Doubtless you have received them now. (I have had a copy some weeks, but I did not like to trouble you.) I now send you a new copy. You kindly say that you ‘‘will look out in them most of the points to which Lord Reay’s attention should be directed.’’ Will you be so good as to do so now? You also say that you will show ‘‘in the Blue Book that Dr Hewlett has laid his hands on the worst military stations and laid down the principles of the remedies.’’ I shall be extremely obliged to you to mark these. And also to tell me what to say to Lord Reay, who is most willing to be taught. You also mention that ‘‘Neemuch, Nasirabad, Mhow’’; what ‘‘others’’? ought to be taken in hand at once, and that ‘‘there is a good deal to do in this way of inspecting and improving many towns.’’ Say what? Would you be so kind as to point me to all these things in the Blue Book, and to put me in the way of telling them to a man perfectly ignorant of sanitary things, but laborious and conscientious and willing to learn. I shall be extremely grateful. And would Mr Frederick send me a spare copy of Vol. XVI? Doubtless I shall have some more questions to ask you. You said that I had asked you questions which would, or ‘‘ought to take you three days to answer.’’ (I have already introduced Dr Hewlett to Lord Reay as much as words could, telling him of Hewlett’s work in Bombay.) Pray kindly say how you and Mrs Sutherland are. N.B. Dr Hewlett: one of his greatest works is that he has ‘‘aroused the interest of the people in sanitary things,’’ is it not? You say that ‘‘an attempt should be made at once to find some persons to do work of this class,’’ i.e., in ‘‘villages where nine tenths of all the important work has to be done.’’ What ‘‘persons’’? engineers? or headmen? Please remember that I have no eyes, or rather I have eyes and they are neuralgic. You must not, please, tell me to ‘‘look in the book,’’ but mark the passages for me and give me yourself the moral. I have been laid up all the winter. It seems to me that one must always repeat the most elementary notions of sanitary things again and again. Do you know that in one

308 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India week we have eighteen!!! probationers at St Thomas’ ‘‘down’’ with diarrhea and sickness and in a ‘‘typhoid condition’’? Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45765 ff253-54

14 Februar y 1885 Thanks for the two Bombay Municipality Reports. But I understood you that you would be so very good as to look them over yourself and tell me: 1. What is the present state of the sanitary problem in Bombay city, and 2. What remains to be done (I am afraid that my eyes and time are quite unequal to doing this). I have had a long interview with Major Tulloch, according to your instr uctions. He left with me his reports. He does not know the (1) present state of the sewerage problem, but showed me what he had planned. (2) As to the water supply, it appears that the municipality has actually now voted the money for his water supply plans for bringing the water from sixty miles off (the plans of many years ago, which he showed me) and they are going to begin them. But it is already too late to begin them this year, as necessar y machiner y is not yet ordered from England and when the monsoon breaks it is too late for work. (3) Major Tulloch says that Mr Ollivant,37 the present municipal commissioner [of Bombay] (chairman) is a person entirely to be trusted for sound principles and correct information, if Lord Reay requires them. Do you happen to know Mr Ollivant’s sanitar y principles, as we do Dr Hewlett’s? Source: From an incomplete draft probably to Lord Reay, Add Mss 45807 f161

9 March 1885 Private. I cannot thank you enough for your great kindness in coming at so absorbing a time to you. I deeply regret that, having been rather ill and overworked, I have not been able to write down what you kindly said I might. But I shall seize the great privilege you gave me of letting it follow you to Bombay. Mr Ollivant is the name of the municipal commissioner of Bombay city—a most trustworthy and competent person. The municipal body of Bombay city considers itself, I need not say, a private corporation, and is rather impatient of interference.

37 Sir Charles Ollivant, member of the Indian Civil Service.

Village and Town Sanitation / 309 Source: From a letter to Lord Reay, Boston 1/8/105, draft, Add Mss 45807 ff 177-80

6 November 1885 Private and confidential. You were so ver y good as to encourage me to write to you if I had anything important to submit to you especially in sanitar y matters. And your great kindness makes me venture to appeal to you now. Dr Auchinlek’s appointment as surgeon general, H.M. Forces, is just expiring, and under clause 2 of India Army Circular 1880 the Government of India reser ves power for local governments to appoint, subject to the confirmation of the secretar y of state, an officer of the Indian Medical Department, if qualified, as surgeon general, H.M. Forces. Though the death rate of the British troops serving in Bombay has been materially lowered, yet the number of men ‘‘constantly sick’’ (about 564 in a small army of some 10,000 British troops) shows that much remains to be done. Bombay and several other towns in the presidency ranked unhappily high for ‘‘admissions’’ from malarial fevers, even as high as from 716 to 939 per 1000 strength on a seven years’ annual average among British troops. (It is true these fevers are not generally fatal, but they are a main cause of inefficiency and invaliding of troops—and a single attack predisposes to more.) Further work is therefore absolutely necessary ever ywhere. We must work hard to be per fect. The reports from the surgeon general, H.M. Forces, show that much of this sickness is preventible, and much would be prevented by greater sanitary strictness. We sanitarians were grieved to see in the Annual Sanitary Report that the British surgeon general had opposed the sanitary commissioner, Dr Hewlett, in his wish to receive certain necessary returns. And we rejoiced when we saw that the Bombay government authorized his, the sanitary commissioner’s, being furnished with a copy of the admission and discharge book from each station hospital. Might this not be a favourable opportunity for filling the vacant post of surgeon general, H.M. Forces, with an Indian medical officer singularly adapted for the appointment? And that man I believe you will think Deputy Surgeon General Hewlett, the best sanitary officer in Bombay, perhaps in India, exceptionally good in sanitary experience in the Bombay presidency. Dr Hewlett comes next after Dr Moore, surgeon general with the Government of Bombay. We want Dr Hewlett to introduce sound sanitary principles. He was deputy surgeon general in Sind for three years, and had administrative charge of all troops, British and Indian, and all medical arrangements for sending up

310 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India troops to Afghanistan. He is therefore per fectly conversant with the working of the medical staff. But what we want him for is for his special qualifications as a sanitary officer. We want him to instill into the young men what they are to do, and how to do it. We want him to create an enthusiasm, an enthusiasm with knowledge, as he is well fitted to do, on the subject, among the young officers of the department. No man has his experience. If you would think well, to nominate Dr Hewlett, there is scarcely a doubt that the secretar y of state for India would confirm the appointment. Five years’ experience, a record of the sanitary work of the army, conducted by a man specially instructed in the subject, such as Dr Hewlett would leave behind him, would be simply invaluable. He would at the end of his five years’ term have left a distinct mark on the sanitar y condition of the army. He would have been able to show the medical officers the causes of disease and how to remove them. This is the first thing; second to it is the appointment of an officer of the Indian Medical Department as surgeon general would please and rejoice the whole department, which feels itself rather put in an inferior position. But none would rejoice so much as your selection of Dr Hewlett as the leaders of sanitary reform in England who would feel themselves favoured and honoured by one of the pioneers of sanitary reform in India being appointed to such a responsible post. His success would be their own success. . . . We call upon you now to fulfill the promise that Indian officers should hold appointments formerly limited to the British, for you will never have a better chance. An exceptionally good officer, especially adapted in rank, standing and fitness, the best sanitary officer in Bombay, perhaps in India, eminently good in sanitary knowledge and experience in Bombay. . . . I know that your great interest in your kingdom will pardon an old sanitarian for urging that a man of such unexampled experience as Dr Hewlett shall be appointed, if possible. Source: From an incomplete letter to an unknown recipient, British Library RP 2055

[c1885] Yes, the fall of Khartoum [1884], the death of Gordon, the expedition of relief must fill every mind. I knew Gordon. He was a saint and hero. But the comments of the newspapers are almost treasonable. Lord Ripon’s advice is the only true course. He says, ‘‘You say: what will Europe think of our disaster? What effect will the Muhammadan success against us at Khartoum have upon other Muhammadan sub-

Village and Town Sanitation / 311

jects in India? What Europe will think of us is what we think of ourselves. What Asiatic Muhammadans will conclude is what they hear us say and write ourselves. If England, as she is too fond of doing, abuses herself, scolds, grumbles, etc., Europe and Asia will take her at her word and will say: England must know best, there must be surely even more under this than England owns herself. Muhammadans will think that England is crumbling, if she says so herself.’’

The Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, 1885 Editor: By 1885 it was widely thought that not enough was done for village sanitation, especially in Bombay presidency. Writing to Lord Reay, governor of Bombay, in November 1885 (see p 313 below), Nightingale referred to a draft bill, the Bombay Village Conservancy Act (soon to be replaced by the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill38) and to Hewlett’s memorandum on village headmen as promising documents. Both recommended giving increased powers to the village councils, instead of having villagers wait passively for orders from above. Nightingale emphasized: ‘‘The system of village sanitation must begin from the bottom’’ (see p 318 below). Late in 1885 Lord Reay, with the support of the viceroy, Lord Dufferin, conceived the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, which was to see several redraftings in the next five years. It became the subject of intense correspondence involving Nightingale, as she read and commented on the drafts. Her main problem with the early version of the bill was that its proposed sanitary reforms applied only to large villages, leaving ‘‘two thirds of the rural population’’ without ‘‘the benefit of sanitation’’ (see p 325 below). This she wrote to a local association of Pune (Poona), near Bombay, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, enjoining its members to ‘‘carefully watch this bill’’ so as ‘‘to bring it into a form well suited to local conditions’’ (see p 325 below). The bill was amended in 1888 to include all villages. Nightingale saw the amended bill and informed Lord Dufferin and Lord Ripon (who was in communication with both Lord Dufferin and the new viceroy, Lord Lansdowne) of her concerns. She then wrote, on Ripon’s request, to Lord Lansdowne, the new viceroy (November 1888) and to Sir Raymond West, urging them to grant more powers to

38 On the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill see Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 208-14.

312 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India villagers in order ‘‘to enable the people to organize themselves in the villages’’ (see p 337 below) using their own ‘‘initiative’’ to raise the necessar y money without leaving everything in ‘‘the hands of the collector’’ (see p 344 below). In a letter to Lord Cross, secretar y of state for India, her criticism of the bill was biting: ‘‘It is a return to stringent absolutism . . . a bill of active interference by government officers.’’ The movement had been ‘‘to put power into the hands of the people,’’ provided it was done to the satisfaction of the government, ‘‘to revive their own immemorial village organization, such as the panchayat.’’ Instead of the ‘‘corrupt petty native official’’ there would be ‘‘the decent villager,’’ but this put ‘‘the whole power and executive into the hands of the collector’’ (see p 345 below). Nightingale communicated the same concerns to Lord Ripon, then back in England (see p 346 below). She wrote again to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in 1889, commenting on the amended bill and insisting that ‘‘the villagers themselves’’ should do the work (see p 354 below), under the supervision of the Sanitar y Department, and see to the collective cleanliness through a campaign of education. Thus ‘‘the hereditar y village authorities and ser vants’’ would be ‘‘gradually trained to the improved methods of per forming their customary duties towards the local public, so that eventually the health machinery may come to work almost automatically’’ (see p 354 below). When the bill was passed in 1890 and became law, it was still criticized for ignoring the peasants’ situation and overburdening them with extra taxes, instead of reser ving ‘‘a definite portion of the village cesses to meet the expenses of sanitation’’ (see p 367 below). Lack of such funding was to set back the progress of sanitation in villages. The extensive discussions that had accompanied the evolution of the bill, however, revealed that self-help was now embraced by the government, marking a important step toward granting wider responsibility to Indian nationals. Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff193-94

17 November 1885 I have never had time to tell you of the very successful interview I had with Sir F. Roberts.39 But I will. Dr Hewlett’s five points:

39 Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832-1914), Sir, commander-in-chief of the British Army in India 1885-93, later Lord Roberts of Kandahar.

Village and Town Sanitation / 313

1. Village sanitation and the best means of carrying it out. (This I am to write to Lord Reay upon.) 2. The desirability of the Bombay government being informed that their views regarding the contagion of cholera are opposed to proved facts and are likely to cause embarrassment to true sanitary progress and England’s action regarding quarantine. (You will help in this, and how can I ?) 3. The importance of the Bombay government giving every facility to municipalities to take advantage of Colonel Ducat’s ser vices as consulting sanitary engineer. (This, I think will be done without us.) 4. The advisability of Indian engineers being encouraged whilst at home on furlough to take every opportunity of studying sanitary engineering as a speciality. (This I think I have nothing to do with.) 5. The desirability of employing civil surgeons in each zillah [administrative district] as sanitary officers who should work under the direct control of the sanitary commissioner, as in the Punjab. Would you kindly give me hints as to all five points, how I could help and particularly what view you take and how you are helping and what I should say to Dr Hewlett if possible by Thursday morning? Source: From a letter to Lord Reay, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 5483/41

19 November 1885 Private and Confidential. Village Sanitary Organization. You granted me a great boon in allowing me to write to you. You will not censure me for making use of it. My heart is in the villages and the village patels in village sanitation: what to do and how to do it. ‘‘What to do’’ is most ably and dearly set forth in Dr Hewlett’s ‘‘Memo for the Guidance of Village Patels,’’ 5 September 1885, which I understand is under government discussion. The main difficulty lies in ‘‘how to do it.’’ And two methods are proposed, viz., the government bill and Mr Crawford’s plan. To you we look for the decision (with great faith) in this question supremely important, for the methods employed should be in conformity with habit as far as possible. As the Government of India have usually said, ‘‘they observe that nothing has been done for the villages.’’ The reason is that every district has its own habits and customs (no one law will do for all) and that we have destroyed the village organizations of old time, which could easily have been put in working train. A village community with local interests and feelings could cure itself well enough, but if this cannot be restored, the plan of an elective representative body will have to be adopted, a sort of village

314 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India municipality, as Mr Crawford puts it, in which the will of the majority, instead of the good will and tacit consent of all, must do the work. Most humbly, and only in accordance with your kind wish, I venture to suggest (1) that you will allow Dr Hewlett’s ‘‘Memo’’ of instr uctions to ‘‘Village Patels’’ to be translated and circulated; (2) by the Bombay Village Police Act of 1867 power has been entrusted to a few patels only, selected by collectors; has not the time come when this act should be extended to a much larger number (also selected in each collectorate)? (3) and that the people should be taught what to do and what not do by their patels and ‘‘panchayats.’’ N.B. You, who know so much better than we do, need not to be told that the power of ‘‘Punch’’ is well nigh illimitable. They can do at once what no district officer can do, or do only by a process of law. (I have a mine of instances in which, e.g., whole villages have been removed bodily by the ‘‘Punch’’—properly approached by our sanitar y commissioner—in a few hours, villages that had been nests of cholera, where district officers had worked in vain.) The present Village Police Act is, however, as you have seen, deficient or indeed absolutely obstructive in certain clauses, and Mr Crawford’s Draft Bombay Village Conservancy Act (which I have seen) would appear to provide a better machinery for introducing sanitary measures into villages. As it proposes to re-establish village panchayats and to give them a legal status with the necessary powers for carrying out sanitary measures, although Mr Crawford’s act does not go so far as we might wish, yet as a beginning it would seem based on sound principles. Now two things seem required: 1. Facilities provided by government, such as suitable areas of ground, etc., in the neighbourhood of villages; increased powers should be given to panchayats as recommended by Mr Crawford, to protect their water sources (see p 6 B of Mr Crawford’s Memo and Section 9 of Draft Act); facilities for the people protecting themselves from local filth are provided also by Mr Crawford’s Draft Village Conservancy Act. Thus a short municipal act for making the people avail themselves of these facilities (not ordering them to do what they have no means of doing and punishing them if they do it not) would meet the case. It is we who have done the mischief. It is you who must undo it and do the good. And how to do it we may safely leave in your hands. Pray forgive me, for I have been for years at work on this village sanitar y question, so important in a country of villages like India, and your advent has filled us with fresh hope.

Village and Town Sanitation / 315

2. Bombay has been foremost in making a grand first step towards executive organization by appointing a sanitary engineer as part of the sanitary staff of the province. This is the great and important lesson taught by Bombay. And we trust it will be learnt elsewhere in India. Colonel Ducat’s appointment is a real advance, and after experience it will lead to more. The Bombay government, we know, will give every facility to municipalities for taking advantage of Colonel Ducat’s ser vices as consulting sanitar y engineer. And we hail with hope the prospect of Lord Reay organizing the whole administration for sanitary purposes. No organization for sanitary improvement has yet been provided except for the municipal towns, and this as yet imperfectly, though the sanitary state has reported on usque ad nauseam [more than enough]. 3. The system of utilizing the services of the zillah civil surgeons, as in the Punjab, as sanitary officers, is also much a part of the question as the sanitary commissioner himself. And they should report to him. But this is beyond my sphere. 4. We are so ver y glad that Dr Hewlett is to go on tour round India as sanitary commissioner and see what other sanitary commissioners are doing. I end as I began: we must gladly leave details to you; we have not the data. With renewed jubilation for all you are doing, especially for the appointment of two such real representatives as Mr Ranade40 and Mr Dadabhai Naoroji41 on the council, which has rejoiced every native of thought and action in the presidency, and for the Thana Forest matter, as well as for many other things. Source: From a letter/draft to W.G. Pedder, Add Mss 45807 ff183-88

19 November 1885 Private and Confidential. I have long wished for some excuse to claim one of your kind visits and doubtful whether you can give me your precious time. I am now using my privilege to ask you whether you would not give us a general despatch from the I.O. with orders to be

40 Mahadev Govind Ranade (1841-1901), judge on the Bombay Legislative Council, editor of the Quar terly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and founder of the National Social Conference. 41 Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), businessman, politician, mp 1892-95, founder of the East India Association, president of the Indian National Congress. See the biographical sketch in Appendix A.

316 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sent out to the Bombay government, first of all to tell them that their sanitar y commissioner does know his business and they must listen to him: to tell them that his (5 September 1885) instructions to village patels must be translated and circulated, the Village Police Act of 1867 extended to a larger number of patels, and the people taught what to do and what not to do by their patels and panchayats. . . . Please tell the Bombay government to provide suitable areas of ground, etc., in the neighbourhood of villages and to give increased powers to panchayats . . . , to protect their water sources and to provide facilities for the people protecting themselves from local filth, in short, tell the Bombay government to do what you would do yourself. . . . Bombay has been foremost in making a grand first step towards executive organization by appointing a sanitary engineer as part of the sanitary staff of the province. This is the important lesson taught by Bombay. And we trust it will be learnt elsewhere in India from your Bombay. . . . Colonel Ducat’s appointment is a real advance. And after experience it will lead to more. Will not the Bombay government give ever y facility to municipalities to take advantage of Colonel Ducat’s ser vices as consulting sanitary engineer? . . . Might I also ask for Dr Hewlett’s last but one Annual Sanitary Report? Source: From two letters to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff199-200 and 201-08

9 December 1885 Bombay Village Sanitation. I am so glad that you are so much better. But pray be careful. The weather in London has been detestable. I send you Mr Pedder’s letter in answer to one of mine asking for a despatch on Bombay village sanitation. You see he will do it; you see he waits to do it till your memo on Dr Hewlett’s last sanitary repor t is received. You see he wishes to come and talk to me about it. You see that he foresees ‘‘difficulties.’’ Could you tell me what line your memo will take? what line I ought to take about his ‘‘difficulties’’? (By the greatest chance, I who have never time or strength to make drafts or copies of my letters, find I made a pencil memo of my letter to Lord Reay, which I enclose, as that to Mr Pedder was on the same pattern, in order that you may tell me what to modify or strengthen in conversation with him.) Please return me the whole ‘‘boutique’’ [batch of documents] and give me all the hints you can. We must support Dr Hewlett’s and Mr Crawford’s experience and practical judgment on this Bombay village

Village and Town Sanitation / 317

sanitation against the altogether obstructive views, for they are nothing more than views, of Messrs Melville and Nugent (on Lord Reay’s Council) whom Mr Pedder calls the ‘‘Bombay government.’’ My letter to Mr Pedder, to which his is an answer, was on the same topics, mutatis mutandis [appropriate changes being made] as the one I enclose to Lord Reay. (I did not of course tell Mr Pedder I had written to Lord Reay.) You know, I dare say, that Dr Hewlett left five out of his six children ill of scarlet fever, from the abominable Bedford drainage, one, a boy of nine, apparently dying, his wife quite worn out with nursing, and he obliged to start for India. He and she were more to be pitied, I think, than almost anyone I ever saw. However, I have heard from her that the little boy has taken a turn for the better and that all are making progress. Dr Hewlett seemed almost broken-hearted at having to leave them. Thank God they are better. With great love to Mrs Sutherland. 19 December 1885 Private. Despatch to Bombay government (Mr Pedder). Your memo on Hewlett’s sanitar y report. I am so ver y glad that you are able to resume your tri-weekly visits to the Horse Guards. Your letter shall now be answered as well as I can, having had a long conversation with Mr Pedder. The I.O. is fractious and quarrelsome: everyone who enters in there becomes an office man and not a service man, loses his undivided devotion to the cause of India, and becomes defensive, warding off troublesome reformers. This being the case, we must do our best. Economy is the order of the day in all except the army, frontier defences and frontier wars (10,000 men to be kept at Quetta at an enormous expense, for all their supplies must be brought from India), etc. Every official in India who dared to hesitate about this policy is to be spoken of with good-natured contempt, especially at Bombay: ‘‘Ray’’ (meaning Lord Reay), ‘‘old Hewlett,’’ ‘‘Willie Wedderburn’’ (meaning Sir W. Wedderburn), etc. But we must do our best. As to pleading for a ‘‘complete executive sanitar y organization,’’ we are specially warned to do no such thing. (1) We are told that the answer from India will be, ‘‘give us a hundred millions and we shall be too glad to do it.’’ (2) We are told that an ‘‘executive’’ means the power of levying money by raising fresh taxes, and that nothing of the kind can be sanctioned. (3) We are warned to begin at the bottom and restore the Mhars and Mangs [members of low castes] as a ‘‘village sanitar y organization.’’ (Of that more anon: we will hope that we are not to

318 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India end there.) And actually at their own request I wrote to ‘‘Ray’’ by last mail to restore these Mhars and Mangs, reinstate them in their village perquisites (grain ‘‘huks’’ [lawful claims?]) and their service lands. (4) We are told this (by the way) but please observe this, that we must on no account speak of Colonel Ducat by name but only as the sanitary engineer, because!! he has the misfortune to be ‘‘old Hewlett’s’’ brotherin-law, which I did not know till the other day, and you I dare say do not know at all. (5) We are told that we must on no account urge the government to ‘‘instr uct’’ the municipalities to carry out the ‘‘sanitar y engineer’s requirements,’’ still less to act with other municipalities as with ‘‘Calcutta,’’ which has made a dreadful ‘‘row’’ (I do have a word to say about that anon). (6) Also, that the municipalities themselves will not stand a too energetic native sanitarian member, because that entails raising money (just like our town councils and boards). You remember that excellent sanitarian native chairman of the Ahmedabad municipality, whose letter Dr Hewlett inserted in his last annual report but one. He would not have been elected in the new municipal board and he asked to be nominated, which was done. But he was not elected as vice-chairman, and he threatens to resign (we are doing all we can to prevent this). According to your desire I was to find out what you could put in your memo on Dr Hewlett’s last sanitary report to strengthen their hands, i.e., the hands of their despatch which is to be written to the Bombay government on your memo when it comes in; they were profuse in their acknowledgments of the excellence of your memo, and suggest as pegs to hang their despatch upon: 1. That you feel convinced the system of village sanitation must begin from the bottom; 2. . . . That you quite agree with Dr Hewlett that village sanitation is at the root of removal of epidemic disease, and are ver y glad to understand that some legislative measures are to promote such sanitation and would be glad to hear the result. (Upon this, put more strongly and better by you, Mr Pedder says, they would be able to hang their despatch.) . . . Dr Hewlett speaks of local funds spent on sanitar y purposes. Mr Pedder says a great deal has been ‘‘spent on wells—the main thing.’’ I think he would be glad if you would notice this (he says that ‘‘old Hewlett,’’ ‘‘rightly notices the defects,’’ and does not say much of what has been done). As an irrelevant reflection I am str uck with Dr Hewlett’s superiority to all these I.O. men. (Mr Pedder is not half the man he was when I first knew him.)

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3. (This by the way:) Mr Pedder asks you to use the word ‘‘village organization’’ (not ‘‘panchayat’’); he says panchayats do not exist, and they at the I.O. want to encourage the village headman. (I am sorry he is wrong, because Messrs Crawford and Hewlett on the spot speak incessantly about panchayats, but since it is Mr Pedder who has to draft [letters] which the secretar y of state will approve and permit, we must let him dictate his own terms, à la lettre.) 4. . . . Mr Pedder asks you to say a word in favour of the leper asylum and its advantage. 5. I now come to a thing which it is most difficult to me to formulate. Mr Pedder begs you ‘‘not to suggest’’ anything based upon the ‘‘non-contagiousness of cholera.’’ He says it actually has the opposite effect on foreign governments from what we wish for and Drs Hewlett and Cuningham suppose. He says the I.O. entirely approve (without believing in ‘‘cholera contagion’’) paragraph 14 of the ‘‘resolution’’ of the government (end of Bombay sanitary report, now under your hands), which has so distressed Dr Hewlett and that the I.O. has signified or will signify its approval to the Bombay government of this paragraph. In vain I urged that the I.O. has done, as you told me, exactly what we wished, that the Government of India has instructed Bombay to clean its ships, as Dr Hewlett wished, that we made no complaint. Mr Pedder went into this at great length—I cannot recapitulate his arguments, you have heard them fifty times. But I suppose we must take him at his word in this, that European contagionist governments, if we harp upon non-contagion, say: ‘‘You will be careless about sending clean bills of health with your ships, and therefore we will stop our ports against your ships.’’ I only tell you what Mr Pedder says: we cannot go against him when he asks you not to dwell upon cholera ‘‘noncontagiousness’’ as a reason for the sanitar y measures recommended (as I wrote to you, I did not feel Dr Hewlett’s indignation against [this paragraph 14]. 6. I come now to zillah [administrative district] surgeons: we can do nothing. Mr Pedder says it will only make a ‘‘row.’’ (I have told you my opinion of the spirit of the I.O.). He says ‘‘that the zillah surgeons should report on sanitary things direct to the sanitar y commissioner.’’ [It] would be as if, in joint operations of army and navy, the army surgeons were to report direct to the naval commander-in-chief or vice versa. I can only tell you what he says. 7. To return to village sanitary things. This is the tone: ‘‘The cultivators and agricultural populations are all underfed and this is the

320 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India cause of their great mortality.’’ To account for army health: ‘‘It is possible to have orders carried out in the army which it is not possible to have carried out in the villages.’’ ‘‘Sleeping on the ground and not on a charpoy [is] one great cause of village mortality. We do not believe in the great decrease of native army mortality. But, if it is so, it is because, though native troops have a great tendency to underfeed, commanding officers watch against this to prevent it, and against sleeping on the ground, etc.’’ (I think you might combat these prejudices very gently and indirectly dwelling on the great decrease of native troops’ mor tality which they don’t believe.) 8. The I.O. say Koch’s42 ‘‘discomfiture is not believed in.’’ N.B. (Now please do always put the names of the sanitary commissioners of each province at the head of your memo. The I.O. asks me the name of the sanitar y commissioner of Bengal. And I ask them. The sanitary commissioners ask one another. And no one knows. Who is the Bengal sanitar y commissioner? and is he good? Who are the good sanitary commissioners besides Drs Hewlett and Bellew?43) I think I had better send this letter as it is, containing as it does the chief points without waiting to write more, as you may be doing your memo. I send your own letter for reference, which please return. With great love to Mrs Sutherland. Source: Notes from a interview with Naylor (?) (coming home for two years’ leave), Add Mss 45827 ff174-75

[1885 or 1886] The bills have been impracticable, so contrary to the habits of the people they would have made a rising. Take the water supply: there is but one tank to the village, or there is but one well of drinkable water; how is it to be separated into tank for men, tank for cattle, tank for washing, then the latrines? The people won’t use the latrines—it is so contrar y to the habits of the people; they will go and squat in the fields, but then we only want them to go, but into one place. Then the cattle. Of course the cattle should not be in the village and the pony should not live in a room in the house. But what are you to do with

42 Robert Koch (1843-1910), bacteriologist, discovered the cholera bacillus in a Calcutta tank in 1883-84, scoffed at by anti-contagionists such as Drs J.M. Cuningham, D.D. Cunningham, etc. 43 Henry Walter Bellew (1834-92), sanitary commissioner of Punjab 1876-87, author of a ‘‘Sanitar y Dialogue’’ and Cholera in India 1862-1882.

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them? Perhaps the land all round the village is owned by a rich man. He says: I don’t want your cattle. Or if not, a leopard might come or robbers. The sites and the buildings of many of the villages are originally so bad, the subsoil has been fouled for centuries. There is nothing to do but to rebuild the village elsewhere. . . . But Hewlett made the panchayat do this on one memorable occasion in a few hours, when it had been tried in vain for years. Still in the last thirty years there is such a difference, e.g., in the Malabar villages: the configuration of the country is favourable; it is tr ue there are only open gutters but there is drainage down to the sea and from the distant hills behind a pure water supply has been bought. The Mhars and the Mangs—there are one or two families in most villages, with lands which have been given them some time by the government, but not enough—enough for the old ways, but not for the new. There are Mhar and Mang villages (in the Deccan)—these have to be coaxed back with high pay and land to villages where they are wanted. You want a dozen Mhar and Mang families when there are only one or two to do the work. Government does not consult the leading natives. But if they did consult the native associations they would say: this is very nice and proper, but I know that Lakin so well. . . .

‘‘Village Sanitation,’’ 1887 Editor: This letter addressed ‘‘the rural population directly’’ (see p 326 below) on village sanitation through the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, a political organization formed by Indian nationals in 1870.44 It was Sir William Wedderburn who suggested to Nightingale that she write such a letter to the association in order to support the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, then under discussion. Members of the association paid a visit to Nightingale in 1885 when in London to lobby British mps. A similar letter went to the Bombay Presidency Association. The letter is followed by a brief commentary published in the Voice of India.

44 See Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 207-11.

322 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Letter’’ to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association and to the Joint Secretaries of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, 22 Februar y 1887, 3 pages. Also published in The Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15,1 (July 1892):1-5

Gentlemen, Having expressed to Sir William Wedderburn the deep interest which I feel in the bill now under consideration, ‘‘to make better provision for village conservancy in the Bombay presidency,’’ I have been advised by him to address the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha with a view to bespeak their special support in favour of village sanitation and to obtain their advice as to the practical steps which can best be taken towards that end. Accordingly I have ventured to send you these few lines and I trust you will have the goodness to lay them before the council of the association for their favourable consideration. It appears to me that what is wanted is, as in England, an act to enable the people, under proper supervision, to organize themselves in the villages for sanitary purposes, the villagers doing the work themselves with the requisite guidance from skilled authority, that is, from the sanitary commissioner and the officers of his department. As yet, the higher officers are Europeans, but the time will come, we hope, when these duties will be performed by trained Indian sanitarians. (It is a truism, but a truism much neglected among us, that it takes a lifetime to make a sanitarian.) The problem seems to be to combine efficiency with freedom: to provide the impulse and the science from the central authority, without undue local interference, so as to produce a stirring practical sanitary executive, which will inspire and direct the willing co-operation of every villager. Looking to the growth of Indian public opinion in such matters and to the great benefits to be obtained, the solution of this problem does not appear to be hopeless. For but little money expenditure is required. At certain seasons, when cultivation is not going on, the villagers have much leisure time on their hands, and the works required for cleanliness and a village supply of pure water are generally of a simple kind. And how could the villagers better employ such leisure time than in making their village more healthy and more pleasant for themselves and their families? There is, of course, daily removal to be provided for of foul matters. But a simple organization for doing this has been familiar to Indians from time immemorial. In persuading the villagers and in directing them, the officers of the sanitary department would act as missionaries and preachers of health and cleanliness. Important help would also be given in the

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same direction if simple lessons on sanitary matters were included in the textbooks for primary schools. The sabha are far better informed than I can be regarding the condition of Indian villages, but I would urge upon their notice the fact that, from sanitary reports, it appears that preventible epidemics in the villages are on the increase. The increase of epidemic deaths in 1884 over 1883 was 583,000 and they were still increasing up to our last reports. Does not the protection of life and property from preventible epidemics rank next to protection of life and property from criminals as a responsibility of government, if, indeed, it is not even higher in importance? For, since the world began, criminals have not apparently destroyed more life and property than do epidemics ever y year in India. From the point of view of humanity the need of action is very pressing. And even from a financial point of view there will be gain rather than loss. There is a saving of money as well as of life by sanitary measures. Men must live and be able-bodied in order to plough. Is there not some danger that the population is actually decreasing in vigour? the race deteriorating through preventible epidemics? If so, there will be great financial loss, owing to the decrease of physical human power and consequently of productiveness. And expenditure to avert this evil will be justified on grounds of finance as well as humanity. Then, as regards hardship to individuals, individuals do not object to personal cleanliness, and all that we want is collective cleanliness carried out collectively with the least possible annoyance and the greatest possible advantage to the individual. In advocating a measure of this kind for India, I am anxious that India should have the benefit of a system which I have seen working with so much advantage in England. Fifty years ago the state of England was much what the state of India now is. The people had not themselves the power to amend it. But they only wanted a little organization with inspection. Now they have the powers. The community itself is the engine that does the work. Allow me to state one of the many cases which have come under my obser vation of the co-operation of the Local Government Board in London with the country authority. In a certain countr y town typhoid fever broke out and there were a large number of deaths. The cause was not known, but it was suspected to come from fouled water. Under advice, the inhabitants, acting through their own board (even individuals may apply direct), wrote to the Local Government Board

324 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India in London to send down an inspector. The inspector came down and inspected, ascertained that the cause was fouled drinking water and reported, making certain recommendations. The country board sat upon the report and adopted the suggestions. The works were sanctioned, carried out and inspected, the inhabitants taxing themselves and obtaining a loan of public funds with the sanction of the Local Government Board. The cause was thus removed and the epidemic ceased. In entirely rural places the same procedure takes place and the necessary remedy is obtained. The rural population in England has thus much improved, though there is much, very much, to be done yet. Now, as to the introduction of a similar system into rural India, I am aware that Indian public opinion has made great progress in these matters within the last few years, but its good influence is but little felt beyond the larger towns, and sanitary missionaries are sadly needed to carry their teaching among the villages, where 80 or 90 percent of the population reside. When deaths occur from an epidemic the people must be taught—not, as at present, to sit helpless, blaming the goddess of cholera or smallpox, but—to call loudly upon the ‘‘sirkar’’ [government] to do its part, and else actively bestir themselves to do theirs in the matter of cleanliness and pure water. May I cite a case which has come to me direct from another presidency? The following is the account of the villages described. Typhoid fever lays up the whole population for two months ever y year, with the corresponding loss of productiveness and degeneration of the race. My informant had lost the whole of his family, dead of this typhoid fever; so had, alas! many others. The known causes were that the tanks for drinking water were fouled by the people, while rank and rotting undergrowths remained uncleared. At last a high-cast Brahmin took up the matter, putting his own hand to the good work and improvements were effected. These villagers themselves now are awakening to the benefit of such work and crying out for a little organization on the part of government. It is under circumstances like these that I plead for the villages. It appears to be proposed to limit the operation of the bill to villages of not less than 500 inhabitants. But will not this exclude a large proportion of the whole population from the benefits of sanitation? It appears that out of some 24,600 villages in the Bombay presidency, only about 9000 have more than 500 inhabitants, so that about 15,600 villages, or two thirds of the rural population, would not have the ben-

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efit of cleanliness—‘‘simple cleanliness is all we want.’’ The returns show that there is an improvement in the health of the towns having municipal institutions, but these towns have in British India only a population of twelve millions, whereas the villages have a population of 1851⁄2 millions, and in these there is a serious increase of preventible epidemics. In conclusion, I feel confident that the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, as leaders of public opinion in the Deccan, will carefully watch this bill, that they will take the best means to bring it into a form well suited to local conditions, and, when it is passed into law, that they will use all their influence to make its working effective and beneficial. And I shall esteem it a great favour if, with the permission of the council, you will inform me how far the provisions of the bill as it now stands will be effective for the end proposed and in what respects modifications are required. I shall also be glad to be informed what other practical steps can, in the opinion of the sabha, be best taken in this most important matter of village sanitation. Pray, believe me, gentlemen—or in all true phrase may I not say that I have the honour to be the faithful servant of yourselves and, if it be not too presumptuous, of India? Florence Nightingale P.S. For the favour of distribution to members of the sabha and others, should the council so permit it, I forward a few printed copies of this letter. I may mention that I have addressed the Bombay Presidency Association on this subject in similar terms. Source: ‘‘Miss Nightingale on Village Sanitation in India,’’ The Voice of India 4 (April 1887):183-84. Reprinted from The Indian Spectator (Bombay) 20 March 1887

This is a question of first importance, partaking of social, economical, political and, if you like, religious character. It is a question covering the spirit and substance of local self-government in India, to which Lord Ripon never tired of referring and on which he dwelt at some length, if we forget not, in his memorable speech in the Town Hall of Bombay. So much for the subject. As to the writer, we need scarcely say that Miss Nightingale is an authority upon this, as upon other subjects. Her study of sanitary questions dates so far back as perhaps the Crimean War and glimpses of this study might be obtained from many of her works and letters published during that long interval. Her position with regard to questions of Indian reform has always been charac-

326 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India terized by a spirit of sympathetic inquiry, of shrewd insight and sturdy independence. There is nothing of the official in what the writer [says], though she is too wise not to profit by authentic information. Such being the position of our benevolent advisor and such the subject upon which she has condescended to advise the representatives of the people of Bombay, it goes without saying that Miss Nightingale’s letter is already receiving careful attention. Copies of it are to be sent to mofussil [rural hinterland] associations and it is hoped that the letter will be translated into the vernaculars and brought within easy reach of every villager who can read or understand it. This time Miss Nightingale may be assured that she has the opportunity of addressing the rural population directly. And her words are not likely to fall on deaf ears. The Indians are eminent in matters of personal cleanliness—there are few of them who go without a bath daily, whatever the manner of the ablutions. This instinct of personal cleanliness is a very good basis to work upon: it will not be difficult to raise it, by organized effort, into what our friend calls collective cleanliness. A pure water supply in every village is an important desideratum. We believe each village has its water storage to suffice for its wants—only the water is not so pure. This is a defect which could be easily remedied. We trust the presidency and other associations will take the matter in hand immediately, conferring health on the village communities and at the same time initiating them into the mysteries of local self-government.

Viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin, 1885-88 Editor: Lord Ripon left India in December 1884 and Lord Dufferin took over as viceroy, ser ving until 1888. It was a difficult succession. Ripon had enjoyed unexampled good will and respect from the Indians, but hostility for his progressive policies from the British. For Dufferin to rule with any measure of success, he had to win back the support of his own community, while simultaneously mitigating the bitter feelings on the part of the Indians created by British racial arrogance. Fortunately, however, Dufferin proved to be highly successful in both. Dufferin’s Anglo-Irish background gave him familiarity with famine, the plight of an oppressed peasantry and the need for land tenure reforms. He was unusually sympathetic and knowledgeable about Irish conditions. He had even, as a young peer, introduced (unsuccessfully) a bill in the House of Lords on land reform.

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Nightingale had worried whether or not Dufferin would continue Ripon’s policies. As it turned out, he did. In the following years she remained in friendly contact with Ripon, consulting him on what to say to the new viceroys coming to pay her a visit before departing for India, and sharing information. Dufferin paid a visit to Nightingale in November 1884, which Nightingale reported on in a letter to W.E. Gladstone: Lord Dufferin most kindly gave me the opportunity not only of seeing him and talking over these things with him but also of writing notes of our conversation for him and marking papers for him. He spoke so highly of the ‘‘clearness’’ and ‘‘statesmanship’’ of Lord Ripon’s letters and measures as to lead one to hope that, though an anti-tenant-right-man in Ireland, he might carry them out in India.45

Lord Dufferin initially gave encouragement to the young Indian National Congress and other nationalist forces, although he later reneged on his support and required civil servants to keep their distance from it. He enacted the Bengal Tenancy Act (1885), implementing, though in part only and with large amendments, the report of the Rent Commission established by Ripon, in 1882, with the object of improving landlord-tenant relations. As viceroy, Lord Dufferin continued Lord Ripon’s progressive socio-political policies, as will be seen in the discussions of the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill and the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. He worked at the ‘‘Indianization’’ of the administration and towards village sanitation legislation in 1888. He produced an elaborate ‘‘Report on the Conditions of the Lower Classes of Population in Bengal’’ (commonly known as the Dufferin Report) with the object of understanding the economic conditions of peasants and workers. Later in the volume will be materials showing how he supported the Congress’s demand for establishing provincial and central councils with elected members. Nightingale had a close relationship with both Lord and Lady Dufferin. Her considerable work with Lady Dufferin on women’s health care is related later on (see p 717 below). Nightingale continued to consult Lord Ripon during the Dufferin viceroyalty, as the second item below shows. Both men were Liberals, and Lord Ripon in fact resigned his position as viceroy early so as to allow the appointment of another Liberal before an anticipated change in government occurred, and, indeed, did occur.

45 Letter 4 December 1884, in Society and Politics (5:466-70).

328 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to John Sutherland in Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:343-44

6 November 1884 My visit from Lord Dufferin took place yesterday. We went over many things—sanitation, land tenure, agriculture, civil service, etc. And I am to send him a note of each. But about sanitary things he says he is per fectly ignorant, especially of Indian sanitary things. But he says, ‘‘Give me your instructions and I will obey them. I will study them on my way out. Send me what you think. Supply the powder and I will fire the shot.’’ Give me quickly what instructions you think I should send him. Source: From a letter to George Evatt, Boston University 1/7/98

6 November 1884 My dear friend (if you will allow me to call you so), how good of you to give me that comforting letter. Now whatever can be done has been. May God bless you . . . Till the new viceroy [Lord Dufferin] is off to India, I have hardly time to breathe. But I shall hope, as you are so ver y good as to say I may appoint a day, to do so soon. . . . May tomorrow’s day be propitious! Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Add Mss 45779 ff194-95

2 Januar y 1885 Private and confidential. I have had a most unexpected opportunity given me of writing ‘‘notes’’ to him [Gladstone] upon the Indian administrative meetings to be desired as connected with Lord Ripon’s past and Lord Dufferin’s future policy in administrative matters, including the Bengal Rent Bill, local government, etc. I have already sent in a sort of ver y brief ‘‘contents.’’ (Naturally the next ‘‘notes’’ must be very brief too.) Might I ask of your very great kindness what yo u should consider the main points to be urged as right in Lord Ripon’s measures and to be urged on Lord Dufferin for the future? You have been so very kind to me that I may also perhaps mention (in confidence) that Lord Dufferin came to see me, and at his desire I wrote ‘‘notes’’ for him. One can only wait and see what, if anything, comes of it. Let me be ever, your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale

Village and Town Sanitation / 329 Source: From five letters to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68883 ff119, 120-21, 128, 141-42 and 180

12 January 1885 Sir Louis Mallet writes that what I say of ‘‘Lord Ripon’s government is quite true and very important.’’ I mean, what I have said in recent letters to him. That is a great deal from him in favour of Lord Ripon. 13 January 1885 About the publication of the letter concerning Lord Ripon you ask: 1. In magazine? Is it not a fact that only the best monthly magazines have any influence, that this could then at all events not appear till Febr uary, perhaps not till March, because they tell you they always make up their No. by the 7th of preceding month? Also a magazine article, should it not be more full and precise? These are only, of course, two or three of the remarkable acts Lord Ripon has passed. 2. In pamphlets? Is it not true that a pamphlet has no circulation, unless ‘‘touted’’ in a way we could not do? Also, I could not put my ‘‘name’’ to a ‘‘preface.’’ 3. In daily papers? Are not these the only means for getting up such a feeling for Lord Ripon on his arrival as he deserves? and we desire? (He was to be in England this week.) You kindly said that you would see editor of Daily News, Daily Telegraph and one other you mentioned. I am such a very poor advisor on these subjects. The thing would be, I suppose, to get a different letter into two of these papers (would this letter cut into two?) and to get one or more editors to write a leading article in a similar sense to the letter. At least I think you said so. Must it not be done this week? Two or even one daily paper this week would be better than many later, I suppose. And then later we must do what else we can. Success to your efforts for Lord Ripon. 13 Februar y 1885 My doctor entirely repudiates the idea of any possibility of my doing any work ‘‘under pressure’’ such as writing and reading within a given time, for the present. I should not mind what he said, or what any doctor said, but that I feel so ill and suffering that it ‘‘points his moral.’’ And I have this morning, after telling Mr Knowles46 of The Nineteenth Century what you said about the two articles, withdrawn,

46 Sir James Thomas Knowles (1831-1908), architect, founder and editor of The Nineteenth Century.

330 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India with what feelings you may guess, from writing his article myself at this time. I have not told Lord Ripon yet and know not how to do so. But I have left it open to Mr Knowles to suggest another writer. 9 April 1885 No doubt you will take an opportunity of pointing out in your article the burst of loyalty in India (and native press) towards England in this Russian crisis, and the offers of troops from Muhammadan and other native rulers. Now this is entirely Lord Ripon’s doing. It is he who conciliated India to British rule. Before he came home I used to hear from India: ‘‘Lord Ripon is worth an army in himself.’’ ‘‘While he is here, England need fear no danger from Russia,’’ etc. It is more remarkable than the colonial outburst of loyalty because the colonies have certainly no love for Russia, and India always had till Lord Ripon’s reign—owing to Russian intrigue and cleverness, I suppose. You see how yesterday’s Times has changed its coat—remarkable only because the Times is the times. But it still worships at Lord Dufferin’s shrine and carefully avoids justice to Lord Ripon. (How calamitous the turning of attention from internal reforms in India.) 6 Febr uary 1886 As for the ministry administratively, my disappointment is deep, but it is heartbreaking when I think of the grief ‘‘not loud but deep’’ in India which had shown such admirable self-restraint. To put Lord Ripon to mend boats!!47 and it appears really out of fear of the India Council, and with a sort of idea that he was reser ved for Ireland! And to put Lord Aberdeen in Ireland! But this is not all the blunders. It is the worst ministry administratively in my time, i.e., more than thirty years, don’t you think so? Source: From notes, Add Mss 45809 ff84-86

[June-October 1888] Sir A. note. Sir A.L.’s general view as to the proper action of the Government of India (while rejoicing in his concurrences to the importance of action) seems to be exactly the same as Lord Dufferin’s—the view we have so deprecated as he expresses it in the two printed Papers he sent F.N., viz., that of simply urging the provincial governments on to do what they can without knowing what they do Lyall’s48

47 Lord Ripon was made first lord of the Admiralty in 1886. 48 Sir Alfred Lyall (1835-1911), lieutenant governor, North West Provinces.

Village and Town Sanitation / 331

and not giving them any assistance toward an executive which shall enable them to know what to do. For example, Our present contention is that the provinces do not ‘‘know pretty well already’’ x x ‘‘what is most necessary to be done.’’ Or if they do they do not know how to do it. Or else there are two parties fighting one another on opposite lines as to how to do it and no one to arbitrate on the grounds of experience. Quer y: on this very point of ‘‘supplying with good drinking water, e.g., the chief cities,’’ one of the chief cities of a presidency not ‘‘North India,’’ is at this moment the scene of a most disastrous discussion. Sir T. Hope and a water engineer who has now left India declaring one way and the sanitary commission and sanitary engineer of the presidency the other way, actual experiment, it is said, affording a proof at this moment that the two latter in the right together with the native president of the municipality, enlightened. But Sir A. Lyall’s note applies only to North India, and probably he could concur with you in what we are saying. . . . Sir A. Lyall: ‘‘No great difficulty’’ about sanitary engineers. I understood that this was every problem at issue—your contention being that there are no sanitar y engineers in India and that there cannot be any. (The one above mentioned has returned home.) Hence the very point of the present proposed dispatch, hence the ver y point that Lord Dufferin’s present policy (see his printed papers) is rather like making bricks without straw—urging the provincial governments to go on without giving them any knowledge how to go on. E.g., again ‘‘draining and cleaning’’ ‘‘smaller towns, giving them proper conservancy arrangements and a system of sewage.’’ But is not this again the very point at issue? not only in the ‘‘smaller’’ but the larger ‘‘towns.’’ At this very moment a controversy is raging which it is understood will be decided in what is supposed to be the wrong way, viz., to adopt the ‘‘pail system’’ instead of a proper ‘‘system of sewerage.’’ The professional sanitary opinion being on what is understood to be the right side. Colonel Yule in his draft despatch put this very point, the want of sanitary engineers in India. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff155-58

16 September 1888 Ahmedabad (Municipal) Sanitary Works. I send you the letter to me of Runchorelal Chotalall, the enterprising native president of the Ahmedabad Municipality, who has fought

332 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the sanitary battle against native and Anglo-Indian alike—and won. Could you kindly tell someone to ‘‘let us know what will be the ‘‘terms of a competent sanitary engineer to induce him to come out to Ahmedabad and carry on both the water works and drainage work satisfactorily?’’ You see also that they ‘‘propose to send the plans to England for the opinion of the competent sanitary authorities before executing the work.’’ Will you kindly tell me when they arrive? I have had besides sent me the printed papers regarding the well which has been constructed in the riverbed at Ahmedabad according to Colonel Ducat’s advice and which it appears has a quite inexhaustible supply enough for all Ahmedabad and to spare. (You will remember that Colonel? Brownlow, the water engineer, pronounced that there would be no supply at all worth having.) I have to return these papers. Shall I send them to you first to see? Further, I hear ‘‘the well is finished, but it is not as yet used, because they have not as yet fully got the loan for the completion of the distributing mains, sewers/towers, etc.,’’ have also an extract from the Bombay Gazette sent me which will be they hope conclusive. Shall I send you this before I return it? It is most satisfactory about the ‘‘whole of the loan for the water supply probably being locally taken up.’’ (I wish my English correspondents wrote as good a hand as Mr Runchorelal in English. As far as I can make out ‘‘it is especially gratifying to the government, as it is a most important beginning, and there are hopes that other towns will put their spare cash and invest in works of local improvement.’’ The result of the loan at Ahmedabad will be known on 1 September, so we the Ahmedabad people shall financially be in a position to commence the work as soon as the detailed plans are passed. As for the drainage, you are aware’’ (F.N. Yes, certainly, I am ‘‘aware’’ of it all!) ‘‘that one main sewer in the city and one principal main drain from outside . . . to a sewage farm is to be constr ucted at present, but only a few houses from the neighbourhood of the city main drain are to be connected with it. A sum of £15000 is to be spent for this purpose, and a formal application for the loan is already before government, whose sanction is soon expected.’’ x x All this is very satisfactor y and I look back with great satisfaction to the work done at other towns where we had to fight not only local and native ignorance but ignorance in high places and determined opposition on the part of the minister of Public Works.’’ . . . My friend [of] Ahmedabad may not be as interesting to you as it has been for long years to me who wrote upon its khalkoowas (cesspits

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under the houses) and its awful death rate, which we mean to halve. I never thought then to see the reform. God save the right! From a note to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45766 ff174-75

[1888] Private and confidential. From Mr Hewlett, at his request, to Sir D. Galton. Ahmedabad. Colonel Ducat: About Ahmedabad, I am sorry for the city and for the success of sanitar y work in the Bombay presidency. Government will I presume give the work to Doig, the executive engineer, Ahmedabad, whose services I should consider very dear at 21⁄2 on the outlay. He is totally uneducated as an engineer and knows if possible less of sanitar y engineering than of any other branch of the profession. He could possibly design a steamship as successfully as a sewerage scheme—and I don’t see a chance of anything but hopeless failure for Ahmedabad. It is very hard on old Runchorelal after all the trouble he has taken and the near approach to success at which he had arrived. Chadwick would have made Ahmedabad a model for Western India. . . . I am very sorry about it all. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff216-23, copy 45778 ff136-42

24 October 1888 Strictly Private. 2. In regard at least to the Bombay presidency, in reference to which more particularly I screwed up my courage to ask Lord Dufferin how funds are to be found for the sanitation of its 24,000 villages (as a matter of fact, notwithstanding the supposed powers of the Bombay Local Boards Act, there has never been any attempt made by any local board to cleanse a village, and if they were asked to do so, the answer would be that the funds are not sufficient), whether the village Bombay organization will be fostered and an executive village agency established? Lord Dufferin kindly answers that, ‘‘in some provinces, Bombay amongst the number,’’ the organization of local government agencies does not go down so far as the individual village. ‘‘We are, however,’’ he adds, ‘‘now engaged in correcting this defect and I have at present under consideration a proposal for the introduction into the Bombay council of an act which not only provides for sanitation in villages and establishes that executive sanitary agency to which you refer, but will also link the village community to the larger territorial area under the control of the local and district boards.’’

334 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I wish the details of this ‘‘proposal’’ were known to you. The detail will be so important, e.g., is it not a matter which will have to be very carefully safeguarded for, if the local boards have the funds raised by taxation in villages in their own hands, is not the danger that the money will be spent not on the village where it has been raised but in beautifying the approaches to or in building schools or dispensary for the market town or headquarters of the local board? The continual complaint of villagers is: we don’t mind being taxed, if only we saw the results of our money in our own village; but this is just what we never do. . . . 3. Lord Dufferin says that we are ‘‘aware that the various municipal laws throughout India have recently been recast in an ampler and more liberal mould, while local boards have been created in rural areas under acts of the various legislative councils. These municipal and local government boards acts confer on municipal and local bodies large powers for promoting sanitary and other improvements, and for entertaining the agencies necessary for these purposes.’’ The Government of India however made a mistake in their ‘‘resolution’’ of last year regarding the municipalities, at least on the Bombay side, as the Bombay government said in reply: ‘‘Under the legislation referred to much of the money which the municipalities were formerly able to spend on sanitation, they are now by law compelled to spend on education.’’ ‘‘The municipalities have had no increased power given to them for improving the sanitary condition of towns and villages.’’ But we must, I grieve to say, admit that they do not make use of the powers they have; e.g., Surat has a larger income than Ahmedabad, but has done nothing except bring on a serious outbreak of cholera. And government brought out a capital resolution ordering them to do what was wanted, but they will do nothing unless constantly ‘‘prodded up.’’ Ahmedabad is working splendidly at water supply and sewerage (it was a dreadful city) under its native president, Mr Runchorelal Chotalall, who is worthy of you. They are now about to lay on a water supply, inexhaustible, obtained from a well built in the riverbed. . . . Ahmedabad will be the first mofussil town to be sewered. Its death rate was enormous. This Mr Runchorelal Chotalall (who is a correspondent of mine) is by no means Anglicized. He does his pilgrimages properly to the Himalayas. I think it must be satisfactory to you when a native of the natives takes this enlightened and vigorous line, overcoming opposition from within and without.

Village and Town Sanitation / 335

4. But is not the main thing for government not to impose taxation, but to proceed something in this way: to say that, in the interests of the people themselves, the sanitary condition of the villages must be improved, that the people will be allowed to choose their own way of doing this, but that it must be done to the satisfaction of the officers government will appoint to supervise the work, that government on their part will be ready and willing to assist the people, as far as lies in their power, by re-establishing by law the position of the village panchayat, by giving land as inams [hereditar y grants for special services] to the village menial servants (the Mhars and the Mangs) and for village sanitary purposes, by giving the village headman authority to punish those who disobeyed the order of the village panchayat, and to recover the huks of the village menial servants by summary process, to give the panchayats power to impose taxation on their fellow villagers with the assent of government. Will not the people know much better than government how to raise the money without causing irritation? ... 5. The Bombay village organization lends itself best—does it not?—to carrying out village sanitation. Which other province has a village organization workable like that of Bombay? Is there throughout India some village system, more or less perfect, which might be made use of? Have we left no village system in Bengal? It would be a grand thing if each village had a ‘‘governor’’ in its headman. . . . In thanking Lord Dufferin for his letters and acts, should I merely express how strongly we hope that this ‘‘resolution’’ will be a new departure of the happiest augury to India, or should you advise me to discuss the points with him (now so late in his day) which he raises, especially ask him about the ‘‘linking’’ the village community to the ‘‘larger territorial area,’’ etc.? I have only again to ask your pardon for this long letter and to say what I cannot say, how much I am of India’s greatest benefactor, the faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a draft letter to Lord Dufferin, Add Mss 45809 ff4-5

[soon after 16 October 1888] Thankful for sending me the sanitary acts of various provinces and yet more for the new departure upon which, by the resolution of the Government of India of 27 July 1888, all over India practical sanitary progress may now be made.

336 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It is indeed an act worthy of you to give this strong impulse to what is to lower the death and sickness rates and increase the physical vigour and power of growing food supplies of all the people of India. . . . You will be remembered with gratitude by all these poor millions if the subordinate provincial governments do but carry out your intentions. We hail this new departure of the happiest augury to India with delight and hope. May you see in future years the fruits of your policy. And may the blessings of your Indian millions reach you wherever you are. The marquess of food, water supply: You are kind enough to tell me that you have now under consideration a proposal for the introduction into the Bombay council of an act not only to provide for sanitation in villages and to establish an executive sanitary agency but also to link the village community to the larger territorial area under the control of the local and district boards. We shall look forward to this with joy and trust/hope, as safeguarding very important and immense, though small, interests such as that the money raised by taxation in villages should be spent in the village where it has been raised and not in beautifying or in building the market town or headquarters of the local board. That constant ground of complaint Indian villages will now have no longer: ‘‘We don’t mind being taxed if only we saw the results of our money in our own village, but we never do.’’ Source: From a draft letter to Sir Raymond West, Add Mss 45809 ff14-20

[end October 1888] Your visit was a source of such great interest and instruction to me (I was obliged from having been so long an invalid to receive you in invalid fashion), for the subjects you were good enough to discuss with me are so near my heart. You desired me to send you my remarks on the draft Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, which you were so good as to leave with me. And I now hasten to do so, after having studied it carefully. Indeed, the bill, I need not say it, is a subject which I have thought of for years. What you kindly told me in the course of your own valued remarks to me you will see I have taken into account in those I now send. The two transcendent merits of the bill which strike one at once are: (1) all the moneys raised in the village are to be spent in the village; (2) the village menial servants are to have government lands and their dues are to be recoverable as part of the land revenue. Village

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sanitation is in India so enormous a thing that what is wanted is no doubt to enable the people to do it themselves. . . . What is wanted is, as in England an act to enable the people to organize themselves in the villages, to be their own local (rural) government, under strict government control and supervision, of course. They have their own immemorial village organization which I suppose we have done something to weaken or destroy, and you want to revive it. After all it is only the people themselves who can do it. This is part of the sanitary education we want. Another part is elementar y sanitar y education for women and girls and boys, and short paragraphs introduced in elementary schoolbooks. ‘‘Give me the schools of a country and you may make its laws.’’ I enclose a little book (sanitary reform) by one Murdoch—not a doctor—who has been his whole useful life in India. And there is a small sanitary primer of his (Way to Health) which Lord Dufferin has introduced into schools, better and simpler than the sanitary primer of the late Sanitary Commission. . . . ‘‘Canal unhealthiness’’ certainly. But supposing there are other causes of mortality and unhealthiness pressing still more severely upon millions of village populations not in North India and not directly in the neighbourhood of canals—causes perfectly well known to be removable and without any very great expenditure. . . . Are we not equally ‘‘bound to remedy’’ these? Do the one and leave not the other undone. [It is] most necessary to concentrate and localize, not to ‘‘scatter’’ our funds, certainly. And you contend, I believe, that ‘‘funds’’ will be wasted without a ‘‘central body’’ of experience to direct their application—an executive, in fact. [Difficulties] come from mistaken government action in disturbing old native systems of village scavengers. . . . What [is] unprecedented is that no step whatever is proposed for obtaining skilled advice for the provincial governments how to carry out these ‘‘measures [for promoting sanitation]’’ when they do anything. Instances are legion of the quarrels, contests of two parties and no one expert to decide on professional grounds which is right, on the other hand from ignorance nothing being done. Is this not so? Is not this going on in the same endless track, only a little faster and more persistently ‘‘without’’ (1) the advice and aid of experts, (2) greater facility in procuring funds as your draft rightly puts it. . . . And as there has been ‘‘reporting’’ and ‘‘placing on record’’ for years and years on sanitary subjects, let it be shown how immediate practical result may now follow by executive action. . . .

338 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It would be most important for us if Sir A. Lyall would give us the information where this is the case. Source: Notes from a meeting with Edward Stanhope (secretar y of state for war), Add Mss 45827 ff167-68

1 November 1888 Mr Stanhope (1) quite impressed with necessity of keeping sanitary problem constantly before secretar y of state. . . . (6) Said, what about India? answer: bad sanitation of Indian Army falls upon him, thus in any case he is bound up with India; at present India cannot be safely left to her own arrangements because she has neglected for twentyfive years to adopt measures recommended by royal commission. Source: Letter to Lord Dufferin, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Ms 0/1071/M/B/N, L1, draft Add Mss 45809 ff111-12

10 South Street Park Lane 27 Februar y 1889 Private. Dear Lord Dufferin Your goodness in writing to me on your voyage home to Europe, and in lending me a copy of your speech at a farewell dinner, impressed me deeper [deeply]. And I had, before, to know your great kindness in lending one copy of your most important sanitary ‘‘resolution’’ of July 1888, and in writing to me with such weight and detail upon a subject which is one of the greatest interests of my life. I have laid that much to heart and endeavoured to work it out. I feel as if I had never thanked you enough, though I have continually done so in my head. If ever I have the great pleasure of seeing you again, as I should never have dared to hope and you so kindly proposed—but I know well that you have had quite other and more important things to do— I shall venture to ask you whether India’s provincial governments are really carrying out the vital intentions in the ‘‘resolution,’’ and especially if Bombay, the recalcitrant but go-ahead Bombay, is recalcitrating. I am sorry that, though you once saved her Sanitary Department from the financial storm, it does not appear to have finally weathered that storm. At least it is proposed to reduce now the Sanitary Department, which is only at half the strength it should be to act as a supervisor y establishment at all, of the [illeg. unofficial?], still further to cut down the six deputy sanitary commissioners to four by uniting East-

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ern and Western Gujarat into one district and by making the overworked sanitary commissioner, who is over the whole presidency, take a district himself!! It is as if they were to say, ‘‘the Sanitary Department has shown us how many millions die annually from preventible diseases, let those millions go on dying!’’ It needs no saying that natives in the mofussil cannot be trusted to carry out sanitation, or even vaccination, without a thoroughly efficient supervising establishment. I am sure that you do not forsake your colossal child India. And I might also ask, if I dared, whether you are satisfied with your successor [Lord Lansdowne]? Pray believe me, dear Lord Dufferin, ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale P.S. And might I ask, should such a time ever arrive as my seeing you, whether you gave some fatherly admonitions to the ‘‘National Congress’’ people, who would doubtless not only accept them with sincere and grateful respect but profit by their wisdom? They would be touched by that tact and courtesy, the ‘‘steel hand in the velvet glove,’’ which touches all the world and has governed in three continents. [Editor: the draft includes the following, which was omitted from the sent letter:] And I might also ask if I dared whether you are satisfied with your successor at Bombay, cutting down of deputy sanitary commissioners from six to four. Let those millions go on dying. Source: From a letter to Lord Dufferin, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Ms 0/1071/M/B/N, L2

4 December 1891 I trust that you will not think my request impertinent or that, if you do, your kindness will excuse it. You may perhaps remember that you were good enough to meet Prince Damrong of Siam49 at the Travellers’ Club with Mr Frederick Verney, English secretar y to the Siamese Legation, at his request. Mr F. Verney is going to Egypt with Prince Damrong on their way to India for an introduction tour. You will have seen how intelligent the prince is and how well he speaks English. A line from you to Sir Evelyn Bar-

49 Prince Damrong, brother of the king of Siam, minister of public instruction at Bangkok.

340 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ing50 (besides the official introduction) would of course be of the highest value, if you are so ver y good as to give it. Mr Frederick Verney will be at Rome to meet the prince in about a week or ten days, should you kindly give it to Mr F. Verney there. He will be at the Hotel Quirinale, where the prince’s rooms will be. May I beg my kindest regards to Lady Dufferin if you will present them, and may I ask you to believe me, your faithful servant Florence Nightingale

Viceroyalty of Lord Lansdowne, 1888-94 Editor: Successor to Lord Dufferin as viceroy, Lord Lansdowne served 1888-94. He twice called upon Nightingale before leaving for India, causing her to comment in a letter: ‘‘I have been so pressed for three weeks by Lord Lansdowne’s leaving England as viceroy.’’51 He left for India on 16 November 1888. In terms of policy, Lansdowne largely followed in the footsteps of Ripon and Dufferin, so that Nightingale could say: ‘‘Viceroys are now far beyond the India Office Council’’ (see p 857 below), an office which did not well understand why political power should be granted to Indian nationals. A former student of Benjamin Jowett, at Balliol College, Oxford, Lansdowne had the distinction of having held senior positions in both Liberal and Conservative governments. A notable event in his viceroyalty was the passing of the India Act of 1892, by which the legislative councils were reconstituted by increasing the number of members on them, with the right to discuss financial matters and to interpret them. Nightingale had encouraged the Indianization of municipal and provincial councils, feeling that local officials must be taught ‘‘to do the work themselves’’ (see p 857 below). Railway and irrigation works were extended as well during his tenure. Nightingale and Lansdowne corresponded regularly on sanitary matters, so that she could say of him: ‘‘He did much for us in every way’’ (see p 890 below). He was well disposed towards village organizations and local self-government, and established sanitary boards in each province. In writing to Frederick Verney she said that the three

50 Sir Evelyn Baring (1841-1917), later Lord Cromer, cousin to the viceroy, Lord Northbrook, and his secretar y in India. 51 Letter to John Bratby, Society and Politics (1:788).

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last Indian viceroys, including Lansdowne, were ‘‘of a far more progressive and liberal and human stamp than anything in the Indian council at home.’’52 Source: From three letters to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff208-11, 212 and 45778 ff143-44

24 March 1888 Privat e and Confidential. Pardon me if you think me presumptuous in asking your answer to a question. At least it is for a subject worthy of you. I am asked ‘‘the principal questions which a governor general (of India) should consider and perhaps the titles of some books which he should read.’’ As an e.g., merely ‘‘irrigation, instr uction in agriculture’’ are mentioned but only as ‘‘e.g.s.’’ It is of immeasurably more importance that ‘‘he’’ (you will infer for whom this is) should consider what you have done and what remains to be done to carry out your views as to local self-government in municipalities, districts, villages; it is in the rural districts of India (which comprise in their villages the large majority of the populations of India) that least has been done and most wants doing. You who are master of all the subjects do not need my poor words. And no one but you could really answer the question that is put to me: what are ‘‘the principal questions which a governor general should consider’’ (and ‘‘perhaps what should he read’’)? Then there are the civil service questions, the education questions (technical and other). (Probably it would be an ‘‘Irish bull’’ to say that a governor general in India should ‘‘consider the question of the India Council at home’’ though this is almost at the root of all.) But how should you put land tenure? and what ‘‘questions’’ of organization and civil administration should you put first for him to ‘‘consider’’? If your great kindness could see the way to giving me hints without imposing labour upon yourself, it would be doing the greatest service to India. And I trust you will give me credit for having subsided from giving you trouble for a long time. I am now entirely laid aside by illness, at least from seeing and conversing with people. But my work is still as dear to me, or dearer than ever, especially what little I can do for India. . . . Might I ask you to destroy this note?

52 Letter 5 December 1890, Add Mss 68886 f184.

342 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 1 June 1888 Private. I have never thanked you for your exceedingly kind and important letter of 6 April, of which I made great use, bearing in mind that it was marked ‘‘Private,’’ nor for your goodness in offering me a visit on the same subject, which I deeply regretted I was unable at the time from serious illness to avail myself of. I am still a prisoner to my rooms. But if you are not too much occupied to bestow this kindness now, and would make an appointment any afternoon about 5 or 6, I should be extremely grateful. 25 October 1888 Private. Our viceroy ‘‘apparent’’ [Lord Lansdowne] kindly came to see me in July. He was most favourably disposed to these objects we have at heart, but specially well disposed to village native agencies, to panchayats and the like, to local self-government, etc., which I attributed to his having had the advantage of seeing and hearing from you. He proposes to come and see me again some day during the next two or three weeks (he leaves England, I believe, on 16 November). Is there anything that you would kindly advise me particularly how to discuss? Pardon me for troubling you at so great a length in this letter. Besides that your opinion would be invaluable on its points, if you are so kind as to give it, it would be most gracious if you would tell me, should I or not discuss these points of details with the incoming viceroy as to what will enable this Government of India ‘‘resolution’’ to bear practical results? One may go on with too true and frightful death statistics forever, but that does not tell one how to cleanse a single village or find funds in what the outgoing viceroy calls the ‘‘depleted revenues of India.’’ The incoming viceroy says he has asked why the practice of allowing solvent local bodies to borrow of government at a little higher rate than government is able to borrow at was discontinued apparently in 1879 and that he has not been satisfied with the answer. What should I say to him about this? Source: From a letter to Henry Stewart Cunningham, Add Mss 45809 ff12-13

27 October 1888 Private. Many thanks for your kind note and for the copies of your Calcutta Health Society Journal. It is you whom they ought to thank for ‘‘my letter’’! as I do. I was about to write to you on much that has happened as to the ‘‘resolution’’ of Government of India of 27 July. But I will now only trouble you with two pressing questions. . . .

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Above all, I should be very glad if you kindly would indicate any subjects you wish since the ‘‘resolution’’ should be urged upon him. You will guess who has appointed himself here on business for tomorrow afternoon [Lord Lansdowne]. And it is probably, if not certainly, the last time I shall urge him before he leaves England. Source: From a letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff192-95

6 November 1888 Confidential. Sir Raymond West came to me, according to your kind desire. And he left with me the draft of his Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, asking me to write my criticisms and remarks upon it for him, which I have done, and shall send by Friday’s mail. He said you wished to see his draft bill and asked me to communicate with you. Shall I send it you? The bill has these two great merits: all the moneys raised in the village are to be spent in the village and the village menial servants are to have government lands and their dues are to be recoverable as part of the land revenue. But the bill rather makes a show of granting local self-government to the native public (which is quite shrewd enough to see that it does not), whereas I believe/fear you will think it a bill actively interfering by government officers and giving opportunities for being dishonestly worked. ‘‘It keeps the promise to the eye and breaks it to the sense.’’ I believe that you will think that a provision relying on the villagers to raise funds among themselves in their own way without any government interference—any open government interference. No doubt there will be pressure put on the leading men to establish a panchayat, but the villagers would believe they were doing it themselves and they would raise the funds necessary for the purpose. I believe you will think the proposed bill will be an engine for private spite, for it will be very dear to the committee man. The sanitary committee, as it is called—not a panchayat—is to be appointed by the collector to be able to spy out all his neighbours’ and enemies’ shortcomings and summon him before the Punch [panchayat]. Should not the power be thrown into the hands of the police patel and the recognized headman of the village? These two provisions and others were actually in a draft bill called the Bombay Village Conservancy Act, of which the covering letter was dated Pune 21 August 1885. The proposed bill will, it is to be feared, be irritating to the people because it is a return to a stringent conser-

344 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India vatism. It throws everything into the hands of the collector and leaves no initiative to the people. Also it ignores entirely the sanitary commissioner. The mamlatdars or magistrates know nothing about sanitation. Even the ordinar y collector does not know where to look for filth and disease causes. I am afraid you thought this was the bill of which Lord Dufferin spoke as a ‘‘proposal’’ now before him. I will not take up one more moment of your precious time. But this bill will decide the fate of more than 20,000 villages. No words of mine can say with what hope we look forward to your filling the position which is the greatest in the world for doing good. Will you direct someone to write me a card saying whether I am to send you Sir Raymond West’s draft bill? This note is for yourself alone. May I wish you all the best wishes for the highest success. Source: From a draft letter to Sir Raymond West, Add Mss 45809 ff36-37

8 November 1888 Private and confidential. I can never thank you enough for your kind visit. You kindly asked me ‘‘what Lord Cross knew’’ of the subject we were talking of. And I am afraid I may not have been explicit enough in my answer. (1) Lord Cross certainly knows of the sanitary resolution of the Government of India, 27 July, in which are given efficient central control, executive headquarter boards in presidencies and provinces, loans from government. (2) Lord Cross cannot know of the contemplated Bombay assistance [?] against a sanitary executive board at Bombay which has, I believe, received no pen-and-ink form whatever and which, we may hope, will collapse. (3) He probably does not know of the draft ‘‘Bombay Village Sanitation Bill’’ (1888) giving the executive to the collector and the power of tax in the village for sanitar y purposes to him, with a sanitary committee appointed by taxing himself. This has not received its final form even as a draft. Of these two things I have certainly no right to say a word. Nor have I, except to you. (Lord Dufferin has received a ‘‘proposal’’ for ‘‘consideration’’ from Bombay, which I suppose gives an inkling of this bill.) Source: From a letter to Lord Cross, Add Mss 45809 ff38-39

10 November 1888 Private and confidential. You were so good as to have some conversation with me on the subject of village sanitation in Bombay. A draft bill has been just shown to me, upon which I could very much wish to consult

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you in order that you might, if you thought it desirable, say a few words to Lord Lansdowne about it before he leaves England on Thursday. . . . I know how much I am asking to ask you to give [me] even for one quarter of an hour before Thursday. Source: From a letter to Lord Cross, Add Mss 51278 ff46-51, draft Add Mss 45809 ff42-43

12 November 1888 I have just received your kind commands to write to you on the subject of the latest draft bill, entitled the ‘‘Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, 1888,’’ which was given me to read, and I hasten to avail myself of your kind permission. This draft contains two excellent provisions: that all the moneys raised in the village shall be spent in the village (the reverse of this has been the universal village complaint) and the village menial servants are to have government lands, and their dues are to be recoverable as part of the land revenue. The defects of the bill are that it is a return to stringent absolutism, that it leaves no initiative in the hands of the villagers but is a bill of active interference by government officers; that it gives opportunities for being dishonestly worked. The movement has been latterly in the direction to put power into the hands of the people, to allow them to choose their own way of doing what was necessary in their own interests, provided it was done to the satisfaction of the officers government would appoint to supervise the work, to revive their own immemorial village organization, to raise funds by those means for the village . . . to substitute the decent villager for the corrupt petty native official. This [draft bill] is a movement in the other (retrograde) direction; it puts the whole power and executive into the hands of the collector, who has too much to do already, and the collectors, with some brilliant exceptions, do not know much where to look for filth and disease causes. . . . The bill, it is to be feared, will be an engine for private spite, for it will be delightful to the committee man to be able to spy out all his neighbour’s and enemy’s shortcomings and summon him before themselves. . . . It was hoped by some of the best authorities that government would do this work by re-establishing by law the position of the village panchayat, that funds should thus be raised, as the people know much better than we how to raise funds without causing irritation by giving the village headman authority to punish those who disobeyed the order of the village panchayat, government of course reser ving power. . . .

346 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, No. 2, Add Mss 43546 ff228-29, typed copy Add Mss 45778 ff150-53

13 November 1888 Private and confidential. The latest draft (1888) ‘‘Bombay Village Sanitation Bill’’ was put into my hand and I was asked to make my criticisms and suggestions and send them to Bombay, which I have done. The bill is of such vast importance to the Bombay presidency, for it embraces the whole of its (more than) 24,000 villages, without reference to numbers of inhabitants, being less or more. The bill has these two great merits: (1) all the moneys raised in the village are to be spent in the village; (2) the village menial servants (Mhars and Mangs) are to have government lands and their dues are to be recoverable as part of the land revenue. Its defects are: that it is a distinct return to stringent absolutism; that it leaves no initiative in the hands of the villagers, but its machinery is active interference by government officers; that it gives great opportunities for being dishonestly worked. You instituted a movement in this direction: namely, to put power into the people’s hands, to allow them to choose their own way of doing what was necessary in their own interests, provided it was done to the satisfaction of the officers government would appoint to supervise the work, to revive their own immemorial village organization, such as the village panchayat; to raise funds through the panchayat for the village sanitation; to substitute the decent villager for the corrupt petty native official. By this bill we have (instead of the panchayat) the collector and a ‘‘sanitar y committee’’ appointed by the collector himself to do the work. The collector is to assess the rate for sanitary purposes ‘‘in conference with’’ his sanitar y committee. The sanitar y committee man is to summon ‘‘the offending neighbour,’’ perhaps out of private spite, before themselves (not the police patel). I will not enter into detail. The draft is by no means a final draft and might be altered, though not I fear in principle. The sanitary commissioner and department are entirely ignored, though the collector does not know where to look for filth and disease causes, with some brilliant exceptions, and the mamlatdar (magistrate), who also comes on the stage, knows nothing about sanitation except to clean the road the collector is to pass through.

Village and Town Sanitation / 347 Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, University of Alabama, Reynolds 5080, typed copy Wellcome Ms 9090/14

27 November 1888 I was very much obliged to you for sending me a copy of your triumphant answer to the Government of Bombay, which ought to have the desired effect. I am glad that Sir J. Peile says the Bombay Village Sanitation Draft Bill is ‘‘unworkable.’’ And I am not without some hope that a change may be effected in it. Thanks for Mr Runchorelal Chotalall’s good letter. He has sent me almost the facsimile, which I was just going to send you. Good as it is, I was afraid you would not like the government engineers having charge of the works. I mean that you would be afraid of mistakes being made. Source: From a draft letter to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45809 ff82-83

[December 1888] Regarding Ahmedabad water supply and sewerage I regret to say that I have not been able to obtain for you the papers I am so anxious you should see, as the official papers have been left in office in India. But something might be done by your referring to Mr Hewlett’s remarks regarding Ahmedabad in his annual report for 1886. And would you kindly call for the government resolutions which have been published since on the subject of water supply and sewerage, especially a government resolution, General Department, issued in, I think, April this year. And on them would you think well to get the secretar y of state to inquire: who is to be the engineer appointed? and to point out the necessity of his name being submitted, if you think well, to the secretar y of state in the first instance, as in this the first experiment in sewerage it is so absolutely vital that no mistake should be made as will probably be this case if it is given to a man who has never been engaged in such works. Runchorelal, the president of the Ahmedabad municipality, deser ves to be helped. He has worked so hard. He has raised the funds. He has fought an uphill battle to satisfy our principles. Source: From a typed letter, with corrections, to Sir Raymond West, Add Mss 45809 f88

1 Januar y 1889 Please do not forget your most kind promise to send me from Bombay a copy of your book upon Deccan indebtedness and the Deccan Agriculturalist Relief Act, on which you are so ver y high an authority. It will be so full of information to me, in which not one is more deeply

348 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India interested. I was delighted to have the opportunity to making your acquaintance. May I also ask you a great favour: to send me a copy of your (approved) bill planning for village sanitation as soon as it is published. I trust that the freedom of the remarks . . . I submitted to you on the draft bill you were kind enough to leave with me was what you meant and intended. I had to write them hurriedly, though the subject had been one which has interested me for years. Had I had more time I should have put more plainly what I always feel in making any suggestions: would there be any objection to this? would it be possible or desirable to carry that point out? Source: From a letter or draft to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45809 ff 107-08

11 Februar y 1889 Strictly private. Burn. I have had this morning a most kind letter from Sir R. West at Bombay anent his draft village sanitation bill. He says the draft had been sent to the Government of India for permission to introduce it and from the Government of India it went to the secretar y of state. Until Lord Cross had intimated his assent, or at least the absence of objection on his part, they could not take any further step. But they have now received the requisite permission to go on. I may tell you in the strictest confidence that Lord Cross told me what he had written to Lord Reay on this bill. And it was, expressed of course in the most guarded manner, that he thought they would do well to consult the leaders of native opinion. ‘‘The bill will be published tomorrow, 24 Januar y, as a project with a statement of objects and reasons.’’ (He sends me a slip of newspaper which appears to be an abridgment of the draft bill exactly the same as what I sent you.) ‘‘In about a fortnight’’ (from 23 January) he hopes to introduce it in the Legislative Council. No change, he says, can be made in the provisions of a bill that has been approved as a project until it has been sent to a select committee. ‘‘At that stage’’ (he then expresses himself in the kindest manner about my ‘‘suggestions’’), ‘‘the experiment . . . if we can get it carried out, is one of great importance, and I am far more desirous of getting a good work done than of carrying my own special views.’’ . . . What I want to ask your kindness counsel [about] is: should I proceed at once with the letter to the Bombay Presidency Association you so kindly drafted for me on my criticisms of the bill? . . . Or will this be unhandsome to Sir R. West as his select committee may have adopted some of my suggestions? At all events I must say to my native associa-

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tion that alterations may be made? If I do write, must I write to both Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and Bombay Presidency Association? Need I have copies printed for them? Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5086

21 May 1889 I am ver y much obliged to you for sending me the Pioneers with your letters in them, which I will return as soon as I have read them. But I am sorry to say my eyes are suffering so much from overwork that I cannot read difficult print or difficult handwriting as much as I would. I take the liberty of sending you a copy of a letter which I was requested to write (by a government man) to the leading native associations in Bombay on the subject of the bill, and which has been translated and very fully commented on in the Bombay newspapers. I will ask you to return it me. I had received a copy of the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill before writing it. I am sure I shall relish your printed letters when I am able to read them. And I am certain that you are master of the old fable that, when they wanted to strip a man’s cloak off him, it was not the sharp and violent wind which succeeded, he only held his cloak the tighter. It was the sunshining which made him throw it aside. I have many things to write about, but cannot today. My eyes are now so bad that consulting letters not plainly written or papers not plainly printed blinds me for a week. Source: From a dictated letter to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45809 ff175-76

27 July 1889 Mr Hewlett has his pamphlet [‘‘Village Sanitation in India’’] on village sanitary rules for the natives nearly ready, and he hopes that you will find in it something for your invaluable tracts to be translated into the vernaculars. That was very curious, what you told me, about the natives preferring calf vaccination, because they consider it more of the nature of a sacred rite. I have inquired of Mr Hewlett about it. He was quite in its favour, but I am sorry to find that he says that the subject was thoroughly thrashed out in Bombay presidency and that they find that the expense of keeping up a supply of calves was quite prohibitive of the practice. Was it in Madras presidency that you found the calf vaccination practised, that you calf-vaccinated yourself? I sup-

350 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India pose they had found it practicable there. Could you tell me? . . . I hope I shall see you again before you leave England. Source: From a letter to Sir Raymond West, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C195, draft, dated 29 July 1889, Add Mss 45809 ff 177-78

1 August 1889 Bombay Village Sanitation Bill. Privat e. Allow me to thank you heartily for your most kind letter of 8 July about the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill in committee. We may trust to you, I know, to press all that you think wise in the popular view of the case. I rejoice to think that you have ‘‘got in the thin end of the wedge,’’ because we know that you will follow it up till you have got in the thick end also, making the people see or at least think that it is their own doing as well as for their own interests! I shall gladly see the copy of the report of the select committee which you promise; and I will make any suggestions that occur to me, as you are so good as to desire. But it is in the administration of the act that lies the pith of the whole matter, and where I feel confident that Sir Raymond West will continue his good work. The best act in the world may, as we know, be administered or neglected so as to remain a dead letter; or, worse, set the people against it, while a not altogether good act may succeed in its object, bringing sanitation among the people, if worked in the manner that a great administrator in India so well understands. I am hopeful that you will tell your assistant collectors or sub-officials to carry it out in a sympathetic manner among the people. If the assistant collector or officer who worked it well were mentioned with praise on the administrative report, then, as you have taught me, the other assistant collectors or officers would be sure to make it work, and in a sympathetic or popular manner, letting things drop that they found offensive, even, as you say, to the ‘‘defects or prejudices of the people.’’ I have even hopes that I shall see someday, in an Indian paper, Sir Raymond West or Lord Reay making a speech to a municipality, referring to the Bombay Village Sanitary Act as a measure to which the sirkar [government] attaches much importance.

Village and Town Sanitation / 351 Source: From two dictated letters to T. Gillham Hewlett, signed by Nightingale, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5092 and 5093

2 August 1889 I was ver y glad to hear from you, and it was very kind of you to send me your doctor’s verdict, because you know how anxious I was to hear it, and I hope, on the whole, we may consider it a favourable one. Thank you for sending me a proof of your pamphlet ‘‘Village Sanitation in India.’’ I don’t know what you will say to me, but, as I understood that you had sent out only one proof (this to me), and none to Sir Douglas Galton, whose suggestions are so much more valuable than mine would be, I sent my proof to Sir Douglas Galton, asking him to return it if he had received one from you. But, to my great distress, I found he was not in London, and they did not even know his address. (He is often on arbitration business in England and Paris, and has not his letters always forwarded.) But it was said that he would be in London within a week. I do not quite know what to do. I was in hopes that the pamphlet would have been printed in a larger and clearer type, because it will be almost hopeless to get the great men, like Lord Lansdowne, to read it unless in a fair type. And yet it is so important, if this vital subject (in a land of villages) is to make real progress, that the rulers should be properly incensed. You truly say that there is no more urgent subject. I myself can hardly read it, with my defective eyes, and I am afraid I should be a long while, reading little bits at a time, in making the suggestions you desire, without blinding myself, and these suggestions might after all be of little use to you. You desire to have the proof back ‘‘as soon as possible.’’ I think I will keep the pamphlet, if you give me leave. . . . Lady Galton has promised to send me her husband’s address as soon as she has it herself, which may be today. I do not underrate the value of the pamphlet, believe me; it is because I think it impossible to over rate it that I wish so very much it should have good clothes on. 3 August 1889 I am glad after all that I did not send my meagre note No. 1 yesterday. I hear from Lady Galton this morning that Sir Douglas Galton is ‘‘now in Paris on business of the Jury of the Exhibition, but he is expected to return to London on Monday’’ or a day or two later. And she does ‘‘not forward letters to him.’’ I think if you see no objection that I had better keep your valuable proof till he returns. You may depend upon me to make no unneces-

352 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sar y delays. And I may be able to do a little to it myself. Another thing which I could not say by another hand: the printer must not hurry you. If he can’t spare his type, I will gladly pay for any extra expense in keeping it. It is impossible to hurry ver y busy persons in criticizing such a valuable document. And if it could be printed in a better type, I would for the reasons in my No. 1 gladly pay for it, for your sake and that of the cause. I trust that its gist does not run directly counter to government. They honestly think they are getting in the ‘‘thin end of the wedge’’ by their present bill [the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill]. I believe they would have adopted some of the suggestions I humbly made to the native associations, but they will not stand lecturing. And I doubt whether they will make much change now, but will try to administer the act sympathetically to the people. God grant they may. Source: From a copy of a letter to John Murdoch, Add Mss 45809 ff237-38

[after October 1889] 4. But, above all, you know I wish that some very simple tract on a Hindu’s duties to his village for natives should be written to follow Mr Hewlett’s work. He was the only man I have ever known who knew how to enlist the natives on his side, or rather on their own side, in what you may call public sanitary work. He did do a great deal through the panchayats and I could tell you wonderful stories about this. It seems to us such a pity that so remarkable a man, so practical an enthusiast, should have been taken away in the height of his usefulness. I send you a copy of his pamphlet, the last thing he ever did; I could send you more copies if you liked it. Copies have been sent out to the Government of India by the secretar y of state for India, but the greatest good which could be done, and you would do it so well, would be if a tract could be written for the natives upon those lines. The pamphlet is, of course, only for the government. I send Thorold Rogers’s British Citizen, but it is a great deal too elaborate even for Englishmen, only this: if Englishmen can read this book because they have had liberties for nearly 800 years, I always think when I look at the immemorial machinery of Indian villages, each village being a republic with a governor of its own, how comparatively easy, much more easy even than in England, it would be to revive that constitutional machiner y for the purposes of village health and village law in India. You know so much more about these things than anyone else, though Mr Hewlett was an adept in village administration and munici-

Village and Town Sanitation / 353

pality administration that I fain would hear that this great work of putting the villages on their sanitary mettle was in your hands, and that was why I sent you Mr Hewlett’s last pamphlet.

‘‘Village Sanitation in India,’’ 1889 Editor: Three open letters to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha on village sanitation, 1887 (above), 1889 (immediately below) and 1891 (see p 357 below), attracted much attention in the Indian press, and a selection of comments appeared in the Indian Spectator of 11 January 1892. When addressing national organizations, Nightingale used a cautious and polite tone. She was happy to register, however, that her 1887 letter had had some impact and that ‘‘the benefits of sanitary legislation’’ were now extended ‘‘to all Bombay’s’’ villages, not only to those having over 500 inhabitants (see p 325 above). She insisted on the active participation of villagers in the plans for sanitary improvements. William Wedderburn had introduced Nightingale to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Bombay Presidency Association, both of which organizations contributed to the emergence of the Indian National Congress. Source: Florence Nightingale, Letter to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association and to the Joint Secretaries of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (London: Printed privately as a pamphlet for circulation to members of the above associations, by Spottiswoode & Co., 20 Februar y 1889). Also in The Quar terly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15,1 (July 1892):5-9

London 20 Februar y 1889 Gentlemen, Since I had the honour of addressing you just two years ago on the subject of village sanitation, there has been published in the Bombay Government Gazette of 24 January 1889 a new draft bill entitled the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, 1889, which, in many respects, makes an important advance upon previous projects of legislation. Especially is it a cause for satisfaction that the new bill proposes to extend the benefits of sanitary legislation to all Bombay’s 24,600 villages, without excluding any, as was contemplated by the previous limitation, which, by excluding villages under 500 inhabitants, excluded nearly two thirds of the total number. You are aware of the great interest I have taken for many years in questions of Indian sanitation and I am again advised by Sir William Wedderburn to submit for your consideration some points with regard to this amended measure, and to ask the favour of your opinion and advice.

354 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 2. The general method which, according to my view, should govern this class of legislation was indicated in my previous letter, namely, that the act should enable and encourage the people to organize themselves in the villages for sanitary purposes—the villagers themselves doing the work, with the necessary advice and (in the case of unsatisfactor y results) stimulus from outside. What is to be avoided is filling the villages with low-paid subordinates of a centralized department. The villagers should be encouraged to get the necessary work done in their own way, the results being judged by a qualified inspecting officer of the Sanitary Department, upon whose report the collector would, when necessary, bring pressure to bear to get the work done by the village organization, and only in the last resort cause it to be done through outside agency. The advantage of this method seems to be that the ancient village organization is thus strengthened and utilized, the hereditar y village authorities and servants being gradually trained to the improved methods of performing their customary duties towards the local public, so that eventually the health machiner y may come to work almost automatically. But, again, would you suffer me to repeat that there must be, as it were, missionaries and preachers of health and cleansing, if any real progress is to be made? In persuading the villagers and in directing them, the officers of the Sanitary Department ought, of course, to act as such. And would you kindly give me your further advice as to how best this important mission can be performed? 3. To those who, like myself, earnestly desire both that the village sanitation should be really effectual and also that it should be carried out by the people themselves with the least possible friction and interference, it will be a cause of rejoicing to find in the new bill various provisions which will operate in these directions. Prominent among such provisions are the sections (41 and 42) which place the services of the hereditar y village servants at the disposal of the village sanitary committee, and which ensure to such servants the recover y of their customar y dues, provided that their duties have been duly performed. It is believed that indirectly also this provision will be beneficial as tending to remove friction and to produce harmony among the various castes within the village. Again, those sections (28, 30, 38) seem excellent which provide that all money collected in the village, by subscriptions, rates or fines, shall be spent within the village itself. And I am glad to see that section 39 contemplates donations and loans being made by district and taluka local boards to villages for expendi-

Village and Town Sanitation / 355

ture on sanitar y purposes contemplated by this act. Might not also a portion of such donations be made available to provide rewards, such as a turban or dress of honour, to be presented on some public occasion to those patels and other village authorities who most distinguish themselves by their successful efforts to benefit the health of their fellow villagers? 4. As regards the general scheme of the bill, it appears that at first ever y village is to have a chance of showing what it can do by itself. In the beginning each village is to employ its own resources and keep itself clean, the patel being its natural head. If the village does not keep itself clean, if it is found to be in a bad sanitary state, it is to have a notice, by means of a proclamation, of not less than two months; after that, if it is still unrepentant, arrangements will be made under Part 2 for the appointment of a village sanitary committee, with powers to punish infractions of the sanitary rules, to carry out the work of sanitation and to recover the amount expended by a rate charged on the inhabitants of the village. It is my inference that the extension of Part 2 to any village is consequent upon the failure of the village to keep itself clean, but it is not expressly so stated in the bill. Section 6 does not require that the collector should, in his proclamation extending Part 2, make any statement as to the objects and reasons for the extension, nor does this section explain what is the nature of the objections which will be held valid if brought by the villagers. Would it not be desirable that the proclamation should be based on the report of a sanitary inspector to the effect that the village is in an insanitary condition? and should not the proclamation specify the nature and particulars of the default? In that case the villagers would understand exactly what were their faults of omission and commission, and would have an opportunity of amending their ways before more stringent measures were adopted. No doubt the efficacy of the bill depends primarily upon the executive efficiency of the village sanitary committee. And a very vital question upon which I should wish to be favoured with your opinion is whether the mode of selection proposed by the bill is the best one for the objects in view? Section 8 provides that the committee shall be chosen by the collector, and that the chairman of the committee shall also be nominated by him. Are there not grave objections to such a mode of selection? I am assured by those well acquainted with district life in the Bombay presidency that, owing to the large size of the collectorates (are there not in Khandesh 2600 villages?), it is impossible that the collector or any other high official,

356 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India European or native, can be personally acquainted with the villagers from among whom the choice has to be made. To place on the collector the duty of nomination would, therefore, be in practice (would it not?) to give the selection of the committees to the subordinates of the taluka office and the village accountants, who are not likely to choose the independent men who possess the confidence of the villagers. Would it not be better to allow the villagers to choose their own committee, to have the old village panchayat [council] established by the inhabitants themselves? This was what was proposed by a draft bill in 1885, which provided that ‘‘the inhabitants of any non-municipal village may at any time establish a panchayat to look after the cleansing of the village.’’ Such a course would be consistent with the ancient village organization and at the same time be in accordance with the spirit of all recent legislation relating to local self-government. If this principle be approved, I would ask you kindly to advise regarding the best practical method of carrying out the selection. 5. Part 3 is apparently to be put in force when Part 2 has proved ineffectual to produce proper sanitation. But, as in the case of Part 2, objection may here be taken to the want of definiteness as regards the reasons for the extension, and also to the nomination by the collector of the members of the sanitary board. Would it not be possible to link such sanitary board in some way with the taluka local board, making it, perhaps, a sub-committee of that board? The multiplication of local committees having concurrent or conflicting authority, and elected in different ways, appears likely to produce confusion. As regards the nature of the tax or rate (to carry out the work of sanitation), it is so very important a consideration, that might I ask the association what they would recommend, so that it should be acceptable to the people without transgressing accepted principles of taxation? 6. There are a variety of minor points on which I should be glad of your opinion, such as the following questions: (a) Would it not be well that the village rules to be made by the committee under section 11 should be approved by the sanitary commissioner as well as by the collector? (b) Should there not be some provision, by grant of lands or pay, to induce Mhars and other hereditar y village servants to settle in villages where their services are required? And if more is demanded of them to properly cleanse the villages than was demanded of their forefathers, must not more be paid them?

Village and Town Sanitation / 357

(c) What should be the status of the sanitary inspector (sections 21 and 22)? Should he not be an educated man whose sanitary qualifications have been duly tested? Should he not belong to the Sanitary Department, his services being placed at the disposal of the taluka local board? (d) Is the contract system (section 26) such as you would approve, instead of having appointed village servants? I should esteem it a great favour if, with the permission of the council, you would kindly inform me how far you would consider the provisions of the bill as it now stands effective for the end proposed, and how far you would suggest that they should be modified. I should also again venture a request to be informed what other practical steps are, in the opinion of the association, to be best taken in this most important matter of village sanitation. Pray believe me, gentlemen, to be your faithful and hopeful servant [Florence Nightingale] P.S. For the favour of distribution to members of the association and others, should the council so permit it, I forward a few printed copies of this letter. I may mention that I have addressed the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha on this subject in similar terms.

‘‘Sanitation in India,’’ Februar y 1891 Editor: The third letter to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha was preceded by encouragement for it to send delegates to the Seventh Congress of Hygiene and Demography, to be held in London, with Douglas Galton as chair of the organizing committee. Nightingale was clearly annoyed that the congress had initially left India out. In the letter immediately below we see her remonstrating with Galton, a friend, long-time collaborator and husband of a cousin. In the end the sabha was invited, and they sent three delegates, as is apparent in later comments (see p 362 below). Source: From notes for Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff41-44

[July-August 1891] Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. 1. Why is India, with its 250 millions for which we are responsible, left out when Argentine Republic is put in? 2. The suggestion of a sanitary congress in India has been made to me from India.

358 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 3. If Sir D.G. does not want India on the congress, he is the more bound to tell us how to proceed to represent India as she wishes. (India will in all cases want a machinery of its own. It will want provincial congresses in India.) The importance of using the present international congress lies (1) in its vast machinery, (2) in its big names, (3) in its official I.O. names; the I.O. must listen, (4) the list of great objects. . . . Bombay should be the first place where a congress should be held (‘‘big drainage works’’). . . . We may get the direct support of I.O. by names on program. To ask them if they would include India, would take India within their scope, say that this idea of having congresses in India—sanitar y congresses to be held in India—has originated there. Glad to have his, Sir D. Galton’s, advice; millions of deaths from want of sanitation. You take in Persia [?] with which you have nothing to do, Argentine Republic. You leave out India, the great dependency which makes England the greatest empire in the world. . . . Bombay Village Sanitation Act: inclination to lay too much stress on starvation and none on want of sanitation as cause of fever: all the people hors de combat with fever; three causes: rotting undergrowth, bad water, muddy road. A letter should be written to the public in India saying what has been successful in England. British Association, Social Science Association, Medical Association, Sanitary Hygiene Society, what is the society that started these congresses? . . . Also of what we have done in England: these the objects, these the results. And a few personal particulars: who are the leaders—then write to I.O., then to viceroy. Source: Florence Nightingale, Letter to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association and to the Joint Secretaries of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (London: Printed privately as a pamphlet for circulation to members of the above associations by Spottiswoode & Co., 16 Februar y 1891). Also in The Quar terly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15,1 (July 1892):9-12

London 16 Februar y 1891 Gentlemen, In continuation of my previous letters of 22 Februar y 1887 and 20 Februar y 1889, on the subject of village sanitation in India, I now take the liberty of addressing your association with reference to the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, which is to be held in London from 10 to 17 August next. The objects of the congress are clearly set forth in the Preliminar y Statement (copy of which I enclose) put forth by the general committee.

Village and Town Sanitation / 359

As stated by them, ‘‘The aim of the congress is to awaken public interest in the progress of hygiene and demography, by which latter term is understood the study of the life conditions of communities from a statistical point of view; to afford persons interested in these subjects an opportunity of meeting, with the object of advancing their progress; and by conferences and debates to elucidate questions relating to hygiene, demography and public health.’’ H.R.H. the prince of Wales has consented to act as president and it is expected that the congress will be of great magnitude and importance. 2. You will observe that this is the first time that the meeting has been held in England, and as a special feature of this congress it is hoped that there will be a full representation from India and the colonies. It is also very desirable that this representation should be not only official but also non-official. I am therefore anxious to urge upon Indian friends interested in the cause of sanitation the importance of the present occasion, so that the representatives from India may include as large a number as possible of those possessing detailed and accurate knowledge of the condition and wants of the Indian people. 3. Might not this international congress, if warmly taken up by the enlightened native gentlemen and liberal associations of India, be a turning point in the sanitary histor y of the peoples of India? It has been said, ‘‘The people of India have no faith in sanitary measures. They regard epidemics as the visitation of a malevolent power.’’ (Is this still true?) Yet no one can take care of the people’s health but the people themselves. How much may—nay, must be done by them! Without them, how little! Without engaging the people themselves on our side, or rather on their own side, without convincing them of what is for their own interest, their own life and health, we may pass what sanitary acts we please, but is it not true that they will remain in great measure a dead letter? We may have the most exact knowledge of what is wanted to be done to save life and health, to save these great races from physical degeneration, from losing the best months of the year for cultivation through being laid aside by fever—not to speak of the sad and enormous preventible fever death rate, increasing, it is feared. But we cannot do it. The educated native gentlemen who know the people will show a practical example; they will first, as has been well said, ‘‘obser ve sanitar y rules themselves.’’ Then, must they not give their invaluable, their indispensable, influence to help government in village sanitation by creating a public opinion in its favour among their country-

360 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India men, and showing them the benefits, as has been done in some remarkable instances, to be derived from carrying out measures which have for their object improved health, and therefore greater vigour and happiness among the rural population? And is it not for them, and especially for the great popular associations, to assist the government in framing the most efficient, the most workable and least unacceptable methods of carrying out village sanitation? Did they help in the Bombay Village Sanitation Act? Is it not for them to influence the panchayats, where these exist, the headmen, the villagers, as to the causes of death and disease among them, and to remove those of the sad deterioration in physical stamina but too visible? They will no doubt interchange most useful experience with the forthcoming international congress. But their work will then lie at home, as will indeed the work of everyone, European and Oriental, who attends the congress in good earnest to do good. 4. And may I as a woman venture to whisper that one of their first duties at home will be to influence their ladies? There is perhaps no countr y in the world where woman’s influence is so high as in India, nor where ladies have sometimes manifested such capacity of governing and of administration. But it is not to this that I allude. It is to the everyday domestic government and administration of the home. And perhaps there is no civilized countr y in the world (‘‘I speak as a fool’’;53 let me be contradicted) where there is such ignorance among women of the first and simplest rules of health for themselves and their children. (Correct me, pray.) Now the domestic health depends on the woman. Yet is it not sometimes the case that the native gentleman, even where he knows, is unwilling to interfere with his own wife? The ladies must be paramount, whether instructed or uninstructed, in their own households. Let the ladies be first instructed by their own husbands and fathers, we humbly suggest, and let them then instruct other women, for women can only be taught by women in these matters. Least of all can they be taught by legislation. A private public opinion must, so to speak, be created among them how to save their own and their children’s health. In England there are ladies’ sanitary associations, of which our queen is often the gracious patroness. In India let the time be near

53 2 Cor 11:23.

Village and Town Sanitation / 361

when there will be Indian ladies’ sanitary associations, of which our empress, who is deeply interested in the welfare of her beloved daughters of India, might no doubt become the gracious patroness. Let them begin during her life on earth. 5. Bear with me. I have wandered far from the international congress. Yet not so. These sanitary congresses, which you will soon create in India, especially at Bombay, where such gigantic sanitary interests are at stake, find their most valuable impulse in contributing to private or non-official effort after returning home. Indeed, were it not for this, would not the congress miss its highest object—the practical one? You do not want a neat arithmetical sum in statistics. You want real practical work for the good of all. You will support us. Let the East meet with the West to learn and to teach in matters of life and death. Let it be the victorious army of peace, is the earnest prayer of yours, gentlemen, respectfully and hopefully Florence Nightingale P.S. For the favour of distribution to members of the association and others, should the council so permit it, I forward a few printed copies of this letter. I may mention that I have addressed the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha on this subject in similar terms. Source: From two letters (same date) to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff45 and 46

Claydon House Winslow, Bucks 16 September 1891 Let me congratulate you, my dear Sir Douglas Galton, on the congress and your and its success. Of course the aspirations of people who do things very well are always higher than what they do so well. But we have heard enough to give ourselves joy on your success in such difficult operations. I mean your own success too. 16 September 1891 Private and Confidential. We have been and are working hard here with dark brown Indians from congress, brown prince from Siam, white or whitey brown county council. On all these no one could give the advice you can.

362 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

‘‘Sanitation in India,’’ December 1891 Editor: In this letter Nightingale, who had finally become convinced of the validity of germ theor y in 1884, now suggested the use of bacteriological examples in village lessons. A ‘‘magic lantern’’ or slide projector would show the ‘‘noxious living organisms in foul air and water’’ (see p 363 below). Villagers would be even more motivated to eliminate bacteria than with a mere lecture. Source: Florence Nightingale, Letter to Rao Bahadur Vishnu Moreshwar Bhide, chairman, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (London: Printed privately as a pamphlet for circulation to members of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha by Spottiswoode & Co., December 1891). Also in The Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15,1 (July 1892):13-17

London December 1891 Sir, I have to thank you for your letter of 9 June last, and shall feel obliged if you will express to the members of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha my best thanks for their ready response to my request that they would bring the subject of Indian village sanitation before the Congress of Hygiene and Demography, and also for the valuable papers which, at their instance, were contributed by Messrs Kirtikar, Ghole and Dhurandar. 2. I have noted their desire that the Indian authorities should be moved to appropriate a certain portion of the local fund proceeds to the expenses of village sanitation under the act, and I am now in communication with friends interested in the subject with a view to a representation being made to the India Office. 3. In the meantime, may I perhaps be allowed to suggest that the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha should themselves institute a system of lectures on village sanitation to be given in all the villages and small towns? If villagers are not taught the simple things that they can do for themselves to promote health at home, law cannot force them, nor can funds help them. Is it not generally not so much the want of money as the want of knowledge that produces bad sanitary conditions? Do not rich people in the towns die from overcrowding and from bad drains? Indeed, are not the typhoid fevers of Bombay city more rapidly fatal than the malarial and typhoidal fevers of Bombay villages? Alas! we have also to remember the lifelong deterioration in strength and the annual interruption of labour from these rural fevers.

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Must not the poor people be taught that, by merely taking trouble, without spending money, they can do much to make their homes healthy? But they will never take trouble, unless they can be convinced that much of the suffering and sickness from which they and their wives and children suffer so grievously is preventible suffering. 4. Are not the great needs of the very poor: (a) diminution of overcrowding, (b) carrying away of sewage, (c) better water supply? (a) The question of overcrowding and want of ventilation is the most difficult one for poor people themselves to touch, but is it not a question for the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha seriously to consider how fresh dwellings can be most efficiently and cheaply erected? (b) and (c) But upon the two other points—(b) the carrying away of sewage and (c) a better water supply—the people can most effectually help themselves, if they are made to understand the terrible results of neglect and the most simple remedies. Might not the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, which has always shown itself so active in promoting the social and physical welfare of the people, organize a system of lectures and practical demonstrations on such subjects, to be given from village to village by men (1) well versed themselves in the principles of sanitation and (2) knowing the habits of the people, and able to sympathize with and help them, instead of stirring up their prejudices? Much work might be done at little money cost by men working in the untiring missionary spirit of the late Mr Garesh Wasedeo Joshi, who gave a bright example in his devotion to the welfare of the people. Probably the village schoolrooms might be utilized for the lectures, which might be made attractive by object-lessons, with the magic lantern showing the noxious living organisms in foul air and water. Such preparations shown at the hygiene congress produced a strong impression. But the lecture would only be the first beginning of the teaching; a lecturer who had made himself acceptable to the people would go round the village and show the people how to dispose of their refuse; he would explain to them the danger of depositing it in their little close courtyards, and how the solid should be separated from the liquid excreta, and the former utilized in their cultivation. Then he would go with them to examine their water supply and show them certain simple precautions to be observed: not washing near the supply of drinking water, not allowing human beings or cattle to foul the river, tank or well. The Hindu religion enjoins so much purity and cleanliness that the influence of the religious teachers and of the caste panchayats might

364 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India be usefully appealed to. The people have a high respect for the panchayat—the panchayat for the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha. The Sabha can approach the people through the panchayat, if the panchayat can be brought to interest themselves, not only in domestic and social moral condition, but in domestic health. 5. Sanitary primers are much needed if sanitation is to be taught in elementar y schools, not mere adaptations from the English, but productions from the best native experience. But much more wanted are sanitar y masters—schoolmasters who believe in sanitation or prevention of disease, and know something about it. What is read in the book stays in the book. In lectures, in schools, representations to the eye are alike wanted. The officer of health is too often only a book and a pen. So is the schoolmaster. He must be a voice—a voice as it were among the villages. Books often do no good, and so few can read. 6. The business of municipal and sanitary reformers, should it not be to see that the public money spent on roads, water supply, etc., does really benefit the poor who cannot help themselves, and not only the rich who can? Some roads are sure to be kept clean, but what is the condition of the bylanes and back streets of towns and villages? Is it not these ordinar y sanitar y requirements of the common people that need to be promoted, rather than large and expensive schemes for the comfort of those who can take care of themselves? 7. One more suggestion. Might not the municipalities and rural local boards appoint sanitation sub-committees from among their members, whose duty it would be to help the health officers in their work, and to be the medium of communication between them and the general body of these corporations as regards sanitary matters? This plan is now being followed in England, where teaching committees are being appointed for technical education and sanitation, under the county councils. It is found that the members of such committees are led to make a special study of their subject, and much fresh energy is thus brought into the practical work of the general body. 8. The Sabha will have observed with satisfaction that, on account of the active interest shown by India in the work of the congress, it is proposed at future congresses to form a tropical section, with a view to secure adequate discussion of the sanitation and diseases peculiar to tropical climates. And it is hoped that Indian sanitary reformers will thus be encouraged to keep in touch with the most recent scientific developments.

Village and Town Sanitation / 365

Pray believe me, Sir, faithfully yours and the sabha’s [Florence Nightingale] P.S. Will you kindly allow me the liberty of sending you printed copies of my letter, to follow by next mail, and asking from you the great favour of distributing them to local associations and influential Indian gentlemen, as you think fit? Source: From a letter to Lady Grant-Duff,54 British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/13

4 August 1891 I am so glad that Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff is to preside at the Indian Delegates’ Conference and to give an address. May I not commend to him through you the cause of village sanitation in India? We laboured for many years at the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, before it became an act; and now it is a ‘‘dead letter’’ because no proper funds have been allotted for it. . . . Still what we wanted first was that the villages should do what they could do for themselves, and that any ‘‘patel’’ or headman whose village was remarkable for sanitary improvement should receive a ‘‘mark of honour.’’ (And this would cost but little.) But if Sir Mountstuart saw well to take up this important branch of the subject, he would not need hints from me. Source: From a letter to Sir Raymond West, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C209

22 January 1892 May I venture to send you a copy of a letter of mine to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha? And may I still farther venture to ask you to give me your invaluable support, if you agree in my suggestions on a subject to which you have given so much attention? Before you receive this you will have had a letter of introduction presented to you by Mr Frederick Verney, who is travelling with Prince Damrong of Siam. May I presume to say that every kindness you may

54 Lady Grant-Duff, née Julia Webster (d. 1915), was active in Madras, where her husband was governor 1881-86. She helped Nightingale find suitable authors to write health primers in vernacular languages. For an indication of her work on health and educational causes, especially for women and girls in India, see her published speeches in Speeches by Mrs Grant-Duff 1884-5-6. Nightingale told her sister they were ‘‘the very best I ever read by a woman’’ (letter 27 June 1886, Wellcome, Claydon copy, Ms 9011/35).

366 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India have been able to show Mr F. Verney, who is seeking instruction, not pleasure, will be taken by me as a kindness done to myself? He is particularly interested in the Bombay Village Sanitation Act and such like things of which you are a master. It seems late to wish you a happy and successful New Year and many of them; nevertheless I do with all my heart.

‘‘Letter to Lord Cross,’’ 1892 Editor: The letter below to the secretar y of state for India, Lord Cross, proposes a better application of the proceeds of village taxes (cesses) to the purposes of sanitation. In acknowledging receipt of it (8 April 1892), he had a copy, with its enclosure, forwarded to the governments of India and Bombay. While the governments decided to give priority to other projects, such as improved roads, it was recognized that attention had been effectively drawn to the subject of village sanitation. Nightingale’s letter was published in the official organ of the Indian National Congress, ‘‘Miss Nightingale and Indian Sanitation,’’ along with an editorial. The appended memo shows Nightingale continuing to press for spending on improvements with the governor general, Lord Lansdowne. Later correspondence with Douglas Galton relates further efforts to get support for the measures proposed in the memo. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Letter to the Rt Hon Viscount Cross, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretar y of State for India, Enclosing a Memorandum Signed by Members of the India Committee of the International Congress on Hygiene and Demography,’’ India: The Organ of the Indian National Congress 3,39 (15 July 1892):200-01. Also in The Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15,1 (July 1892):17-21, typed copy Add Mss 45811 ff38-43

London [21] March 1892 My Lord, The strong interest which, as her majesty’s principal secretar y of state for India, your lordship has shown in the sanitary progress of that country, and especially the active steps which were taken through the India Office to bring India within the scope of the last International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, embolden me to address your lordship regarding that branch of the subject in which I take a special and personal interest, I mean Indian village sanitation. 2. In the Bombay presidency much attention has been given by the authorities to this subject. And desirous of helping in this work I have,

Village and Town Sanitation / 367

during the last five years, been corresponding with several of the leading native organizations, asking them actively to use their influence in spreading among the villagers an elementary knowledge of sanitary requirements. On the occasion of the congress I addressed a letter to the Bombay Presidency Association and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, urging them to bring before the congress detailed and accurate information regarding the condition and wants of the rural population. In response to this request the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha sent three papers to be read at the congress. But at the same time they pointed out the difficulties which attended the progress of sanitation in their province. They stated that, according to their experience, the Bombay Village Sanitation Act, 1889 [1890], failed to produce the desired results, because the act did not reser ve a definite portion of the village cesses to meet the expenses of sanitation, while the rural population were too poor to bear further taxation. They therefore expressed a hope that the congress might be moved to invite the attention of the Indian authorities to this financial difficulty. 3. There was no opportunity of obtaining from the congress an expression of opinion of the kind desired. But the insanitary condition of Indian rural villages was much discussed at the special Indian meetings held in connection with the congress. And the accompanying copy of a memorandum [appended] by members of the Indian committee of the congress will show how strongly the need is felt for active measures to reduce existing evils. 4. In reply to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha I sent a letter, in which I renewed my plea in favour of popularizing sanitary instr uction. But in doing so I felt how little could be done to improve the rural health conditions without adequate funds, and I also felt how difficult it must be to make the cause popular in the villages if the new movement in favour of sanitation is associated with fresh taxation demands, especially when the villagers have already paid a cess levied to meet the same requirements. Many ancient prejudices have to be overcome, so that it is most important that there should be no fresh grounds of aversion. I have therefore felt it my duty to bring their request to the notice of your lordship. Through the courtesy of the India Office I have been favoured with the perusal of documents showing the origin of the village cesses above referred to. And I understand that they were originally contributions voluntarily paid for village purposes. After wards these cesses were made leviable by law and the power of directing the expenditure was vested in the local boards. But the gov-

368 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ernment have always recognized the principle of ‘‘localization’’ (as laid down by H.E. Sir Philip Wodehouse), which gives to village necessities the first claim upon the proceeds of the village cess. From our point of view reasonable sanitation is the first of these necessities, and therefore we feel strongly that this necessity should be provided for in preference to the needs less directly affecting life and health. 5. We must live in order to work. We must live in order to drive the cart or cross the bridge. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?55 A village free from choleraic and typhoidal poisons is more important to the village population than the best means of communication. Reading the debates on the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, it appears that the main object of the measure is to constitute a good village organization for purposes of village sanitation. These village organizations for these purposes supersede the local board and therefore it seems that in them should be vested primarily the administration of the funds raised by village cesses, for village sanitation. According to this view the villagers would not require to ask back from the local board a portion of the amount paid by them, but in carrying out a minimum of sanitation would spend what was absolutely requisite. Ought it ever to have gone from them, from the time that a suitable village organization had been established to administer it? The balance would go to the local board for more general local purposes. 6. In conclusion, I should esteem it a favour if your lordship would be so good as to inform me whether, in accordance with the recommendation contained in the memorandum, it might not be possible for the local authorities under the existing law to cause sufficient funds to be appropriated to satisfy the minimum requirements of village sanitation? I have the honour to be, my lord, your most obedient servant Florence Nightingale

[enclosed] Memorandum From the papers read and the opinions expressed at the Indian meetings in connection with the last International Congress of Hygiene and Demography [1891], it appears to the undersigned members of

55 Matt 6:25.

Village and Town Sanitation / 369

the Indian committee that the insanitary condition of the rural villages in India is a very serious evil, and that active measures are required to obviate the existing injury to public health. They understand that, as regards villages in the Bombay presidency, funds are raised by village cesses for works of local public utility, including sanitary improvements, but under the local funds acts these funds are expended by local boards, each of which exercises authority over many villages. And it appears from the local boards report that in 1890 the local boards received altogether 421⁄3 lakhs of rupees, of which about 26 lakhs came from such villages cesses, but out of this amount only 31⁄3 lakhs were spent on village sanitation and water supply—namely, Rs. 3,17,250 in improving the water supply, Rs. 4979 on village sites, including clearing rank vegetation, Rs. 620 on sanitation at fairs, etc., and Rs. 12,780 on conservancy of towns and villages. From this it appears that the amount spent in actual cleansing operations in the village was very small indeed compared to the amount raised by the village cesses. In the opinion of the undersigned, the removal of the present sanitar y evils in the rural villages is the first necessity as regards these villages, and they would urge on the authorities that reasonable sanitary improvements in each village should be regarded as a first charge on the cess raised in that village. Until the minimum of sanitation is completed, until the cess of that particular village has been appropriated to this, while typhoidal or choleraic disease is still prevalent, it appears to the undersigned that the claims for any general purposes should be postponed. Good local communications are, no doubt, desirable, but they come second in importance to the removal of those insanitary conditions which are undermining the health of the rural population. [signed] Douglas Galton, chairman of organizing committee of International Congress of Hygiene George Birdwood W. H . Corfield, m.a., m.d. (Oxon), member of the Permanent Committee W. Robert Cornish, surgeon general, late member of the Legislative Council, Fort St George W. Guyer Hunter W. J . Moore, late surgeon general with the Government of Bombay Dadabhai Naoroji

370 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India G.V. Poore, m.d. W. Wedderburn Thomas Holbein Hendley, surgeon lieutenant colonel, c.i.e., delegate for Rajputana

Education for Village Sanitation Editor: After exhorting Indian nationals to do themselves the sanitary work in villages, Nightingale made concrete suggestions on how to do so: train Indians in sanitary questions, make available to them the necessar y funds and launch those instructed Indians as lecturers in villages to ‘‘show them on the spot what they could do for themselves’’ (see p 378 below) and to spread basic knowledge in hygiene and sanitar y matters. She proposed that the Sabha take an active role in that concerted effort in co-ordination with health officers. Source: From two letters to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff217-19 and 221-26

May 1892 Private. I have lately received from the India Office reports of the provincial sanitary boards, or rather copies of the remarks and orders of the Government of India on the reports of the sanitary boards of local governments. . . . In looking the papers through, I regret to see that, in several of the reports, no notice is taken of village sanitation. And in Bengal the local government seems to have restricted the operation of sanitary boards to municipal areas. In Assam something appears to have been done. I take this opportunity to mention village sanitation in Bombay. And your goodness makes me venture to send you privately a correspondence of mine with the I.O. (five pieces), which I understand has been sent you officially by Lord Cross’s kind desire. It is on one point only, of the burning question of village sanitation in Bombay, my deep interest in which has covered years. This point is perhaps a technical and small one, and yet not small, for without it the Village Sanitation Act is said to remain a dead letter. It is this, that each village should be legally authorized to reser ve and spend a part of its own cess paid by itself till the minimum of sanitation required by this particular village is attained. As I feel very keenly the importance of the question, I trust that I may without impertinence express the hope that if you think well, you will personally give it your support.

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June 1893 Your extreme kindness on former occasions and the fear that you are about to forsake shortly your immense Indian family lead me to venture to ask again a great favour. Your personal interest has given to the sanitar y cause such a great stimulus in India which, no doubt, it has much advanced. Might I venture to ask for reports as to the working of 1. the village sanitary acts or local boards acts detailed from each presidency and province and their results on the public health; and the same on 2. the sanitar y boards of local governments, but more, if I might ask, as to their working in villages than in municipalities, which municipalities appear to have received the lion’s share. Or copies of the remarks and orders of the Government of India on the reports of the sanitar y boards of local governments. 3. In reference to villages, you were so ver y kind as to mention that the local governments have been asked for an expression of their opinion upon the point whether each village could be legally authorized to reser ve and spend a part of its own cess paid by itself till the minimum of sanitation required by this particular village is attained. This refers to my papers containing these proposals, which had been sent you officially by Lord Cross, as you kindly told me. These proposals then referred to Bombay alone; I am naturally anxious to know whether anything has come of my ‘‘brat.’’ Other provinces have, I believe, some similar ‘‘brats.’’ I trust they have increased in wisdom and stature and grown up to man’s estate.56 Then there are selected villages, village union committees for improving village sanitation, but (subject of course to higher authority) we want villages to do for themselves rather than unions. In one province the sanitary board proposed a scheme of sanitation for selected villages to include (a) improvement of drinking water, (b) improved drainage, (c) prohibition of deposits of manure. The results in these selected villages might be watched. Could not the principle of allowing these villages or some of them to spend money themselves be tried? Might one ask whether the engineer on each sanitary board has been really a sanitary engineer? And does he devote his whole time to the purpose? Board of two: no doubt great strides have

56 An allusion to Luke 2:52.

372 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India been made during the past twelvemonth. I shall hail the arrival of the papers so kindly promised. In several provinces, as we have lately heard, ‘‘r ules’’ have been made. ‘‘Rules’’ are quite necessary. But if left without action is it not almost like making a ‘‘r ule’’ that chimneys shall not smoke? The book and the pen. It appears as if everything depends entirely on the district officer. And this is quite right. But it is to be hoped that provision is made now to ensure his having sanitary inclinations and education. Other wise the roads by which district officers are to go may be cleansed, but the bylanes and houses and compounds of the poor be left in a horrible state. Caste is always objected. Would enabling the village to reser ve a part of its own cess enable matters to make progress? Th e y, the villages, know what can be done with caste. In London the outside is filthy but the houses are clean. In India the outside is clean, but the houses and interior courts are filthy beyond description. Hence a world of fever and deterioration of national health. But to sum up: no doubt great strides have been made during the past twelve months. And we shall hail the arrival of the papers so kindly promised. But more than all we hail the help that so blessed a viceroyalty in the midst of unexampled difficulties has been to India. And we thank God for it. . . . Private P.S. I hope you will not think the master of Balliol more altered than the lapse of five years’ warrants when you see him again. To us who saw him at the worst, it seems like a resurrection from the dead. On the whole, he is pretty good, whereas he used to be incredibly naughty, in attending to ‘‘Brother Ass’’ (the body). He has given up those long fatiguing tours of visits; he drives out most days, taking a lame fellow with him, of course; he comes less often to London; he has fewer large parties in his house at Oxford. And we do not see the ‘‘sentence of death’’ in him, as we did. If possible, more than ever, he looks upon all God’s human creatures of whatever class as his brothers and sisters, and upon making his service a second education for his servants and for his secretaries, whom he trains out of poor young men. His influence at Oxford is, I believe, greater than ever. He goes on with Plato. Plato ought to be grateful to him. But you see signs of fatigue in him after much conversation. Pardon this long P.S.

Village and Town Sanitation / 373 Source: From a letter to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45812 ff12-14

1 September 1893 Private. Thank you a thousand times for your wise suggestions and ready help and great kindness. I am afraid I am going to write a most unsatisfactor y letter in return. I cannot find a producible letter of Lord Cross with the ‘‘promise to send me answers such as could be quoted to the I.O.’’ as you desired. If I showed you one, it must have been a private letter. I have reams of letters done up (unsorted) in large packets, which my six months’ illness of this year prevented my opening and sorting. I tried yesterday and could not stand the fatigue. I saw Sir Douglas Galton yesterday. He ‘‘understood that the replies from the various governments in India would be sent to’’ me. He was ‘‘quite clear that’’ I ‘‘was to have them but did not know how to fix it on a letter from Lord Cross.’’ . . . Your kind suggestions were three: 1. To write a friendly letter of thanks to Lord Lansdowne (and that you would be so very good as to give me a draft). Would it be possible to suggest to him to give a very small grant to a native association to initiate the lectures to villagers? This is a thing he could easily do, if he would, before December. I enclose a few scratched-down ragged ideas to incorporate into a draft to Lord Lansdowne, but have not an idea whether any one of them would do. I am like a sea jellyfish. 2nd suggestion. Sir W.W. to write a summary for India for the ‘‘educated natives.’’ 3rd. To write to the I.O. claiming Lord Cross’s promise [to send answers that could be quoted to the India Office]. I have explained how this cannot be at least at present, for I cannot produce any evidence of the promise. Sir D. Galton has an idea that all that was to be sent to me was to be ‘‘confidential,’’ so could not be used. I send according to your kind desire the five pieces, beginning with my, or rather your, letter to Lord Cross, a letter from Lord Lansdowne, and one from Lord Harris within, also the packet which I read to you the day before yesterday containing Lord Lansdowne’s letter to me, copy of mine to him which he sends me, extracts from native press.

374 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45812 ff16-18

[September 1893] I know so little about the thoughts and feelings of India, but your excellency who have been there in such a commanding position, etc. Progress has been made and will be made during your tenure of office and you will leave some lasting mark of the benefits you have conferred. [I] quite agree with Lord Lansdowne about the water supply and general cleanliness; villagers must do it for themselves. We could not do it by sending a whole army of sweepers. It would be just as dirty again. The people must be preached to by native lecturers to clean themselves. We don’t want to destroy their nationality as the native press says. We want to restore their nationality. We must preach to the people and show them how they alone can do it. How would it do to give the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha a very small grant to start such a system of lectures among the villages? Lord Lansdowne says that the native associations would not go to the expense of organizing a system of lectures. How would it do to induce one native association to initiate the thing by a very small grant? If you could get one native society to do this, would not others follow? Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff86-90

23 September 1893 Private. India lectures. I answered Lord Lansdowne’s letter with thanks and some reply to the local Indian papers, of which you sent me extracts. I wrote, because I wanted a favour, viz., a small grant to some native associations, e.g., the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, to enable it to start—the sanitar y village lectures—to be ‘‘only a beginning for practical teaching, for results as to not fouling water supply, disposal of refuse,’’ etc. . . . I had a high official from Bengal here yesterday complaining of this in Indian schools. The Hindus are the most talky nation in the world. I could have told him that England, the most practical nation in the world, beat Bengal. In answer to your question about ‘‘tests and examinations’’ after ‘‘lectures,’’ which are ‘‘valueless if not followed by some tests,’’ I do not think examinations on words do any good.

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‘‘Health Lectures for Indian Villages,’’ 1893 Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Health Lectures for Indian Villages,’’ India 4,10 (New Series) (1893):305-06

London 1 October 1893 Knowing the wide circulation which your journal enjoys among the educated classes in India, may I ask the favour of a little space to appeal to those classes to support and direct the efforts which are being made on behalf of the health of villagers and their families? I obser ve that some native journals express a fear that if government undertakes village sanitation, the result will be increased taxation in some form. They also fear that the work of sanitation will be promoted ‘‘in accordance with European ideas,’’ thereby weakening the sense of Indian nationality. I do not presume to say that these fears are without any foundation. But I desire to suggest the direction in which our Indian reformers might work, so as to obtain for their poorer brethren protection from the unsanitary evils which are now sapping their strength and vitality, without additional taxation, or trenching unduly upon national customs: on the contrary, by working through the villagers themselves and teaching them to give the fullest effect to the admirable doctrines of their religion with regard to cleanliness and purity. As regards the need of something being done to improve village surroundings there can be no doubt, and I see that a native journal fully endorses the following remarks by Dr Gregg [sanitary commissioner of Bengal] on the difficulties of rural sanitation: Rural sanitation is unknown in these provinces. No attention whatever is paid to conservancy or water supply, and stagnant ponds are allowed to exhale miasma everywhere. The people are cleanly enough as regards their persons and the interior of their houses, but the surroundings of their villages are often appallingly filthy. This has been and continues to be pointed out to them as the cause of their unhealthiness, but it seems to be of no use talking. . . . Wells are dug for them and tanks are excavated, but they will not set them apart for special purposes, and obstinately use the water of the same tank for washing their persons and bathing their bodies, and washing their clothes, and bathing and watering their cattle, and cleaning their utensils, and for drinking and culinary purposes. So long as this disregard continues there must be a large amount of sickness, disease and death in our villages.

376 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Such being the distressing condition of things, how can some remedy be found in accordance with the social and religious feeling of the people, and without imposing additional taxation on the villages? Does it not appear that a great part of the evil can be removed by the people themselves without expense, if they can be persuaded to adopt a few simple precautions which will ward off suffering and loss from themselves and their children? There is a good old saying that every man should clean his own doorstep. That is common sense and also public economy. The question is: how are the people to be persuaded? Dr Gregg has said that ‘‘it seems to be of no use talking,’’ and words without practical illustration are indeed idle words. It is also no doubt very difficult for those who are of a different race and who hold an official position. But I cannot but think that the villagers would listen more readily if addressed by those who are of their own race and religion, and who exercise no authority as servants of the government, especially if the lecture was illustrated by object lessons on the spot. What I would therefore propose is that the experiment should be tried of giving health lectures and demonstrations of a thoroughly popular kind in a few selected villages in different parts of India. And I would appeal to Indian associations interested in the material and social welfare of the people to undertake this beneficent duty. I have on a previous occasion been in correspondence on this subject with the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, so well known for its knowledge of the needs of the villagers and its active efforts to supply them, and I feel confident that it will give a favourable hearing to this appeal, enlisting in the cause men desirous of following in the steps of the late Mr Ganesh Wasedeo Joshi, who gave a bright example of unselfish devotion to the welfare of the people. My suggestion then is that, where this work is undertaken by a local association, a system of lectures should be organized showing the villagers the need of (a) a better water supply, (b) the carrying away of sewage and (c) the diminution of overcrowding, these lectures being given from village to village by men (1) well versed themselves in the principle of sanitation and (2) knowing the habits of the people and able to sympathize with and help them, without offending their prejudices. Probably the village schoolrooms might be utilized for the lectures, which might be made attractive by object lessons with the magic lanterns, showing the noxious living organisms in foul air and water. Such preparations shown at the International Hygienic Congress produced a strong impression.

Village and Town Sanitation / 377

But the lecture would only be the first beginning of the teaching; a lecturer who had made himself acceptable to the people would go round the village and show the people how to dispose of their refuse. . . . Now about the cost. I am aware how difficult it is to find funds for the current work of public associations. But could not a special fund be raised for this special urgent need? I know how, from ancient times up to the present day, large sums have always been forthcoming in India from charitable men and women for wells, tanks, hospitals, dispensaries and other institutions for the public good. Would not the comparatively small sum required for the present experiment be forthcoming if the case were urgently represented to those having the means? Prevention is better than cure. If we can prevent disease by simple sanitary precautions it is a better religious act than relieving the person after he is stricken by disease. So strongly do I feel the need of such action that, if such a fund is started, I will, with the help of a few English friends, gladly send a small contribution as token of my earnest good will. Also, if an association submitted to government a well-considered scheme for such a system of health lectures, I should have great hopes that it would obtain a moderate grant of public money (equal perhaps to what is raised by private subscription) to help in carrying out this work. His excellency the present viceroy [Lord Lansdowne] and other high authorities are deeply interested in the cause of sanitation, and if the association offered to furnish full reports of its operations and to allow the grant to depend upon the results shown, it seems that a strong claim would be established for assistance in this good practical work for our poorer Indian brethren. Source: From a letter/draft/copy to Lord Kimberley,57 Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9014/131

28 November 1893 Private and Confidential. Village Sanitation in India. May I trust that your kindness will not consider it too great an intrusion on your invaluable time if I try to bespeak your favourable interest on behalf of some points in Indian village sanitation—or rather non-sanitation? For many years I have been deeply interested in this work. The Bombay Village Sanitation Act was a step, but it is said to be almost a

57 John Wodehouse (1826-1902), diplomat and Liberal Cabinet minister, 1st earl of Kimberley, secretar y of state for India.

378 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India dead letter for want of funds. I then ventured to suggest to Lord Cross who, with Lord Lansdowne, kindly gave me the opportunity, and many experts joined in the suggestion, that each village should be allowed to reser ve part of its own cess to answer the minimum requirements of its own sanitary necessities. Perhaps your great kindness to India might make it possible to call for this letter to Lord Cross of 21 March 1892 and its enclosures. I have also tried not to be behindhand with the Indian native associations, to appeal to some of them in Bombay presidency on this subject because we cannot reform the Indian homes without the Indians. A whole legion of sanitarians could not do it. Especially, as you are aware, the ‘‘Poona Sarvajanik Sabha’’ has often given valuable information to the Government of India. It (the Sabha) would doubtless start instr ucted Indian lecturers who would go round to the villages and show them on the spot what they could do for themselves, if it (the Sabha) had the encouragement of a small grant from government and a small subvention from England. This would answer in some degree the question of want of funds. But above all the mere fact of the viceroy of India having shown his interest by such a grant would give such a stimulus as nothing else could to Indian native exertions for their own benefit. Pardon me for writing such a truism to you. It cherishes their loyalty and binds the native Indians to us. It is so necessar y, if you thought well. Source: From a typed letter signed by Nightingale, and two typed copies of letters to Mrs Harold Hendley,58 Add Mss 45812 ff185-86, 187-88 and 194

15 September 1894 Private. I am deeply obliged to you for sending me your valuable book on hygiene and I venture to ask a few questions of so competent and enlightened a lady. . . . The [Indian] government will devote or has devoted a certain sum ever y year to protect drinking water in villages. And how well it will be for you, as you propose, to teach them how to protect it in a certain measure themselves. The hygienic rule given about cholera is not to go near it (if possible, we may add) if we wish not to spread it. Would it not be possible

58 Née Emma Mary Beall (d. 1928); her husband, Harold Hendley (1861-1932), was at the time civil surgeon in the Punjab.

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to try to show how cholera may in some measure be prevented from taking up its abode in the household for which we are responsible? (There is a little pamphlet of this kind in South India.) Are there numerous villages in the Punjab in which advice to send for the doctor to poor village natives is impracticable? . . . There is now a movement for teaching the people by native lecturers who, after having gained the people’s confidence, should go round the village and show them on the spot how to protect their water supply, where to put their refuse, etc. It had even been suggested in one presidency that native women might be instructed to go to the women in their own homes. Lectures do little enough even for the cultivated. I venture to send you a pamphlet of mine, an attempt to reach the countr y cottage mothers in England.59 I could ask many more questions, as e.g., what difficulty is there from caste in the Punjab—if any? must you have lower castes there to remove cattle manure and human excreta, etc.? But I have troubled you too much already. I see many allusions to India in ‘‘Nursing and Accidents,’’ etc., but nursing is too often I suppose unattainable by the native poor. What immense good may be done will be done by yourself and Lieutenant Colonel H. Hendley, if you lay out the road to reach the poor natives in the Punjab and find what they most want in hygiene and what they can do for themselves. May success attend you. 20 September 1894 Private. Thank you a thousand times for your long and most interesting letter, so full of information. I should be so sorry not to see you, as you are so good as to offer a visit, before you return to India. If you could kindly fix a day now, at 5 p.m. any afternoon after today, I would tr y to keep it free. Forgive my having been so long in answering yours. It was partly owing to my waiting for the Madras pamphlets—eight only of those I ordered for you are come—partly to press of work. 1. You kindly allude to page 20 of my Rural Hygiene, and what I have said on physiology. You will see that those were given to educated gentlewomen and not to the poor, but to those who were to teach the poor at home. If you are kind enough to look at the original pamphlet, which I enclose, and which I edited, you will observe from a specimen lecture

59 Probably her ‘‘Rural Health’’ paper in Public Health Care 6:607-21.

380 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India at p 20, addressed by one of these ladies to the cottage mothers, how infinitely simple it was and that only as a stepping-stone for invitations from the cottage mother to ask her to show them in their homes. 2. With regard to what you have seen about the new water supply at Peshawar not being relished by the natives, it is always so, I believe, for the first few years in India. But we take courage. In an instance which came under my own knowledge, a bheestie [water carrier] was once found (in one of the most European cities in India) by an Anglo-Indian putting mud into the pure new water supply. ‘‘What are you about?’’ said the Anglo-Indian. ‘‘O Sahib,’’ said the bheestie, ‘‘my master would not (a native master of course) drink the water if I did not dirty it.’’ But all that has subsided, and the natives are as thankful for the pure water supply as the Europeans now. So will you find, I trust. . . . I enclose the paper read at Budapest, according to your desire (there is a resolution too which I will send) and the original pamphlet of the Health Missioner and eight little Madras pamphlets. There are four larger ones still to come. May all blessings attend your great work. . . . The Punjab Report (government) particularly mentions the filthiness of the surroundings of the Punjab homes, but says that the inhabitants would greatly resent its interference.

‘‘Village Sanitation in India,’’ 1894 Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Village Sanitation in India,’’ A paper for the Tropical Section of the 8th International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at Budapest (London: Spottiswoode & Co., 20 August 1894). (The Memorandum of 1892 is reprinted as an appendix, pp 6-8.) Also in Huitième Congrès International d’Hygiène et de Démographie tenu à Budapest du 1er au 9 septembre 1894, Comptesrendus et Mémoires, publiés par le Dr Sigismond de Gerlóczy, tome II, section III: Hygiène des pays chauds (Budapest: Könyvnyomda-Részvénytársaság 1896):579-83

I have for many years been interested in questions affecting the health of the people of India. At first my attention was chiefly directed to the cities, and I watched with great interest what was being done by the municipalities, not only in the presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, but also in important local centres such as Ahmedabad. In some of these places there are water works worthy of the great towns of Europe, though we are told that other ‘‘large centres remain in the condition of water supply in which the Hindu handed them to the Mughal [Muslim ruler until 1857], the Mughal to the queen.’’ And I found that strong efforts were being made to deal with the

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question of drainage, which is a peculiarly difficult one with dense populations in a tropical climate. But the number of large towns in India is very small. India is mainly a country of peasant cultivators. And I came to understand that 90 percent of the 240 millions of India dwell in small rural villages, each village being self-contained and organized as a commune, a little republic, with its village council and mayor, who is called the headman or ‘‘patel.’’ It thus became impressed upon me that the sanitation affecting the great bulk of the Indian population was village sanitation and, in order to benefit the people of India, we must try to learn the actual conditions under which they live in these village communities. What is the present state of sanitation in the villages? What are the diseases from which they suffer? What are the most necessary preventive measures? Which are the main difficulties in our way? Whence may we hope for help? Under the old village organization, the villagers, working under their headman, managed in their humble way every department of business required for their local wants, and it was the duty of certain low-caste village servants to remove dead animals and perform other sanitary work. But, unfortunately, in a large part of India the village system has been allowed to fall into decay. The ancient patriarchal methods have ceased to be effective, while as yet little has been done to find any modern substitute. The results are ver y deplorable. This is what the sanitary commissioner of Bengal says regarding the sanitar y condition of the villages. . . . 60 The subject is one which has naturally engaged the attention of some of the leading Indian associations, such as the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Bombay Presidency Association, which occupy themselves with the social and physical condition of the people. And I have had the advantage of corresponding both with these associations and also with several educated Indian gentlemen interested in sanitation and well versed in the condition and customs of the people. From what they tell me I learn that the great needs of the very poor in the villages are: (a) diminution of overcrowding, (b) carrying away of sewage and (c) better water supply, while the difficulties in the way of improvement are to be found in the poverty of the villagers and in their attachment to old custom. As regards removal of sewage and care of the water supply, much may be done by the villagers them-

60 W.H. Gregg’s citation is the same as on p 375 above.

382 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India selves if they can be made to understand the terrible results of neglect and the benefit of the most simple remedies. I have therefore appealed to my educated Indian friends to instruct their poorer brethren in these vital truths. And I have ventured to suggest to them that health missioners might be sent among the villages, men (and women also, to convince the rural mothers, whose influence in this matter is great and whose dearest interests are at stake) well versed in the principles of sanitation, and at the same time sympathetic and conciliatory. Lectures and practical demonstrations might be given in the village schoolrooms. But the lecture would only be the first beginning of the teaching; a lecturer who had made himself acceptable to the people would go round the village and show the people how to dispose of their refuse; he would explain to them the danger of depositing it in their little close courtyards, and how the solid should be separated from the liquid excreta, and the former utilized in their cultivation. Then he would go with them to examine their water supply and show them certain simple precautions to be observed, such as putting up a little parapet so that the well should not become a cesspool after every shower of rain, not washing near the supply of drinking water, and not allowing human beings or cattle to foul the river, tank or well. The Hindu religion enjoins so much purity and cleanliness that the influence of religious teachers and of the caste panchayats (or councils) might be usefully appealed to. With a gentle and affectionate people like the Hindus much may be accomplished by personal influence. I can give a striking instance within my own knowledge. In the Bombay presidency there was a village which had for long years been decimated by cholera. For long years the government had in vain been trying to move the village: ‘‘No,’’ they said, ‘‘they would not go; they had been there since the time of the Marathas; it was a sacred spot and they would not move now.’’ At last, and not long ago, a sanitar y commissioner [T.G. Hewlett]—now, alas! dead—who by wise sympathy, practical knowledge and skill had conquered the confidence of the people, went to the panchayat, explained to them the case and urged them to move to a spot which he pointed out to them as safe and accessible. By the very next morning it had all been settled as he advised. The government in India is very power ful and great things may be accomplished by official authority, but in such delicate matters affecting the homes and customs of a very conser vative people, almost more may be done by personal influence exercised with kindly sympathy and respect for the prejudices of others.

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The most recent official reports show what has been done by the administrations of the various provinces in the matter of village sanitation, and we should tender our cordial acknowledgments to Lord Cross and Lord Kimberley, the late secretaries of state for India, and to Mr Fowler, who now holds the office; also to Lord Lansdowne, the late viceroy, and to Lord Elgin, for the personal interest they have shown in this matter. The main difficulty is, of course, the financial one. From the official reports above referred to it appears that some progress has been made towards improving the sanitary condition of Indian villages, but much remains to be done. It seems that the people themselves fully appreciate efforts for improving the supply of drinking water and for draining water-logged tracts. But at present they do not go beyond this, and they would much dislike any scheme for the additional taxation of villages for sanitary purposes. Meanwhile, in Madras, through the agency of village unions, which are increasing in number yearly, in Bombay, the Central Provinces and the North West Provinces, under the recently enacted Village Sanitation Acts, in Bengal under the Rural Drainage Bill, and in all parts of India by administrative influence and pressure, villagers are being induced to carry out simple measures of sanitary improvement and especially to extend and safeguard the sources for supply of drinking water. Funds for these undertakings are often inadequate; still, money is to some extent being made available from local funds and from the general treasur y. There remains to notice the important development in connection with the seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held in London in 1891, when a tropical section was organized in order to deal with the special conditions affecting health and disease in hot climates. On that occasion the princes and people of India showed a very active interest in the health movement, considerable sums were contributed to the expenses of the congress, delegates were appointed and, under the auspices of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, valuable papers were contributed by Messrs Kirtikar, Ghole and Dhurandar bearing upon the question of village sanitation in India. An Indian committee of the congress was formed, under the chairmanship of Sir Douglas Galton, and special meetings were held in connection with the congress, to discuss the insanitary condition of Indian rural villages. Arising out of the facts and opinions then brought forward, the following important Memorandum was recorded by members of the Indian committee. . . . (see p 368 above).

384 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India At Budapest this year the Tropical Section will hold its first session, and its deliberations will be watched with eager attention, for the whole human race is interested in these questions of tropical diseases which, generated under special local conditions, too often spread to other latitudes. I earnestly trust that those who are now bringing their learning and experience to bear upon these difficult problems will favourably view this my humble effort to throw light upon the causes of disease in India, and will use their powerful influence to improve the condition of the many millions where life, health and happiness are involved. Editor: For the next letter there is a draft with a date exactly two years earlier. The letter reproduced here is from a source of actually received letters, while the draft is from a British Library volume with Nightingale’s own papers. The more interesting differences in wording are noted. Source: From a letter to Vaughan Nash,61 Woodward Biomedical Library A.78

10 September 1896 My dear Vaughan, if I may call you so. I am sorry to say that there is no one now in London to whom I could ‘‘refer’’ you ‘‘who might help’’ you ‘‘to give a clear and accurate account of what is being attempted’’ (in Bengal) ‘‘in the Chronicle.’’ I am afraid, you will think that what I am going to say is more historical than such an account as you desire. It is a long story. For some years there have been ‘‘village unions’’ in Madras presidency which have succeeded admirably, but not quite according to our ideas, which obtained sometime before the Bombay Village Sanitation Act. This however became almost a dead letter for want of funds. Funds which were supposed to be for the sanitation of villages being applied by the local or district councils for making roads for the great officials, e.g., the road to Mahabaleshwar was for the governor of Bombay. (These are the things which make cess payers of India suspicious of the British raj.) One of our next moves was what you will read at Appendix B, Memo pp 6 and 7 of the pamphlet enclosed. I have received through the I.O. a great many answers from the Government of India and through the Government of India from the provincial governments to

61 Vaughan Nash (1861-1932), journalist, married to Rosalind Shore-Smith. Nash travelled to India in 1900 to report on famine in the Manchester Guardian, and later as a book, The Great Famine and Its Causes.

Village and Town Sanitation / 385

this. And the matter is still progressing. All this is of course for strictly private for yourself alone). At p 3, 8 you will see what the object of the village sanitary work even to be and what as far as I yet know (but I am to receive fresh reports) those of the village unions, whose funds are clubbed together—see p 5 (2). The lieutenant governor of Bengal long resisted village unions on the ground that the supervision would be so expensive. But he appears to have yielded now, only in the notice which appeared, they seem to be for ‘‘roads as well as sanitation,’’ besides what appears in the cutting you are so good as to send me. We have already got our ‘‘resolution’’ from the Budapest Congress approving the enclosed objects. This always helps with government. But we must not oppose them, if we want to win. This is a thing which the Englishman so little understands. In the House of Commons here we pit H.M.’s Opposition against H.M.’s government and vice versa. We try to turn out H.M.’s government if we believe that will do us any good. In India there is only H.M.’s government (H.M.’s Opposition does not exist in the sense it does here). The native press is vicious (and useless enough) because it can only abuse. It has nothing to propose.62 And here the India published here in London continually forgets this. It deals in headings in large capitals, ‘‘Blunders of the British Government,’’ which is simply mischievous (as you will understand) and nothing else. We praise the S. of Ss. for India and the viceroys (GGs) for everything we can praise them for and we don’t quarrel with them. And we get something while the others get nothing. They are simply a ‘‘reductio ad absurdum.’’ I am afraid I have helped you very little, if at all. I could show you a great many papers, but you have no time to read them. Perhaps we may resume the subject when you and I have more leisure. It will last longer than we shall. I conclude that now we are to lose you in the D.C. for a few weeks after this week (which I am very glad of) and that therefore you are in a hurry to do this. But whatever you do, you will kindly not drag me into it or write anything where I may be detected. Other wise any influence I may have will gone. I may say that, so far from this being an ‘‘experiment in local selfgovernment,’’ L.S.-G. has been bursting out, like roses in June, all

62 Add Mss 45795 f200 has ‘‘And a zealous mp takes up some of the abuse, and never thinks that only 200 or at most 2000 is the circulation of that paper.

386 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India over India ever since Lord Ripon’s63 government. He was the author of it all: his attempt to substitute for low-paid corrupt petty officials who are our representatives in India, decent villagers. But 99 percent of all the work still remains to be done. India is a big place, almost as big as the I.O. I do not anticipate that our ‘‘village councils’’ will have much to learn from India? The circumstances are not only different, they are often poles asunder. Please remember never to betray me. What I am afraid of is reaction. Parliamentary action is so remote from any native ideas.64 F.N. Source: From a letter to H. Babington Smith, Trinity College, Cambridge, Houghton Collection, draft (dated 10 November 1896), Add Mss 45814 ff4-11

13 November 1896 Private. I have never thanked the viceroy [Lord Elgin] as I ought for so kindly sending me the papers regarding the ‘‘Village Sanitar y Inspection Book,’’ invaluable, if carried out. Will you perform this office for me with enthusiasm? Also, may I venture to ask what is the ‘‘progress and maintenance’’ of this Village Sanitary Record in the Bombay presidency, and if it is not too much to ask, in the Madras presidency, in Bengal, the Punjab, North West Provinces, etc., especially as regards (1) the sort of persons who ‘‘furnish the information’’ and if any pains are taken by native ‘‘literates’’ to incense them with the value of the ‘‘points.’’ It would be such a valuable education for them, and as regards the ‘‘literate residents,’’ whether ‘‘headman, village accountant’’ or other who ‘‘embodies’’ it in the V.S.I. Book. It would be at least as valuable information to us British on the habits of the people. (2) The ‘‘character of the soil’’ and whether saturated with noxious matters; or water-logged and producing malarial fever; whether works of drainage have been attempted and whether ‘‘embankments’’ have brought an unjust stigma on irrigation as the mother of fever by obstructing the drainage. (3) As regards the ‘‘overcrowding of houses’’ so lamentable, especially at night in some places (‘‘My house is like a box,’’ says the Hindu

63 Add Mss 45795 f204 has ‘‘the hated one.’’ 64 Add Mss 45795 f201: What I am afraid of, if we press the natives too hard, is reaction against our sanitary ideas. And we always forget how entirely remote from any native ideas, except the smallest minority, almost as invisible to the naked eye as a microbe, Parliament is and Parliamentary action.

Village and Town Sanitation / 387

complacently) or of ‘‘sites.’’ And the sanitary (or insanitary) state of the ‘‘immediate surroundings’’ of ‘‘houses.’’ (4) ‘‘Trades and occupations’’ in villages: what trades are noxious. ‘‘Castes’’ and whether the ‘‘caste’’ of native sweepers and scavengers, paid by the villagers in land and handfuls of food, still exists to the infinite benefit of the inhabitants, or has been swept away itself— almost by mistake as it were. (5) As to the ‘‘food’’ of different districts, respectively rice, millet, etc., the ‘‘supplies’’ of food—a question, alas!, so important in the present scarcity—whether by irrigation (canals, wells, etc.), railroad or imported, etc. (6) Water supply, perhaps most important of all how wells are protected from impurities, how tanks are kept pure. May not Europeans, visiting the village tank unexpectedly at the evening hour, find women washing dirty clothes in it, cattle drinking and fouling it, streams of liquid refuse from the village, etc. And from this tank their drinking water is obtained! Is any effort made by, say, the village schoolmaster to teach at least the young the horrible mischief of fouling the drinking water? (Brahmins will not touch manure, unless educated to it, for fear of the loss of ‘‘caste.’’ Could not advantage be taken of this?) If there is a river, is it polluted by impure drainage or by manufactures? Has any outbreak of disease been known to ensue from a cleaning, owing to the resulting exposure of noxious matter? (To many of these questions, I might, I am ashamed to say, find a melancholy answer from some place or other in rural England. We are by no means immaculate.) (7) To ever y question, in this crucial ‘‘point,’’ including ‘‘How is house refuse disposed of?’’ might I beg a careful answer, hoping that my humble anxiety may be forgiven. (8) Stalling of cattle for the sake of protection inside the houses and storing of the manure. (9) ‘‘Religious fairs’’; what measures are taken to prevent the mischiefs of an agglomeration of people? ‘‘Mar riage processions,’’ ‘‘burials of the dead’’ are most interesting questions, supplying information on the customs and religions of different peoples. (10) Scarcity (or famine). May I recur to this question? As I have been for very many years intensely interested in the progress of irrigation (people must live and not die in order to be sanitary), might I venture to ask what is expected from irrigation, what from railroads, what from importation of foreign corn respectively in the present scarcity? Painfully interesting and most important statistics of the spread of irri-

388 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India gation, etc., have been published by the Government of India. Might I ask for more? The Government of India invites local governments and administrations to make ‘‘additions’’ in the ‘‘questions to be put.’’ Now, after all, Fever is more important than cholera. It takes more victims by thousands and thousands of thousands. It saps the strength of the populations more, is constant while cholera is occasional. (11) Have questions been asked about prevalence localities of fever and its causes? (12) How have the ‘‘selected villages’’ responded? How the ‘‘chief village’’ of ‘‘each group’’? How far has it then extended to all the villages in the group? (13) Might I ask how far assistance has been invited or valuable co-operation obtained from the various local associations, European and native, interested in the social and sanitar y welfare of the people? Pardon me, I am aghast at the multitude of my sins, the multitude of questions I am asking. But as the list of ‘‘Points’’ was not lost, neither will the answers, I trust, be lost upon us, if you are so ver y good as to supply them. And your kindness will not ‘‘growl.’’ And we would thank the viceroy with all our hearts and minds for what he is doing for the improvement and enlightenment of his people concerning their health. But the peasant women, in whom really lies the way to health, the key to health and to disease, have yet to be reached. ‘‘La reconnaissance n’est qu’un vif sentiment des bienfaits futurs’’ [gratitude is but the keen anticipation of future blessings]. Pray believe me, your faithful servant Florence Nightingale P.S. Indeed I am aware how far-reaching such questions are, and that in order to procure full information, reference to local authorities would be necessary. In the meantime, I should be most exceedingly grateful for a brief reply on the various points, which would enable me to understand how far the most excellent circular of the Government of India has already produced an effect. F.N. Please let me have the ms back.

‘‘Health Missioners for Rural India,’’ 1896 Editor: In the following published letter, Nightingale referred to her previous suggestion of holding health lectures on sanitation and simple demonstrations of a popular nature in Indian villages in order to

Village and Town Sanitation / 389

help resist epidemics and recurrent diseases. She commended T.G. Hewlett’s sanitar y work and Behramji M. Malabari’s proposals for selfhelp in matters of sanitation. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Health Missioners for Rural India,’’ India: A Record and Review of Indian Affairs 7,12 (New Series) (December 1896):359-60

In a former paper contributed to India [‘‘Health Lectures for Indian Villages,’’ 1893] I made some suggestions for improving the health of Indian rural villages. My proposal was that a system of simple and popular health lectures should be organized to show the villagers the need of (a) a pure water supply, (b) the removal of refuse and (c) the diminution of overcrowding, these lectures being given from village to village by men well versed themselves in the principles of sanitation, and knowing the habits of the people and able to sympathize with them and help them, without offending their prejudices. It was suggested that the village schoolrooms might be utilized for the lectures, which might be made attractive by object lessons with the magic lantern, showing by the help of microscopic slides the noxious living organisms in foul air and water. But it was pointed out that the lecture would be only the first beginning of the teaching; a lecturer who had made himself acceptable to the people would go round the village and show the people how to dispose of their refuse. . . . To show how much may be done for the Indian peasant—who is thought so unpersuadable—by the vigour of sympathy, may I mention an instance of a sanitary officer in India [T.G. Hewlett], now alas! dead, who, when he came into office, found the rural people sacrificing with flowers and fruits at the shrines of the Goddess of Smallpox and the Goddess of (whatever they call it) Cholera; and how, long before he left, they came to him, if there had been four or five deaths from cholera: ‘‘Sahib, bestir yourself, don’t you see we’re all dead?’’ Another instance of the work of the same man is how he moved a village in one night, which had been decimated by cholera and fever for one hundred years, and which successive governments, native and British, had in vain attempted to move: in vain, because it was clustered round a temple of great sanctity; and he, by persuading the panchayat, moved them to a site of his own choosing, and he came in the morning and they were all, goods and all, settled in upon the new and safe site. He knew what he wanted to do and how to do it! Is it not the case that we sometimes call people unpersuadable when we do not sufficiently try

390 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to look at the matter from their point of view? Do we not sometimes come into fatal collision with prejudices which have in them a grain of tr uth, because we do not have patience to seek out that truth? I am painfully aware how difficult, how almost impossible, it is for anyone at a great distance to do anything to help forward a movement requiring unremitting labour and supervision on the spot. But it is my privilege to meet in England from time to time Indian friends who are heartily desirous of obtaining for their poorer fellow countrymen the benefits which, through sanitary science, are gradually being extended to the masses here, both in town and country, and which are doing so much to promote their health and happiness; so I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard seed germinates and roots itself, and at last produces an overshadowing tree.65 I should like to see such experiments tried in different provinces and under various conditions. As regards the Bombay presidency I have been so fortunate as to obtain the powerful aid of Mr B.M. Malabari,66 who has recently paid his periodical visit to England and with whom I have had the opportunity of full consultation. And I do not think I shall be betraying confidence if I say that he is turning his special attention to Gujarat and Sind, and will probably make his first attempt by establishing small committees at Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Surat and Hyderabad in Sind. The watchword is—small beginnings under favourable circumstances. ‘‘Let us begin somehow,’’ he says, ‘‘in the name of God, the beginner of good life and good work. Let us cast the seed in the most congenial soil we can find. What pleasure it will be to watch this seed germinate, shoot up the tiny flower and in time bear the much needed fruit! This is a beautiful process and the only one that is natural. It will repay us abundantly; the growth we seek will be real and lasting.’’ The program he suggests is modest and practical. He proposes to raise a small fund, say 1200 or 2000 rupees, for the expenses of the first year. When that has been collected and a local committee is formed, the next step would be to prepare a simple sanitary primer suitable to the local requirements and to have it translated into the vernacular languages of the district, with a view to its distribution among the rural villages.

65 An allusion to Luke 13:19. 66 Behramji M. Malabari (1853-1912), Indian social reformer, poet, editor of The Indian Spectator.

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Then arises the most important part of the work, that of securing health missioners for select localities. Mr Malabari would have them married men, whose wives would accompany them and preach health and cleanliness amongst the village women. In this proposal I would most heartily concur. Indeed from my point of view, to enlist the sympathy and gain the approval of the good mother who rules the home is the keystone of the whole position. If her authority is on our side I feel little fear for the result. Then it is proposed that the health missioners should send in monthly reports to the committee, who would publish and circulate the most interesting portions, especially to local boards and to sanitary and medical officers. If the movement commended itself to the villagers and to the public generally, the government might, at the end of the year, be asked to consider the best means of further promoting it. Such is an outline of the proposals sketched out by Mr Malabari. It is essentially a scheme of self-help, but it also contemplates recognition by government. And this seems the right means to attain success: local effort, strengthened and stimulated by the great central authority. Happily there is no doubt of the good will of government in this matter of village sanitation. Successive viceroys have shown an anxious desire to deal effectively with this most difficult problem, and a solid foundation for future proceedings is being laid by the excellent ‘‘Village Sanitary Inspection Books,’’ which are being introduced for the purpose of collecting and storing precise information regarding the condition of each village. Every sanitarian who reads the Government of India letter of 8 March 1895 (which is printed at p 367 for ready reference) will be struck by the thoroughly practical and suggestive character of the various ‘‘points’’ to which attention is drawn. It will be observed that the government propose to introduce the system of inspection books tentatively in selected villages, which will be conveniently grouped and marked off in the official maps. Such selected villages would be specially suitable for the operation of our voluntary committees, which would be in a position to assist the villagers in accurately compiling the information required by the government. Doubtless the local officers would gladly include in a group of selected villages any locality which the committee may choose for the scene of their labours. The health missioner in such places would occupy a most useful position—in touch with the villagers on the one hand and with the sanitary and district officers on the other. And by gaining the confidence of the people he could act as an interpreter as

392 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India regards their habits, wishes and prejudices in such a way as to remove friction and promote useful work. Many of the ‘‘points’’ are of an intricate kind, needing much careful local observation. Take for example Point 4, which deals with the character of the soil and its tendency to retain moisture or other wise, and the question is asked whether there is any obstruction to drainage by roads, railways, embankments or other works. Here many interesting considerations arise. In fever-stricken villages the soil about the houses may be saturated with noxious matter, or the whole neighbourhood may be so water-logged, owing to embankments or large tanks in the vicinity, as to produce malarial fever. In this connection it would be interesting to ascertain from the villagers what, according to their idea, are the causes of local unhealthiness, and what are the medicines and modes of treatment adopted by them in case of illness. Point 8, again, refers to the all-important question of the water supply and its proper use by the inhabitants, and here also there is need for constant watchfulness, in order to ascertain whether the people really take trouble to get their drinking water pure, or whether they are content to go on in the old way, taking into their bodies, by means of impure water, the germs of fever and other destructive maladies. It is only by the constant care of the people themselves that a tank or stream, nominally set apart for drinking purposes, can be effectually protected from pollution by liquid refuse, clothes washing and the intr usion of cattle. And the people will not take this care unless convinced of its vital necessity for themselves and their children. Here therefore instr uction and persuasion by friendly and familiar advisors are urgently needed. The vital question of conservancy, including the disposal of house and kitchen refuse, is dealt with in Point 9. This is a matter which depends so much on local conditions and the habits of the people, that too great pains cannot be taken in order to discover in each locality what is the most suitable method of obtaining satisfactory results. In this, as in most of the other matters, it is the peasant woman who, in the rural villages, holds the key either to health or disease. I have put together these few rough notes in the hope that the leaders of Indian public opinion about to meet in congress [the 12th Indian National Congress] at Calcutta will take up this question, and with their special knowledge and experience will guide our steps in a matter so deeply affecting the welfare of the Indian masses.

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hrough her practical work in public health and sanitation Nightingale came to address the plight of Indian nationals, especially that of the peasant class. She became increasingly eager to try to influence aspects of Indian life and society beyond the area of public health, to be an agent of social change. Up to the time of the Mutiny in 1857, it was widely believed that India had to be Westernized if it was to be shaken out of its inertia, and that Indian society could and should be reformed on the British model, especially through education. An important contribution to education in India was embodied in Charles Wood’s despatch of 1854, which created a properly articulated system of education from primary school to university. It led to the opening of the first Indian universities in 1857, one in each presidency capital, and to the foundation of private colleges. The active co-operation of the Indian upper classes was considered essential for European-style reform. Not so for the lower classes/castes, who were typically commanded with little regard for their sensibilities. British opinion indeed despaired of ever raising that ‘‘inferior race,’’ made of ‘‘ ‘niggers’ or tigers,’’ views Nightingale deplored (see p 147 above). Prejudices were expressed without inhibition. For instance, James Mill (the father of John Stuart Mill) was able to present Hindus as backward and apathetic, Muslims as tyrants and fanatics, and British colonialists as preparing India’s way to a high stage of civilization.1 Even the liberal Thomas Babington Macaulay, in 1835, poured scorn on the ‘‘entire native literature of India and Arabia’’ as not worth ‘‘a single shelf of a good European library.’’2

1 James Mill, Histor y of British India, especially vol. 2 (see editor’s notes pp 164 and 374). 2 Quoted by Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj 34.

/ 393

394 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The Mutiny of 1857-58 was a painful repudiation of the myth of British benevolence. It was clear that British efforts to Westernize India were resented. The queen’s proclamation of 1858, on the assumption of crown rule of India from the East India Company, stipulated racial equality and respect for Indian traditions. But after some measure of calm had been secured, British behaviour soon reverted to its rut. Attitudes were amended, but only slowly. British rule continued to be largely self-ser ving. As Sarvepalli Gopal noted in his study of the period, ‘‘Canning, during his years as viceroy (1858-62), was anxious to win the favour of the British community in India, and he gained their applause by supporting their interests and resisting the home government on their behalf.’’3 Gentr y and aristocracy (ex-warlords now disarmed, rajas, rajputs, talukdars) recovered their lands; their support was again actively sought4 while injustices toward the ryots and social abuses were perpetuated. Even ‘‘the five years of Lawrence’s viceroyalty (1864-69) saw little impact on the Indian scene,’’5 except in the construction of public works and some improvement in sanitation. While Lawrence had sought to advance the well-being of the ryots, he was powerless to effect real change. This was the precise point at which Nightingale wished to intervene. Land tenure, land revenue policies, the power of the zemindars (revenue collectors in Bengal, confirmed as landowners by the British) and talukdars (revenue-collecting intermediaries in the North West Provinces and Oudh, confirmed as landlords by the British), usury and taxes— all of which contributed to the dire condition of the ryots. Taking a stand against the stream, Nightingale believed that much could be achieved with the better-educated lower classes eager to better their lot. A general remark is necessary here. When considering the evolution of Indian society since the beginnings of the colonial period, it is essential to avoid seeing Indian history as shaped exclusively by colonial power, or the British presence as the active agent moulding a passive India. Indian society already had its own evolutionary momentum prior to the colonial age. British rule did not cause the profound social changes that took place in India prior to 1850 so much as speeded them up.6

3 4 5 6

Sar vepalli Gopal, British Policy in India 1858-1905 57. See T.R. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857-1870 172. Gopal, British Policy in India 62. See Christopher Alan Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire 155-68.

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This perception must be applied when studying developments in agriculture, trade and commerce, the practice of pilgrimage (which existed prior to the railways), temple ritual and devotional movements and philosophical and theological activities. After 1850 Western ways began to have a greater impact on practices and beliefs, but various uprisings and, above all, the Mutiny, impressed upon the British a deep need for a constant reassessment of their policies. This is the context of Nightingale’s involvement with Indian social and political evolution. She joined the chorus of Indians and British social reformers who aimed at overcoming negative elements of the caste system, sought to curtail the powers of the landholders, change the laws of marriage and inheritance, and abolish such extreme practices as suttee (immolation of widows), female infanticide and child marriage. She also inveighed against British assumptions about private property. ‘‘No ancient nations had our extreme ideas respecting the sacredness of private property. Why do we introduce them into India which is an ancient nation?’’ (see p 448 below). In seeking social change in India Nightingale was clearly indicting the British practices that had intensified deplorable aspects of Indian life. She asked, ‘‘What progress did we make in thirty-five years?’’ To Sir W. Denison she stated, ‘‘My feeling is that the people are deteriorating and that we have to a certain extent been the cause of this’’ (see p 464 below). Social change had become her new focus, but the pace of change was frustratingly slow. ‘‘The growth of India’s economy in the years 1860 to 1890 was to make only a small dent in its inheritance of rural poverty.’’7 Nightingale was aware that positive, lasting transformations could not take place without developments in education. Her concerns about education in general, and agricultural and technical training in particular, are forcefully expressed in both her private correspondence and her publications. It was in that context that Nightingale considered that ‘‘irrigation in India is the great question of the day, as the repeal of the Corn Laws and unrestricted commerce were the great questions in England in days gone by’’ (see p 293 above). ‘‘Progress in agriculture and education, it was expected, would lead to other social reforms and ultimately to an improvement in the population’s general well-being and political responsibility. Zemindars had to be forced out of their selfishness into care for the common good.’’

7 Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire 199.

396 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Many aspects of the ryots’ extreme poverty had their origin or sanction in the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Introduced by the governor general of the time, Lord Cornwallis, the settlement was the centrepiece of British land revenue policy; it was intended as a way of improving the collection of land taxes and maximizing revenues for the British administration.8 Cornwallis sought ‘‘to introduce private property rights in land through a Permanent Settlement . . . , which would safeguard them from the revenue demands of the state.’’9 The settlement was most concerned with the relationship of the government to the zemindars in Bengal and Bihar, and, to a lesser extent, to the talukdars in Oudh and the North West Provinces. It has been said that Cornwallis’s intention with his settlement was ‘‘to reform the old Bengali zemindar by depriving him of his feudal privileges and to convert him, by education and the gift of property, into an improving landlord after the contemporary English model.’’10 The zemindars or landlords were to be considered the proprietors of the land: the ryots had to pay a rent, left unfixed, to the zemindars, who paid a fixed revenue to the government. The British government expected that the zemindars would be reasonable in raising the rent of the ryots and would invest their savings in the development of the land, cultivating wastelands and caring for irrigation works, and thus improve general productivity. That expectation was hopelessly optimistic. In fact the ryots were given over to the less than tender mercies of the zemindars, who were left free to exact as much rent as possible from the ryots, by any means. The cultivators, if unable to pay, were deprived of their tenure or occupancy rights. Further regulations gave still greater powers to the zemindars, including the power to seize possessions, evict and imprison. Despite the obvious abuses of the system, the government felt that it had to side with the zemindars if peace and order were to be maintained. The results of the Settlement and its sequels, contrary to Cornwallis’s intention, were catastrophic for the ryots. Nightingale called the Settlement ‘‘the most outrageous overthrow of rights of cultivators that ever was effected’’ (see p 421 below). It had been established

8 See Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement, and Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 141-47. 9 David A. Washbrook, ‘‘India 1818-1860: The Two Faces of Colonialism’’ 395-421. Washbrook’s thesis was that Indian nationalism was to remain ‘‘torn between attempts to pursue a modern Western future and to evoke a glorious, unchanging and distinctively ‘Oriental’ Indian past’’ (420). 10 Guha, A Rule of Proper ty for Bengal 171.

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‘‘with no survey, no records of rights and no definite method of assessment; after 1820, zemindari settlements required the recording of rights, annual assessments of cultivated land and periodic reassessments.’’11 A zemindar had many ways to exert power over tenants— legally and otherwise—and these remained until zemindari abolition in the 1950s’’ (211). The ryots were regularly tricked by the zemindars and left unprotected from exploitation and oppression, while the government had committed itself to non-interference. Furthermore, ‘‘European planters in effect robbed peasant farmers of occupancy rights and combined debt servitude with coercion’’ (213). Nightingale joined the already-pressing call for an end to government inertia on the zemindari issue. Rent being the main mechanism to exploit peasant labour, the 1859 Bengal Rent Act had already offered some protection to the cultivators, who received ‘‘occupancy rights’’ on the condition of having cultivated the same piece of land for twelve years continuously. Lord Canning described the act as ‘‘a real and earnest endeavour to improve the position of the ryots of Bengal, and to open to them a prospect of freedom and independence which they have not hitherto enjoyed by clearly defining their rights and by placing restrictions on the power of the zemindars such as ought long since to have been provided.’’12 However, the zemindars could and did easily prevent the application of the act by making long-term occupation close to impossible. Further bills enhanced the position of the zemindars and European planters, making the Indian landlords, in Nightingale’s damning words, ‘‘something between an Irish middleman and an American slaveholder’’ (see p 421 below). Some justice for the ryots had to wait until 1885, when the Bengal Tenancy Act ‘‘sought to give the peasantry of Bengal security of tenure and moderation of rent.’’13 But this was not achieved without debilitating side effects, as Bayly noted: The more homogeneous society of peasants and petty moneylenders which emerged in the later nineteenth century was a more appropriate basis for a semi-European colonial state. It also held out better hopes of profit to the importers of Lancashire cottons

11 Ludden, An Agrarian History of South Asia 167. 12 Cited in Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770 119. Bose’s study of peasant history in Bengal largely holds for colonial India as a whole. 13 Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital 121; see 183.

398 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India than the fragmented consumption of nomads and tribals. Still, in the destruction and degradation of forest, forest produce and herds, the people of India had lost some of their resources with which to guard against bad seasons or the intrusion of the larger society from outside. A hundred years later forests and grazing grounds, along with the cultures they supported, have virtually disappeared.14

Colonial administration of India in the nineteenth century remained plagued by social conservatism. The structure of landholding in India as it had emerged from the pre-colonial period and had been consolidated by British administrators and revenue courts made it likely that profits from a period of slow expansion (such as occurred between 1860 and 1890, for instance) were monopolized by the rural moneylenders and landlords or by urban commercial people. . . . The Indian authorities approached matters of agrarian reform with the greatest of caution.15

Amidst all the changes Indian society went through during British rule, and in face of the ryots’ material deprivation, narrow colonial interests ventured only timidly towards social progress. For better or worse, the second half of the nineteenth century was a critical era in the formation of the social order of modern India. The letters that Nightingale exchanged with Prasanna Kumar Sen between 1878 and 1882 are significant in the context of social reform, as they discuss the improvement of the condition of life of the ryots, and not least because here was an Indian national providing Nightingale with factual information, urging her to work for the betterment of people’s lives and being in turn urged to participate in social action. Four major papers written between 1874 and 1883 encapsulate Nightingale’s proposals for social reform, which were directed explicitly at improving the life of ordinar y Indians. Reproduced below, they offer vivid documentation of the plight of the ryots. Having grasped the scope of their miserable conditions, Nightingale then concentrated her efforts on changing them. For her, in order to reach that goal, British administration had to live up to its duties; the justice system had to be altered and, above all, the agrarian system had to be reconstituted.

14 Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire 144. Bayly’s entire sur vey of ecological, social and ideological changes in nineteenth-century India (136-68) is useful for an understanding of the broader issues. 15 Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire 203.

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The letters preceding the four papers relate Nightingale’s first attempts to gather appropriate material for the papers themselves. Then the lengthy background paper, ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot,’’ with its own introduction, is presented. It was never published, but Nightingale drew from its material to write several essays which did see print. Source: From two letters to Dr Duff,16 Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC4/74/6 and 8

18 July 1874 Nothing can excuse my venturing to intrude upon you and I will not make matters worse by attempting to do so. Sir Arthur Cotton tells me that your kindness will not think it an intrusion. The thing is this: I have been for fifteen years engaged in matters, principally regarding sanitar y administration, for the troops and natives in India. And most official papers on these subjects pass through my poor weak hands. Latterly I have been asked by the ‘‘authorities’’ to write something about the zemindar and ryot question, and they have themselves supplied me with some materials. It is an awful question: you are the first authority living on the state of the population in Bengal. It has been suggested to me, for I had not the audacity to think of it, to seize upon some ‘‘opportunity of asking you to send me your remarks.’’ I can scarcely hope that you will have time or inclination to read the accompanying (very) rough proof probably ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot . . . ’’], which would be the first sketch for anything I should write, were I to carry out what is more a proposal of others than my own, still less that you would find leisure to give me your (truly invaluable) views on the subject. Rather ought I to ask that you will forgive me for wishing you to read one unnecessary line. . . . No. 2. I add to my misdeeds by sending you a copy of a previous pamphlet,17 which gave rise to the idea of writing the one which now implores, very humbly, your criticism upon its first rough proof. 19 August 1874 I cannot thank you enough for your long, most wise and kind letter full of hints invaluable to me. I am the more obliged, because I fear that you could ill afford the time and strength to write it.

16 Probably Alexander Duff (1806-78), missionary in India. 17 ‘‘Life or Death in India,’’ in Health in India, 1873 (9:710-45).

400 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I could have wished that it had been otherwise and that I might have reaped a little more of your unique experience about our poor ryots. But whatever you do must be of such incalculable importance in God’s world and God’s work that I can only pray for God’s blessing on whatever work you are doing and not wish it otherwise. This is merely a word of grateful acknowledgment. I hope that, more than uncertain as my life is, it may not be the last time that I may enjoy some communication with one whom I have ever considered as one of the most favoured of God’s ser vants and in His name I ask for your prayers and blessing. I am, ever yours faithfully and gratefully Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to Maria M. Machin,18 Thomas K. Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, letter 3

30 November 1874 How earnestly I join with you in praying today for His Kingdom to come, ‘‘especially in India,’’ how much does that imply! The poor ryot ground down to a state almost worse than slavery, for he is never but only just above famine. I am sure that you too pray—not for my work in India but—that God’s work may be done in India, whether by me or not. . . . We must pray indeed that the labourers may be sent forth to the harvest,19 not only for India and the missions but for our own particular work. Source: From a letter to Reinhold Rost,20 Wayne State University, Folder 37 (11)

31 December 1874 I do not like to let pass the old year without at least thanking you for your very kind note of 5 October offering, on the recommendation of Sir Bartle Frere, to send me books out of your library to consult. I have not sooner availed myself of so good an offer, because I found that the books I needed (administration reports and the like) were only to be had from the departments and I would not trouble you with the ‘‘negotiation.’’ But I am now going to venture upon your kindness and to ask whether I may have

18 Maria M. Machin (1843-1905), nurse and friend. 19 An allusion to Matt 9:38. 20 Reinhold Rost (1822-96), linguist, librarian of India Office.

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1. Dictionar y of Indian Terms by Horace Hayman Wilson,21 2. Repor t of the Indigo Commission, 1860 and, if possible, 3. some sketches or drawings of miserable Bengali huts by Chinnery. I am working at a report on the social relations of zemindar and ryot, and land tenure in India and these things would be very useful to me. Also could you send me any volume in which I could find 4. Lord Cornwallis’s ‘‘Permanent Settlement’’ itself ? (I have the ‘‘Bengal Regulations’’ Vol. I) I shall be greatly your debtor.

‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot,’’ 1874 Editor: The work entitled ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life and Death in India’’ had a troubled history. It was never completed as a book and never published as such. Nightingale published in 1873 an article, ‘‘Life of Death in India,’’ which appears in Health in India; the material here was collected for a contemplated second edition. Various parts of the present document were used in later articles, papers and letters, especially in ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak,’’ ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill,’’ ‘‘A Missionary Health Officer’’ and ‘‘The United Empire and the Indian Peasant.’’ Several drafts and proof sheets of the work exist, going back to 1873-74 and extending to 1878-79. The manuscripts, all at the British Librar y, can be described as follows. Add Mss 45831 is the earliest draft of the work. It includes: ff 1-44—preface based on a memorandum on the Land System of Oudh by Sir George Campbell; ff45-89 on the zemindari system; ff 90-136 on irrigation. The structure of the earliest version is basically preser ved in the proof sheets of Add Mss 45832. Nightingale had several copies of parts of the work privately printed and circulated among friends (Benjamin Jowett, Bartle Frere, George Campbell, Arthur Cotton, John Lawrence, Alexander Duff and possibly others). They offered numerous criticisms and urged her to revise the text, sometimes substantially (Jowett practically suggested rewriting the whole thing).22 Discouraged, she abandoned the project

21 This title cannot be found. 22 See Jowett’s letter to Nightingale in Vincent Quinn and John Prest, eds., Dear Miss Nightingale: A Selection of Benjamin Jowett’s Letters to Florence Nightingale 1860-1893, letter 344, and Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:295-96.

402 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India for a while but kept coming back to it; thus we find various additions in the margins of the four versions of Add Mss 45832. Add Mss 45832 is made up of four sets of proof sheets, printed by Spottiswoode and based on the first draft, but adding to it appendices, remarks to the printer, copious handwritten marginal notes and newspaper clippings. They repeat each other but for some suggested emendations, and have different page numberings. The first set consists of: pp 1-96—‘‘Life or Death in India’’ (this is the raw material for the paper with the same title and its appendix, further edited by Nightingale in Add Mss 45833), made of pp 1-51, ‘‘Life or Death in India under the Zemindari System’’; pp 53-96—‘‘Life or Death in India under Irrigation’’; it has a handwritten quotation as epigram: ‘‘With the sun in one hand and a watering pot in the other we can produce everything; without, nothing.’’ The second set contains: pp 1-153—‘‘Life or Death in India,’’ plus a new title written by hand, ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life and Death in India,’’ dated 13 November 1874. It in turn is made of ‘‘Life or Death in India under the Zemindari System’’ from pp 1-60; pp 67-153 contains ‘‘Ir rigation as Affecting Life or Death in India,’’ and a repeat of pp 67-153 as ‘‘uncorrected proof ’’: ‘‘Life or Death in India under Irrigation’’ with the quotation as epigraph, this time printed. The third set consists of: pp 1-84—‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life and Death in India,’’ sent to Sir Arthur Cotton; it has annotations by Cotton and is close to the second set. It seems that this is also the proof sent to Sir Bartle Frere; it was at the basis of an interview with him for which Nightingale left notes (now in University College, London); these notes are found below just after the edited work. The fourth set is made of: pp 53-96—‘‘Life or Death in India under Irrigation,’’ possibly the one sent to Jowett and containing a few of his annotations; it is close to the first set. There is among Nightingale’s papers another proof entitled ‘‘Life or Death in India,’’ with the subtitle ‘‘Life or Death in India under the Zemindari System’’ (27 pp), printed by Spottiswoode in 1874 or shortly thereafter, and containing Nightingale’s few proof corrections.

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Duplicating the other proof sheets to a large extent (it is especially close to the second set of Add Mss 45832 but in abbreviated form), it is made of sections lifted from Add Mss 45831 and contains some new passages. Add Mss 45833 contains yet another draft of the same material made c1878, part of which (pp 4-28, 97-143) became ‘‘The People of India,’’ published August 1878 in The Nineteenth Century. Out of this complicated set of overlapping documents we settled on Add Mss 45831, the original draft, as the base document, incorporating material from Add Mss 45832, whose additional passages, included at their logical place, are indicated with the signs < >. In spite of the unfinished nature of this document, with its sometimes schematic form and overall tentative character, it is an important writing. It not only contains a copious reser voir of data, which Nightingale was to use in various writings, but is a comprehensive statement of her views on the plight of the Indian people. It offers the remedies she deemed appropriate to meet the desperate situation. Some of the material deals with the causes of famine (extensively treated in Health in India). Famine remained a terrible scourge in India, recur ring ever y ten or eleven years (see p 195 above). Its causes were investigated by Nightingale to the extent it was possible from her own vantage point: drought in one year turned into famines if peasants were not able to save. Peasant poverty was often the result of unjust social institutions, for which the British government was responsible. Her knowledge of the living conditions of the Indian people cannot fail to impress. Source: Florence Nightingale, Draft for ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life and Death in India,’’ Add Mss 45831 ff1-136

[1874]

Preface [ff1-26] The aim/object of my work/attempt is to show as well as I can how it is that whole peoples among the most industrious in the world, on the most fertile soil in the world, are the poorest in the world: how it is that whole peoples, always in a state of semi-starvation, are from time to time on the brink of famine? And if not actually swept away by famine, it is by their rulers giving food wholesale. Is there any fatal necessity for this? Is it not due to two or three causes, not only preventible, which we, their rulers, having ourselves induced, either by doing or not doing, can ourselves gradually remove?

404 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India These facts and arguments I shall not of course draw from my ‘‘innermost I’’:23 they are what I have learnt while serving an apprenticeship of sixteen years in Indian sanitary matters, from our great Indian administrators, the Anglo-Indian ‘‘princes of the blood,’’ so to speak, as well as from a study of original documents not usually accessible to, or at least not usually read by us, the English in England. These causes are: 1. The land tenure of parts of India, which places the cultivator at the mercy of his native superiors, which is in fact a serfdom. The land tenures of different parts of India will be given and the conditions of the people resulting from the land tenures; 2. The want of irrigation, which is felt more or less all over India, except in a few favoured regions, is greatly reducing the produce; and also the want of communications, which deprives the producer of a market; and the conditions of the people resulting from this want of water and of cheap transit. Lastly, I shall inquire what are the remedies which the experience and wisdom of our great Indian administrators have suggested to them. But, with the view of introducing the subject to the English reader, this preface will give a sketch, dry but short, of the principal land settlements of India. . . . [the rest of the folio is written in very faint pencil, mostly illeg.]

The Land System of Oudh Probably no land settlement question in India has been more discussed, both as to matter of fact and as to its results, than the land system of Oudh, and now more than ever. It is impossible to give it out of any book, for in one we find the results of the present settlement represented as all right, while in another they are shown to be all wrong. Even as to the facts of what are the results and what were the rights, there is almost the same difference of opinion: one showing the rights under the settlement to be rights, the other to be wrongs. In this darkness as fair a statement as after much hearing and reading can be made will be given.

23 A possible allusion to Robert Browning (1812-89) in reference to Elizabeth Bar rett Browning (1806-61), Letters 15 and 19: ‘‘In the innermost I I found the lady sitting on her sofa.’’ It could also be a rendering of the German ‘‘Das innerliche Ich.’’

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1. Oudh (see Sir G. Campbell’s Essay on Tenures of Land, Cobden Club,24 p 213), as it is, is as we know identical in soil, population, etc., with the North West Provinces, surrounded by which it looks like a cup in a saucer, or a mouse in a trap, or the hole to admit the handle of a tool. Of Oudh, as it was at the beginning of this century, one half was ceded to the East India Company and is the main part of the present North West Provinces; the other half is what we now call Oudh. Thus not only the people and the country, but the government and the tenures, were the same up to the first years of the present century. The dispute begins even as to the historical nature of these tenures. But it would appear as if, while the Muhammadan government was in its vigour, the great zemindars, successors of the old Hindu rajas, were suppressed and lost sight of; most of them wholly disappeared and the government then dealt with the villagers direct. During the decadence of the Muhammadan powers a new set of zemindars arose: some, farmers of the revenue; some, successful freebooters; a few, descendants of old chiefs. But their position was uncertain and variable; there was no time for them to settle down. When the Government of India inquired into tenures in the North West Provinces, few of the zemindars were found to have substantial claims. And, as has been seen, though some were maintained, generally we dealt direct with the villagers. As the price of the surrender of half of Oudh, Saadat Allee, the then-nawab, obtained a contingent officered by British officers, and proceeded to use it very effectually ‘‘to bring to complete obedience the subjects who were left to him, and to put down’’ the turbulent zemindars (Campbell p 213). For some time to come the holding of zemindars, called talukdars in Oudh, were reduced to very narrow limits. It is only under the weak administration of Saadat Allee’s successors, and after the British troops had been forbidden to interfere in internal affairs, that we can date ‘‘the rise of the modern talukdars.’’ ‘‘A few of these are in some sense chiefs of clans.’’ But just as formerly in the Highlands and in Ireland they were not really landlords but only chiefs. By far the greater number of the modern talukdars are of quite recent creation: farmers of the revenue, court favourites and the like, ‘‘mere modern revenue collectors or contractors who have obtained a

24 Sir George Campbell (1824-92), lieutenant governor of Bengal 1871-74, author of The Tenure of Land in India, 1876, and famine commissioner.

406 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hold over the districts intrusted to them. In all cases the power has gone to the strongest or most astute in each family, not to the man who had the most legitimate claims by seniority’’ (Campbell p 214). [2.] Take for instance the case of the man whom it was the fashion to call ‘‘chief of the barons of Oudh,’’ Maharaja Sir Man Sing, K.S.J. The history of that family is curious. It only goes back a generation. And Man Sing is not an Oudh talukdar: he is not even an Oudh man at all. The uncle of the present maharaja came to Oudh a foreigner. He was a Brahmin by caste and a native of the old British province of Bihar, a trooper in one of our cavalry regiments. He happened to be on duty at the Residency, and there to attract the eye of the king, who took him into his own service as an orderly. Eventually he rose to be ‘‘keeper of the private gate,’’ a ver y important post under a native prince, and came into very high favour. As natives generally do under such circumstances, he used his influence for the benefit of his family. He sent for his brother, father of Man Sing, from Bihar, and put him into the Revenue Service, where he rose to be a great farmer of the land. Being accustomed to British ways, he very industriously set himself to obtain from people having more or less claim to interests in the various villages, deeds of sale in his favour. This was almost a novelty in Oudh. Between his official position and these purchases he came to be the possessor of a great estate. He died before the Mutiny. His ‘‘eldest son has held great places, but is notorious for having almost ruined by tyranny the districts beyond the Gogra, and has been prudently kept in the background since British rule.’’ Man Sing, though the youngest of his sons, managed to put himself for ward as the representative of the family. ‘‘The present maharaja is an extremely clever person, thoroughly versed in political affairs.’’ This is the man who, at a meeting of the British Indian Association at Lucknow, said that there was no right, there could be no right of possession for the ryot; no length of time could alter the ryot’s position. If he in any way crossed the talukdar he was liable to dispossession! And Raja Man Sing desired that the one hundred thousand people inhabiting his taluka should be declared liable to immediate eviction from house and home if they in any way crossed him. Though it were proved that every ryot in a village had occupied the same house and tilled the same land for three generations, Raja Man Sing would have it declared that ‘‘if they crossed him’’ in his wish to grow flax or in any other project, the feelings of attachment, with which they regarded the lands inherited from their ancestors, were to be as nothing—they

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were to go. (In other parts of the empire long-continued unquestioned possession has been held to generate a prescriptive right.) Do you doubt whether the maharaja, Man Sing, said this? Here are his very words: ‘‘The question now is, do these occupancy rights exist? If the cultivators possessed these rights before Oudh passed under British rule, no one would be allowed to evict them from their holdings as long as they paid their equitable dues, but no such rights ever existed. You are all aware that our ryots live on our estates only by sufferance. They have been allowed to retain hold of our lands for generations’’ (this by the man who only dates back a generation: he allows that the ryots have held the land for generations) ‘‘not because they had any right to what they held, but because we were kind enough not to deprive them of their homes and comforts every now and then! We made them settle on our lands, advanced money to them to till our soil, took care of their eternal and worldly welfare and permitted their children to occupy the holdings with which their dearest associations were connected, not because they had any right to them but because it is the nature of man not to unmake those whom we have made with our own hands. The ryots all along knew, however, that we had power to deprive them of the holdings if they in any way crossed us. The ryots knew full well that they were but possessors of the soil, and the landlords knew that they were its absolute proprietors. Possession, however continued it may be, is not right. I do not know the customs of other countries, but this is certain that in Oudh at least possession is not right’’ (Smith and Elder, The Real Story of the Talukdars and Tenant Right of Occupancy in Oudh). Therefore, according to Man Sing, the land settlement in Oudh is this: the ryot not to ‘‘cross his landlord’’ without losing his land. 3. Is it not matter of official history that Oudh was annexed ‘‘solely and wholly’’ on account of the turbulence and misconduct of the talukdars, the inability of the native government to control them and the consequent oppression to which the people were subjected? Under these circumstances, and seeing how notoriously recent was the aggrandizement of the talukdars at the expense of the villagers, it is not surprising that the orders drafted by Lord Dalhousie and issued by Lord Canning on his assumption of office, directed that, where the villagers had claims to engage for the revenue with the government direct, these should be favourably considered, and that the talukdars should be required to prove any claims they might put forward in opposition. It is however a great mistake to suppose that in consequence of these

408 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India orders there was a sweeping dispossession of the talukdars from any of their well-established possessions. Over great part of the country the talukdars were the men in possession and they retained their estates, being deprived only of what ver y recent and urgent oppression had gained them. By far the greater part of the villages which we found in their possession remained with them. Several of the most important men who afterwards rebelled did not suffer at all. Maharaja Man Sing was always said to be a bad manager, eaten up by a horde of dependents. Soon after the annexation he failed to pay the revenue for which he had engaged, and his estate was temporarily sequestered for the arrear. If it had been in Bengal, would it not have been summarily sold? As it was, he was not deprived of it. 4. But a year had passed after the annexation when the Mutiny broke out, and in all that part of the country the British government ceased to exist. It has sometimes been said that upon this a simple native peasantr y forthwith rushed to and set up the beloved native landlords of whom they had been deprived. Is not all this an utter fiction? In India someone must rule. The talukdars had ruled up to annexation. We had not put them down. They were in full possession of their forts and guns and armed followings and of most of the lands which they claimed. When British power disappeared, they resumed power. For a time they temporized to see which way the battle of the Mutiny would go. Or, as Sir G. Campbell says, ‘‘The talukdars did not behave excessively ill. Some of them assisted our fugitive officers to escape, and for a time they generally temporized and did not take a ver y decided part. From the time, however, when the attempted relief by Havelock and Outram failed, and the relievers were shut up along with the original besieged, the great body of the talukdars identified themselves with the sepoy cause, went into full rebellion and took part in the siege of the Residency’’ (Sir G. Campbell’s Essay . . . p 216). Some months later, when the neck of the Mutiny was entirely broken, the talukdars were dispersed and fugitive and anxious to make terms. From a military point of view they were to the British power utterly contemptible, and they would have accepted very moderate terms. But Lord Clyde25 was said to be very anxious to bring operations to an end. By one of those extreme vacillations of opinion which occur in India did not many people seem to suppose that, because a

25 Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde (1792-1863), commander-in-chief in India 1857-59.

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militar y mutiny had occurred and the government had been upset under one system of civil administration, the opposite extreme must be right? Did Lord Canning come to a great extent under the influence of this school of feeling when he confiscated in name all the lands of Oudh by his famous proclamation? We learn from Sir G. Campbell that Lord Canning (See Sir G. Campbell’s Essay p 217) himself stated ‘‘that his object was not really to confiscate finally the rights of the talukdars, but to get rid of all the engagements into which we had entered after annexation, and to obtain a ‘tabula rasa’ [clean slate] which would enable him to restore the great landowners,’’ and in fact to mark out a new policy on that ‘‘tabula rasa.’’ When the policy of a party has got the upper hand, the subordinates in the administration are often more extreme than the chief. And did not those entrusted with carrying out the new policy in this instance go farther than Lord Canning understood or intended? Not only was there offered to the talukdars, still with arms in their hands, everything of which they had been possessed justly or unjustly at the time of annexation, but there was so great haste made to bring them in and settle the province that there was sometimes very inadequate inquiry. Were not talukdars allowed to make their own lists of the villages which they claimed? And were not charters pledging the faith of the British government to the grant of territories thus scheduled (or non-scheduled) hurriedly passed? In many instances was it not afterwards found that this practice had involved a real confiscation and granting away of the rights of others? Of course, the talukdars ‘‘almost all came in and received English grants of all the villages which they had in any shape or in any way brought under their dominion before the annexation of the countr y,’’ and some which they had not. ‘‘Certain it is that a continual process of absorption of the independent villages into the talukas, and suppression of those men who would have been considered village proprietors under the North-West system, went on up to the time of annexation, so that at last the greater part of Oudh was held by the large talukdars, corresponding to the zemindars of Bengal. Not only were the talukdars constantly in arms against the government, but the talukas were also torn by intestine feuds. If we look to the successors of the great chiefships, we shall generally find that the ruler for the time had murdered his uncle and supplanted his cousins, and that the cousins or cousins’ sons formed an opposition, ready to supplant him on the first opportunity. The outs constantly harassed the ins by predator y attacks.’’

410 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Sir George Campbell has put a story on record, how, when he was magistrate of a British border district, he had ‘‘repeated remonstrances, through the British resident, regarding the atrocities of a man who was represented as a common robber and dacoit of the vilest description, sheltered by British subjects, and after some blood had been spilt in an attempt of my police to capture him, I was quietly told that I need not trouble myself any longer, as he had made terms with his government, and was installed as talukdar.’’ We have only to look at the book of Colonel Sleeman, the British resident, written after he had made an official tour through the country, to see what these talukdars are.26 But we cannot at all say that the ryots were wholly against the system, or no system. On the contrary. They rather liked it. Though they were always being dragged in by one faction or the other and always being plundered and oppressed when the enemy’s faction had the upper hand, yet, as Sir G. Campbell says, ‘‘the exercise of despotic power by the superior implies the possession of the sacred right of rebellion by the inferior.’’ If one talukdar ill-treated them, they ‘‘paid him off’’ by going over to his enemy. They made terms with either side. Now, this ‘‘fun’’ is over. The ‘‘sacred right of rebellion’’ is snatched from them by British bayonets. And it is doubtful, indeed more than doubtful, whether the ryots are not worse off for being at peace. ‘‘As respects the ryots, it was at first said that the old hereditar y ryots had a bare right of occupancy, but that there was no limit to the rent which might be demanded, save the highest rack-rent of the day.’’ A little later, the chief commissioner declared ‘‘that there was no such thing as a right of occupancy.’’ The governor general, Sir John Lawrence, then stepped in with a will and ordered a ‘‘special inquiry.’’ But the Oudh ryots were not so sure that they wished for their ‘‘rights.’’At least they ver y much preferred the right ‘‘of rebelling and running away.’’ They thought this their ‘‘best safeguard.’’ And they were not so far wrong. ‘‘There was also no standard of law and right, and though the ryots said that a talukdar ought not to turn them out, when asked whether he formerly had the power to do so, they said, ‘of course he had; the man in power could do anything!!!’ ’’ Such was the right in Oudh. Certain compromises, thanks to Sir John Lawrence, were afterwards made, to which we shall refer further on in the book. A good

26 Sir William Henry Sleeman (1788-1856), A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 1849-50.

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many village heads obtained the position of sub-landlords, but of the cultivators only a very small fraction have obtained so much as a shred or rag of any right of occupancy. The great mass of cultivators in Oudh are now held to have absolutely no rights whatever, to be mere tenants at will liable to be dispossessed or to have their rents enhanced to any extent at the mere pleasure of the landlord. And, as we have seen, the ‘‘chief of our barons’’ of Oudh lays this down in so many words at a British meeting, apparently unopposed, not only as a practice but as a principle, not only as a matter of fact but as a matter of right. Oudh is the only province in India in which this state of things exists, in which there is a pure landlord and tenant system according to English theory but, as we shall soon see, the very reverse of English practice. ‘‘Thus Lord Canning did in Oudh precisely what Queen Elizabeth did in Ireland, when the surrender of the Irish chiefs was accepted and their possessions were regranted on English titles’’ (Sir G. Campbell’s Essay). When came the revenue settlement, ‘‘there arose the question whether any inferior rights were to be recognized in subordination to those of the talukdars, just as the same question arose when a settlement of Ireland was made under James I.’’ 5. Lord Canning had inserted in his orders words saving the rights of inferior holders, but did not the party strongly in favour of pure landlordism, being in the ascendant in Oudh, and having the execution of these orders, construe them as adversely as possible to the inferior holders? And was not the result that the talukdars were held entitled under their post-Mutiny grants to all superior rights, and that those inferior rights only were admitted to which the claimants (the onus probandi [the burden of proof ] being wholly thrown on them) could prove that they had had a strict legal right, in a country in which there was no law and no right? Certain compromises were after wards made. A good of the inquiry (a special inquiry by Lord Lawrence) ‘‘was that neither the ryots proved a right to stay in, nor did the talukdars prove a right to turn them out.’’ But the talukdars, being taken as prima facie owners under the grants, and the onus of proof being thrown upon the ryots, it may be said that the ryots generally failed of the proof necessary to give them legal status. All depends on the way the burden of proof is put. ‘‘Eventually a compromise was effected, under which a comparatively small number of the highest class of ryots, the descendants of old proprietors and dominant families, have been admitted to a right of occupancy at rates (to be fixed from time

412 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to time) slightly below the full rack-rents of the day,’’ while ‘‘all other ryots become tenants-at-will.’’ It may be rather anticipating matters to place this in our preface. The fact is this ‘‘compromise’’ was effected after a long struggle in favour of the defenceless Oudh ryots, waged almost single-handed by Sir John Lawrence, then governor general, who instituted a special inquir y on the subject, as above mentioned. This will be recurred to when we come to treat of the condition of the Oudh ryots farther on in the book. ‘‘Thus the Oudh talukdars are much more complete owners of the soil than any superior landholders in any other province, infinitely more so than those of Bengal ever were.’’ 6. Under the king much of the revenues of the talukdars was expended in maintaining forts and military contingents: the revenue received by the government was much smaller than it should have been. In our first settlements we were content to obtain as much as the king used to receive. But when the lands came to be measured and regularly settled, it was found that they were worth a great deal more and, though the revenue was settled on liberal principles unknown to native governments (allowing half the rents to be retained by the landlords) there was a considerable increase in the revenue demand. Meantime the talukdars were permitted and encouraged to raise the rents of the cultivators, and they made the best, it must be confessed, of their opportunities. Also, under the influence of English theories, by way of establishing their power, enforcing enhanced rents and getting rid of independent and troublesome ryots, they served large numbers of notices of ejectment on the ryots and actually ejected many. Is not this a thing wholly unknown under any other government or in any other province of India? Now, if this had been attempted under native government, the ryots would have rebelled and, betaking themselves to a guerilla warfare in the jungles, would have made terms for themselves. As it is, are they not kept down by the strong arm of British power, the safety valve as it were screwed down? And is there not much suppressed and smouldering discontent? Oudh is already more populous than any other Indian province; it is one of the healthiest in which, while peace is maintained, the population most rapidly increases. If a rack-rented and discontented population, deprived of all rights on the soil, comes to press very severely on the limits of the land, may we not well have another Ireland in Oudh before ver y long? As Sir G. Campbell, who seems to have foreseen this

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result, said nearly five years ago, ‘‘Already we hear of their free use of the power of raising rents without restriction which has been conferred on them, and even of the service of notices of ejectment in large numbers, and on the other hand of combinations of ryots to resist these proceedings. Class questions seem to be prematurely arising which have not been reached in other provinces in several generations. And it has been necessary for the government to come to the assistance of the aristocratic system, by lending the talukdars money, not to improve their estates but to stave off their creditors’’ (Systems of Land Tenure, Cobden Club). Meantime, are the talukdars doing the duty of English landlords? Far from it. They have been disarmed and wholly relieved of their militar y following (they are backed by something far more potent, the power of the British government). And they ought to be in far easier circumstances than before, some increase of revenue notwithstanding. But the one part of their new position which they appreciate is the property and credit which we have created in their favour. Moneylenders, well knowing the value of land under our system, are ready to advance them money to any amount. Of this they take advantage, not to improve their estates but to launch into personal extravagance. Most of them are already deeply in debt. Has not revenue fallen into arrear more than in any other province of India, and have we not actually been obliged, in order to preser ve this aristocracy of our creating, to pass special laws to protect them from their creditors and to take a large number of the estates into the hands of British officers, to be dry-nursed for the benefit of the landlords? Thus the Oudh aristocracy had already become a source of weakness to us. Instead of their supporting a government to which they owe gratitude, are we not obliged to support them? Their own position is bitterly uncomfortable. The revenue is badly paid. There is a war of classes most dangerous to the peace of the country. And must not a bold peasantry accustomed to warfare and divorced from all rights in the soil every day become more and more a source of political disquiet? Such up to this time is the result of the experiment of pure landlordism in India.

Contents [summar y] Editor: Folios 27-57 present a detailed outline of matters to be treated. They contain many cross-references to the manuscript pagination and various coded notations and remarks; these are mostly omitted here.

414 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Additions or substitutions, however, are included from the abovementioned proof document, Add Mss 45832, with the signs < >. 1. Are the zemindars landlords?

2. What Is the ‘‘Permanent Settlement’’? ‘‘to protect all classes of people’’ ‘‘especially the most helpless,’’ 3. Three Questions

American slaveholders [are] superior to Bengal zemindars, especially in calamity like famine. Still the zemindar is not unlike the rest of the world.

What zemindars were under Muhammadan régime: English idea that anybody might be lawfully chosen as collector of revenue then; that the class to be settled with had ‘‘right of property’’ in land; then they, the English, found out that they did not know what ‘‘right of property’’ over Indian land consisted in. (Maine) Depopulation of country under Muhammadan oppression led to Lord Cornwallis’s ‘‘unlucky experiment’’; he took his landlords from the Muhammadan’s tax gatherers. Zemindars had all the wastelands, a third of the country, handed over to them. Village communities had the only right to Indian land. Outrageous overthrow of rights of cultivators.

27 An allusion to Matt 5:26.

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Salt Tax

The headman: Maine. Settlement of government estates now made with village headman. Plan for village, district, provincial council: Sir B. Frere. English know little of public opinion in India. Danger to our government from this. Russian village, district, provincial assembly: Long, Note. Panchayat (village jury): Munro, Malcolm,28 Long. Municipalities and panchayats: N.W. Provinces; Chankidari Act. What use made by our government of panchayat.

28 Sir Thomas Munro (1761-1827), notably responsible for a land tenure system in Madras much more favourable to the ryots than the zemindari system in Bengal; Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833), East India Company administrator, governor of Bombay.

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Old Indian spirit extinct: what have we English substituted for it? Compare Mughal rule and our own in public works, in architecture. Native managing power. India[n] cheapest workman in the world.

Ir rigation. Essential point in Indian finance: to increase wealth of people. Average taxation: 21⁄2 rupees a head. Irrigated districts can pay over 3 rupees and their income is increased far above their taxation. If all India paid 3 rupees a head, Treasur y would be overflowing. A district tax-free and without irrigation, miserably poor; [a district tax-free] with higher taxes and with ir rigation, rich. Railway taxation. Comparative cost of transit on railways and canals. Revenue due to irrigation. Railways for military purposes. Canals for food. Note on education (make separate section). 1. Ryot’s objection: that zemindar takes whole profits of water.

426 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

2. Water carriage.

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3. Cost of water immeasurably less than value of water. Irrigation on Godavari and elsewhere has set the cultivator free from moneylender. 4. And we English talk about ‘‘breach of faith’’ with the zemindar!

5. Results of irrigation in Rajahmundry 1854: pays £48,000 more revenue, has £127,000 more income. Confusion of revenue. No basis for revenue system or collection. Whole of additional revenue levied on lands that already paid tax. All the government servants (Brahmins) hold their lands rent-free; one third of the whole Delta; not an acre has been assessed for the improvements. Yet these owners had raised the rents to their tenants. Causes of water not being used: arbitrary rules for taking the water. Not allowed to sell a field full of water. Engineers not allowed to sell water. Zemindars raise rent, even when paying no water rate.

Remedies: Irrigation. 1. Thorough reform needed in system of collecting water rents. Minister of Public Works to be not an engineer but a statesman, to relieve viceroy overworked, to deal with delays and irresponsibilities.

2. To give the cultivator definite rights. 3. Proprietorship. Native virtues, native helplessness. 4. Experiments of proprietorship might be tried. Sold up zemindaries might be let out to villages through headmen (Sir G. Campbell did so). Land tax cannot be permanent as expenses of civilized governments must increase. Sir John Strachey’s minute on alteration of conditions of Settlement. Sur vey of Bengal, Bombay, Madras, N.W. Provinces. Village system (Sir B. Frere’s plan and village jury among the remedies). Village registrar to record subordinate rights in land, recommended for Bengal: Long. Native land surveyor: his measurements regulated by bribes. Allotment of land in Russian village municipality. 5. Loans. What has been proposed? Lending fund administered by tr ustees. Special act for works on the Hugli [River].

430 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 6. What are the zemindars to do? Manufactures. Spirit of manufacturing enterprise. One zemindar family has set up co-operative system of labour among their tenantry. Sir G. Campbell on India’s future manufactories. Lord Salisbur y’s answer to Manchester deputation. 7. Query. 8. Sir B. Frere’s plan. 9. Query. Panchayat village jury. Star vation and land tenure; difficulties fettering the ryot, (This whole section should come before Remedies). Semistar vation, the ryot’s chronic state.

[1.] Who raises his rents? the government or the zemindar? Who breaks the contract? 2. A shor t chapter on keeping contracts. 3. On ‘‘Confiscation.’’ Whose property do we confiscate? Zemindars under the Mughal rule. Land had ceased to be saleable through Mughal oppression. Cornwallis appeared only to have seen Muhammadan law. Indian law would have shown him communal property. Village communities and Hindu organization crushed first by Muhammadans, then by English. Expelled ryots turning dacoits. Type story of a brave and respectable sepoy turning dacoit, beheading the zemindar. (Under a new heading) It has been shown that, if all India were irrigated, the ryot under the Permanent Settlement would still be always on the verge of star vation. May not this famine be used as a reformer of the state of landed property in Bengal? A work for the greatest of statesmen. Ever y year adds to its difficulties. No time therefore to be lost in setting to work. It must be a gradual, but still an immediate work. Other wise a jacquerie [peasant revolt] may make it a sudden one. The rent league among the Muhammadan ryots of Eastern Bengal, might, but for Sir G. Campbell, have become a jacquerie.

(before ‘‘Remedies’’) The Ryot’s Evils 1. Usury. Our rule gives security to property, and justice: is our justice ‘‘a helpless agent in the hands of grasping usurers’’? our security, security to the moneylender’s property? Letter to the secretar y of governor general’s council on usury. Usur y under British rule. Non-employment of natives in Bengal. Native executive establishment in Upper Provinces. Honour, the great object of life in India. Honour among the natives, the result of want of confidence. Change in civil procedure, code wanted: that courts may not be tied down to the ‘‘four corners of a bond.’’ Evils of land sales in Central and N.W. Provinces. No ‘‘shaking of burdens.’’

434 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 2. Excessive population. Early marriages; physical deterioration. Lord Napier of Magdala’s general order. The ryot’s wrongs. The zemindar has all the rights. No equality between the zemindar and the ryots. ‘‘Rights of property’’ in England for the benefit of the poor as well as of the rich, not so in India. Example of Russia and Japan, Prussia and Austria. Common sense, the sense of the common interest. Hindus not a barbarous nation. 240 millions cannot pass away. What can England do? Cannot she like all other great countries give the cultivator an interest in the soil? 4. Are we afraid of the zemindars?

Should we not sum up the ryot’s rights as well as the zemindar’s? What are they? We have introduced serfdom and now the zemindars, masters of the serfs, are our masters. May we not, while consulting the security of our empire, be securing its insecurity? By sacrificing 50 millions to a few zemindars we are star ving an industrious people. Cannot England do what Russia has done? What makes Russia really formidable to England in India. Conclusion Arguments with English people. Humanity. Safety of government. Would the railway or the emancipation of the ryots be our best insurance of India? If we do not emancipate the ryot, may not the ryot attempt to emancipate himself? England has abolished slavery, the ‘‘eating sore’’ of the world. Shall she not abolish serfdom in her own India? Ryots not so well off bodily as some slaves were. The uneducated ryot is utterly defenceless, but a ‘‘slumbering volcano.’’ Famine: no consequence of an abnormal season but an index of a normal state of things (semi-starvation). ‘‘Thou art the Man.’’31

Ir rigation, a star ting point for reform of zemindari system. Proposed commission of inquiry to repor t. Appendix on Reforms in Abolition of Serfdom. In Prussia, in Austria, in Russia. In these countries the legislator broke through older and better-established rights than the rights of the zemindars.

Life or Death in India (Dramatis Personae)33 The marquess of Salisbury: a real workman and born ruler of men, secretar y of state for India by the grace of God. Sir George Campbell: ex-lieutenant governor of Bengal. Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Sir Arthur Cotton, r.e.: the most perfect master of his art of irrigation. Colonel Rundall, r.e.: head of Water Department in Bengal, then over all India, now in India Office Fire Department. Colonel Haig, r.e.: head of Water Department in Bengal, now at home ill.

32 Arthur Young (1741-1820), agricultural reformer and first secretar y to the Board of Agriculture in the UK. 33 Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:295-96: ‘‘Mr Jowett revised the book many times and among the first things which he cut out was the characteristic ‘Dramatis Personae.’ ’’ This was, however, retained at the top of the proof document.

438 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The zemindar: created landlord out of tax-gatherer, growing rich. The ry ot: created slave out of cultivator, star ving for, while ‘‘wealth accumulates men decay.’’ How noble is Gulliver when he comes upon the subjects near his heart: the land tenure, the zemindars and the poor cultivators? What a grasp he has of it—the head to plan, the will and the skill to execute. One hopes he will enlighten public opinion here. People in England are so satisfied with a word—without in the least looking into the thing; the word being contract, breach of contract, keeping faith, breach of faith, rights of property, confiscation. Political economy. (It reminds one of the ‘‘wear y’’ knife grinder.) But on whose side is the breach of contract? And what is the contract we have made with the zemindars? And was there no contract with the cultivators? We in England are always talking about landowners’ rights: rights of property, always on the side of the land. But have the cultivators no ‘‘rights’’ in the ‘‘land’’? We are always deprecating ‘‘confiscation,’’ but confiscation of whose property? of whose rights? is not the ‘‘confiscation’’ the other way? Are we not ‘‘confiscating’’ the ryot’s rights? Would it be at all correct to say that in Bengal the ryot is the rightful owner of the soil? the zemindar the man put over him by government? In Orissa, it is worse, for the contract is between the ryots and the government: the ryots are the landowners; they hold the land direct from government and the zemindar is—what? the middleman? the collector/tenant? the renter? But the Englishman in England, of course, with his feudal notions, ‘‘zemindar’’ reads ‘‘proprietor,’’ ‘‘landlord’’ and then he talks of the zemindar’s right in his own land: confiscation, breach of contract. And that sets us all in a blaze (it is quite refreshing to see the intense passion which Gulliver puts into his advocacy of the ryot’s rights). But is not the breach of contract the other way? is it not the zemindar who breaks the contract (on which he holds the land) with government? not government with him? If so, even if Lord Cornwallis had intended what he did only, he would have been a reasonable man compared with what we are; we seem to have confiscated the zemindar’s duties. Are, or rather were, the zemindars landlords or only farmers of revenue, having the right of receiving the tax, of which they retained about one third? Did the Permanent Settlement ‘‘confiscate’’ the rights of the landowners and make a present of them, with powers, as it turned out almost unbounded to the zemindars? When this is talked about to India

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Office, secretaries of state who are great English landlords, the landlord immediately appears and they say: ‘‘You are talking downright communism,’’ all their sympathies being with the zemindars. Have not all great Indian officials hitherto been afraid of the zemindars? just as they were of the Bengal army? This is the battle that has now to be fought. This is the cause that has to be won. If we continue to act as we did with the army, will it not end in a similar catastrophe? Must we not face the difficulty? and no longer allow that terrible principle—or non-principle: ‘‘it will last my time,’’ leaving overwhelming calamities for those who follow to rule in this matter? Is not the Bengal zemindari question nearly that of the southern states slaveowners? And if we do not take up the matter, will not God take it into His own hands, as He did the rights of the slaves? and perhaps settle it with torrents of English blood? England has abolished slaver y. It is her great title to the gratitude of man. She is even now carrying out her right to be empress of the seas by saying there shall be no slave trade on the wide oceans. But, at this moment on her own lands, in her greatest dependency, where breathe under her rule one fifth of the human race, there exists unchecked, nay, unwittingly established by herself, a virtual form of slaver y, terrible in its evils. Shall this be borne by England? In one respect, is not Bengal slavery worse than southern states’ slavery? for the slave in America was well fed, his master often an educated gentleman. The Bengal ryot is in a chronic state of semi-starvation when he is not under the pressure of absolute famine. The zemindars are certainly not landowners. We cannot too clearly and strongly insist upon this in dealing with the matter in this countr y, because a word used in a false sense falsifies the whole argument. They were farmers of the revenue; they merely collected the government tax, retaining part of it for their own support. Did not the real rights of the land belong to the chief cultivators? In Tanjore we have what we call meerassidars, bona fide landlords, with a perfect right to let, sell, mortgage, etc., which they do and always have done. But did not the Permanent Settlement in Bengal make over all the farmers’ rights in the land to the zemindars? This was certainly not the intention of Lord Cornwallis, but so it actually worked and with regulations which we could hardly believe as standing on a statute book of our government: they put the cultivators, that is, the whole population, absolutely at the mercy of the

440 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India zemindars. The 5th and 7th Regulations, giving to the zemindars the power of summoning whomsoever they please to their office, etc., work in the most monstrous manner. Governors general, full of the idea of landlordism in England, have thought that they would make a class of English landlords in India, like the men who thought that all were ‘‘the creatures of circumstances’’ and that, if he put 10,000 sparrows into a huge hive, they would make honey. But in the first place English landlords are not models; in the second it was more like making Irish absentee landlords and without the feudal feeling. It was something like making Irish middlemen. And in the third India is not pervaded by a Christian atmosphere. In fact and in result, has not the Permanent Settlement been the most outrageous overthrow of rights of cultivators that ever was effected? Had they not clear and solid rights in the land? and were they not reduced almost to the state of slaves, worse than slaves in point of food? Even where this atrocious system was not established by government, was the state of the mass of the people anything less than a state of abject dependence upon the rich and high-caste people? dependence for a claim upon those who acknowledged no claim? And is this not so still over a great part of India? Is not the ‘‘confiscation’’ we are taught to dread a ‘‘confiscation’’ of the ‘‘rights’’ of the whole body of the people? And has it not already taken place? And is not the redressing of it what is now needed? Was not the cultivator really the owner of the soil in Bengal just as he always was in Tanjore? the zemindar really the farmer of the revenue, and this his proper position? Now matters have settled down into an entirely new state and none but a master hand can unravel the complication. Does not the whole matter absolutely require to be effectively grappled with, as the famine is? Under the Company’s government was there but one thing thought of—viz., to get possession of the largest revenue—and did not every revenue officer feel that this was the one thing he had to look to? Did not the government renounce their own duties? Forty years ago, was not the common saying about us among the natives that we were a kind of civilized savages, that we could fight, but when that was done we were utterly lost, that we could not even keep in repair the noble works of beneficence that their own great men had constructed. And they would point to the tens of thousands of ruined tanks, etc., all

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over the country. On one occasion did not somebody make some effort to have some little work done to roads and did not the India board come to the deliberate conclusion that it would not pay to make a single mile of road? For example, was not the average annual sum expended in Rajahmundr y on all public works £500 a year? and the whole expenditure on the twenty districts £70,000 a year, £3500 per district, when £20,000 would barely have kept the old works in repair, even had they not been allowed to go to ruin? Could a government who so ignored their own duties ever think of enforcing any upon the zemindars? But ought the zemindars ever to have had any duties excepting to collect the revenue? Ought not the government to have considered all duties as their own proper work? and to have kept the zemindars in their own proper subordinate position, instead of which they were made kings and despots, irresponsible kings without even a constitution to lay down their duties and control their rights. 2. About irrigation: the ryot will say, and does very truly, that the zemindar will take the whole profits of the water. Colonel Haig found that, where government had charged 1 rupee or half a rupee the zemindar had added 3 rupees to his rent. The actual irrigation in Orissa is fully 100,000 acres this year, probably much above it. This alone would give an increased produce of about £150,000, besides some £10,000 or more for canal tolls alone, so that no doubt the actual total results in produce and saving on carriage, etc., is much above 10 percent even now. But under one canal Colonel Rundall found 50,000 acres irrigated, while 3000 of them only were acknowledged and on these only was water rate paid. Above the canal, the crops were almost a complete failure from want of rain. Would not a minister of public works, as proposed by Lord Salisbur y, take care to have these things put to rights and alter the whole face of affairs? In Orissa the progress of traffic is wonderful: the traffic three times what it was last year; there were 300 passengers a day on the Midnapur Canal. And this although the canals are isolated. If the main line from Calcutta to Cuttack were completed, would not the traffic increase far more rapidly? To return: even in Godavari in many places, the instant the water reached the land, the zemindars raised the rent, this when the government were taking no water rate. Is it not a certain fact that the main

442 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India reason why the ryots do not use the water in Orissa is that the zemindar would take the whole benefit? Does not the case require the immediate and most energetic proceeding of government, giving the cultivator definite rights? and taking the most summary measures to prevent the zemindar interfering with him? and this whether the land is ir rigated by government or not? Is it possible to mistake in Bengal and especially in Orissa the appearance of the great body of the people to be that of a people who for generations had not had a sufficiency of food? 3. While the authorities are afraid of the zemindars, is not the real ‘‘party’’ to be afraid of the mass of the population, if they must be afraid of something? Could not great officials make others feel that there was something else to be afraid of? and make them distinctly understand that if they or other civilians would not do their duty to these millions, somebody should be found who would. The present secretar y of state [Salisbury] seems just the man to take this matter in hand and may perhaps set about it in earnest, as soon as he has started his noble irrigation scheme. The irrigation is an excellent starting point for the zemindari investigation on the ground that some definite regulations are absolutely required. Would a special commission be the best mode of inquiry—say, three members—two of them nonIndian? Source: From notes for a new edition of ‘‘Life or Death in India,’’ Add Mss 45831 ff65-136

Note to p 9 of Life and Death in India. Some of these abwabs or cesses levied by the zemindars are ‘‘general’’; others are levied by ‘‘some’’ zemindars; others by ‘‘many’’; others are levied, one by this and another by the other zemindar: none by none, one may say. But this makes the matter worse. Suppose every small proprietor in Brittany able to impose an illegal rate, and any he pleased, any tax that came into his head or fancy, upon every unfortunate labourer. Now, a sprinkling of non-official Europeans throughout India is a benefit. When the governor general called for reports from the governors or commissioners on the results of grants of land made after the Mutiny to Europeans, the replies were all entirely in favour of the system. And this although the bias of the civil service is generally against that class. They all declared that it was productive of immense good and that not only was there no ill blood between the Europeans and the natives, but exactly the contrary: that natives highly appreciated

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the presence of Europeans among them. The most experienced Anglo-Indians believe that there is a wonder ful power of amalgamation between native and European [breaks off] When Sir Arthur Cotton first steamed up the Godavari, the first question asked at every village was: but will you bring us salt? That the price of salt should be so high that the average consumption is less than half that of the districts like the Godavari, where it is cheapest, and where the people can afford to buy it, is a reproach to us. And that our financiers should have increased the salt tax, because there was no one to speak or fight for the ryot, is a reproach to them. But is not the essential point in Indian finance to increase the wealth of the people? The average amount paid by all India is 21⁄2 rupees a head; £40 millions by 160 millions of people. The amount paid by Tanjore (under 2 millions of people) is £720,000—more than 31⁄2 Rs.; and by Godavari (1,600,000 people) £530,000—31⁄4 rupees a head. If all India were partially ir rigated, and the people paid 3 Rs. a head, would not the Treasur y be overflowing? . . . Were India to save this alone, would it not enable her to pay so much more in other taxes that the salt tax might be abolished? And if there were a system of canals, would not the saving on transit alone by the enormous traffic, be equivalent to the abolition of more taxes? We have increased the income of the Godavari territor y far beyond the amount of the taxes: much above a million, while the taxes are only half a million. If we had declared the Godavari tax-free forever, but without irrigation, would it not have been a miserably poor district compared with what it is now while paying 1⁄2 a million a year? Does it signify more than a straw what the middle and upper class of natives say about the salt tax? Is not all they know about it that it is a tax on the poor, instead of some tax that might be laid on the rich? Or does it signify very much what the poor say? [what speaks is] the grinding poverty, the feeble strength of the people, the consumption one half of what it ought to be for health? What would the poor have said if they had been consulted about draining Calcutta, though they were dying by tens of thousands for want of it? Is it not one of those many things in which we ought to think for them? What did the people of Godavari say when we talked of irrigating the district? One of the educated class, a tehsildhar, in reply said: ‘‘There never had been an acre irrigated in the taluk, and there never will be.’’ What did all England say when it was proposed to connect the two halves of the British Empire, we who flatter our-

444 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India selves that we are the most intelligent people upon earth? What did the Lords and Commons say to it? If we wait till men want even the most palpable things done for them, must we not wait forever? About the irrigation works for Oudh, the highest quarter in India said: ‘‘The talukdars themselves don’t want it.’’ What an argument! Russian Reform. 1. Village municipality. The Russian ‘‘world’’ or village municipality34 (3000 years old, by the way) is presided over by an elder, elected by the heads of families; his business is with the village lands, the schools, the poor, the police, of which he is the head. He is the village judge and can fine and imprison on a very small scale. The elder, with the heads of families elected according to their amount of land, presides over the communal assembly. But he is subordinate to the district elder, and even the allotment of the land takes place in an assembly of the whole commune, including the women and children. In each commune there are skilled, uneducated land surveyors, who execute the work of division. He is also subordinate to the justice of the peace, who is elected by the community of the district from among the nobles and landholders in the district and can fine and imprison on a larger scale, but cannot pronounce between himself and his own peasants. 2. District assembly. Next comes the district assembly, composed of from 300 to 2000 families. They have a head aided by the village heads, who are the elder and assistant elder of the different villages. The district assembly is composed of the different communities chosen from every ten heads of families. Its business is with taxation and recr uiting, and the control of the village officials. It is summoned by its head. In India there was no organization by which, in the Mutiny, the peasants could combine for the defence of order. As Haxthausen35 says: ‘‘The rural population forms a dam against the flood of a revolutionar y spirit.’’ In Russia, on the contrary, ever y ten villages send deputies to form a canton, and ten or twelve cantons form a district, the members of which are chosen by peasants, merchants, clergy, nobles, each apart, each free. 3. Provincial assembly. The provincial assembly is at the head of all: it is composed of delegates from the districts. It holds regular sessions.

34 The Russian word ‘‘mir’’ means both world and village. 35 Baron August Freiherr von Haxthausen (1792-1866), German political economist, who published on land tenure in Russia and the Doukhobors.

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Its business is with county affairs: roads, education, prisons, fisheries, imperial taxation, conscription, spirit licences; also, with the construction and maintenance of public buildings, the post, the levying of taxes imposed by law, mutual insurances, local trade and industry, matters required for the civil and military administration, management of property, capital and incomes belonging to country districts, proposals relating to local needs. Enlarged powers are being gradually conferred on the provincial assemblies by government, so that ultimately Russia may have a real representative assembly, a House of Commons for which these are a training school. They have been consulted on military ser vice, on railway projects; they vote large sums for village schools. In the annual budget sometimes two fifths of the votes are obligator y, but three fifths discretional. Public opinion is elicited, and taxation levied by them. As might be expected, the landlord interest is strong in the provincial, the peasant interest in the district assembly. (The above is taken mainly from the Reverend James Long.) Sur vey. The registration of the peasant’s rights by the government is already in progress in the North West, that is, the recording [of] the names, rights, interests and holdings of every landholder and every cultivator in a country held by peasant proprietors, parceled out in minute divisions, and containing 72,000 square miles (that is as large as England and Scotland put together) comprising 80,000 villages, with an agricultural population of nearly three times that of Ireland, or between 14 and 15 millions. Every field is to be mapped and classified according to its produce. As the Calcutta Review has it, government will possess ‘‘just as accurate and detailed information regarding every state in these provinces, as is possessed by any landlord or farmer at home, regarding his individual property.’’ The Rev James Long, after saying that, in Bengal, the ‘‘police system is a signal failure’’ in ‘‘the detection of crime,’’ recommends ‘‘the village system in its various compartments—the village watch, the village chief, the village jury’’—not only for purposes of police, but for what he describes as ‘‘the corroding evil of Bengal: the grasping and blackmail of subordinate agents who prey both on the landholder and peasant, without remorse, fleecing both.’’ He says that ‘‘the revival of the office of village registrar,’’ contemplated by the Bengal government, is needed to ‘‘record the subordinate rights in land’’ and to ‘‘give a clue through the labyrinths of the subdivision of property—no trifling work in Bengal where a mango tree is sometimes divided into sixteen shares.’’ Mr Long comments on the absence of

446 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India vital statistics in Bengal: The Punjab and even Burma were able to furnish their vital statistics to the sanitary commissioner with the Government of India, Dr Cuningham: Bengal none. ‘‘Village schoolmasters,’’ Mr Long says, ‘‘might be utilized as registrars.’’ The revival of village registrars, sixty years ago, by Lord Moira,36 was stifled after a time by ‘‘zemindari influence.’’ Mr Long tells us that the ‘‘native land surveyor’’ in Bengal ‘‘is the plague of the countr y; his measurements are too often regulated by the amount of bribe he receives.’’ (The Government of Bengal now requires, in order to check this, ‘‘a knowledge of land surveying from subordinate government officers.’’) In the Russian village municipality ‘‘the allotment of the land takes place in an assembly of the whole commune, including the women and children; there are in each commune skillful land surveyors, who execute the work of division.’’ ‘‘It would be well,’’ says Mr Long, ‘‘if we had that class in Bengal.’’ He adds, with regard to ser f emancipation in Russia, ‘‘the basis of all lay in land secured to the peasant on certain conditions, and the elevation of the peasant in the social scale by giving him a share in the village administration based on the elective system.’’ ‘‘The serfs have been emancipated, and the village system is made the basis of all other reforms,’’ or, as Haxthausen says, ‘‘a system of self-government, that the people might be released from the despotism and avarice of the officials.’’ ‘‘Combination’’ against ‘‘feudalism’’: that is the secret. What the Russian government has done, cannot the English? 1. Usur y under British Rule Can it be wondered at that the natives say that they had rather have one of their own ‘‘magnificent despots’’ who would ‘‘cut the knot’’ of such oppression as this, than a ‘‘law-abiding’’ people like ourselves to reign over them, who only tighten the knot which strangles them and their industry, and lays waste their fruitful lands? that our law is worse than their misrule? They cannot even say, like the Irishman, ‘‘if it were not for the honour of the thing, I had as lief be without’’ when he went in a sedan without a bottom. For (1) the sedan of our justice has top, sides and bottom, all impenetrably sealed, not to be stretched or

36 Lord Moira (1754-1826), governor general of India and commander-inchief in India 1813-22, extended British holdings in India, defeated the Gurkhas in the Third Anglo-Maratha War.

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expanded in any way whatever. And (2) we give native gentlemen no ‘‘honour,’’ no share in the government of their district. And this in a land where ‘‘honour,’’ distinction, promotion are ‘‘the great objects of life.’’ This in a land where, if we would but give headmen, chiefs, native intelligence its proper place in its district, and not fill up all places with Englishmen, confidence would return and trade would revive. Why is there all this usury? why all this hoarding of money? Why does a people which has so distinguished itself in past times in manufactures and in the arts of civilization, distinguish itself no longer? When we talk of hoarding, however, we must not be supposed to mean that any but the most ‘‘exceedingly trifling’’ sums are hoarded. ‘‘Capital they can hardly be said to have.’’ ‘‘How very slight these hoards must be’’ is the conclusion from every evidence we have. Why but because there is no confidence?. . . . Of late years, however, has there not been a marked improvement in this respect? In the civil service generally, do not strong feelings now exist in favour of ryot rights? It is no more expedient than just strenuously to acknowledge this fact? Of the noble efforts in the direction of native improvement, of men like Sir W. Muir and Sir G. Campbell, England is well aware, and have not many of their subordinates been animated by their spirit? Can there then be any bounds to the change for the better, whether in Indian zemindar or English official and non-official, which time may work? My poor little paper only conveys the impression made on a disinterested outsider, that is, one who has no personal or party interest in the question involved, by a careful per usal of the original documents, and desires beyond everything to express the strong and earnest hope that the more enlightened zemindars of the present day would seek for an amicable adjustment of their own and their ryots’ rights, in the palpably benevolent spirit of Lord Cornwallis’s enactments. Doubtless, the zemindars, under the Muhammadan régime, were, as a rule or as a class, tax-gatherers or farmers of revenue, not bona fide landlords, in our sense of that term. But every office in India, under the natives, tends to run in the hereditar y groove and to originate possessorial rights. Also, must we not carefully consider (1) that the rights of property are of a ver y different kind in India from what they are in England: no shock is given to commerce by interference; (2) that non-interference in England goes upon the supposition that property will be more

448 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India improved by leaving even the extra profit in the landlord’s hand; also on the argument from the difficulty of distinguishing what increase of value is due to external circumstances, and what to the landlord’s own capital and enterprise? No ancient nations had our extreme ideas respecting the sacredness of private property. Why do we introduce them into India, which is an ancient nation? The rights of property are commonly defended on the ground that they are for the benefit of the poor as well as of the rich. Political economists explain how property accumulates and then flows out among the poor as a fund for wages. But where this is not the case, how shall we defend the rights of property? The great difficulty which a non-Indian official has in judging about India is ‘‘what is practicable?’’ ‘‘what forces can be overcome and what cannot?’’ (it is a sort of political engineering) but also ‘‘what forces can be made use of and what cannot?’’ and ‘‘what stimulus can be given to the decayed life of the native population?’’ etc. The outsider only guesses about all this. On the other hand, the official has his official way of looking at things: ‘‘There must be famines, not a good, but you must remember the increase of the native population under our peaceful sway,’’ etc. And is it not always worthwhile for him to consider carefully the ‘‘guesses of outsiders,’’ derived from general considerations and other states of society, and convert them by his experience into solid practical conclusion and action? The natural progress of India might have been through war, through famine, through misery and oppression of all sorts. Still some—not eminent British official but—eminent native prophet or chief would have at times come to the front and given a chance of better things. A revolution like that of Japan would have been possible. (If a prophet were to appear among the ryots, we must put him to death.) But have not we English extracted all the genius and vigour of the natives, and do we not leave or rather keep them at a peaceful level of misery and degradation? Have not even the missionaries a worse chance than they had? for formerly they might have worked by the conversion of a native prince and through a native feeling: now they are aliens and strangers. Compare the English government not with the principles of Christ but with the principles of Buddha! . . . There may be famines among barbarous nations, owing to idleness and improvidence, but is it not unique that regular cultivators of the soil should be liable to be starved periodically under a favourable cli-

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mate, or what might be made such, by a plentiful supply of fresh water, with proper drainage? Remember all this time how large a portion of the wealth of England is drawn from the blood and bones of the people of India. Meanwhile what have the people of India become? ‘‘A people long used to hardships,’’ who ‘‘lose the very notion of liberty,’’ to quote the same political author, writing of another nation; ‘‘they look upon themselves as creatures at mercy and that all impositions laid on them by a stronger hand are legal and obligatory.’’ Would one not think that he was writing of the ryots? ‘‘Hence proceed that poverty and lowness of spirit, to which a kingdom may be subject as well as a particular person.’’ Would one not think that he was writing of India? . . . But if we do not do it, what then? When we compare the Russian emancipation of the serfs, and our non-emancipation of the ryots (and is not the first an infinitely more difficult and dangerous business than the second?), will not the thought sometimes occur to us that Russia would have been a kinder mistress to the poor Hindus than England? Russia in India is the dread of England, and might be really terrible (not by sending an army of 100,000 men 3000 miles) but by lying hid among the surrounding nations and conspiring with some internal movement. What if the Crimean War and the Mutiny had fallen in the same year? Suppose Russia having prepared the way by native emissaries, working for some years in secret, to proclaim the emancipation of the ryots: what hopes would be aroused? She would supply the necessary organization in which Orientals are deficient. She would fight with the many against the few, we with the few against the many. Can any government of the few, of ‘‘the handful of Europeans,’’ be secure which allows the mass of the people to hope that there might be a better or not much worse condition for them under some other? Or indeed under which they say: ‘‘We can’t be worse off?’’ Suppose Russia fifty years hence to be in possession of India, and to have fulfilled our mission of liberating and elevating the ryots: would not this be very provoking? Wages and price of food. The Indian Economist, 1874, says ‘‘Wages in money seem to have undergone little or no change for the last twenty years, while prices have risen heavily. In ordinar y years the ryot feeds his labourer out of his own grain stores; in dearth he sets him adrift. Masses moreover of the ryots themselves seem to be little better off than day labourers. The ryots will work day and night to irrigate their lands where water is procurable, and if we want a rubber crop, the way to get it

450 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India would be, we think, to assure the ryot that, whatever he might sow, he and no other should reap.’’ What a country road is. What a country road means may be told by an instance or two: of ‘‘the main line of road’’ down the valley from Kurnool to Cuddapah. Colonel Rundall says that it ‘‘is even now for miles and miles in such a state that, during the dry weather even, carts take to the field in preference, while in the wet weather it becomes so impassable that, after heavy rain, carts are detained for days before they can move. The country is thus virtually shut up.’’ (This is printed in italics in the report from which it is taken.) Colonel Rundall adds: ‘‘A good line of communication, available at all time and seasons is therefore an essential requisite, and if at the same time the cost of transit on it be kept low, there can be little question as to the effect it will have in stimulating production.’’ In a previous paragraph (he is speaking of the ‘‘Tumbuddra project’’) he says: ‘‘If by the construction of a reser voir the canal is made perennial, there can be little doubt of the irrigation spreading faster, but when to this is added a continuous navigation, a great additional stimulus to cultivation will be conferred by raising the value of almost every description of produce, especially of those grains which are at present unable to be transported, or to bear the high cost of transit entailed by the existing means of communication.’’ Bhawalpore. In a native state in the Punjab, Bhawalpore, as will be told further on, irrigation has been successfully carried on, and an economical system of canal administration introduced by the political agent and his irrigational officer—the natives cheerfully lending their aid in carrying out the works. If the people of India can be taught and guided in helping themselves, we thus do them lasting good. The Bhawalpore works are inundation canals. Vast portions of the Bhawalpore Desert are only a desert from want of water. . . . How Jacobund [?] was founded. The Blue Book of 1873 tells us that ‘‘Jacobund was founded in the midst of a barren treeless waste. The water of the Bagari [?] Canal was brought to Jacobabad and the tail was extended thence to the Kelat [?] boundary near Khyra Ghuri [?]. Now the former desert is a dense forest of babul and other trees, upwards of 60 feet high, sheltering the houses and gardens of the inhabitants. Within a few miles there is the desert again, which skirts the Baluchistan hills, a level plain of splendid, fertile, alluvial soil, but hard, naked and barren, like a threshing floor, without shrub, herb or

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grass, except in the vicinity of canals.’’ (And so with many, many vast regions of India.) ‘‘There the desert is converted into a garden; woods took the place of sand, and the Bagari Canal revenue, which amounted to £4796 in 1852, was £13,594 in 1857, and £17,339 in 1862. The improvements of General Jacob only cost £16,200.’’ The Fordwah in Bhawalpore. The ‘‘Progress and Condition of India 1873’’ tells us that ‘‘the native state of Bhawalpore extends for 300 miles along left banks of the Sutley, Chenab and Indus. The Trevewanna once fertilized a vast tract, but, owing to neglect, the feeding channels and the Trevewanna itself silted year by year, and more land fell out of cultivation. ‘‘The people took to rapine for a living, and at last the whole N.E. district of Bhawalpore became a mere population of cattle-feeders. This was the state when Major Minchen, the political agent, assumed charge of Bhawalpore in 1867, during the minority of the nabob. He borrowed £15,000 at 12 percent interest for ten years and dug a canal called the Fordwah, with the best results. A revenue of 12 lakhs, paid in grain, increased to £190,000 paid in cash. The system of yearly clearances had been placed on a sound basis. This is a measure of the blessings conferred upon the country.’’ Political value of irrigation. Colonel Strachey says (1870) that ‘‘the value of permanent means of irrigation in the district west of the Indus would be very great, in a political as well as fiscal sense. Everything which would add to the wealth of the population and security of obtaining a means of existence must conduce to the confirmation of habits of order and peace.’’ How little do we English folk think of the paramount importance of these two things: the wealth of the population (not only of the revenue), the security of their means of existence (not only of India) in our home thoughts! ‘‘In this point of view it seems probable that attention should also be given to the irrigation of the Peshawar valley and the Yusufzaie countr y. There is no so powerful agent in the cause of civilization as money.’’ The ryots never have any. ‘‘The possession of money derived from honest labour, and the knowledge that the means of procuring it in this way were fully secured, would assuredly produce a very beneficial effect on the border tribes,’’ aye and on the ryots too all over India. . . . Canals from a military point of view. Akin to the political effect of canals is the question of their hold on the affections of the people, and consequently of their security in case of mutiny. We are told on the highest authority that canals and not railways would be defended by the

452 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India people, that ‘‘you can keep armed steamers running upon it at all times, day and night, independent of the traffic, which you cannot on the railway’’; that ‘‘an irrigation canal in use would have the whole population on the side of it, and it would be a very dangerous experiment for people to try and destroy a canal; the people would be inclined to protect it, whereas they would not care about a railway being destroyed.’’ Moral and political effects of canals. Mr B.T. Login, c.e., says: ‘‘In India the promotion of irrigation works becomes a matter of public policy as well as humanity, for the widespreading distress occasioned by want of water is liable to produce discontent.’’ Indeed we should think so. ‘‘On the other hand, the moral effects cannot but be beneficial, when, from one canal alone, and that in an incomplete state, more than a million human beings were fed by its produce in 1860, and the writer well remembers on that occasion the cry for water and the satisfaction which its arrival caused among all the cultivators.’’ Compare this with the professed official fear that they will not take the water. ‘‘Only those who had the distribution of this water can fully appreciate the good effect such works must have on a population like that of India. If every stream which now flows to waste from Oudh to Peshawar were turned into irrigation canals, we should have a far greater militar y command of the country.’’ For satisfaction in plenty of water is better than compression by force for the peace and content of a people and, besides this, canals are a real source of defence. But, Mr Login adds: ‘‘Although no one would ever dream of closing a canal to quell a rebellion, yet the moral effect of our having the power to do so would at once make the industrious cultivators side with us in keeping the indolent and rebellious in order.’’ In other words, industry is always on the side of our power. ‘‘The effect, therefore, of having half a dozen more canals like those from the Ganges, the Jumna and the Ravee would possibly enable us to dispense with at least half a dozen European regiments.’’ A canal is worth more than a regiment, for the one only represses disaffection, the other changes it to affection. ‘‘Or at all events,’’ Mr Login proceeds, ‘‘in the event of a war on the frontier, few troops need be left behind to overawe that portion of Hindustan which produces the most warlike races of India. Therefore, for political causes alone, there is ever y reason why a regular system of irrigation canals should be carried out in Oudh, the North West and the Punjab, leaving out of view the far higher cause of humanity.’’

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Ganges Canal saved as many as Orissa famine slew. ‘‘The full development of irrigation would greatly enlarge the commerce between England and India, for irrigated land could support three times the present number of inhabitants of one of the most thickly populated portions of the globe. It has been shown that, owing to the Ganges Canal, as many lives were probably saved in Bengal during 1865-66 as perished in Orissa in 1868, and this canal in 1866-67 repaid to the countr y more than its total cost, while it was the means of feeding little short of 21⁄2 millions of people.’’ Compare this with the official complaints of the Ganges Canal not paying! Lord Lawrence says in his examination before the Parliamentary committee, 1 July 1873: ‘‘I think that there is one element in the question, which apparently you have not taken into consideration, and that is the great saving of revenue which has been effected by the existence of the Ganges Canal. I would say in a broad and general way that the money which you saved in the year 1861-62 in the shape of land revenue, and in the shape of saving the property of the people, was far more, on the most moderate calculation, than all the accumulated interest which we lost until the canal paid, say, 5 percent on its actual outlay.’’ x x ‘‘I travelled through those districts in 1837; I saw the utter barrenness of the land; the whole country was waste; there was not a green leaf of any kind or description in many of the districts; I saw large tracts of land under canal irrigation in other districts, in those ver y years of which we have been speaking, and there it was one sea of corn and barley.’’ Old canals of northern India. Lieutenant C.C. Scott-Moncrieff tells us that from the earliest times engineering works were constr ucted to store water and enable it to be thrown over the country. But in 1350 the Emperor Feroze Toghlak, ‘‘one of those enlightened and able monarchs who did so much for early India, bringing to bear on the hot plains which his fathers had overrun the energy and vigour of his northern habits and Turkoman descent,’’ made the first irrigation canal; he also built fifty dams across rivers to promote irrigation, thirty reser voirs, etc. His canal, which was to water the parched districts of Hansi and Hissar, about 100 miles west of his capital at Delhi, drew its water from the river Chetang, one of the drainage lines of the subHimalayas. His canal was restored and vastly improved about 200 years later by the great Akbar, ‘‘one of the greatest and wisest rulers of that or any other age and country.’’ Akbar’s son, Shah Jehar, ‘‘the Louis XIV of the East,’’ carried on the work and completed a system of

454 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India canals of about 420 miles, drawing now the water from the Jumna, ‘‘whose sources are supplied by the endless Himalayan glaciers, and which consequently only comes down in greater volumes the greater the heat, which melts the ice.’’ Condition of ryot in 1873 in the ‘‘Garden of India.’’ We come now to the depth of wretchedness, more wretched still than Bengal: the ‘‘Garden of India,’’ Oudh. Mr C.W. McMuir tells us that the average holding all over Oudh (vide Census Report) is 31⁄4 acres to each tenant; that the rent paid is an average of above ten rupees per acre; that out of thirtythree men whom he examined, twenty-nine paid money rents; of the twenty-nine, nineteen had had their rent raised—in some cases doubled—within the last three or four years; and the others were either men who had recently taken the lands or were under the court of wards. The superintendent of the Lucknow central jail informed him that 10 percent should be deducted from the weight of prisoners, who ‘‘had been fattening from three weeks to a month’’ in his jail. ‘‘Deducting only 5 percent, the weight stands at 7 stone 3 lbs. That of an average British ‘‘prisoner is 10 stone.’’ ‘‘In nearly every case, the prisoners had been convicted of theft or of cognate offences.’’ Condition of the Ryots in Oudh, 1871. Two or three years ago the chief commissioner of the province circulated questions to all the commissioners under him. ‘‘The reply to these inquiries,’’ says the Indian Economist, ‘‘was uniform and heartbreaking. The cultivator consumes nothing of the produce of his labour but the very coarsest grain. Everything goes into the hands of the bunniah [moneylender], and deliverance seems hopeless. Having let down our plummet and sounded the depths of this misery, are we to sit still and look wistfully ‘to time and general laws,’ and coldly take leave of it?’’ ‘‘In the name of God, no! If the British government cannot alter it, it is no government at all.’’ There can be but one echo, and that universal, to these words. Godavari Delta Works. With reference to the Godavari Delta Works, ‘‘there has not been the smallest fear of famine for the twenty-five years since the works were begun, and it secures a vast extent of the surrounding country. And these works yet admit of a further improvement. Though there is water in the canals all the year, yet they cannot nearly be kept full in the dry season. If water were stored in the Upper Godavari, not only would 500 miles of that river and the Wurdah be kept in an effective state for navigation in the dry season, but the water would be of great value in the Delta, both for improved naviga-

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tion and for extension of the second crop cultivation. This water could be supplied at a very moderate cost.’’ Thus for Bengal: a district—what am I saying? a kingdom, two and a half times the size of Ireland, with more than five times Ireland’s population—a kingdom including Patna and all the famine regions of this year. These regions would have been by this time the ‘‘abomination of desolation’’37 but for the Christian heroism of British officials, who have justified our Christianity to the earth, who will never themselves be known by name but who have created an almost new thing: official heroism in saving, not taking, life. Out of this vast country considerably less than one sixth part— about two thirteenths—are all that will be saved from future famines by the only two great irrigation schemes now in progress, viz., the Orissa and the Son works. Of the Patna division—about three fourths the size of Ireland—but with a population twice and a half that of Ireland, less than one third (that south of the Ganges) will be protected by the Son scheme, leaving more than two thirds yet to be provided for—a small matter of upwards of 16,000 square miles, or half Ireland, but with a far larger population than all Ireland. Of this small matter, less than one third will be protected by the two Gandak schemes, of which the High Level canal is to be started. Common roads are at present the only communications of this part (North Bihar). One of the great advantages of the Son scheme is not only that it protects a country which, though small, has a population more than that of all Ireland, put together from scarcity, so far as the rice crop is concerned, although storage of the water of minor streams is wanted for the cold weather crops, but that it secures intercommunication by water. All the Son canals being connected with the Ganges, South Bihar will become accessible to the river systems of Bengal, the North West Provinces and Oudh. But meanwhile, is anything being done, or proposed to be done, for poor Lower Tirhut? In Darbhanga and North Bhaugulpur—the centre this year of the severest scarcity, and an intolerably large centre too—is anything being done to utilize a snow-fed river, with always a large volume of water, either for irrigation or navigation? Are there any communications but common roads? What common roads mean, we will shortly tell. Has not the first attempt at improving the commu-

37 Matt 24:15.

456 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India nications been the railway for transporting government grain from the Ganges ghat to Durhunga? Though much has been done, is it not as little compared with what has to be done? Tinnevelly is the only exception, we believe, where, though the ‘‘tank cess’’ was commuted into money and the proceeds included in the general revenue (a process given at length on another page), a separate account of its amount has always been kept. Trichinopoly. The gigantic Ponnairy tank, in the Trichinopoly district, has now been in ruins for many years. The bund is 26 miles long, of great height, with two substantial masonry sluices, and still in good preser vation. Its water came from the Coleroon River by a channel 62 miles long, and by another from another river. ‘‘The whole of the countr y once fertilized by this stupendous work is now waste, and in great part covered with thick jungle, except a few poor villages scattered here and there, with a limited extent of cultivation attached to each.’’ (Bourdillon’s, Balfour’s and F.C. Cotton’s Report 1853.) Has anything been done since to repair the ‘‘stupendous’’ error and the tank at the same time? . . . ‘‘Our best policy (not only for reasons of revenue) is to encourage the growth of a middle class sufficiently wealthy and intelligent to possess influence and self-confidence, and owing its aggrandizement solely to industry and the arts of peace. Such a class has as yet never existed in the East, the occasional local prosperity of a few merchants being rather a proof that an exception to the rule. . . . ’’ Turning to the more general part of the subject: ‘‘The total expenditure on the (Godavari) works had been 12,65,361 rupees, and the total increase of revenue above the previous average was 19,54,803 rupees, leaving a net surplus gain of 6,89,391 rupees. This striking fact deser ves special notice. To what are we to ascribe the instant rise of revenue and the sudden spring of prosperity? It could not then be wholly the effect of irrigation; the increase of irrigation, large as it has been, is not sufficient to account for the whole gain in revenue. We believe it may be found in the condition of things, viz., in the vast stimulus given to industry and production by the employment of labour and the circulation of capital involved in the expenditure of large sums in a depressed and poverty-stricken district.’’ The ‘‘Progress and Condition of India,’’ 1873, tells us of Feroze Shah’s Canal in the fourteenth century and of Akbar’s restoration of it in 1568, and in 1626 of Shah Jehan’s conveying water to Delhi by a branch from Feroze’s Canal, which traversed the Aravah hills by a

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channel cut through the solid rock 60 feet deep at the crest. For 150 years Shah Jehan’s water flowed through the city in a masonry bed, with innumerable lesser streams. Since 1753 it has ceased to flow. We quote again: ‘‘This magnificent addition to the revenue is not to be gained by exaction, by trenching on the fair rights of property or industry; on the contrary, the noblest feature of all is that vast gain to the government is to be obtained by adding in a far higher degree to the wealth, comfort and happiness of the people. The value of the crop on an acre of dry land does not exceed 6 rupees, but that of an acre of rice is 20 rupees.’’ The Special Commission, consisting of J.D. Bourdillon, collector of North Arcot, Major Sir George Balfour, member of the Military Board, and Major F.C. Cotton, say, reporting in 1853: ‘‘An examination of the list of (government irrigation) works suggests humiliating reflections. The ancient rulers of the country, with resources of science and skill immeasurably inferior to what we can command, raised those numberless, magnificent and valuable works, to the possession and the advantages of which our government has succeeded. It is too evident that, had the present powers ruled, the country would never have possessed these additions to its wealth, or the government that large accession of revenue, both of which are due to the enlightened intelligence of princes whom we are accustomed to style barbarian.’’ x x Loss to ryots from want of water is ruin. ‘‘In connection with the subject of loss of revenue from neglect to repair works of irrigation, it must never be forgotten that for every 100 rupees of revenue so sacrificed, to the ryot the loss is of often total ruin. For if the tank or channel on which the value of his land depends is permitted to fall to decay, he has no resource; he cannot even, under the existing revenue arrangements, cultivate it with dry crops, for if he did so he would have to pay the full rent for irrigated land, and the ground is therefore left untilled.’’ Ignoring rights of ryots in irrigation works. ‘‘An order was passed by government (Revenue Department, 6 September 1857, No. 905) directing the stoppage of the repair of two very large tanks in the Bellary district which were damaged. The expenditure necessar y to repair the tanks, that is, to recover this amount of income now lost, is £9850, less than one year and a quarter’s purchase, and this is withheld.’’ The special commission already referred to ‘‘points out how completely it (this order) ignores the rights of those ryots who have a property in

458 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the land watered by these tanks. They have been inherited through many generations and have been purchased probably again and again in dependence on that right. If they are now left without irrigation, ‘‘they become utterly valueless under the existing revenue settlement, and even if the assessment is re-adjusted to suit them as dry land, still at least three fourths of their value will be annihilated. And yet the question of restoring the tanks is discussed, as far as appears, without any reference to these interests. In the case of existing works the government is in a degree morally bound to maintain them in repair’’ (and this modestly styled ‘‘degree’’ seems as if it ought to be a very high degree indeed!) ‘‘independently of and in addition to the consideration of revenue, for the sake of the capital which, on the faith of their virtual engagement to do so, has been invested in the land under such works.’’ ‘‘Tank fees’’ paid expressly for repairs (Leigh). The special commission proceeds to consider the ‘‘tank fees’’ and says: It has been usual to regard the cost of maintaining the works of irrigation as a charge on the revenue, and it has been represented as a part of the cost of collecting the revenue. It cannot be included in the latter without a perversion of language and confusion of ideas, and it is certain that it is not even a charge on the revenue to the extent commonly supposed, and it is doubtful whether it is so at all. The native princes who constructed the tanks and channels of irrigation knew quite well that from their very nature they must stand in need of constant repair. They, therefore, made a special provision for this necessity, by subjecting every acre of land irrigated to a special cess for this particular purpose, which was in some instances contributed by the ryots, and in others in equal parts from the ryots’ share and the government share of the produce, the revenue being in those times received in kind. x x After the assumption of the government by the English, it was determined to consolidate all the items making up the land revenue into a single demand, and for the most part this was a fixed sum in money for each acre, the revenue in kind being commuted.

This ‘‘consolidation’’ of payments for duties, some of which were ‘‘assumptions,’’ but performances ad libitum on the part of the government, seems to us very like: heads, we win, tails, you lose—very like improving the ryots’ rights off the face of the land. ‘‘In that operation the tank cess was included in the settlement and was merged in the revenue, and the correlative duty of maintaining the works of irriga-

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tion in efficiency was fully recognized on the part of the government’’: ‘‘recognized,’’ it seems, but not performed. x x ‘‘These facts place the government in a new position as to the works of irrigation.’’ Obligation to be fulfilled in return for equivalent received. ‘‘It thus appears that it is not simply a question of policy whether the government shall keep the works in repair, nor even that this is a merely implied engagement to do so, but that it is a positive and express obligation to be fulfilled in return for an equivalent received. It must be admitted that the duty has not been performed, and private property has suffered great damage in consequence, and it now remains therefore to retrieve past neglect, and bring up the works into a state of full efficiency as rapidly as possible. The fact that capital has been invested in the irrigated land on the faith of the irrigation involves a moral obligation to maintain it, and even if that obligation were disregarded, the motive of self-interest would still remain, for we have adduced many facts to show how intimately the prosperity of the revenue is connected with the efficient condition of the works of irrigation.’’ Might we not say depends upon them, as rice upon water? Economy in pence, waste of millions. ‘‘Indeed, in Indian finance in general, while there are stringent orders against the expenditure of hundreds, no account whatever is kept of millions never realized, though well within our reach. We economized a writer’s penknife, and take no steps to guard against a famine. There are numberless tanks and channels too, the waters of which, if carefully husbanded, would flow over tracts of land not irrigated now, adding to the revenue very greatly more than need be spent upon a better management.’’ ‘‘The price of rice in Orissa last December (1873) was £4 a ton, and in Nuddea, near Calcutta, it was £9, a difference of £5 for a distance of 250 miles, over which it could be carried by canal for a few shillings. Thus the price of rice where they wanted to buy was nearly double the price it might have been bought at, or half what they might have got it for where they wanted to sell. Think of food being sold in a district at the famine price of 1 d. a lb., this year 1874, when it was selling within 250 miles at less the 1⁄2 d., for want of one link of canal of about 80 miles.’’ ‘‘The main canal to connect Calcutta with Cuttack is ordered to be stopped short of an effective temporary terminus at tidewater, near Balasore, instead of being pushed on with all possible vigour to Calcutta.’’ ‘‘With a system of canals, the cost of carriage from one end of

460 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India India to the other would be under £1 per ton, making a most serious difference in the cost.’’ Our first business to connect all important links. ‘‘The first question of course is, as matters now are, how can the next money be expended so as to give the greatest results? In consequence of the wretched patchwork way in which these works have hitherto been carried on, extensive systems of navigation are left unconnected for want of short lengths of canal.’’ Thus the North and South Coast canals at Madras are in a great measure paralyzed for want of a connecting link of 3 miles. The Northern Canal and the Kistna Canals are separated by a line of 100 miles. The Southern Coast Canal is broken by two intervals, one of 60 and one of 20 miles. The Indus and Ganges navigations are separated by a line of 150 miles from the Sutley to the Ganges Canal; the Lower Ganges and Calcutta by a line of 150 miles; the Burhamputra and Calcutta by a few short lines of about 100 miles in all, Orissa Canals and those of the Godavari by about 250 miles. The canals and rivers on the west coast are in the same way divided by several short lines of a few miles each. One of the first things to be done is to execute those short connecting links, so strangely left uncut hitherto, and in which the money spent will produce such disproportionate results, by giving increased effect to so many thousand miles of navigation already in operation. After this the next thing to do will be to cut additional lines that will lay upon the populous tracts, and all mines, forests, etc., and connect them with the present system of navigation. Completion of present irrigation schemes, what is wanted. ‘‘Think of these enormously productive works being left year after year unfinished for want of £100,000 or £200,000, while millions have been spent in unremunerative works, which have entailed irritating taxes on the country. ‘‘On the Godavari about £100,000 is required to irrigate 300,000 acres. Think of the Ganges Canal having been allowed to linger on for twenty years, and not half the land yet watered, for want of the works necessar y to correct its defects and complete the distribution. But not only this, think of those invaluable works upon which not only the populations of those districts themselves, but of all the neighbouring ones, depend for their lives, not being even kept in repair. The late Upper Godavari Commission state that the locks in the Delta were out of order, and that the main line of canal had been closed for nine months. x x Many of the canals were useless from want of necessary repairs, and land yielding £30,000 in revenue had been thrown up

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from the failure of the supply of water. Who could believe it possible that even in our day there could be such astonishing neglect of these vital works? The first thing therefore to be done on this point, is to repair, correct, complete and extend all the present projects. All money so expended, if laid out with ordinar y engineering skill, will make immense returns, because all the heavy works connected with these projects having been already constructed, what remains to be done will be disproportionately productive.’’ But, if what ‘‘remains to be done’’ is not done, it will be proportionately unproductive. [It] ‘‘can hardly be overestimated, and when we find that cotton from Saharanpur, Jugadore, Kurnool, Paniput, and even Delhi, is now carted to Firozpur to be boated down the Indus, rather than sending it by rail to Calcutta, it is self-evident that, in spite of the moderate charges on the E.I. Railway, a still lower rate is necessar y to secure the cotton trade. A navigable canal secures this, while at the same time it can be constructed at about one third the cost of doubling and maintaining the railway line.’’ ‘‘Unmade roads in the rainy season are almost impassable’’ (as we know now from our famine experience in Bengal 1874). ‘‘Upon good roads, metalled and bridged, a native cart will carry half a ton (1200 lbs.), on a bad road, 600 lbs.’’ Indian agriculture. Well may Sir G. Campbell say (in 1872) ‘‘that we know nothing about agriculture; we are children in that respect, and we cannot teach others till we are ourselves taught.’’ Livestock. Mr Robertson, the superintendent of government farms, Madras,38 asserts without any hesitation that there is no countr y in which the livestock of the farmer is so wretched as in India. ‘‘It is true that in a few favoured localities the stock is moderately good, but taking the country as a whole the quality and condition of its livestock is a disgrace to the age.’’ Is it not rather that ‘‘the age’’ is a disgrace to its predecessors, which had a ‘‘livestock’’ that were their credit? ‘‘There is unfortunately little or no attempt to improve matters. The ryot deals with his stock as with his crops—leaves all to fate. With a stock of over 7 million head of cattle and over 6 million of sheep, he provides neither pasture nor fodder crops for their use, but leaves them to preser ve their wretched existence by such food as they can collect on unenclosed wastes, on the sides of tanks and water courses,

38 W.R. Robertson, principal of the Madras Agricultural College.

462 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India on fallow lands, etc. In some favoured, thinly populated localities, the position of agriculture livestock is much better, but by far the greater number of the livestock are kept, during two thirds of the year, just above the starvation point.’’ And in what is the ryot, their master, better off himself ? And is he scarcely more able to execute large irrigation works himself, if the government does them not, than his own livestock? The result of such management is that disease is seldom absent from the herds and flocks of the ryot, producing at times frightful loss. I wish that we had statistics of the annual loss by disease amongst Indian livestock. Facts such as these would rouse us to the actual state of our agriculture. Modern agriculture would revolutionize all this; it would provide proper food and pasturing for livestock, while it would cultivate only the best of the indigenous breeds, and improve them by importing suitable varieties from other countries. It is a mistake to suppose that India is deficient in fodder crops.’’ x x ‘‘And yet fodder crops are entirely neglected by the ryot.’’ Mr Robertson goes on to tell us that the ‘‘native plough is a most imper fect implement’’ and ‘‘stirs only a portion of soil, leaving a series of ribs untouched (I annex a woodcut of a native plough and ploughman), while the English plough turns over the whole body of the soil. The ryot who owns an English plough can, by its means, with one man and one pair of cattle, do as much work as his brother ryot can perform with two native ploughs, two pairs of cattle and two men.’’ x x ‘‘The draught of an English plough, owing to its superior construction, is seldom greater than the draught of a country plough, doing only half the work; but, assuming that the ryot must give 65 rupees for his pair of cattle, the outlay, including the cost of the plough, will be only 80 rupees. The two pairs of cattle he now employs cannot be valued at less than 50 rupees per pair, so that to provide them and a plough he must incur an outlay of upwards of 100 rupees against the 80 rupees expended by the owner of an English plough, while he will spend twice as much for the manual.’’ Another authority says: ‘‘My experience has satisfied me that the Indian farmer is most bountifully supplied with fodder crops; indeed in this respect he is much better off than our English farmers.’’ . . . The pair of cattle that work the English plough will need a better class of food than is now given to ordinar y plough cattle, but then only two animals will require to be fed instead of four.’’

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Conclusion. Mr Robertson’s conclusion is one that we should do well to lay to heart for many things besides ploughs, and many ‘‘objections’’ besides the one he states: ‘‘Now it has been objected that the ryot has no inducement to buy a plough—at, say, 15 or 16 rupees—as long as the thing he calls a plough can be produced at a cost of 2 or 3 rupees. That a considerable number of our ryots cannot raise such a sum as 15 rupees I readily admit, for I know that a very large number cannot at certain seasons afford to feed, clothe and house themselves and families properly or even decently, but because such a condition exists, are we to stand idly by and wait until all the ryots can afford to provide themselves with the means wherewith to cultivate their soil ?’’ How many good things such an ‘‘objection,’’ so ‘‘idly’’ spoken and so idly heard, has prevented in India! ‘‘There are thousands of ryots able to provide these means, but they have neither the intelligence nor the enterprise to avail themselves of them; they hate all changes and dislike everything that demands of them more exertion, or the exercise of a greater intelligence.’’ And what do we do, either for their bodies or their minds, to give them the power of enterprise? In sanitary things we make the same objection: because we cannot attribute to want of drainage the whole of the Burdwan or other fevers, therefore we ‘‘stand idly by’’ and wait till we know all the causes of all the fevers, before we do anything to remove any. And this, although there are ‘‘thousands of ryots’’ able and willing and eager to execute small drains, and as Colonel Haig tells us to ‘‘secure ever y drop of water,’’ if we would but help them and thus give them both health and wealth. Well may Lord William Bentinck39 say in 1835: It is impossible not to deplore the same defective state in the agricultural as in every other science in the country. Look where you will, and you find the same results: poverty, inferiority, degradation, in every shape. For all these evils, knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, is the universal cure. We must not forget that the government is the landlord of the country, possessing both the means and knowledge of improvement and, putting all obligations of public duty aside, is the most interested in the advancement of the wealth and comfort of its numerous tenantry.’’ What progress did we make in thirty-five years?

Well or better may Lord Mayo add in 1870:

39 William Cavendish Bentinck (1774-1839), appointed in 1833 the first governor general of India.

464 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It cannot be denied that Indian agriculture is in a primitive and backward condition, and the government has not done for its improvement all that it might have done. When the light of science has been properly brought to bear upon Indian agriculture, the results will be as great as they have been in Europe. The duties which in England are performed by a good landlord, fall in India in a great measure upon the government. The only Indian landlord who can command the requisite knowledge and capital for the improvement of the land is the state. There is perhaps no country in the world in which the state has so immediate and direct an interest in such questions. The land revenue yields 20 millions of our annual income. The means of obtaining agricultural instruction in India are no better now than they were fifteen years ago. The work that is per formed by the great agricultural societies of Europe must be per formed in India by the government or not at all.

And the secretar y of state for India adds, very much to the purpose: ‘‘It is certain that, with the exception of the permanently settled provinces of Bengal,’’ and is that a reason why these should be left without help? ‘‘the government has a direct and immediate interest in the improvement of agriculture which is possessed by no government in Europe.’’ Condition of the people. Well may Sir G. Campbell say, quoting a report made so late as 1869 on the Madras presidency, that very countr y famed for its past industry in public works: ‘‘The bulk of the people are paupers. They can just pay their cesses in a good year, and fail altogether when the season is bad. Remissions have to be made perhaps ever y third year in most districts. There is a bad year in some one district or group of districts every year.’’ Well may Sir William Denison,40 late governor of Madras, add: ‘‘My feeling is that the people are deteriorating and that we have to a certain extent been the cause of this. We have destroyed their native manufactures, have put a stop to the development of native talent and are fast bringing them down to the condition of producers of raw material. I do not like to see this.’’ We do not know who can. Well may Sir T. Bazley41 say that ‘‘the governing power of India had not thought the first necessities of mankind worthy of their attention. They had thought of the native army, they had thought of the home army, they had thought of state, but they had not thought of the com-

40 William Thomas Denison (1804-71), governor of Madras 1861-66. 41 Thomas John Bazley (1797-1885), 1st baronet, mp for Manchester.

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forts of the people, and they had neglected the first element of progress: they had not given them common-sense education, nor the knowledge of civilization.’’ That is, we have not taught them how to live: we have not given them the simplest elements of this art in England, no, not even an English plough, unless they hunted it up for themselves. And where were they to hear of that unheard-of instrument among themselves, unless we told them? ‘‘We must not shield ourselves,’’ Sir T. Bazley continues, ‘‘by saying that we had an inferior intellect to deal with. Perhaps the Hindus are a more timid race than ourselves, but they were our equals in intellect, and we who had the development of India in our hands were bound to spread information among the great masses of the people. . . . ’’ In the budget speech at Calcutta, it was said: ‘‘If any doubt has hitherto existed as to the expediency of engaging in great and extensive schemes of irrigation, that doubt has been completely dispelled. There can be no deliberation in dealing with famine. The issue forced upon the government has been not whether it shall engage in speculation which may yield an uncertain profit, but whether whole districts of the countr y shall be exposed to a periodical depopulation for want of those preventive measures which human power can command. Irrigation in India is the great question of the day, as the repeal of the Corn Laws and unrestricted commerce were the great questions in England in days gone by.’’ It is not a fanatical engineer who says this: it is the supreme government and governor general of India. ‘‘But all that the repeal of the Corn Laws and free trade have done for England, and much more than all, can be done for the people of India by works which will fertilize their fields and place their means of subsistence beyond the reach of accidents’’ (and so on through many paragraphs). How noble are these words! Of course the deeds were commensurate. Of course British capital, science, knowledge, as our chancellor of the Exchequer would say, were set to work without a moment’s delay. No, these words were ‘‘left’’: ‘‘To point a moral or adorn a tale.’’42 And again and again: famines ‘‘at which the world grew pale’’ ‘‘depopulated’’ the land. In other words than my own: Nor is there the sign of beginning upon such a general and effective system of works, not a sign of that being done in irrigation and navigation which has been done about railways.

42 Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, chap 44.

466 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘What can we look for to put an end to this fearful and ruinous system, this putting off from year to year these vital works, and to lead to an intelligent and effective prosecution of this essential enterprise, the irrigating and navigating India?’’ Conclusion: Government, India’s landlord. We can hardly sum up better than in the words of the triple report so often quoted: The government are in the position of landlord as regards the government irrigation works: they, and they only, in general can undertake the construction of such works. There are vast numbers of undertakings, to a large amount, which would return not 10 percent, but 20 and even more directly into the Treasury, besides a vast addition to the comfort and wealth of the community, in advancing whose prosperity the government has an interest—not here to speak of the duty—which does not exist in the case of the English landlord. Again, at a very moderate computation, irrigation quadruples the produce and the value of land, and thus, though acre for acre somewhat more labour is required, yet food is raised at less cost of labour, and a larger fund is left, after paying the cost of production, to be expended on other articles of comfort and convenience besides food. Then the comfort of the people at large increases, new wants spring up which were unknown before, and new branches of industr y arise to minister to those wants.

Thus a market is created for the surplus produce, and the producer and the consumer mutually profit by each other’s prosperity. And this process can go on to an unlimited extent. For the power unlimited of consumption is limited only by that of production—the necessary conditions being that the producers of all kinds shall be placed within reach of the consumer by good communications, and that labour shall be free. Thus capital accumulates, and with the accumulation of capital comes the love of peace and order, the cultivation and enlargement of the mind, and in a word civilization. . . . The [1856] Sonthal and Pubna insurrections are not known in England to one of a thousand who were absorbed in the Fenian attempt to blow up Clerkenwell Jail, and in the Fenian success in murdering a policeman at Manchester and letting two Fenian prisoners out of a police van.43 Neither are these insurrections interesting to

43 Both attempts to rescue Fenian prisoners in 1867.

Florence Nightingale (portrait). Photograph courtesy of the Royal College of Nursing.

(Top) Imperial Assemblage, Delhi, 1877. (Above) Viscount Lytton, viceroy. Photographs courtesy of Knebworth House.

The 1st Marquess of Ripon, viceroy. British Library Reproductions.

Lady Dufferin, vicereine. British Library Reproductions. Lord Dufferin, viceroy. British Library Reproductions.

(Left) Sir William Wedderburn. National Portrait Gallery (Collection X31873), photograph by Bassano. (Right) Dadabhai Naoroji.

“Life or Death in India,” 1873.

British rule in India resulted in desperate famine for some, while revenues went to pay for Afghan wars and this monument to Queen Victoria, built in Calcutta after her death. From http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/jessnel/big_adventure/1116505620/p1070282.jpg/tpo.

Dr Mary Scharlief (oil portrait). Photograph courtesy of the Royal Free Hospital Archives.

Dr Rukhmabai, physician and opponent of child marriage. From http://womenofbrighton .co.uk/Rukhmabai.htm.

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one of a million who gloated over the Tichborne trial.44 Yet had the then-lieutenant governor of Bengal not been the man he was, each of those insurrections might have become a jacquerie, and the jacquerie become a rebellion. Sir G. Campbell was the first to estimate and admit that there were grounds of provocation and to remove them. Three years ago there was the grossest and vilest oppression of the poor Sonthals. The late lieutenant governor of Bengal put it down and made a new state of things. Englishmen have little idea that in Bengal and Oudh there is always a smouldering fire of discontent—discontent at too real grievances, that at any time the ashes may burst into a flame and the flame into a blaze, that had not a man with real insight into the ryots’ grievances been at the head of Bengal affairs at the time, the fire would have blazed up then. And as when an American prairie takes fire, no man knows where it will stop. Englishmen little think, not only that there is always a rent league among the Muhammadan ryots against the zemindars—even including Muhammadan zemindars, but that, although Muhammadan ryots have more energy and pluck and selfreliance, yet Hindu ryots will combine with Muhammadans for such a purpose as a rent league. In the Mutiny, the ryots were with us, and it was due to this circumstance that the Mutiny never became a rebellion. In the Mutiny, the Marathas attempted to stir up and tried to win over the ryots in Bombay presidency against us, but the ryots answered that they, the Marathas, failed because the ryots knew that they were better off under our rule and would not be stirred up and won over. How would it be if Bengal ryots knew or thought that they were not better off under our rule, as in Eastern Bengal where Muhammadan ryots are the strongest, or in Oudh? How would it be then? The late lieutenant governor of Bengal pacified the rent league? How might it be another time? The very progress of education might make the situation more dangerous. The rent league, which was pacified, might at any time assume formidable tone and shape, so formidable that if it did put on that of a jacquerie, the holders of property would be nowhere. (The successful opposition of the ryots, assisted then by the zemindars, a dozen years ago, against indigo planters—the zemindar, when it was

44 A sensational trial, and in 1851 the longest trial in an English civil court: a man claiming to be Tichborne, who had gone missing at sea twelve years earlier, reappeared to claim an inheritance.

468 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India not against himself, could understand the ryot’s grievances—shows that ryots can do something and that they can combine.) Of all this, English people have only the faintest idea, if indeed they have any at all. Nothing would move John Bull so much—except humanity, for indeed he is a champion and a patron of humanity—so much as the idea that a jacquerie is not so entirely impossible in the future as he thinks, that the ‘‘dumb animal may not be always dumb, the worm will turn again.’’ The Bengal ryots have a grievance—a grievance approaching starvation. The Muhammadan ryots of Eastern Bengal not only have this grievance but they know it. The ryots are capable of combination, even between Hindu and Muhammadan. These are three dangerous elements. It is more easy to show how with a people the most industrious in the world on a soil the most fertile in the world, the ryot is always on the brink of starvation than to show what is to be done and how to do it. In Oudh Lord Canning’s measures had made the ryots serfs. Lord Lawrence by an act of the legislature tried to give security of tenure to these Oudh ryots against the powerful talukdars. He had great difficulty in carrying this act; it does much for the ryots but practically it can be made to fail in many points. And he wished to do much more. What he thought necessary as remedies for the ryot’s wants and evils— which some say are worse if that be possible in Oudh than in Bengal— was much more. What is required to be done, what it is proposed to do, and the means of carrying it out are to be seen at [breaks off] If it could be shown to Englishmen that the peasantry have a right in the land in Bengal and Oudh, this would be a great point. To talk of ‘‘right of peasantry in the land’’ is, in England, revolution. But, if the peasantr y had this right, and we dispossessed them of it, that is a different thing. The Bengal peasantry are little else than serfs. The Russian peasantry is now much better off than the Bengali. That is a disgrace to us. Ours is a levelling centralizing influence. Even after all that has been done and all that is written about our reign of justice, our courts of law are still all for the zemindars. The longest purse carries the day (M Mohl). England has feudalism yet. But she might be shown that feudalism has nothing to do in India, that we have wronged the peasantry in the name of feudalism. It is said that the feudal party in Russia, opposed to serf-emancipation, actually held us up as their authority, and said: ‘‘Would you have the peasantry freer than England’s peasantr y?’’ Now we boast ourselves to be the land of freedom and property above any-

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thing else. This is a terrible lesson when Russia, till lately the land of ser fdom, and the party of serfdom in Russia, cites our example for slaver y and the stand-still policy. There are peasant magistrates in Russia; there are peasant magistrates in our own North West Provinces. Must Bengal and Oudh always remain behind? Editor: A set of proofs, eighty-four pages in length, identical with the above ‘‘third set,’’ has Nightingale’s inscription onThe Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life or Death in India, ‘‘Proof. Sir Bartle Frere.’’ Then, in another hand, ‘‘Notes of an interview with Sir Bartle Frere in F.N.’s writing are enclosed.’’ Nightingale’s hand continues: ‘‘Please return to F. Nightingale, 35 South St. Park Lane, W. 7/12/74.’’ The proof itself is included in the above-edited text. Here we reproduce the notes written by Nightingale from an interview on it, with some of her own responses to Frere’s comments. They show her respect for Bartle Frere’s views, and also her use of such an expert to test out her own ideas. Source: Notes on an interview with Sir Bartle Frere, University College, London SRE. folios 950.N31.3

21 January 1875 Sir B. Frere. Hoodwinked. If an English official, however good a scholar, only listens to that one—every Englishman, however much he distr usts the natives, has one he trusts, the trusting man has many— and does not go out and talk and ask among the natives, he will be hoodwinked. Difference between S. and W. India, and all the N. and E.: that the former recorded the rights first and kept them (Elphinstone,45 Munro and Malcolm), doing mischief sometimes by keeping and sometimes by altering. Lord Cornwallis, etc., made the settlement first with headman or zemindar and afterwards, after it was settled, recorded the rights, so that any corruption could take place between headman and other.

45 Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859), Scottish statesman and historian, with the East India Company, resident at Pune in 1811, then involved in Maratha politics; from 1819 to 1827 he was lieutenant governor of Bombay, his main achievement being the compilation of the ‘‘Elphinstone code of laws.’’ He was involved in the coming-to-be of a system of state education in India.

470 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Lord Cornwallis’s settlement left Bengal bare: nothing but one English judge, one English collector, one English, etc. Everyone said with how little expense Bengal is managed; no one went out among the natives till the missionaries to see how they were managed. In Bombay, where native offices were left (we never touched their emoluments), we were always told how extravagant we were: keep down the expenses. Campbell in Bengal had to try by pinching and pricking to organize an acephalous map of a polygon [?]. Native collectors, native judges and police so underpaid, eked it out by oppression, served their own purposes; not seldom a man would be made to confess murder by torture and the murdered man walked into court. But if the native chowhydar [?] paid by a cahn [?] from every house is required to oppress his fellow villagers, he will think twice before he does it. If the native collector is properly paid to make up his collections, or the collectors from time immemorial, he will not torture and oppress. Danby Seymour46 went out and investigated the Madras torture. Lord Salisbur y, self-willed. But will take a knock-down blow like a gentleman and admit you have beaten him in argument. Never saw anyone so anxious to help Lord Northbrook: if Lord N. does not think it helps him, Lord S. withdraws his bill (if Lord N. only knew it). Minister of Public Works, Strachey: Lord S. willing to do whatever Lord N. wished. Rent-free lands, squireocracy, redeemed rent. Lord Canning’s policy: If you leave them alone in their possessions, you have always a body on your side of landed men. B. Frere’s comment on side of p 5 (see p 415 above), next to Lord Cornwallis, provides for the possible re-establishment of indirect taxes: Mark reimpose. It is difficult now to get anyone to listen to a statement of the fact that to this day indirect taxes on capitalists, artisans and traders form a large portion of the revenue in ever y native state, without a solitary exception as far as I know. Yet we are perpetually told by modern opponents of indirect taxation that it is ‘‘contrar y to native ways,’’ ‘‘to the genius of Hindu ‘finance,’ ’’ ‘‘a European innovation.’’ [next to ‘‘he pays on his own marriage. . . . ’’] FN: Most true.

46 Henry Danby Seymour (1820-77), mp.

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[next to pp 15-16] FN: Sir Thomas Munro’s scheme, called the ryotwari system, had its trial and its failures too. BF: not so great as in the zemindari. [p 17 on H. Martineau’s British Rule in India] BF: This description of Miss M. is very true in the abstract, but less true of Madras than of other parts of India. The great faults of the Madras system were (1) Munro worship. . . . [p 20] FN: But this is not to say that Manchester, as it carried free trade against all the world, may not soon become the most valuable influence of the day in carrying India’s progress against all the world, including herself and itself (Manchester and India), and forcing a reconsideration of what we consider ‘‘first principles’’ in governing India. All hail to Manchester! BF: very just. [p 21 seems to have a comment of John Lawrence] I doubt whether the planters were superior to the zemindar—they might. [p 76 at Conclusion] FN: Query: Do railroads really increase the safety of English rule in India? BF: yes. It is true the railroads in the coach and we have no manure carts. But if you have neither cart nor coach, a coach is a boon, better than nothing. [p 78] FN: No good laws or education can compensate India. A man must eat in order to be educated. [p 80 next to On the violator of the Permanent Settlement] FN: We are asked to abolish the Permanent Settlement. That is impossible. But it is rather the violation of the Permanent Settlement that we have to abolish. Editor: Notes and correspondence on the same concerns, such as how to improve the ryots’ conditions, follow. In them, Nightingale and Frere explore such practical measures to alleviate the ryot’s suffering as the improvement of the water supply, irrigation, thrift and foresight, improved agriculture and legal aid against moneylenders. Famine made the plight of peasants and villagers, always poor, more desperate. The ‘‘Great Famine’’ of 1876-79 was a major concern to her, and there is reference to the Bihar famine of 1874. Ryots rebelled in the Deccan in 1874-75, and the causes of the uprising and suggested remedies are the subject of the Repor t on the Deccan Riots by the Commission of Inquiry, 1876, a document Nightingale perused in her writing (see p 505 below).

472 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Nightingale held that the status of ryots relative to that of their moneylenders was effectively that of ‘‘slaver y to zemindars’’ (see p 479 below), where the ryots were exploited, cheated by usurers and petty administrators, and forced into debt. The urgent need of placing the relations of landlord and tenant on a secure basis was something that she emphasized in her writing and correspondence. The proposal emerged of establishing native agricultural banks, supported by British capital, to help Indian ryots, ‘‘the poorest in the world’’ (see p 479 below), out of deprivation. She confided to her friend Mar y Clark Mohl in 1878,47 ‘‘India work has occupied me exceedingly lately, especially the question of the frightful indebtedness . . . of the Indian, and chiefly the Deccan, peasantry and their slavery, actual slaver y, to the moneylenders.’’ Source: From an incomplete letter to William Farr, Add Mss 43400 ff277-80

22 September 1877 It is one of my greatest pleasures to hear what you are doing. Thank you for your Shrewsbur y paper. The manner of your doing it is equally admirable with the matter. I wish indeed you could send a lecturer round ‘‘the principal country towns.’’ I am sure he is wanted here. I shall await with impatience the ‘‘copy’’ of your ‘‘paper’’ which you kindly promise. I think I could almost ‘‘take up my bed and walk’’48 to go to hear it; particularly that part of it which combats the idea, almost the wish, that ‘‘the high mortality must be sustained to prevent’’ the population increasing too fast, seems to me of particular value at this time. Even you can scarcely imagine how in this hideous Indian famine it meets me at every turn from great men, men of authority, statesmen and ‘‘councillors,’’ that famines are sent by Providence! to keep down the population. This famine must undoubtedly be coped with as it is, as we can, but the three crying wants of India seem to be (1) water: if we had given them water, we should not have to be giving them bread and to have seen millions perishing for the want of it, in spite of all the government has done. That is, irrigation by every means: canals, tanks, storage and regulation of water wells and cheap water transit including steam navigation canals. (2) The giving the ryot in Bengal every legal help/facility against the zemindar,

47 Letter 18 July 1878, in Women (8:590). 48 An allusion to Mark 2:9.

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his landlord, pampered by us under the Cornwallis Permanent Settlement [of the land revenues 1793] so that all his, the zemindar’s, dues have been more than paid him, none of his duties under that settlement required of him as a landlord, some at least of those duties under the form of water cesses, road and education cesses, etc. Otherwise, give the ryot water and the profit will all go into the pocket of the zemindar, who has had all the rights without any of the duties of landlord given him. You will advocate, will you not? above all showing the English people that irrigation pays. I was appalled at the ignorance and fallacies of Lord G. Hamilton’s speech Times of 5 or 6 October saying that rails pay and that water does not. It should be exposed but who is to do it? and also at Lord Salisbur y’s speech at Bradford in Times of 12 October, saying amid such extraordinar y trivialities as that ‘‘water can’t run uphill,’’ and therefore we can’t have irrigation. [3.] Thrift is what must save the Indian ryot. We have heard (this is the secretar y of state’s under secretar y of state for India) of the horse being made to live (or die) on a straw a day, but I don’t know that we ever heard before that the horse ought to exercise ‘‘thrift’’ and save his one straw a day. [continued 16 October 1877] Yet this is what it appears the country ryot has actually done, quite unknown to our masters. There is such an element of endurance and heroism that, during the greatest need/starvation and the highest prices, the hoarded pits of grain have remained buried in the earth (no one betrayed the secret), put by not to sell again at the highest famine prices but for seed corn against another failure of crop year of famine. And not till the present harvest was secured have they appeared. What thrift, what endurance have the Westerns compared with this? and we in the West preach thrift to them, a heroism, endurance, thrift and self-abnegation unknown to the Western. The horse literally ‘‘saved his one straw’’ a day for his children’s sowing, the most heroic, the most secretive, the most poor, to most industrious. And they call these people not thrifty; it is the heroism of thrift. They are the poorest of peoples. The old rule used to be that more than twice the principal could not be exacted. It was said that Sir Arthur Hobhouse49 was going to reintroduce this into Bengal. There

49 Sir Arthur Hobhouse (1819-1904), English judge, legal member of the council of the governor general of India 1872-77.

474 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India is so little danger of pauperization that, for one who threw himself without need on the relief measures, ten died in silence. The giving the ryot especially in southern India every local help against the moneylender, into whose hands the ancestral lands are passing and the ryot is becoming not metaphorically but literally and legally the moneylender’s slave, instead of as we do now giving the moneylender every legal help to possess himself of the lands of India and to make the ryot his slave. Otherwise give the ryot water and the profit will all go into the pocket of the moneylender. It is strange that, under the nation probably the justest in the world, ‘‘the abolition of the slave trade,’’ a slaver y, a poverty, an impecuniosity, an impropertyness should be growing up, actually the consequence of our laws, which far outstrips in its miserable results, because it enslaves and renders destitute a land-possessing peasantry, anything except the worst slave trades. And in some respects we are worse than the tax-farming Turks. Our government, which has absolute power, lets all this be, and they call me a ‘‘dangerous man’’!!! Have you read Pedder’s article in The Nineteenth Century for September?50 That is what we have been urging for years. Two things my correspondents (Madras) most urge: (1) orphans and destitute children now forming main population of relief camps to be taught useful trades instead of being sent back to swell agricultural hosts already too large; (2) system of small loans at moderate interest to country ryot now carried out to very small extent by government, to be extended to meet need, supported by British capital. Is it true that a rate of 40, 50, 60 percent is a not more uncommon rate of interest in the country interior of India than a rate of 4, 5 or 6 percent is in England? If so, the fear must be not of the conquest of India by the Russian but of the conquest of India by the moneylender? Is it possible that England would reconquer India (by a system of loans from British capital at a moderate rate of interest? or might the Government of India) by enabling the indebted country ryot to redeem his lands and pay off his debts, lending him money at 10 or even 15 percent? What a glorious conquest that would be!

50 W.G. Pedder, ‘‘Famine and Debt in India,’’ The Nineteenth Century (September 1877):177-97. The article made the proposal of a native agricultural bank.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 475 Source: Notes for a meeting to be held with Henry Stewart Cunningham, Add Mss 45827 ff121-22

8 December 1877 First question to be asked: Why are ryots unwilling to accept the water? Because it puts them in the power of minor official (all natives), tehsildars, etc. Bribery, oppression, corruption, bullying is the rule, the universal rule with these. They have unlimited power to make themselves disagreeable and must be bought off with a bribe. Collectors (all Europeans) quite invulnerable to bribes: but secondrate, dunder-headed men (not little gods); the official network of petty administration does require improving. The indebted ryot and the usurious banja [grain trader] [are] pretty much the same all over India. Government, the first mortgagor on the land, has all the machiner y ready for lending, but it is taken advantage of in an almost infinitesimal degree, perhaps in all India only a quarter of a million, interest about 7 percent. Again indebted ryot prefers going to his own banja to putting himself in the power of minor officials of government. Banja seldom takes a bond: it is more often 5 rupees, 6 rupees to be repaid next month, but it is quite true that the land is passing into the hands of the banjas, that the ryot’s crops are not his own but the banja’s. All over India land changes hands, as in Ireland the moneyed man buys Ireland from the gentry. It is true the banja sells the ryot up and gets his land for a tenth of its value; so does your banker sell you up, so does a country attorney get farmers absolutely in his power. Source: Notes from a meeting with Henry T. Prinsep,51 Add Mss 45827 ff125-26

2 Febr uary 1878 Ir rigation in Punjab must be by little channels from river to river of the five great rivers twenty or thirty miles long. Then the people to erect their little wells or rather pumps like the Egyptian shadoof on the channels, which cost £3 instead of £30, which a masonry well costs, and can be worked with one or two pairs [of] bullocks instead of four pairs. The irrigation, when made to be placed in hands of village communities, for them to distribute among themselves—with certain regulations such as not more than one third of your territor y to be irrigated—then they will not waste the water, then there will be no taking

51 Henr y Thoby Prinsep (1792-1878), member of the Council of India 1858-74.

476 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India all the water and leaving none for lower down. Then there will be no briber y, the people gladly use the water and gladly pay. If it is left in the engineers’ hands, the engineers don’t understand the people; perhaps they spoil the people’s own little irrigation arrangements (take the water from them), in making their great schemes, which don’t meet the people’s wants. For every rupee that goes to the government another rupee goes to the minor native officials. Bribery is universal, invariable. If the people complain the higher official always wants to give them their rights, but if one minor official who has taken the bribe is punished the whole of the others unite to ostracize the unhappy complainant, to make his life a burden to him, and he never complains again. . . . Irrigation is healthy if the people manage it themselves: they take only just enough and they gladly pay if they have not to bribe too. It is unhealthy if they take all the water at once in order not to have to bribe a second time; then they swamp their land and sit down in the swamp and have fevers. . . . A native judge will take a bribe; every officer in his court will take a bribe; the real plaintiff will never appear or never be able to reach the judge and no word of truth ever reaches the superior official. Much is said now about admitting natives to higher posts; much rather should all this be looked into. No discrimination is exercised in choosing the petty native officials. They are chosen for their cleverness, wealth or position, never for their character or honesty. . . . Englishmen treat the native as if he were an inferior being, but the calling the natives ‘‘black’’ has gone out. Still we don’t love India. Sir G. Campbell doesn’t love India. Source: From notes from a meeting with Lord Lawrence, Add Mss 45777 ff 202-05

9 Febr uary 1878 Immense improvement in India in the last twenty years in well-being of ryots except where there have been droughts; immense improvement in education but they try too much to get into government employment in Punjab and N.W. The proprietors [are] generally cultivators; people don’t hire themselves much out as labourers and when they do are paid not in wages but in kind. Riches generally in wife’s silver ornaments; when drought comes, they eat these. . . . Yes they bribe the police if there is a family crime, especially if there is a murder to be hushed up. But that is the people’s own fault: they have not to bribe the police so much to get their rights, especially

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 477

now the police is better paid. They bribe the police but look at our detectives trial and these detectives were men in responsible positions. Yes, native courts, native judges take bribes, but except in Holland twenty-five years ago there was not a court in Europe where you had not to oil the palm of every judge. . . . I don’t think an irrigation cess stands in the same ground as education or road cess. I think irrigation cess which goes into the Treasur y to supplement works done extravagantly by engineers is breaking faith. But education and road cesses are spent locally. These engineers are gentlemen, but still it is a great temptation not to do a canal frugally if the cost is to be made up by a tax, if it is not to be done so as to be made to pay. But the people, if you will have patience with them and enlist them, will always take the water in time. Illegal abwabs; ancient rascalities; the people always mind these ancient rascalities less than new cesses and rates; custom endears them; let whole villages to them and planters made ryots grow what the planters wanted. Act of 1859 has altered things much for the better. Irrigation there has been unhealthiness from percolation. Where (in N.W. Provinces) people not taking the water, engineers raised embankments in order to carry the water farther on—water percolated and made marshes; two villages entirely swept by death from fever. People with only pasturage lands for instance will not take the water in ordinar y years. Inundation canals are the cheapest to make, the dearest to keep up. Other canals the reverse—the dearest to make, etc. Labour has also immensely risen in value and since the time of the native rulers when it was done by corvées—the expense of canals is out of all comparison greater. Godavari works high up of irrigation and navigation. Colonel Haig’s estimate £200,000, spent £400,000. Lord Northcote said: Stop. I begged to go on and £700,000 were spent and still not finished or a success. Estimates cannot be exact even in England, how much less so in India. (London School Board: we built school on Thames Embankment, foundations not good—school cost twice the estimate.) But engineers should if they find unexpected difficulties or find they are doubling estimated cost announce this in time, ask for further instructions, and not go on for fear they should be stopped, which ends in their being stopped after immense sums have been spent on his authority for schemes/works/localities of which he gives no account

478 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India for execution which he is not to be responsible for. It is the more necessar y to give a scheme. Bright only did as a S. of S. does—he only got up, crammed the scheme. He said he had not examined the figures; why in Sir A. Cotton’s own interest, he should have done just the contrary; he should have talked it out with an opponent of Cotton’s and then given us his matured judgment. People only listen not to a counsel, but a statesman, to a man who knows and has thought for himself. A counsel gets up his case, his brief, and forgets a week after all about it. A S. of S. crams and gets up his speeches, knowing little and caring less. But that’s not what you want. Sir A. Cotton and those who know can answer questions whenever they’re wanted. Balfour was only [saying] I have confidence in the man. If he and Bright knew nothing but what Cotton had told them, how does that improve Cotton’s case— what does it go for? (If your wife or sister says she has confidence in you, it’s ver y nice—but what good does it do a public man’s schemes for Balfour to say it?) These are not the sort of men to help Cotton. I would rather have Campbell to help me than ten Balfours. Lord Salisbur y knows little and cares less, only gets up a speech. Duke of Argyll cared more but he cares for the least little home subject more than for the greatest Indian subject. Sir C. Wood, the man who cared most, who would have two or three opponents together to talk out the subject in his own room. That’s what Bright should have done. Government ought to do canals which will only just pay and which would not pay a private company, because the property of the people is the payment. Not that I mean by that to pump and prey upon the people and raise the assessment but to do our duty to the people without putting any fresh taxes upon them. They are always except in the Punjab only just above the margin of want by two or three bracelets, only just raised above starvation in times of drought by a few rupees’ worth of silver ornaments which they eat. The ancient rascalities, the illegal abwabs: people don’t mind. Lord Lawrence thinks income tax better than enhancement of rent. Thinks road and education cesses which are for local purposes not on the same footing as irrigation cess, which is to go into the Imperial Treasur y and supplement the cost of a too-extravagant public work. Engineers do not make canals frugally if a water assessment is to cover the cost. The Orissa assessment for water was too high. (Did this go into the Imperial Treasur y?) . . .

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 479

Communications do no good for people who have nothing to buy food with. These people are all agriculturists; they have no trades to go into. When their crop fails, they have nothing to fall back upon but the wife’s silver ornaments. In Punjab most of them [are] small proprietors, also are cultivators, no large zemindars, few day labourers; they don’t have wages in money but in kind. Source: From two draft letters to Sir Louis Mallet, Add Mss 45779 ff147 and 148-55

11 Februar y 1878 I have never thanked you for your kind note of September. My best thanks are that I wrote you a long letter in answer about matters pertaining to Indian cultivators and Madras poverty which I was so good as not to send respecting as I do your time. My reason now for troubling you with this short note is this: you will kindly remember that, when I last had the pleasure of some correspondence with you, it was to lay before you the gist of a statement which Lord Salisbur y permitted me to make to him as to the heads upon which information should be required from India upon an uniform basis which information could not be sufficiently challenged. Febr uary 1878 It grieves me beyond measure that you think this great Madras calamity [famine], so much greater than our government at all allows, will be a pretext for the postponement to another generation of the real duties of England to India. . . . But it was not to moralize that I venture now to write to you. It is about the Indian ryot (to ask some questions I should say, but that I have no hope you have time to answer them). The Indian ryot, so incomprehensible to us, the poorest in the world, and it is said getting poorer and poorer every year, the most industrious in the world, the most heroic, the most secretive and false. The irrigation, so vitally, so mortally needed. The indebtedness to moneylenders, so that a full crop, if he has one, merely means so much in the moneylender’s pocket. The slavery (in Bengal) to zemindars, worse than any Bulgarian slavery to Turks. These are the subjects, heart-stirring enough in themselves which in your hands might stir all England. 1. Water: if we had given them water, we should not now have had to be giving them bread. And not only this, but to have seen millions (take all the famines in this century) perishing for the want of it, in spite of all the government has done. For example, irrigation by strengthening, repairing and keeping up the old tanks, by storage and

480 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India regulation of water, where possible, for keeping the old tanks always supplied. I see appeals from ‘‘influential’’ numerous natives, notably from Arcot and Trichinopoly, for this and accounts of success from Sind and Bombay by wells. Irrigation means irrigation by every attainable means: canals, tanks, storage, wells and cheap water transit, including steam navigation canals. . . . 2. The giving the ryot in Bengal every legal help against the zemindar, his landlord, pampered by us under the Permanent Settlement . . . so that all his, the zemindar’s, dues have been more than paid him, none of his duties under that settlement required of him as a landlord, some at least of these duties under the form of water cesses, road and education cesses, etc. . . . 3. The giving the ryots, especially in southern India, every legal help against the moneylender, into whose hands the ancestral lands seem to be passing; and the ryot becomes, not metaphorically but in some cases literally and legally, the moneylender’s slave. . . . Is it not strange that under a nation, probably the justest in the world and the abolisher of the slave trade, a poverty, an impecuniosity, an impropertyness, leading to virtual slavery, should be growing up, actually the consequence of our own laws, which outstrips in its miserable results, because it enslaves and renders destitute a land-possessing peasantr y, anything except the worse slave trades. And in some respect we are worse than the tax-farming Turks. One thing has been most urged by my Madras correspondents: a system of small loans from government at moderate interest to the countr y ryot which is now carried out (to a very small extent) to be extended to meet the need and supplied by British capital. . . . 4. The first question to be asked is, in cases where ryots are said to be unwilling to accept the water for irrigation purposes, why are ryots unwilling to accept the water? Because it puts them in the power of the minor officials, all natives, the tehsildars, etc. Bribery, oppression, corruption, bullying is said to be the rule, the universal rule with these. They have unlimited power to make themselves disagreeable and must be bought off with a bribe. Does the official network of petty administration require improving? The second question refers to the point already alluded to, viz., that the indebted ryot—indebted although, except at his children’s mar riage, he is the most frugal of mankind—and the usurious moneylender are pretty much the same all over India. Government is the first mortgagor on the land. It has all the machinery ready for lend-

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 481

ing, it would lend at less than 7 percent. But this is taken advantage of by the ryot in an almost infinitesimal degree, perhaps in all India only a quarter of a million is out at interest in this way. The question is: why is the indebted ryot unwilling to accept the government loan at less than 7 percent and prefers going to his own moneylender at five or seven or even eight times that rate of interest? Is he afraid of putting himself in the power of minor officials of government? Is he afraid of offending his banker? Is it quite true that the land is passing into the hands of the moneylenders? that the ryot’s crops are not his own but the moneylender’s? that all over India land is changing hands? that the moneylender sells the ryot up and gets his land for a tenth or less of its value? that the ryot is absolutely in the moneylender’s power? . . . 5. Improved agriculture. Another thing urged by my Madras correspondents is that the orphans and destitute children, lately forming the main population of relief camps, should be taught useful trades instead of being sent back to swell the already too large agricultural hosts. But should not rather better agriculture be taught? Can nothing be done for these Deccan people? to show them how to have better and more produce and to give them a market for their goods? the first by irrigation and better methods of agriculture fodder crops, etc. Could there not be a model farm under an irrigated system at Pune? the second by cheap water [communication and roads]? The common people who find it hard to live when bread is cheap feel themselves about to die when it becomes dear. Source: From a note, Add Mss 45836 f92

[1878] With heartsick dismay Mr Bright’s speech at Manchester [11 December 1877], its reckless or vague assertions, e.g., about land tenure when the ver y thing to which we want to draw attention—the disastrous effect upon the ryot of the zemindars’ land tenure in Bengal—is exactly the reverse of his wild assertion. Then the unwisdom of mixing up political views—and political views not worked at and peculiar to himself— with the subject of the ryot’s miser y—pressing and undeniable—just at the time and place which were the very last to produce them. x x Bad as it was, his speech did not deserve—though it was sure to provoke—the savage attacks of Sir J. Stephen:52 Sir J.S., a great legal admin-

52 Probably Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, as his father, Sir James Stephen (1789-1859), a former colonial under secretar y, had by then died.

482 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India istrator, with no intimate knowledge of the peoples whose affairs he has administered, while Mr Bright is no administrator with no intimate knowledge of the peoples whose affairs he has never administered. Of course to the English public with no knowledge at all intimate or superficial of these Indian peoples, Sir J. Stephen seems an oracle and Mr Bright’s truths are floored with his ignorance. Both leave entirely untouched the reasons in the universal corruption of the minor native officials (corruption rivalling that of the Russian major officials) why the people will not take the irrigation water, why the people will not take the government loans, why the universal indebtedness to moneylenders. The statesmen, of my day fifteen-twenty years ago, were as careful and had as great a grasp of their facts and conditions as those of the present day are reckless and without any large view or clear insight into facts and conditions. Editor: The following scattered notes seem to come from conversations with experts such as Sir George Campbell, Edwin Chadwick, Henr y Fawcett and Sir Richard Temple. They mainly deal with social problems of the ryots, taxes, loans and education. Source: From notes probably from a meeting with Sir George Campbell, Royal Holloway, University of London 2

16 March 1878 Sir G. Campbell. Enhancement of rent—the less we have of that the better. Ashley Eden has withdrawn his bill—I asked him to collect undisputed rents only. Ryots manage to get money for rent leagues better than trades’ unions. Eastern Bengal press measure: known here only by Times, believe it to be inevitable, but they have left English written newspapers free. Now these are the worst of all, the most scurrilous; the greatest harm is done by their being read by people in England, Mr Fawcett, and then they think they know the ‘‘people of India.’’ They know the anti-people of India and no other. This Famine Fund. Raising the salt tax a wicked policy. Times correspondent entirely sold to government, says there is unanimity. My letter in Times reprinted in native papers, though government contradict it—acted upon it, raised licence tax to £20 and now £50, now there is no longer ‘‘unanimity.’’ Now the class, the only class which speaks, is touched it begins to speak. The poor salt-eaters can’t speak and so they are put upon. [The government] raises salt tax 40 percent in Madras and Bombay, lowers it 5 percent in Northern India. Government at home remonstrates.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 483

Lord Lytton says will lower it next year. Mostsalt eaten in famine times. Road cess worked even better than was wished. It was not only spent locally but raised locally, that is, there was strictly speaking a representation (in India you must raise from the bottom upwards not from the top downwards). Plutocracy protects landowners. Bombay ryotwari [and] Punjab village communities a representation not only of zemindars but of ryots, under of course the paternal supervision of the collectors. On election to a committee in each district the committee struck the rate: different for each district, according to the surveys of what was wanted. Viceroy’s council always packed. Bengal council independent; then it was spent locally under the committee’s orders. The accounts were kept separately—nothing went into the Imperial Treasur y and the people saw that their money was spent for their own advantage and were per fectly satisfied. This is the only way you can do without breaking faith under a Permanent Settlement. . . . Lord Lytton is absolute; they have submitted, but say distinctly it is breaking faith. The irrigation cess was added on to the road cess, now the Famine Fund is added onto that; it is paid into the Imperial Treasur y. No separate accounts are kept. That is what I call working better than was wished—it is distinctly breaking faith—I promised Bengal. Lord Lytton has been remonstrated with. It will stand he says: they may want it for something else. Punjab and therefore separate accounts can’t be kept. (That sounds dangerously like Secret Service money.) You must raise from below, have representation begun below to manage the people’s own local affairs and so keep rising to a higher and higher sphere of representation. England will be driven out some few hundred years hence. What I am afraid of is that we are such a plutocracy that everything runs to favouring large landowners, to swallowing up the little landholders. Well we may change to being a democracy. . . . As an outsider should say it was only temporary: reaction from Cotton prosperity (like the miners who drank champagne). Wedderburn says it good for ryot to be indebted to sowkar—that is nonsense. Mar waris not such bad people in rest of India. Punjab (village communities) is indebted but nothing like Bombay, not the same ill feeling to moneylenders; Punjab prosperous. Yes [I] believe that that may be the cause. The village shop and moneylender being the same. In Calcutta we knew the inconvenience

484 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of the paymaster being the Commissariat—the enormous rate of interest. 50 percent is low, 100 percent is something. Manure: this is the great difficulty (want of). Water without manure no use—lands getting exhausted. Efflorescence of salts percolating up as well as down, where water carried high—in principle of water finding its own level. Rice cultivation [is] healthy even. (Government loans where stagnant.) Daily cultivation healthy: Kaveri, Godavari, Kistna. Sir A. Cotton successful in all these. (Godavari too low for navigation eight months of year, never finished: four months [of year] a torrent. When I was chief commissioner of Central Provinces, Sir A. Cotton then in England, applied to to point out a place for a great supply tank (Madras tanks destroyed village communities—people must do them themselves—Punjab). [Cotton] drew circle on map, but no place could be found there for great supply tank. Sanitar y question great question of irrigation: Burdwan fever, Hugli drainage. . . . [I] believe myself that the great rivers coming down from Himalayas bring malaria. Terai has the washings from mountains, malarious. Deltas are malarious. [I] have never been able to learn why Indus Delta is not used, as Godavari Delta, for irrigation. Dr Thornton, d.c.l., representative of Punjab in Viceroy’s Council (but that Council packed). (Education drunkenness, says Punjabi fever on Baree Doab and Western Jumna Canal and talks of that ‘‘fashionable panacea,’’ irrigation in greater part of Punjab crops can no more be grown without water as without land. Sind ditto, well irrigated. Burdwan fever goes away as it comes; we don’t know how; we drained—it did not subside—where we did not drain it did. Hugli Drainage Danconi scheme, at expense of landowners; they behaved very well; it succeeded very well; great encouragement to go on. Madras tanks all left to go to ruin. You see we have destroyed the village communities. In the old native times it was not the governments that kept them in repair. Chadwick: it was the village communities themselves; under us in the Punjab it is not the government who keeps the tank and wells in repair; it is the village communities. We have kept up the village communities there; now the wretched individual ryot in Madras can’t keep his tanks in repair. That’s how it is. Government loans: these loans are never taken; we have given up offering them to individual ryots. You see the government sends an officer to see what security he has . . . then to see whether he is spending the money as he said. He always prefers going to his moneylender.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 485

We must trust to education to make the ryot know his rights. He does learn them in Eastern Bengal. If we were to put the ryot one season in advance, we don’t give him education by that, he would fall back the more. The moneylender says to him, if you won’t come to me in good years, I won’t stand by you in bad years. Bribes: Oriental does not think he has got anything if he only gets it by giving honest evidence and by good justice; unless he has given a bribe he thinks he has got nothing worth having. He runs to the judge, even the European judge, and says: You are my father, you are my mother, I am your son. Viceroy’s Council says we must otherwise have laid on an income tax, an income tax would have been better than what they have done now. Mr Prinsep a dreadful thorn—no complaints—he favoured the zemindars without ever asking government. So dilatory, would not send in his report. At last given three years furlough to do it, now given up the Service—agent to maharajah of Kashmir. . . . Chadwick says we have the remedy all ready for irrigation malaria; he knows not what he says. In the deltas the irrigation washes the salts out into the sea, on W. Jumna Canal efflorescence said to be destructive, surface drainage very easy, subsoil drainage not so easy. . . . Free press will always be adverse to absolute government; where government free, there are Opposition and friendly newspapers. Education has not been all good: men who can quote Shakespeare, Newton and Locke [are] drunken and good for nothing. Among the poor education has hardly begun. Source: From notes on an interview with Colonel J.G. Fife, Add Mss 45827 ff 145-46

1 June 1878 This is the process: a cultivator goes to the public works overseer and says, I want water for the field. Then he has to sign his name to a paper and submit to certain conditions. Now he has never signed his name before and he knows of no conditions but the moneylender’s. One of the conditions is that he shall have a channel made through his field to the next, that the channel which carries water to his field shall be prolonged to his neighbour’s. This he does not like. And this also may make a delay of a year. All these are reasons why in districts where the people are poor and ignorant there is great delay in availing themselves of the water. Then the cultivator is utterly at the overseer’s mercy, who will do nothing without a bribe.

486 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India And afterwards, too, the overseer will say: Now if you spill a drop I will stop the water. And then there must be another bribe. If the executive engineer in charge of the works talks Marathi, goes about among the people, knows their crops and their circumstances, they will come to him as a resource against their overseers. But if the executive engineer is a careless fellow and there happened to be an overseer a greater villain than the next, they are utterly at his mercy. And this is one of the main causes of not taking the water. At Lakh, where there was a good soil, small rainfall, plentiful supply of water and where they were so slow in taking it that at Azah just above (where it was not at all wanted in comparison) they have done as much in three years as in Lakh in x years, I remember there was a ver y lax fellow, an executive engineer, who trusted to the overseer and did not look after things himself. I wrote him a private, very kind, note to show you the difficulty of dealing with these cases, advising him to resign, making no public complaint because he would have lost his pension. He showed this note at Bombay against me, I was had up, there was a long ‘‘row’’; he is now appointed in Sind which he knows nothing of. One wished then that all departments of government were knocked on the head. This was the case at Lakh and quite enough to account for their being so slow in taking the water. Source: From a letter to Lord Cranbrook, in Alfred E. Gathorne-Hardy, ed., Gathorne-Hardy, First Earl of Cranbrook: A Memoir with Extracts from His Diary and Cor respondence 2:79-80

10 August 1878 Very meekly I venture to send you a poor little article of mine on ‘‘The People of India’’ in The Nineteenth Century [in Health in India]. I hope if you read it you will not call it a shriek (I am astonished at my own moderation). I am not so troublesome as to expect that you can find time to read it, but the India Office has untold treasures (which it does not know itself) in reports on these subjects which will engage your busy time, and especially the Deccan Riots Commission Report, on the relation of the ryots and the extortionate moneylenders in the Bombay Deccan, will, I am sure, call for your attention. Can there be any private enterprise in trade or commerce, in manufacture, or in new interests, when to moneylenders are guaranteed by our own courts the profits, the enormous and easy profits, which no enterprise of the kind that India most wants can rival? What are the practical remedies for extortionate usury in India, and principally in the Bom-

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 487

bay Deccan? The bill now before the legislature at Simla does not seem to promise much. Does it? The whole subject is, I know, before you. Pray believe me (with wonders at my own audacity), ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale

‘‘The United Empire and the Indian Peasant,’’ 1878 Editor: The Great Famine of 1876-79 showed that little had been learned from the earlier famines, even with their commissions of inquir y and recommendations for reform. Indian society was ravaged by famine and the poverty of the ryots worsened, while zemindars exploited the situation by withholding stocks of grain and selling them at exorbitant prices. In the midst of the famine, grain kept being exported to meet trade quotas. In the context of the difficulties created by famine, Nightingale in the following article focused on the problem of how to help the ryots keep out of the clutches of the moneylenders, and ways to protect them from the zemindars. Money famine should not be allowed to follow upon grain famine. ‘‘The famines from which India suffers are at least as much money famines as grain famines’’ (see p 267 above). That is, a ‘‘grain famine’’ proper occurred when crops failed on account of drought or flood. A ‘‘money famine’’ would follow the next crop year, even with better weather, if public works were not provided, for cultivators would lack money for seed. The salt tax again becomes an issue (see p 488 below). Relief work was important in times of famine, but to prevent famine itself the underlying, structural problems had to be addressed. That is why Nightingale in the article emphasized the development of water works for storage, irrigation and communication. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘The United Empire and the Indian Peasant,’’ Journal of the National Indian Association. In Aid of Social Progress in India 90 (June 1878):232-45

7 May 1878 A terrible famine not yet over: in Madras and Mysore out of 35 millions of people at least three millions dead of starvation [in] spite of all the government and the ‘‘Mansion House Fund’’ have done; in northern India looming upon us too, if not already here. For instance, in Oudh, Rohilcund and the North West Provinces there is severe suffering, if not actual famine. English soldiers marching through Rohil-

488 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India cund to Lucknow, collecting among themselves their little all, buy up all the food they can and distribute to the famishing people—it is but a drop in the sea. Not however do these scourges fall upon us only from great droughts. In whole regions of the Deccan, of Madras, in some parts of Bengal, in other parts of India, a peasantry always in a chronic state of semi-star vation, always on the brink of famine fever, is to be found. In Madras and Mysore the personal property of all kinds, of many millions of cultivators, is worth about 9s per head—half the ‘‘value of a Leicester ram’s fleece’’ (according to Mr R.H. Elliot). In the Deccan land is going out of cultivation. And why have these, the most frugal and industrious of people, no personal property? Because, after having fed themselves and their families on the poorest of food there is hardly anything left. What is their food? What are their luxuries? In Madras four fifths of the cultivation are of the coarser grains. Luxuries are unknown. Tea, tobacco and liquor as a beverage are never heard of. The wants of life are reduced to the lowest scale. ‘‘The common people who find it hard to live when bread is cheap feel themselves about to die when bread is dear.’’ In Bombay and Madras, including the Deccan, the ryots cultivate their own land. The state is the landlord. In Bengal the landlords are the zemindars. What is the state of the ryots there? A whole family fed and clothed on 8s or 10s or 12s a month. Food of a labourer and his family in whole tracts, one meal a day only, and that a little rice, with what is called vegetable curry (a little oil and potherbs). This is the ordinar y daily food. (It is true that, in districts and castes which are ver y particular about cooking, and consequently cannot spare the time to do it more than once a day, the one cooked meal a day is found among many of the better castes of Hindus, who eat a little dry parched grain at other meals. The Bengalis are not so particular, and in good times ought to have two or three cooked meals of rice and dhal.) ‘‘Milk we can never look at.’’ Dhal is too dear. Drinking water in the dry season often has to be collected out of filthy puddles. Fish curry or vegetables are added by those who are ‘‘better to do.’’ But the salt tax makes salt—a necessary of life to vegetable eaters even more than to us—so dear that imperfectly cured fish is sometimes the cause of disease. Fish is wasted for want of cheap salt. You cannot compare, it is said, on account of differing climates, the Hindu’s wants with the English labourer’s, far less with the English navvy’s. No, but with the Hindu sepoy’s you can, and this is what the

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Hindu sepoy needs daily to keep him in health on duty: 2 lbs of wheat, 1⁄4 lb of peas, 1⁄4 lb of vegetables, 2 oz clarified butter, 1⁄2 oz salt and pepper, with an occasional pint of milk. Compare this with the Bengal labourer’s diet. And these among the most hardworking people of the earth! The Hindu peasant is, like the French peasant, a born hoarder, but often he has nothing to hoard. Pre-eminently a lover of his family—no Poor Law among them—each supports his own people, old and young. Nay, boys and girls undertake this duty, not only for their own smaller brothers and sisters, but for orphan babies of others. In the Madras famine little boys and girls of seven to ten or twelve years bring—sometimes carrying great distances in their poor thin arms—little naked living skeletons of two to four years to government ‘‘relief centres,’’ feeding these babies with the daily dole, asking for nothing for themselves, day after day for weeks, till the little foster mothers themselves sink fainting at the gates. Or sometimes they bring the starving babies to the missionaries, till the mission houses can take no more. The missionaries and their wives with bleeding hearts see their own scholars lying starved to death by the wayside. Great things are done in feeding the people by their own rich men in Madras. There is no space here to tell of these. If there is one thing proved by the Madras famine relief it is that the people are the farthest from pauperization that can well be, sometimes preferring even death to relief—whether from ‘‘caste’’ feelings or not, cannot here be entered into. All over India less pauperism and fewer beggars, other than religious, than in most European countries. And yet there is no Poor Law. A thrift, a self-denial, a ‘‘political economy,’’ so to speak—but the very reverse of our political economy—unknown to any Western nation; e.g., in many a village extraordinar y self-control was shown by Madras farmers in keeping the secret of hoarded pits of grain, hoarded for seed corn, but also for another year of famine—a secret which needs must have been known to many in each village—and not selling at the time of highest prices. To ask some questions about the Indian cultivator—so incomprehensible to us—the poorest in the world, and in some places getting poorer every year, the most industrious in the world, the most heroic, the most secretive and false; questions about indebtedness to moneylenders, so that a full crop, if the cultivator has one, merely means so much in the moneylender’s pocket; questions about slavery to the

490 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India zemindars (in the permanently settled regions, like Bengal), worse than American slavery before the Civil War, almost as bad as Bulgarian slaver y to Turks; questions about irrigation, so vitally, so mortally needed: these are the subjects, heart-stirring enough in themselves, which might stir all England. 1. First question: How to help the ryots, especially in southern India, to seek help and not slavery at the hands of the moneylender, that useful and necessary member of Indian agricultural life? Otherwise, give the ryot water and the profit will all go into the moneylender’s pocket. We see ancestral lands passing into the moneylender’s hands, the ryot becoming not metaphorically but in some cases literally and legally the moneylender’s slave—the moneylender having every legal help to possess himself of the land and to make the ryot his slave. Such was the state of things in the Bombay Deccan that a commission of inquiry was sent to report upon it. And what does it report? Law giving the creditor all power to imprison the agricultural debtor, ever y legal engine that can drive to ruin the indebted cultivator; this power and this engine used, not only to strip the debtor and his family of everything, down to the miserable clothes on their backs, but to strip him again and again, for he cannot even become insolvent, as often as he scrapes together another rupee; and in one case, at least, to strip him, his wife and daughter of honour, sacrificed to save him from a debtor’s prison. Terrible material for tragic romance among these poor Deccan ryots, even in the dry bulk of an official report. But I am not here to write a romance: a few bare facts without their startling and loathsome details out of the myriad facts of the commission’s report are enough. Well may it add in words startling enough in themselves: ‘‘When we compare the law of India with that of other countries, we find that not one is so oppressive in this respect, not even the law of Moses,53 which allowed the debtor a discharge after serving seven years.’’ It is the government commission which says this. It is true that by the new civil procedure code, which has already come into force, the cultivator’s cattle and farm implements will be saved from seizure. If again we ask, does the moneylender, when he sells up the cultivator and gets possession of the cultivator’s lands, perhaps at less than one tenth of their value, at least invest capital in the land, adopt the

53 In Deut 15:1-2.

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best methods of cultivation, make improvements (as the squatter does in Australia), sink wells, repair tanks, turn ‘‘dr y’’ into ‘‘wet’’ crops, and generally raise the value of the land, the standard of cultivation and of the cultivator’s comfort? So would the transfer of land into the hands of monied classes and better farmers greatly benefit even the poor ousted men? Just the reverse. The moneylender simply keeps on the old occupant, reduced to the condition of a mere ser f, and grinds all he can out of him. So the last state of that land is worse than the first.54 How to save the cultivator from the moneylender’s clutch? A system of small loans from government at moderate interest to the country ryot now carried out to a very small extent), to be extended to meet the need and supported by British capital, would save the ryot. But the ryots, it is said, will not take the loans. The indebted ryot—indebted, though except at his children’s marriages—he is the most frugal of mankind, and the usurious moneylender is pretty much the same all over India. Government is the first mortgagor on the land; government has all the machinery ready for lending. It would ask less than 7 percent (asked by the moneylender 50 percent is low, 100 percent is something). But government loans are taken advantage of by the ryot in an almost infinitesimal degree. Perhaps in all India only a quarter of a million is out at interest in this way. The question is: why is the indebted ryot unwilling to accept the government loan at less than 7 percent and willing to go to his own moneylender at 36, 40, 50, 60 or even 100 percent? Worse even than this: with a humane motive a new law upon the currency of a bond was made for the Bombay ryot, enforcing the bond within three years of its date. The usurer holding a bond, say, for 100 rupees, will now force the debtor at the end of three years not only to pay the 100 rupees, upon pain of being carried to the law court, or of being sold up and his land passing into the moneylender’s hands at a tenth or less of its value, but to give a fresh bond for 200 or 300 rupees. Why does not the ryot free himself from the usurer’s claws and throw himself into the just arms of the government loans? Is he afraid of putting himself in the power of minor native officials of government? Is he afraid of offending his banker?

54 An allusion to Luke 11:26.

492 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In the last India Office ‘‘Progress Report’’ it is written—this is on government authority—that ‘‘even when, after floods at Ahmedabad, government sanctioned the advance of £1000 to poor cultivators, without any interest at all, no one availed himself of the offer.’’ And it is added: ‘‘There are few ryots in a position to offend their banker. The great object of the moneylender is to evade repayment: if the season is good he lets the debt run on from year to year at 36 percent interest, and this system is preferred by the cultivator to the tedious formalities and rigid terms of repayment attached to government advances.’’ The same Progress Report speaks of ‘‘their (the moneylenders’) heartless and unscrupulous action towards their debtors,’’ and adds— it is the government who say this—‘‘it is hoped that some amelioration may be effected in the position of the ryots by a modification of the present system of civil procedure.’’ One echoes the hope that the government will make good their hope, but the ‘‘modification’’ in ‘‘civil procedure’’ given above has, on the showing of an ex-member of the Bombay council, done nothing but harm. The same ‘‘Progress Report’’ says—it is the ‘‘financial commissioner’’ who speaks: ‘‘That sales and mortgages take place to a large extent is not to be doubted. It is desirable that the landholders should, if possible, retain their lands and should prosper.’’ Probably. It is to the flourishing Punjab that this paragraph refers. In close connection with this matter comes another question: in cases where ryots are unwilling to accept the water for irrigation purposes, why are they so? Because it puts them in the power of the minor officials (all native), tehsildars, etc.? ‘‘A question to be asked.’’ Briber y, oppression, corruption, bullying, are the rule, the universal rule, with these petty officials. They have unlimited power to make themselves disagreeable, and must be bought off with a bribe. Does the official network of petty administration require improving? ‘‘A question not to be asked.’’ No idea can there be of ‘‘improving’’ the moneylenders—so intolerable and so necessary, but not necessarily intolerable—‘‘off the face of the earth.’’ But of improving them as a class there can. But of government rates of interest coming into competition with usurer’s rates of interest there can. So each would benefit each. Can we fancy the ryot with education enough to give him confidence in the government loans? For, without such education, even could the government pay off all the ryot’s debts tomorrow and he, the ryot, be no better

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educated then yesterday, it would be no use, for the day after tomorrow he would be just as badly off as before. Can we fancy great and philanthropic men among Indian gentlemen, lovers of their kind, lovers of education, public benefactors? Is it quite a wild utopia to think that education might teach the ryots to seek legal powers against the moneylenders, as in Eastern Bengal against oppression? It is a wild utopia to think of getting rid of the moneylenders. It is not to put them on the right footing. Let Indian gentlemen prove that it is not. Is it the wildest delusion to think that some day a teacher might arise of their own people? Nay that even the moneylenders might sit at the teacher’s feet? There have been great prophets in the East before these days: we in the West have learnt all our spiritual life from them. May we not give back some of our material life for it? One there was who, we are expressly told, preached—a voice crying in the wilderness55—this very subject: to take no more than their dues, and the people came to him. And he preached to this very class among others—to usurers, to minor officials of government—and they came to hear him and asked him what they should do: to put no man in fear, to accuse no man falsely, to do no violence, to be content with what rightfully accrued to them.56 What a noble, glorious task before the wise men, the holy men, the power ful men of the East, again to bring the usurers, the petty officials, tehsildars, to honesty and mercy, to free the ryot from indebtedness and slavery. And may the God of mercy and justice, whom we all believe in, raise up such prophets in these days, and be with them all in such a saving task! And young Indian gentlemen, they come to England in these days: is it the wildest of utopias that they might study, e.g., the co-operative store of the West—a product one would think surely fitted to thrive in the Indian soil, the soil of village communities, so as to be able to introduce it in the East? (It is principally in regard to small banking business, that is, money loan advances for agricultural purposes, that the ryot deals at a disadvantage: could this work be undertaken by cooperative institutions? or by a load fund set on foot by benevolent native gentlemen?) And here the ryot would not have to trust the government, he need only trust himself, with his savings. Hoarding is nat-

55 An allusion to John the Baptist in John 1:23. 56 John the Baptist’s advice to tax collectors and soldiers respectively in Luke 3:12-14.

494 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ural to him. In the co-operative store a child may put in its penny and receive 5 percent. Far from us the idea of boasting. The co-operative store is as much wanted for the reckless waste and unthrift of some great towns in England as for the grinding poverty of some great tracts in India. It has been said that ‘‘thrift’’ is what must save the Indian ryot. We have heard of the horse being made to live (or die) on a straw a day, but we don’t know that we ever heard before that the horse ought to exercise ‘‘thrift’’ and save his one straw a day. Yet this is what it appears the country ryot has actually done in some cases in the Madras famine. He justified the English counsellor and died. What thrift, what endurance have we Westerns compared to this? And we in the West preach thrift to them! The ‘‘horse’’ literally ‘‘saved’’ his one straw a day for his children’s sowing. And they call these people not thrifty. It is the very heroism of thrift. Compare the workingmen on high day wages of some of England’s largest towns—their drunkenness, their lust and vice and brutal crime, their reckless waste, absolutely unable to look forward a single day, hardly an hour—to the industrious cultivators of India. There is no comparison. One might ask which is highest, even in the scale of civilization? And we must not forget that England spends seven millions, the price of a famine, a year on her Poor Law relief. 2. Second question: How to help the Bengal ryot against the zemindar, his landlord under the Permanent Settlement? This sounds formidable; but we have to ask another yet more important question (we have also destroyed the zemindar as a progressive landlord under the Permanent Settlement): how to help the zemindar to make himself master, not of his ryots—that he is already—but master of his own progress, which must include theirs, for all progress is and must be solidaire, as the French say: one man can’t go for ward while the others go backward, master of progress by putting within his reach all the arts and means of progress, and of raising the value of his land by improved agriculture. We did the zemindar a cruel disservice by giving him all the rights without any of the duties of landlords, so that all his dues under that settlement having been more than paid him, few of his duties under that settlement were required of him: duties, that is, under the form of providing police, water, drainage, roads, education, etc. Such are the duties of an improving landlord. Such were the duties intended by the Permanent Settlement to be required of the landlords. Instead of

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this landlords have thrown their duties on the ryots in the form of oppressive abwabs (levying illegal taxes). Give the ryot water and all the profit goes into the zemindar’s pocket. And how can a landlord thrive with a wretched tenantry? It is a first axiom—a well-to-do peasantry, a well-to-do landlord; a rich people, a rich treasur y. There are excellent landlords in Bengal, such as would do honour to any country. The maharanee of Burdwan is one. She has prohibited the levy of abwabs of every kind on her estates in Midnapur. May we not have the pleasure of mentioning with respect, on the lieutenant governor’s word, some others who are really good landlords to their ryots: the proprietors of the Mysadul estate and the Roy Babus of Jara. In Bankura, Babu Radha Bulluh Singh, of Kuchenkole; Babu Damoodhur Singh, of Maliara; the Banerjees of Ajodhya and the Messrs Gisborne. In Beerbhoom Raja Ramrunjun Chuckerbutty, of Hetampur. May we not give them a cheer from over the water? Are we not all one, all brothers and sisters and fellow countrymen—all we? We in England, in India and in the colonies will be ‘‘we.’’ It is not longer ‘‘as far as the East is from the West,’’57 but ‘‘so near as the East is to the West,’’ so near must ‘‘we’’ be to one another. A successful experiment on the Hugli: the drainage of about 80 square miles of swamps on the banks of the Hugli, called the Danconi works, at the expense of the landowners, under a special act. The landowners behaved like honest patriotic men. ‘‘The Danconi drainage scheme in Hugli,’’ quoting the lieutenant governor’s remarks in 1876-77, ‘‘has done immense benefit to the country, and the operation of apportioning the cost (484,127 rupees) among the proprietors of the lands reclaimed is now going on.’’ The one question which has in these drainage and irrigation matters always stopped the way is, who is to pay? Whether government will make the zemindars, whom it has made the possessors of the soil, pay for the works or not? Are the zemindars so selfish and worthless a class as to exercise their considerable influence over the government thus? No indeed. The Danconi drainage experiment proves the contrary, and will be the precursor of many more such experiments and proofs. An unsuccessful experiment in Jhansi: Jhansi in misery and degradation impossible to exaggerate. Why? Within the last ten or twelve

57 A paraphrase of Ps 109:12.

496 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India years in the Central Provinces and in Jhansi we have revived our ‘‘wellintended but visionary plans,’’ as Sir Thomas Munro called them, ‘‘for the improvement of India by the creation of zemindars of whole districts, or of simple villages.’’ In Jhansi the famine of 1868-69 came alike upon our own villages and those transferred by us to Sindhia, but our own villages could not recover; in Sindhia the people recovered entirely. The explanation is not far to seek. See how we have benefited the landlord! ‘‘In native territor y proprietar y right is unknown, while in British Bundelkund [in central India] government, with the best possible intentions, conferred at one blow the proprietar y right in their villages on the zemindars. This perilous gift has been of great disservice to them. Instead of rising in the social scale, and standing out as a comfortable yeoman class, they found their newly obtained rights useful only as a security upon which money might be borrowed.’’ The moneylender again and his clutch! ‘‘The Marwaris and others were ready to lend money to an extent before unknown, and when the famine came they freely signed away their birthrights for a morsel of bread.’’58 ‘‘Freely’’ can hardly be said; cultivator and zemindar alike appear in slavery to the moneylender. ‘‘Old debts, which had long passed the limit of recover y in a court of law, were revived by needy men in want of a little money and were secured by registered bonds bearing ruinously high interest. The men of this part of the country were always improvident and little disposed to labour, and when pressed for food for themselves and their people, and called on at the same time to pay up a portion of the government demand, they signed away their lands for the sake of a little present relief.’’ Esau and the mess of pottage over again! Such are among the effects of the recent land settlement of the Central Provinces. But the vital question is, after all, water. 3. Water. If we had given them water should we now have had to be giving them bread? and not only this, but to have seen millions (take all the famines in this country) perishing for want of it, in spite of all the government has done? Water. That is irrigation by strengthening, repairing and keeping up the old tanks, by keeping the tanks always supplied, where possible, even in droughts, with water; by storage and regulation of water; irrigation by every attainable means: canals, tanks, storage, wells; encourage the people to dig wells, to repair tanks—in

58 An allusion to Gen 25:30-34. ‘‘Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils. . . . Thus Esau despised his birthright.’’

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the old times it was not the government, it was the village community itself which repaired the tanks. Water, that is, cheap water transit, including where possible steam navigation canals. Can nothing be done for these poor people, especially these poor Deccan people, to show them how to raise more and better produce, and to give them a market for their produce, the first by irrigation and better methods of agriculture, fodder crops, etc., the second by cheap water communication and roads? Could there not be a model farm in every district, an agricultural school in every province? There is no time to lose: ‘‘Live horse and you’ll get grass’’ is a proverb, but if the grass long delays in coming the horse dies first, and so will India. If all this be true, and we have it on the word of the government, the fear must be, not of the conquest of India by the Russian, but of the conquest of India by the moneylender. Is it possible that England would re-conquer India: * by enabling the indebted country ryot to redeem his lands and pay off his debts; * by putting her loans within his power and, aided by powerful native influence, even within his prejudices; * by reforming the system of land assessment, where it needs reform, so as to ‘‘enable independent ryots,’’ as Sir Thomas Munro said, ‘‘by lighter assessments to rise gradually to the rank of landlords’’; * by amending land tenures; * by putting improved methods of agriculture within the cultivator’s knowledge and power, with model farms and schools of agricultural instruction—and what could the wealthy Indian gentleman do more for his race than by founding industrial and agricultural models and schools? * by forest plantations, and encouraging villages to plant trees; * by encouraging the cultivator in all ways to make wells, repair tanks, even to subscribe for canals; * by enabling the landlords to execute great works of drainage and improvement; * by enabling the merchants of Calcutta and the great towns to car ry out works of cheap water communication—zealously advocated even by railway engineers; * by assisting the engrafting of co-operative stores, loan funds and the like in India, especially in the village communities which still exist;

498 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India * by improving the official network of petty administration; * by extending the system of representation, not only of zemindars, but of ryots, by which the people not only virtually rate themselves, according to the surveys of what is wanted, but spend the money locally under the elected district committee’s orders—perhaps by constituting a representative assembly, not legislative, in Calcutta; * by just laws for dividing increase of production between zemindar and ryot under zemindari settlements; * by just laws for adjudicating between moneylender and cultivator under ryotwari settlements; * by opening the way to manufacturing progress in both? What a glorious conquest that would be! If this be England’s part, what is the part of India’s gentlemen? of the zemindars, to deserve well of their ryots and abolish illegal abwabs, to take their part—a disinterested, but also an interested part—in drainage and irrigation, and possibly in navigation works and in manufacturing enterprise. Of the native gentlemen, to take their part in founding industrial and agricultural schools. Of all, in educating the people and particularly the agricultural ryots, not merely by schools, but if possible by going or sending among them, so as to raise them out of their fatal ignorance. Of young Indian gentlemen coming over to England, in bringing back what is worth of Western civilization, such as habits of personal influence in raising and bettering the condition of the people—perhaps creating institutes of the nature of coffee public houses, with stories and readings aloud for the country people (we have borrowed the coffee shop from the East—they had it long before the West)—perhaps creating savings banks, with money loan advances at a moderate rate of interest, co-operative stores and the like. The East—where should we have been without the East?—the East used to be the land for great founders, great reformers, prophets in short—sons of kings as well as sons of the poor—sons of God in fact— going forth to gather and lift up the people. Why is it not now? One country, one sovereign: England, the colonies and India. O, to be really one country, one nation, in such a work as this, in deed as in word, in feeling and education, in social and political improvement, in free trade, in giving to and taking from one another, in learning from one another. And how much has India, if once thriving, happy and contented, to give England of her wheat, her cotton, her various material, raw and manufactured, as well as England to give India of her agricultural methods, her manufactures, her engineering, her

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modes of intercourse and civilization! Far from us the word that we have not something to receive and something to learn from India. Native troops ordered from India to serve with English troops— though war may God forbid. Indian gentlemen and even gentlewomen coming over to England, young Indian gentlemen to study at Oxford, others to be examined in London—they see and judge of Western civilization, of the much to learn and to carry back, and also of the much not to learn in the West for the East. England and the colonies asserting their right—the colonies quite as much or more in proportion—to feel for and to pay for India’s famines, besides the government in two famines working almost a miracle. Learned men showing the English that they may be proud of descent from the same blood, the same tongue, the same race as India: England’s elder brother and her child. All this marks a new era: the bonds of fellowship drawing closer. But why India’s poverty? In England if thrift is, there too is thriving; the words are synonymous, the things too. In India it is not so: thrift there is, not thriving. Why? Some causes we have said: want of irrigation and cheap communications, want of improved methods of agriculture, excess of money-borrowing, want of independence on the land. England does give free trade; her markets are free to Indian wheat and cotton. If only India had cheap water communication to bring her wheat and corn and cotton to her ports, and so ship it over the world, she might be the richest instead of the poorest of countries. The colonies do not give England free trade and England does not yet give herself the free trade with India which she gives to India with herself in corn. But this will come. Let all of us, each in his or her own way, small or great—and God speed us all—do our very all to make of one heart all the kingdoms of this empire. Let it be no longer the ‘‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,’’ but the ‘‘United Empire of Great Britain and Ireland, the Colonies and India.’’ God bless the empire! God save the queen! Editor: A new bill, the Arrears of Rent Realization Bill, was introduced in 1878, aimed at helping the zemindars in the collection of rent arrears. This new step in the oppression of the ryots prompted numerous protests, including a petition against the bill. Nightingale received a copy of the bill from Prasanna Kumar Sen and worked strenuously to get it amended, as is reflected in her correspondence below with Sen. This 1878 bill had a tortuous career. It received many drafts intended to please both sides (the debates at various stages are echoed in

500 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Nightingale’s letters). It was eventually revised and submitted to the Bengal government in 1883 under Lord Ripon and passed in 1885 with the new title, Bengal Tenancy Act, under Lord Dufferin. Altogether in 1879 Nightingale agreed with the statement that ‘‘the people see that theoretically the government’s intentions are good, but that practically these good intentions ruin them’’ (see p 523 below). ‘‘She was also inclined to agree with the view of many people when they say: We were better off under our native rulers’’ (see p 523 below). The following fourteen letters were written by Nightingale to P.K. Sen (b. 1850), attorney of the Calcutta High Court and writer on Indian law. In them she declared that her ‘‘interest in India’’ could ‘‘never abate’’ (see p 512 below). The editor’s son added an introduction (ten pages) and notes (twenty-six pages), in which he underlined that even after the passing of the great Rent Act [of 1859] and partly on account of it, the position of the ryots was intolerable: The better minds of India and England felt for the ryot and it was in this connection that letters were exchanged between my father . . . and Florence Nightingale. . . . The immediate occasion of the cor respondence seems to have been the acknowledgment of a contribution to the topical question, ‘‘a tract of the times,’’ which my father had composed and sent to her for her opinion. (xvi-xvii)

Nightingale seems to have been glad of the opportunity to influence the condition of ryots in questions of land tenure, rent laws and occupancy rights of the ryots. The present footnotes accompanying these letters are all abbreviated adaptations from Priyaranjan Sen’s annotations. We have kept this correspondence together. Letters to other persons on the same subject follow.

Indian Letters, 1878-82 Source: From Priyaranjan Sen, ed., Florence Nightingale’s Indian Letters: A Glimpse into the Agitation for Tenancy Reform, Bengal 1878-82 Calcutta: Mihir Kumar Sen 1937)

[Letter 1] 4 April 1878 Private. I am extremely obliged to you for your letter of 21 Februar y, and for your marked copy of the ‘‘Arrears of Rent Realization Bill’’59

59 The bill of Februar y 1878 tried to alleviate the ryots’ difficulties in exercising their occupancy right and to help the landlords realizing their arrears of rent.

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and the discussion upon it in the Bengal Council. I have made what use of this I could. From inquiry here, it appears as if this new Bengal Rent Act60 were not yet passed. Could you let me know whether it is so, though, alas! in that case it will be too late? The difficulty is that in all these cases, the zemindars are strongly represented in the Bengal Council, while the ryots are not at all, except insofar as the official men protect them. I know there was a strong protest against a previous proposal (before the time of Sir Ashley Eden’s governorship)61 to make a radical change in the rights established by Act X of 1859;62 and it was understood that this should not be carried out. With regard to the bill, it should certainly be a part of the scheme that there should equally be a summary remedy by process within reach of the ryots against attempts to exact more than the established rent without any regular legal enhancement. The fairness of the arrangement altogether depends on an adequate provision of that kind. On the side of the ryots the boon which Sir A. Eden proposes to give them is to make their hereditar y tenures freely saleable and transferable in the market. But here comes in the broader question, whether the right of sale, and consequently of running into debt and pledging their properties, might not be as fatal a gift to the ryots as it has been to the small proprietors of the Deccan. But the Bengal men are more accustomed to the law. It is a very difficult question, and till the bill is in the shape in which, after discussion, it is proposed to pass it, an opinion could scarcely be offered here. It is most irritating that the bill should be recommended as being ‘‘tenderness itself ’’ compared with the land-

60 This refers to the bill just mentioned. 61 Sir Ashley Eden (1831-87), lieutenant governor of Bengal 1877-82. In his time there were two ghastly cases of murder of zemindars by ryots, at Faridpur and Midnapur. His regime was responsible for the Bengal License Act of 1878, the Cess Act, the Calcutta Municipal Act and the Calcutta Tramways Act, as well as various laws governing landlord-tenant relations. 62 Act X of 1859 is generally known as the Bengal Rent Act; it aimed to amend the law relating to the recover y of rent in the presidency of Bengal. Under the act a ryot who cultivated the same plot of land continuously for twelve years was given a sort of qualified protection. Since the protection was to be afforded by litigation, it was difficult to obtain it, while zemindars were averse to creating occupancy rights. Hence the ryots were kept at a disadvantage. The rent law was revised in 1876 and 1885.

502 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India lord’s powers under Regulation VII of 179963 and Regulation V of 1812,64 which were ‘‘engines of oppression’’ indeed in the zemindar’s hands and for that very reason repealed by Act X of 1859. It is rather hard to go back beyond 1859, as if Act X, which has done so much for the ryots, is or ought to be repealed. At the same time it may be admitted—may it not?—even by the best friends of the ryots, that there is need of an easier and less expensive process for realizing undisputed rents, in the interests of the tenants who have to pay costs, but on condition that there should equally be a summar y remedy by process within reach of the ryots, as above said. It is most remarkable, the British testimony given in the Bengal Council to the flourishing condition of the ryots under the raja of Banaras. And I would suggest that it would be most useful if you were to obtain facts—tr ustworthy and individual facts—about their prosperity and its causes. That would not only be most interesting but would lead to great and practical good. The British tribute to the ryot that there is no more zealous improver of the soil, ‘‘when his tenure is assured,’’ even when ‘‘his rent is crushing,’’ is also remarkable. And I would again venture to suggest that you would be doing an enormous good if you were to collect and give facts—individual and personal histories of ryots—as to this his zeal. A great statesman, not now in the Cabinet, said to me the other day that the time has now come, bad as some of the means had been to bring it about, when India’s interests must ‘‘force their way to the front,’’65 meaning, particularly, in the British Parliament. 2. It seems that the fairness or otherwise of a very summar y adjudication of rents depends entirely on the nature of the evidence accepted as to past payments—does it not? If the old laws requiring a regular register of these payments by official accountants (patwaris and canongos)66 were put in force, would it then be objectionable?

63 Regulation VII of 1799 was a special law for the recover y of arrears of revenue from farmers of government and ward’s estates, etc., and of arrears of rent in estates managed directly by the collector; it conferred on landlords the power to attach the goods (including livestock and crops) as well as arrest the persons of defaulting ryots. 64 Regulation V of 1812 or the Bengal Land Revenue Sales Regulation, amending some of the rules then in force for the collection of the land revenue. 65 Gladstone, recounted in Society and Politics (5:451). 66 Patwaris and canongos: the canongos, the local registrars (in the pay of landlords) of all rights in the land, and under them the patwaris (in the

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The Road Cess 67 returns have indirectly furnished a register, if they are accurately kept up—have not they? N.B. Is the rule adhered to that half the road cess is paid by the ryot, and half by the proprietor? Many of the provisions of the bill which you notice do certainly seem far too severe and one-sided. Neither the Backergunge nor any other ryots are nearly so bad as they are painted. On the contrary, it is a good sign that they learn to stand up for their rights. Only let them do so by lawful means. And remembering that, besides the wickedness of murder and robber y, such evil deeds do the greatest possible harm to their own cause and their country’s. I thank you again and again for your extremely interesting letter. I shall have much to say to it some day, but there is no time this mail. Thank you again for your this bill and your remarks, and pray believe me, wishing you success, ever your and the ryot’s faithful servant Florence Nightingale [Letter 2] 20 December 1878 Private. I have very many thanks to offer you for your kind note of 16 September and for your valuable pamphlet which accompanied it on the ‘‘Bengal Land Question,’’68 as also for one on the ‘‘Rent Question’’69 by Mr P.C. Roy, and for Mr Dutt’s most interesting little book on the ‘‘Bengal peasantry,’’70 with which I was already acquainted. For

67

68 69

70

pay of the government), or village accountants, who are now in fact public officers bound to record all changes in the possession of the land, the rights and liabilities of every cultivator, etc. In 1871 the Bengal Council passed a Road Cess Act to bring Bengal into line with the remaining provinces of British India, providing for the construction and maintenance of roads out of a cess raised locally on a special valuation of land, on mines, quarries and houses. Then district, and even subdivisional, boards were set up. A second cess followed in 1877 for carrying out other works of public utility. In 1880 the two acts were consolidated and amended. The whole system was ready in 1885 (Act III) to be put into action. The Bengal Land Question by Prasanna Kumar Sen (1878) was the occasion of the correspondence published in this volume. Rent Question by Prafulla Chandra Roy. The full title of the book, which gave a historical survey of the question, is The Rent Question in Bengal. It was reprinted from Bengal Public Opinion in 1883. Romesh Chunder Dutt, The Peasantry of Bengal, an important publication written from the ryot’s viewpoint.

504 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India each and for all of these pray accept my hearty thanks, as for the copies of The Bengal Land Question, which I am circulating among men who care for India and who have influence. Your subject is one of such surpassing interest to me (as you will readily believe) that I had already been occupied in collecting information, which could not be successfully challenged, upon the very questions: land tenures, connection of zemindar and tenants, illegal ‘‘abwabs,’’71 condition of peasantry, which you touch upon, as well upon the history of the Permanent Settlement. What you say about agricultural earnings in Bengal—about the dispersed character of petty holdings and the impossibility of having ‘‘model farms’’—is of intense and piteous importance, so also about the decrease in amount of produce, and the agricultural ignorance of rotations of crops and manures, and the tenants being unassisted by the zemindar’s providing anything, either capital, seed or cattle. The introduction of ‘‘competition’’ and its effect are ably pointed out. You will not wish me, I know, to take up time and paper with idle, though well-deserved compliments, when the object of both of us is one of such pressing, such vital, importance. I would earnestly request you to put down narratives of individual ryots (with time, name and place) in this connection. English people will not read reports in general nor generalities, abstractions, statistics or opinions, such as most reports are full of. They want facts: individual facts concerning particular instances, real lives and effects. Give us detailed facts. We want to rouse the interest of the public. For behind the Cabinet in England always stands the House of Commons, and behind the House of Commons always stands the British public. And these are they we want to interest, and these can only be interested by narratives of real lives. With an ignorant or indifferent public what tells are individual facts about individual ryots with name and place, taken, for instance, in the relations of land assessment and land tenures; as to the ryot’s condition (a) under the zemindari tenure; (b) under different methods of agriculture; (c) under land or rent unions (as in Eastern Bengal); (d) also where, as in Sir G. Campbell’s time, I believe, a voice to tax themselves

71 Abwab, literally, refers to a special additional assessment, as distinct from nirikh rates. P.C. Roy in his book on the rent question in Bengal asserts that abwabs imposed by government do not harm the people, but the secret abwabs imposed by the zemindar do.

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was given locally to the people; as to the dwellers (a) under irrigation or none; (b) under water communication or none; (c) markets or none; as to the daily food and habits of the people. Real facts, not only the reporter’s own opinions or generalities: this is what is wanted to interest the people of England and make a government work for us. Give us some particular type of village by name, some particular type of biography by name. It is true that villages are ‘‘mere dots.’’ Let them cease to be ‘‘mere dots,’’ to us in England through Mr P.K. Sen’s pen. May I venture to urge you most strongly to give us facts concerning the following points, for instance, under the Permanent Settlement of Bengal: 1st point: There were to be no cesses: i.e., no arbitrary taxes levied at the pleasure of the zemindar (abwabs) upon the ryot. What is the fact? 2nd point: The taxes were to be paid by the zemindar and not out of the rent. How has this been observed? 3rd point: The zemindars were not to raise their rents, and on this condition the taxes on them are not to be increased. What do you tell us about this? 4th point: The zemindar is to undertake roads, lesser public works, etc. Has he done so? Does he not rather avail himself of public works undertaken by the government as a reason for raising his rents? 5th point: The ryot was to have redress in case of exaction. What redress does he ever obtain? 6th point: The governor general promised regulations for the protection of the cultivators of the soil. Were the y ever enacted? 7tl point: The zemindar was to give leases. But are leases granted? or is there any proper system of subletting? It would be of unspeakable importance if you could give us facts, real facts and narratives, upon these and similar points. (I would venture to point out the repor t on the ‘‘Deccan riots’’72 by the commission appointed to inquire, as the only official

72 Repor t on the Deccan Riots by the Commission of Inquiry. At the end of the year 1874, in the village Karde, Taluka Sirur, district Pune, there was a largescale riot, preceded by an organized social boycott of Marwari and Gujarati moneylenders. Similar incidents followed at different adjoining centres, and the neighbouring district, Ahmadnagar, suffered equally. About fifty villages were affected. Government constituted a commission of inquir y consisting of two members of the Bombay civil service, one from the Bengal service and one Indian gentleman. The total arrests approached the alarming figure of something like a thousand. The report

506 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India report from India (I have ever seen) which gives facts and narratives, with name, date and place before the summing up and conclusions in a way that would interest an English public. (I wrote an article on it, in The Nineteenth Century for August last,73 which gives many extracts from it, which is very much at your service, if you have not the report itself at hand.) I venture to suggest this report as a model for what we are seeking as to the Bengal peasantry to know. It seems like a Providence that you should have written on this subject and kindly sent it to me at the very time that we were seeking for information on the above points. As you request it, I feel bound to promise, God willing, that, if you will have the great kindness, as you have the power, of writing and sending us the accounts and facts which I venture to suggest to you, I will write a paper upon a subject, which I may almost say interests me as much as it does you, according to your desire. [The paper was to be ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak. . . . ’’] Should you be kindly willing to collect the facts, but there should arise some difficulty as to the expense of putting them in print, perhaps you will kindly let me know. I had meant to make this letter much longer, by asking questions and dilating on various points connected with the above, but am unable to do so by this mail. I may trouble you with a letter by next mail perhaps. Pray accept my excuse, or rather my true reason for my delay in answering your kind letter, viz., severe pressure of over work and illness. I am and have been for years a prisoner to my room from illness. But nonetheless—rather the more—do I earnestly feel for the people of India and dedicate my poor efforts to their service—calling down God’s blessing on all faithful friends of India and on their exertions in her cause. . . . I had omitted to say there will be no time lost if you kindly undertake to do this. At this moment people in England are so absorbed by

dealt with the premonitor y disturbances, described the district in which the riots took place, the relation of sowkar and ryot, and the causes of hostility between the ryot and the sowkar, inquired about the immediate occasion of the riots and suggested remedial measures. 73 ‘‘The People of India,’’ The Nineteenth Century (August 1878), in Health in India (9:777-810). The Brahmo Public Opinion, in its issue of 26 September 1878, refers to this article and quotes its entire first paragraph.

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the Afghan War74 in one way or another, that they cannot spare attention for the far deeper tragedy than any that can be acted there which took place but one brief year ago in southern India, for the permanent state of Bengal. It is best to wait in order to have people’s minds at the service of our subject. India has lost a true friend in our Princess Alice.75 Ever ything good she set herself to learn. She never came to London but she went to see herself all the best and most practical methods of doing good. She went about among the poorest London streets to know the people for herself, without anyone knowing that she was a princess. She was known and loved at my Training School for Hospital Nurses.76 She had established one and was to establish one on that model as soon as she was grand duchess. Our trained nurses are sending a white wreath for her grave. Poor children! Poor Darmstadt!77 [Letter 3] 11 April 1879 Private. New Bengal Rent Act. Sir, I am truly thankful for your information that the Select Committee have not pledged themselves to any part of the bill—that they are waiting to consider the criticism of mofussil officers—and that the government will hardly attempt to hurry the act through the Council. I had previously made all the use I could of your very important information about the nature of the bill itself and had learnt that it was still under consideration here, or rather that it had not yet reached the stage of formal consideration, but that there still was ample time to secure for it full attention. I do tr ust therefore that this act will not pass without being modified to what it ought to be for affording full rights to the ryot. You will, I hope, kindly continue the valuable information which you have been so good as to give. And I shall hope to answer much

74 The Second Afghan War (1878-80) was waged by the then Conservative and Imperialist government of Disraeli. It took money that might otherwise have been spent on famine relief and prevention. The Liberal Henry Fawcett won considerable sympathy from his Indian admirers by leading the opposition. 75 Princess Alice (1843-78), second daughter of Queen Victoria, married to Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt; correspondence with her on nursing in the Franco-Prussian War appears in a later volume. 76 The Nightingale School at St Thomas’ Hospital, funded by the Nightingale Fund, opened in 1860. 77 Darmstadt Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, husband of Princess Alice.

508 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India more satisfactorily. Thanking you again and again for your Regulations, your Calcutta Gazette,78 your remarks upon the bill in it, of which I made the greatest use, and for your letters. May God speed the cause! In haste, and under severe stress of constant overwork and illness, pray believe me, ever the ryot’s faithful servant Florence Nightingale [Letter 4] 30 May 1879 Bengal Arrears of Rent Realization Bill. I am extremely indebted to you for sending me the petition, intended to be signed by the ryots, against the provisions in Part 2 of the bill under the head ‘‘Procedure for summary realization of arrears of rent.’’ I rejoice very much that the lieutenant governor, in accordance with the suggestions of the select committee, has postponed the further discussion of the Rent Bill till next session, and has appointed a commission for revising and amending the entire Rent Law.79 How important this will be. May all good attend their labours! I conclude that the gentlemen whom you name as the members are all good men for the purpose. The petition dwells much upon the fact that, whereas the zemindar’s rent is the same now as in 1793, the ryot’s rent is from three to twentyfold what it was in 1793 (this is, I suppose, strictly correct?) and that, though the zemindar may have parted to middlemen with much of the difference between the rent paid by the ryot in 1793 and the much larger rent paid now, the fact that many are now fattening on the ryot, whereas the Permanent Settlement destined one zemindar (not to fatten but) to protect the ryot, is no reason for collecting with extra severity these high rents. In the long note, the petition shows that its observations (on the Regulations of 1799 and 1812) apply equally to provisions of sections 3 and 4. You concur in this? Such observations as that anyone, whether zemindar or gomastah [agent], who can assert falsely that a cultivator owes him rent, can sell off his property, etc.; that the tenants can find no effectual security; and that petty officials can always be bribed to reject ‘‘security’’; that the zemindar should not be judge in his own case, subject to only inef-

78 Calcutta Gazette (1879) gave an account of the steps taken by government. 79 The commission for revising the entire Rent Law, appointed April 1879.

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fective ‘‘restrictions’’; that false witness can always be had for a few annas apiece: this, I suppose, was too true, and is still too true? The table in the Indian Tribune (which you are so good as to enclose) is very important, viz., the table showing that, out of 1915 cases in which defence was entered, it failed only in 478. And this in the 24-Pergunnahs [a group of villages around Calcutta]! Certainly, if any ‘‘restrictions’’ are to be placed on any party in rent suits, it is on the landlord plaintiff and not on the tenant defendant. After the statement about the fraudulent magnifying of rent claims and supporting them by false witness and forger y, the challenge, which you say has not yet been taken up, is very striking. As also that Part 2 of the Bengal Rent Bill will become ‘‘an engine of oppression in the hands of the corrupt ‘amlah’ [officer supervising courts] of the absentee zemindar.’’ Alas! how does this evidence of corruption confirm the plan of putting natives—the thing we all so much desire—into government situations and offices? That is what I think of continually. Can you devise the reform which will lessen this all but universal corruption? I ask it with the truest devotion to the cause. Is it true that the rent leagues in Eastern Bengal have ceased to exist? It is said that the prices of food are so ver y high now in Bengal as to make the necessaries of life even beyond the reach of thousands. When you are kind enough to write again, please mention how this is. I assure you that I have not been idle in pressing attention to the Rent Bill at this end. From want of time and strength, I am obliged with which I had to trouble you till next mail. [Letter 5] 20 June 1879 I am extremely indebted to you for sending me the ‘‘supplement’’ to the Calcutta Gazette of 23 April. It is an exceedingly important document, as showing what is acknowledged by government. The secretar y to Government of Bengal says that the zemindars declare the amended bill to be of little use to them, and it is they who asked for the commission. At this end at the India Office it comes to this: that, as the bill lately before the council has been wholly dropped and the whole question referred de novo to a fresh commission, nothing can be done till they have reported. The men selected to form the new commission are far from hostile to the ryot, and I earnestly hope they will examine ryots and ascertain what their actual condition is. Some means must be devised for dealing with this land question, compared with which all others put together must sink into insignifi-

510 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India cance. At the same time, is it not to be feared that, in any readjustment, the men of money who command the lawyers and the newspapers and the native members of Council, will certainly not lose and may not improbably gain? The thing would be, that there should be lawyers—noble native gentlemen—who, despising worldly advantage and gain, should be at the ser vice of the ryot, the weaker interest; that there should be newspapers, fearlessly but with the utmost attention to accuracy of facts, to advocate his cause. And we may hope that the day will come when the native members of Council will not be only in the interest of the zemindar. In European countries, such things have been known as young men patiently working their way up to riches, or at least to honour and influence—not for their own sakes but for the sake of their poorer fellows, of the people’s cause, till at last they were elected to representative political life, to high official post or even to the Cabinet. Disinterested political, not party principle—oh what a great, what a divine quality that is! One hears much in India—I do not say it is at all peculiar to India— of the corruption, the exacting of petty bribes, by the petty native officials, from the people, the wretched cultivators, who are in their power. (There is, I believe we may say, less and less and almost nothing of this in England now, though there is ver y much in Russia.) What a glorious career for a band of young native gentlemen in India, not only to be quite inaccessible to every kind of corruption themselves (that, no doubt, they are already) but to set their faces like a rock systematically against every kind of corruption, however small—and probably it is the small and universal taking of bribes which is the worst mischief—in the petty native officials; to use every means in their power, not passively but actively, to establish a public native opinion against bribery—a manly horror of it—to raise the small official out of the habit of ‘‘buttering his palms,’’ of taking ‘‘douceurs’’ [bribes] from the poor. What a glorious object! It is impossible for English officials in India—incorruptible themselves—to check or even to know the bribe-taking of the peons—the small Public Works irrigation overseers, etc.,—from the poor. Only the native gentlemen could speak and work against this. And may God speed them! 2. I had hoped to have gone into this most important Gazette— important as showing what is acknowledged by government—by this mail. But I find time and strength wanting. But I assure you that there is, at last, at last, so powerful an interest awakening in England for the

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affairs of India as I never expected to live to see. The Houses of Parliament now discuss India as if it were a home question, a vital and moral question, as it is. This new public opinion in England only requires educating. It requires facts. I was exceedingly glad to see that you were circulating questions requiring facts for answers among your mofussil friends, and that you were going to collect information yourself. That is what is wanted. 3. To return to the commission on the Bengal Rent Law: would you not be inclined to hope for the cr ystalizations resulting from time to turn the ryot’s holdings into property, as has been the case in most European countries, and in our own country in the instance of the copyholders? I should hope for legislation to give the ryots relief against illegal exactions in excess of the rent established by law. For while the cases in which undisputed rents are withheld are few, those in which illegal cesses, etc., are exacted are ver y many. It was a terrible thing that, while the zemindars are supported in every tittle of their legal rights, when it was shown by a commission of indisputable authority that illegal exactions were habitually made, all special interference was forbidden and the ryots were left to their legal remedy. At present, I suppose, a suit for rent or a suit for overrent or exaction can only be brought as a regular civil action, the same as if it were to try a question of title, and such actions only come on in their turn: it may be a very slow and long turn. Should there not be a separate file for such, and a cheap and summary mode of trial—a case being stated for regular trial when a real question of title crops up? The summary jurisdiction would in all cases be confined to enforcing the rent previously paid and keeping down the levy by the zemindar to that previous rent till it is legally enhanced. In Bengal and Bihar no doubt the zemindar’s papers (in the absence of a public accountant) have been, as you notice, thoroughly unreliable. But I have understood that the road cess returns have done much to obviate that difficulty. Is it not the case that the ryots come trooping in, even in Muzaffarpur, to obtain certified copies of the zemindars’ records of their own rents, and that they, the ryots, will not then pay a rupee more than the amount? (I give them joy.) If the zemindars fail to keep reliable accounts, so much the worse for them: they will lose the benefit of the summary jurisdiction. I am obliged to leave off abr uptly, I hope to write by next mail. In the meantime, let me thank you for all your valuable information and tr ust that you will kindly send me more of what I expect to turn to good account, please God.

512 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Cromford, Derby [Letter 6] 13 October 1879 Sir, I will not lose another mail in thanking you for several kind letters and enclosures containing valuable information. The statements, endorsed by the High Court of Judicature (for that is all-important), contained in the Calcutta Gazette of some months back, are beyond price. And I made considerable use of them in directing the attention of officials to official statements which cannot be successfully challenged. You well know how deeply I was interested in watching the prospects of crops in East Bengal. Thank God that a famine is averted. And thank God that there are zemindars who will look after their poor. Continue, I pray you, your valuable information to me. No blacker cloud hangs over one now than the dread lest the necessity for retrenchment should touch some of the most progressive institutions, education and some productive public works, etc. Pray tell me the results of your examination, which I earnestly hope will have proved perfectly successful; I assure you that I have not failed to bid you ‘‘Godspeed’’ in that as in your future life—that it may be long and vigorous and devoted to the highest aim, the country’s ser vice. The reason of my silence for two or three months has never been, never can be, want of interest. It has been not to trouble you with detail; increased business, permanent illness, and the taking charge in the country of my dear mother (she is a widow and infirm), with looking after our own schools for the poor, our own sick and dying people on this estate. We have two large training schools for hospital nurses in London. I must break off now. But I shall hope to write more fully by another mail. My interest in India can never abate. Any information that you could kindly send me, printed or otherwise, concerning the progress of the commission for revising the Rent Law of Bengal, would be exceedingly valuable. . . . I venture to send you a poor little address of mine to our nurses in training; about half of them are ladies and half working women. May I add that I know of instances of our native Indian soldiers and noncommissioned officers fighting and dying for duty quite as striking as those I have given? [Letter 7] 5 December 1879 Most heartily am I desirous to hear any facts which you may be kind enough to communicate to me, especially as to the progress of the

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commission for revising the entire Rent Law of Bengal, of which Mr Field is secretar y. Might I ask whether there are any reports or correspondence published in the Gazette or otherwise relating to the rent question as treated by this commission, or any kind of information as to its progress and proceedings? In the course of your inquiries as to the state of the ryots, it would be very valuable to give a list of thirty or forty bona fide cases, quoting names and particulars, as regards each of the questions which we have raised in our correspondence. But I am more particularly anxious just now to know the proceedings of the commission on the rent question. Thanking you again for that valuable Gazette you sent me, with a minute by the High Court of Judicature, and again bidding you ‘‘Godspeed’’ in your undertakings. [Letter 8] 5 March 1880 Private and confidential. With the utmost satisfaction I learn that you have passed your examination, and I trust that your health is fully restored. And I assure you, you have my best wishes for your success. But, far and away beyond this, I join with you in unceasing fervent prayer to the Fatherly Providence of us all for your highest success— that is, that you may be enabled wisely, soberly and continuously, through a long life, to help others to help themselves, to speak for those who have no voice, to be the voluntary representative of the poor and dumb and ignorant. And to make others noble, we must ourselves be noble. As regards the Bengal Rent Law Commission, I have ascertained that they have not reported as yet; they are in fact only entering on their work. The ‘‘situation’’ is that Mr Field, who is the working member, has made a digest of the existing law, with suggestions of his own for its improvement, and the commission are now going over these. Still I am afraid the whole thing is to be feared, though the ryots have powerful friends here. Mr Field is anti-ryot. There seem to be only two native members attending the meetings, of whom one you speak of 80 is wholly for the zemindars; but Babu Brajendra Kumar Seal (the sub-judge)81 is not

80 Another native, but unknown, member. 81 Brajendra Kumar Seal was the first native sub-judge appointed to the covenanted post of civil and sessions judge.

514 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India so: he seems inclined to be just to the ryots in most things. And other members of the commission are so also. As regards the road cess, of course there may be and we fear there are cases of overexaction of road cess, but certainly there is a wonderful absence of general complaint. This however may be through fear of the zemindar. The cess was doubled for public works (famine fund) and is now 1 anna in the rupee, I believe? It is on these matters— overexactions and the like—that it is all-important to glean exact information: information that cannot be successfully challenged. To return to the Rent Law Commission: no tacit assumption of the English idea that everything prima facie belongs to the landlord, and that all subordinate rights are so much derogation from his, and therefore to be constr ued strictly and put to the proof—an idea certain to find favour with the zemindars—should be encouraged. Both by status and by the Law of 179382 the ryot has original rights of his own. What is very much wanted is some record of ryots’ holdings so that a right once acquired may not be lost by a mere irregular increase of power, is it not? A proposal for protecting ryots who have cultivated for twelve years in the same village is most desirable, I suppose. No improved facilities for enhancement should be put in the hands of the zemindars in respect of procedure. They are only persons who have certain legal rights under a compromise effected in 1859. The decisions of the courts have been on the whole very favourable to the ryot, have they not? Ultimately I hope that our efforts will be directed to re-establishing a peasant proprietar y—though our well-meant immense experiment in western India has been far from successful.

82 The Law of 1793 is also known as Bengal Regulation of 1793 or the Bengal Permanent Settlement Regulation of 1793. It came into force and effect from 22 March 1793, on which date the different articles embodying the regulation formed the subject for a proclamation by the government of Cornwallis. There would be no remission nor suspension of rent, but it prescribed sale in the event of there being any arrears, reser ving to itself the right to the enactment of laws for the safety and protection of ryots and talukdars without any prejudice to the interests of the zemindars, and with certain provisos in the case of transfer of authority. It was followed by Bengal Regulation 2 or Bengal Land Revenue Regulation of 1793, which declared the abolition of the courts and transfer of the trial of the suits cognizable in those courts to the courts of diwani adalat, also prescribing rules for the conduct of the Board of Revenue and the collector.

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But I earnestly trust that the present commission will limit itself to giving effect to the Act of 1859, refusing to give the zemindars anything which that act does not give them. It is to be doubted whether under present circumstances the ryot might not suffer by a recasting of the whole Rent Law. But I only offer these considerations to your notice, as being those of some of the best friends of the ryots here, and as inviting facts which will be of the utmost importance—that is, provided they are facts and not mere opinions, type facts and not exceptional ones. The facts collected, to be of any value, must be, it needs scarcely be said, tr uly typical and not exceptional. Induction from single instances is a kind of reasoning too much in favour everywhere, but more particularly in India, is it not? To pick our facts to support our arguments and views I have ever found destructive of all progress, all hope of right conclusion and righteous action. But I need scarcely say this to you. To return to your career, which interests me deeply: a people cannot really be helped except through itself; a people must be informed, re formed, inspired through itself. A people is its own soil and its own water. Others may plant, but it must grow its own produce. As well might crops be grown without soil and without water as prosperity and knowledge be grown without the people’s minds being the cultivated soil for these noble crops. Therefore, I do so earnestly bid ‘‘Godspeed’’ to the noble efforts of young Indian gentlemen to educate their poorer brethren into men. I am delighted to hear that your friend is determined to devote himself to giving the people practical education and teaching improved methods of agriculture. In an agricultural country like India, that must be one of the main things. The estates of landlords ought to be centres and nuclei of improvement. It ought to be the landlord’s aim to prove that a peasant is better off as the tenant of an improving and intelligent landlord than as a proprietor who has to stand by himself. But it would be a fine thing to turn the tables on them, the landlords, and to show that, as regards agricultural backwardness, the zemindar is the backward man, the ryot the improving man: to show on the ground that the ryots are models of agricultural progress, the landlords those who do little or nothing for their soil, their tenants or themselves. If there were anything that could recommend the system of a peasant proprietar y, it would be this. This is the real proof to aim at, the real work to do.

516 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I would not miss another mail in answering yours of 21 January, which reached me on the funeral week of my beloved mother.83 Twenty-three years of overwork and illness have been mine. But this last half year, ending with my dear mother’s blessed going ‘‘home’’ (but what a gap to me!) can scarcely come again. Six years without one day’s rest of body or mind I have had (excuse my excuses). [Letter 9] 15 July 1881 Private. I beg to thank you very much for yours of 3 June and for the information contained in it about Mr [H.J.] Reynolds’s [secretar y to the Government of Bengal] draft rent bill—a subject so deeply interesting to me—and for two numbers of Brahmo Public Opinion. I have already made some use of the resolutions, especially resolution 2,84 passed at the ryots’ meeting at Calcutta and hope to make more. Could you be so very good as to make me a present of another copy of this Brahmo Public Opinion of 31 March 188185 for circulation, if it is not asking too much? It might be very useful here. (I have not seen a copy of Mr Reynolds’s draft bill, exactly as it stands. If not too voluminous, might I ask you for a copy? But do not send it, if too troublesome.) I am extremely sorry, because you must have thought me ungrateful, that you do not appear to have received a letter of mine thanking you for your great kindness in sending me last December a copy of

83 Nightingale’s mother died 1 Februar y 1880, after nearly completing her ninety-third year. 84 Ryots’ meetings were frequent in these days, held in Calcutta as well as some of the district towns; resolutions were passed and protests signed. The Calcutta meeting referred to here passed at least six resolutions. The second of these protested against Reynolds’s draft bill as ‘‘being calculated to deprive the ryots and under-tenure-holders of an important right which they had enjoyed since 1859: that inasmuch as these sections require ryots and tenure holders in permanently settled estates claiming a fixed rent, to produce evidence to show that they have been in possession of their holdings at such a fixed rent ever since 1839, . . . and that inasmuch as in the vast majority of cases it will not be possible for the ryots to produce such evidence extending over such a length of time, this meeting is of opinion that the existing law on the subject should not be altered.’’ 85 It contains an account of a ryots’ meeting at Wellington Square, Calcutta, about 6 p.m. on Saturday of the previous week. There were about three hundred ryots present, besides about two thousand people of Calcutta. The meeting passed resolutions critical of H.J. Reynolds’s draft Rent Bill.

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the Rent Commissioners’ Report and Draft Rent Bill (two volumes)86 and two numbers of Brahmo Public Opinion with accounts of the ryots’ meetings. I made, I assure you, the greatest use of all these. Let me request that you will be good enough to put your address in full at the head of each letter with which you honour me. I eagerly await such information about the ryots in Bengal as you have kindly promised me. The memorial to government on behalf of the ryots, and the pamphlet, of which you are so good as to promise me copies, will be very valuable. Let me assure you that, so far from any of the information you so kindly sent, both in letters and in printed documents and in your annotations upon these, being wasted, it is always among the most important I receive. It is impossible to exaggerate the state of the ryots in Bihar, I fear. But do not think the question of Bengal Land is ‘‘shelved.’’ In the Irish Land Bill the House of Commons is affirming a principle very important to the Bengal ryots’ interest. The House of Commons is on our side. And when this is passed the Bengal Land question will come to the front. Thank God! May God defend the right! I am anxious to save this mail in conveying to you my thanks, but hope to write more fully another time. I am, as always (you kindly ask) under the severe pressure of over work and illness. But I am as ever, your and the ryots’ faithful servant Florence Nightingale I trust that you are now quite well. [Letter 10] 12 August 1881 Private and confidential. I promised to write about the subject which so interests us both, again—my last letter having been so meagre. And

86 Rent Commission’s Report and Draft Rent Bill: ‘‘Abstract of Draft Bill embodying the Recommendations of the Bengal Rent Law Commission, 1880’’ was published also as Parliamentary Paper of 19 January, 1881, under the signature of Enfield, secretar y of state. Brahmo Public Opinion of 6 January 1881 wrote: ‘‘The measure which has excited great sensation is the Rent Bill of the Bengal Council drafted by the Rent Commission. It has burst like a bombshell among the zemindars. . . . It has stirred all the landholders’ associations to action, and we now find that there are many more associations of this kind than we ever heard of during the last ten years. The Bihar Landholders’ Association was the first to the field to raise the war cry. . . . East Bengal took up the cry and a large and influential meeting was held in the Northbrook Hall, and resolutions were passed condemning the bill.’’

518 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India this will be hardly less so. Little is known about Mr Reynolds’s draft bill here, and it is supposed to be non- or only semi-official, and that therefore it does not bind the government. But no one seems to have seen a copy of the draft here. Yet if it gives to all resident ryots’ rights of occupancy, that is so great a boon that it is said here to outweigh the requiring ‘‘proof ’’ from 1839 instead of from 1859—a clause so fatally objectionable. As for Bihar, something must be done for the ryots there,87 when a committee even of indigo planters and zemindars find that the ryots have lost all their rights, partly from being moved about by indigo planting, partly from other causes. I assure you that there is no lack here of determination in the highest quarters to give the subject the fullest consideration and justice. The bill must come first from the Bengal government, then go up to the Government of India, then come here to the secretar y of state [Hartington], who is so ‘‘thorough’’ that he will understand all about this bill in order to do it full justice before he will pass it. Nothing is to be done in India without referring home. The bill has not come up to the Government of India yet. And they are determined there in Council to have plenty of time to consider it. Though much way has not been made yet, it is much more hopeful than if there was a disposition to precipitation instead of to justice.

87 The Bihar famine in 1874 affected a total area of 40,169 square miles. The Famine Commission emphasized the strong and urgent need of placing the relations of landlord and tenant on a secure basis. It was soon felt that questions of fixing rents and realization of rent in arrears could not be solved piecemeal and thorough revision of the law was called for. Sir Ashley Eden declared: ‘‘In Bihar what is most wanted is some ready means of enabling the ryot to resist illegal restraint, illegal enhancements and illegal cesses and to prove and maintain his occupancy rights’’ (Brahmo Public Opinion, 26 September 1878). Nightingale says in her pamphlet prepared for the London meeting (1 June 1883): ‘‘The Bihar ryot will submit to be ousted from all his immemorial rights: he has no fight in him. . . . He has lost the right of occupancy by one field being taken for indigo one year, another another. . . . The Bihar ryots are a mass of poor low castes. They were not strong enough to bring their cases before the courts, and this is the result. They are crushed by constant and excessive increase of rent. Rents have been doubled, and more, within a few years. Rack-renting is extreme.’’ See ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear’’ below (see p 590 below).

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The case of the Bengal, and still more of the Bihar, ryots is indeed urgent. But there is good ground for hope—and there is certainty that our rulers are looking at it in the most dispassionate and thoroughly just spirit. I wish there were not room to fear that the present lieutenant governor’s health is falling off. He is not what he was, I suppose? Very much pressed for time and in haste to save the mail. . . . I hope to hear from you and to see a copy of Mr Reynolds’s draft bill. [Letter 11] 28 November 1881 Private. I feel that I have never half thanked you for your kindness in sending me Mr Reynolds’s draft rent bill, and the Ryots’ Memorial [Memorandum] to Sir Ashley Eden88 and four copies of the ‘‘Indian Association’’ address of June to Mr Mackenzie.89 (Would you kindly tell me more particularly the character of the ‘‘Indian Association’’ and its constitution, especially as regards the ryots?) Also for the copy of Brahmo Public Opinion of 31 March and of the Bengalee of 2 July with resolutions. Also for two copies of the pamphlet on the ‘‘Rent Question’’ by Mr P.C. Roy. And now I am going to ask you another favour. I am told that the Government of Bengal reamended Mr Reynolds’s bill and circulated the result as their view. Could you kindly send me this (Government of Bengal’s) reamended draft bill? It is almost impossible—and especially this year when the House of Commons was fairly exhausted with the Irish Land Act90 and, ever

88 The Ryots’ Memorial to Sir Ashley Eden of 1881, among others, protested against the innovation proposed by the draft bill, pleaded inability to produce receipts so old, ‘‘extending over a period of nearly forty years,’’ and advocated the conferring of tenancy rights on all who had been in continued possession of their land for a period of twelve years or more. 89 Mackenzie was in favour of the bill for the speedy realization of arrears of rent and for amending the law relative to rents. While moving that the bill be read in Council he declared: ‘‘I have said that the procedure provided by the bill for the recover y of rent in those cases which it covers is summar y, and perhaps severe. But I must remind the Council that it is tenderness itself, as compared with the powers that the Legislature thought fit to confer upon the landholders of Bengal in years gone by’’ (Brahmo Public Opinion [4 January 1876]:123). 90 The Irish Land Act in the Commons of 1881 influenced public opinion and occasioned comparisons between conditions in Bengal and in Ireland. The Irish Act had secured the three Fs to the Irish peasant; should not the Bengal Act do the same for the Bengal tenant? The Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was indeed largely influenced by the Irish Land Act.

520 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India since, the question of Ireland has been so pressing that the attention of ministers and everyone has been absorbed by it, but this is of good augur y for India—it is almost impossible, I say, to obtain attention to great public and administrative questions during October and November. But the time is now approaching when all political men and officials are reassembling in London. And I assure you the great vital interests of India, that wonderful country, will not pass unnoticed. On the contrary, it seems as if a new era were opening for her. God grant it be so! . . . Would you present my best thanks to Mr P.C. Roy for his kindness in sending me his pamphlet? [Letter 12] 9 December 1881 Private. I would write just a line to say that the great well-wishers to the ryots here are ‘‘agreeably surprised’’ by the liberality of Mr Reynolds’s draft bill and by the allusions, in the papers which you sent, to Sir A. Eden’s views. He desires, it seems, to make strong occupancy rights ‘‘the rule and not the exception.’’ It is true that Reynolds’s bill requires ryots claiming fixed rents to go back to 1839 (twenty years before 1859) instead of twenty years from date of action—a provision which must be modified. But he gives all resident ryots right of occupancy and puts their privileges on liberal and solid ground—and this apparently in accordance with the views of the lieutenant governor. Till we know what is the government draft bill to be seriously proposed, I think my friends would hardly consider it worthwhile to discuss the details of Mr Reynolds’s bill, beyond the main features, which I have stated. I trust you will be so very good as to send me the draft bill which, it is understood, the Government of Bengal have now put for ward as their view, but which has not yet reached the India Office here. The present secretar y of state [Lord Hartington], who is the most serious, conscientious and painstaking of men, will soon patiently take up the question, with which he is very well fitted to deal after his Irish experience. Any information about the associations which have sprung up of late years91 would be valuable.

91 Among the associations that had recently sprung up were the Faridpur Peoples’ Association, Tirhut Landholders’ Association, Central Committee of Landholders of Bengal and Bihar and the East Bengal Landholders’ Association.

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There was one, got up in Sir G. Campbell’s time, in a kind of opposition to the ‘‘British Indian Association.’’92 Would that be the same as this ‘‘Indian Association’’? The upshot of the papers is to make one feel that, as far as the Bengal rent question has gone (so the ryots’ friends say here), it is in hands favourable to the ryots. And I do trust it may be satisfactorily settled. You may rely on my doing all I can. At the same time the absence of information from India here is ver y unsatisfactor y. But Lord Ripon is pretty sure to do justice to the popular side so far as he can if action is really taken. In haste. [Letter 13] 24 Februar y 1882 Private. I am greatly obliged to you for your last valuable letter of 2 Januar y and for four reports (which followed it) of the Indian Association, viz., the second and fourth annual reports, and the proceedings at two public meetings of the Indian Association on the Vernacular Press Act. I am looking forward to your kindness to send me the ‘‘amended bill,’’ the Government of Bengal’s bill on the Revised Rent Law. Not a word you send me is lost upon the cause. I will perhaps await the coming of the ‘‘Amended Bill’’ before entering on the whole question of what is best and what is attainable for the ryot. It is a matter of indeed incalculable importance what may be the consequences of this ‘‘act.’’ The government has no disposition to ‘‘shelve’’ it, but they are right to give it the utmost deliberation. Would it be troubling you too much if I ask whether you would have the goodness to send me the Calcutta Gazette of 23 April 1879, containing a minute of the High Court of Judicature on this same rent law question, which I have seen, and which is singularly to the

92 The Indian Association, at first really the people’s association, was founded in 1876-77. In its early career it influenced public opinion on the Civil Service Agitation, the Vernacular Press Agitation, the Import Duties Agitation, etc. In 1877 efforts were made to raise funds for the Civil Service Agitation. The Indian National Congress had not yet come into being and the spadework was done by the Indian Association in rousing political consciousness among the middle-class population. In April 1879 Lalmohun Ghose left for England as the delegate of the Indian Association, with half a dozen memorials, signed by a large number of people, for ventilating grievances on the civil service question. It was about this time that it held a meeting at the Town Hall in London to protest against the cost incurred in the late Afghan War.

522 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India purpose? It is impossible to get in England, because the India and other offices will not break their files. The gentleman at Howrah whom you mentioned has been good enough to send me copies of his book on the Settlement (Permanent) of Bengal and the Land Question. The work is one of great research and value. But it is a pity that these gentlemen do not see that these works, which require only literary talent and industry, can as well be done in England, and that what English statesmen want are facts, plain facts, if possible from an eyewitness, showing the present condition of the Bengal ryot. In haste. [Letter 14] 24 March 1882 Pardon me for only writing one line today to say that I have found in London a copy of the Calcutta Gazette of 23 April 1879, which I think I troubled you by asking for two or three weeks ago. If you have kindly obtained and sent it me, it will be useful, for no one here could procure a copy. But if not I trust you will not trouble yourself, as my copy is available. I trust you know that every paper you have been kind enough to send me is put to use. Not a word is lost. It was your sending this Calcutta Gazette which drew attention to it. But I hope that you have now collected the all-important recent information about the actual condition of the ryot in the country on his own fields in Bengal, in Eastern Bengal and especially in Bihar, and that we shall soon have the benefit of it. [Last lines reproduced in Nightingale’s hand.] May God defend the ryot is the prayer of my heart. God save Bengal! Pray believe me, in haste, ever yours faithfully Florence Nightingale Editor: Correspondence with other people on some of the same subjects resumes. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

25 Februar y 1879 Private. I am more grateful to you for your note, for more reasons than perhaps you know of, than I can say. I was amused at Sir J. Strachey’s account of Mr Caird’s ‘‘economic heresies.’’ I have had a few lines from Mr Caird. . . . He says: ‘‘But one thing is clear, that, from whatever other cause poverty is too common among the ryots, it is not from harsh treatment by the government.’’ I look at this sentence, like

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an enamoured biographer, this way; I look at it that way. I try to see from it which way the wind blows and I find it rather alarming. In one sense no one suspects ‘‘the government’’ of ‘‘harsh treatment.’’ But, as a vigorous Indian official said to me: ‘‘The people see that theoretically the government’s intentions are good, but that practically these good intentions ruin them.’’ I wonder whether Mr Caird would be flattered or the reverse if he knew how you and I (if I may have the impertinence to class myself with you) watch him as if he were a young queen ascending the throne. You say, ‘‘we shall see how he will look.’’ And I am positively trembling with eagerness to see if he will solve some of these awful problems or just fall into the old rut. . . . He says he is in perfect health. I think I told you how a man (not a collector), who knows every inch of his Deccan, told me how the disaffection against our rule of this fine Maratha peasantry was waxing formidable. A collector from those parts—one of the many correspondences my unlucky paper brought me—after corroborating all my facts, or rather those of the ‘‘Deccan Riots Report’’ (which he apparently thought were not put strongly enough), added that there were in his collectorate some villages received from the nizam [former ruler of Hyderabad], in which our civil courts have but lately been introduced. ‘‘The people were most averse to their introduction, urging most truly that up to that time their lands had all remained their own, but that, under our civil courts, they would soon all pass into the hands of the moneylenders. These people knew what they said, but what a comment on our system. The y spoke the truth.’’ These are the kinds of thing one wants our rulers to hear, mark and consider.93 These are the men who really know the people. These are among the facts one wants Mr Caird to include in his bird’s-eye view. How can these ancestral landholders, made beggars by our rule, give us credit for good intentions and for non-‘‘harsh treatment’’? They say: We were better off under our native rulers. And say truly. You also say, what is our cry now? To ‘‘reduce our workers in every direction.’’ ‘‘The stoppage of half the work in India,’’ how alarming this is. The distress in consequence, I hear, is truly frightful.

93 From the collect for the second Sunday in Advent, Book of Common Prayer.

524 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Sir George Campbell, Add Mss 45805 ff166-69

31 March 1879 ‘‘Realization of Arrears of Rent Bill’’ (see p 499 above) with Mr Mackenzie’s speech upon it: Calcutta Gazette of 8 January 1879. Is this new rent bill now passed? (letter dated 21 Februar y says that it was to become law ‘‘in a month’’?). And do you approve this bill? you who have done so much for Bengal and the ryots. If I say what I am going to say, it is not because I do not know that you know everything and I nothing, but because I want you to tell me. It seems as if this bill were actually going back from Article X of 1859, which did so much for the ryots and is a sort of return to the principles of 1812 if not 1799. The ryots’ friends think the new bill ‘‘calculated to operate most injuriously on the tenants’ interests,’’ but that ‘‘the Bengal government’’ (you will think that I am very seditious) ‘‘is determined to pass this bill and no amount of discussion will dissuade it from its intention. On such an important question, one which vitally affects the interests of the millions of her majesty’s subjects, only six weeks’ time has been allotted for discussion.’’ [Articles of the new bill are next discussed.] I read Mr Mackenzie’s speech with the most intense interest, because it touches on nearly every point that you have been so good as to instruct me upon. But people are ver y much dissatisfied with it; they say of the bill’s two objects: No. 1 ‘‘Yes it strengthens the hands of the rent receiver’’ (Mr Mackenzie’s words) but, No. 2 Mr Mackenzie says ‘‘it attempts to strengthen the position of the cultivating ryot.’’ ‘‘No: it attempts to weaken the position of the ryot.’’ Mr M. appeals to certain native gentlemen. And people say: these are members of the Landholders’ Association and first-class zemindars of Bengal. They say that the sum and substance of the whole bill is that the ‘‘landlord has only to file his plaint to secure x x, failing which (suit) the plaintiff will at once obtain a decree.’’ Mr M. says himself, this is a most summary and severe procedure and that it shifts entirely the onus on the ryot. He says this himself. . . . This is what irritates people so much, that he should say that the proposed law is ‘‘tenderness itself ’’ as compared with the abominable clause of Reg VII of 1799 and V of 1812, which I believe you concur in calling abominable. Panjam and ‘‘Haftam’’ quoted by Mr M. were, were they not? engineers of oppression in ‘‘the zemindar’s hands,’’ and for that very reason repealed by Act X of 1859. It is rather hard therefore to go back beyond 1859, as if Act X is to or ought to be

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repealed. Yet Mr Mackenzie’s speech sounds very like a condemnation of Act X as too tender. And his present bill is certainly not ‘‘tenderness itself’’ as compared with Act X, which he seems to cast in their teeth. . . . Mr M. again repeats that the zemindar is not to be allowed to turn the bill into an ‘‘engine of oppression.’’ (But what is there to prevent the proposed law from being an ‘‘engine of oppression’’ in the zemindar’s hands?) And how does he propose to prevent it? By, he says, Section 26, which, the y say, is one of the most objectionable sections of all. And by Section 27, a ‘‘proper system of rent receipts,’’ ‘‘an improvement advocated by the zemindars themselves,’’ Is this any improvement at all? I don’t think it would be possible for Mr Mackenzie’s speech—the speech obviously of a most estimable man—to be made in a free Parliament where there is debating. The government ought to pay an opposition. Sir G. Campbell and Sir Louis Mallet. What interests me most in Mr Mackenzie’s speech is: (1) the tremendous case he makes out against the Permanent Settlement; (2) his admission that while ‘‘the ryot has absolutely no inducement to begin any such improv e m e n t s,’’ we must look to him and to no one else (to no zemindar) for all improvements. (And therefore must the poor ryot be starved to death?) What is yet more interesting in the speech, if true, if what he cites of the flourishing ryots under the Banaras rajas. Is this true? But yet more strange than this is to see an English government holding up the superior condition of the ryots under native rule. . . . Lastly the British tribute to the ryot that there is no more zealous improver of the soil ‘‘when his tenure is assured,‘‘ even when ‘‘his rent’’ is ‘‘cr ushing.’’ Mr M. then goes on to enumerate our ryot’s present advantages, to which he adds the ‘‘power of education ([I] have many questions about this education. . . . ] for which the name of Sir G. Campbell will be ever honoured. Nem con [with no one contradicting]. The conclusion of all this is, however, a most lame and impotent conclusion. And, except in discouraging subletting among the ryots (not the zemindars), he reverts again directly to strengthening the hands of the zemindars.

526 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to G.H.R. Hart, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 86/27

9 October 1879 I have to thank Sir Richard Temple and you for so many to me priceless papers that I scarcely know where to begin. Would you kindly present my thanks to his excellency for two minutes on the commencement of agricultural scientific education: a subject of the keenest interest to me. There is scarcely anything which hangs over one as a blacker cloud than the dread that ‘‘retrenchment’’ may fall on these kinds of beneficent schemes for which the Government of Bombay has done and is doing so much. Then I have to thank his excellency for the ‘‘Village Conser vancy’’ Rules: my old love. These village rules apply chiefly to new villages, and seem to be very good. I look with eagerness to the promise of supplementary rules which will doubtless apply to existing villages. So much requires to be done and some things can be so easily done, such as ventilating the huts, and if the manufacture of glazed pipes of pottery ware could but be generally introduced in India, would not the question of drainage and sewerage in country towns and villages be more easily solved? The largest part of sanitary improvement could be done by the people themselves, if they were but taught how. The first words of the ‘‘Village Conser vancy’’ Rules are: 1. When a site has been carefully selected, but should the selection of site be left without any direction about it? (Probably these directions however will appear afterwards.) [2.] Here is a case we have at present at the Army Sanitary Commission here, which deals with Indian as well as home sanitary questions: cholera breaks out in a village. The chief commissioner says it is the last place he would have expected cholera in, as it is a perfectly new village, inhabited by better-class people. But the civil surgeon tells us that when he went to inspect it, he had to wade ankle deep through foul-smelling putrid mud up to the doors. We ventured to make this comment on it: if the site had been looked at in wet weather, and the subsoil water level ascertained, the village would probably not have been placed there. No doubt all these essentials as to sites will be mentioned in the ‘‘Supplementar y Rules.’’ As a whole the present rules are as to principles excellent. 3. (At our Sanitary Commission what we often prefer doing is: to select cases out of the Reports and to show how to deal with them. In

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this way a great body of experience is gained in time. In India where it appears as if the great difficulty were to transfer the book knowledge you give the people into their daily practice—the natives so easily acquiring anything by rote and so hardly altering anything of their customs—might not some similar compilation be desirable?) 4. Sir Richard Temple has had in view, I believe, to make the Health Department in Bombay a kind of normal school where natives should be trained, so as to supply the country with skilled inspectors. But these, I suppose, would be chiefly for municipalities, towns and cantonments. 5. His excellency also intends does he not? to issue under the authority of the government a sanitary ‘‘primer’’ or manual to be taught in primary schools. Probably it is already done. It is a great thing for the governor to put his ‘‘imprimatur’’ on the necessity of teaching the subject of health, and to make a beginning in giving his primar y schools a really presentable schoolbook on sanitary work. (Beg that you will excuse and put down to the limits of a letter, which I must not make too long, a pell-mell style of cramming in points which interest me so deeply.) Would you kindly present my most particular thanks to Sir Richard Temple for his great goodness in sending me, and to yourself for forwarding the following valuable papers: the manuscript statement of takavi advances for the purchase of seed, cattle, etc., granted during 1877-78 for the whole presidency, and the manuscript statement of cultivated land held by moneylenders and cultivators respectively in certain villages of the Ahmadnagar and Solapur collectorates (received from H.H. the nizam’s government in the year of transfer, the year of introduction of our civil law, and in the last year. I am particularly obliged to his excellency for these, for I am afraid it has given some trouble to compile them. And, after all, they serve for me to trouble Sir Richard Temple with a fresh question. In the first place, does the name of each holder of land, recorded in the village books, show whether he is a moneylender or not? Next, in the Deccan especially, is it not very uncommon for a moneylender to get land, of which he is really proprietor, transferred to his name? (This is a very good thing, because the turn of fortune may, and but unfrequently does, it is said, make the cultivator again master of his land. And, if it stands still in his name, this must be a much easier process.) It is said on high authority—and I should be very anxious to know if the Governor of Bombay confirms this—that it is ‘‘impossible’’ to

528 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India give the information wanted for the villages received from the nizam, that it could be obtained for the present year only by special inquiry in the villages, and these would not be very trustworthy, and that it could not be obtained at all for the year of transfer. Is this so? I have much more to thank you for, but my letter is already too long. And I intend to do myself the honour to trouble you with another, in reference to some other papers kindly sent me by his excellency through your hand, by next mail. That the renewal of the Afghan War, so deplorable, which will throw so much on the hands of the governor of Bombay, may not thwart his great deeds for the good of his presidency, and that ‘‘retrenchment’’ may tie his beneficent hands as little as possible is the earnest prayer of, dear Sir (in haste), your ever faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From an incomplete letter to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45805 f271

[c1879] What the native cultivator knows and feels so much—whether he knows and feels it or not—and seems contrary to equity is that, when we take under government management ‘‘encumbered’’ estates of talukdars, not being saleable in any case, not even in default of payment of government revenue in Oudh, we do not allow the creditors more than 6 percent, although the original loan has always been contracted at 24 percent and not rarely at 60 percent. In some cases, where the interest had reached more than double the principal, we have reversed into the old Hindu law for our own sakes and allowed no interest whatever, have we not? Also as you say, we pass laws ‘‘for the protection of some large proprietors in Ajmer and in part of Bengal.’’ Say the cultivators: You do this for the rich and for yourselves, then why not for us? When they discuss things ‘‘under the village fig tree,’’94 they ascribe all their woes to us. I had a curious and remarkably well-written letter from a native gentleman of Oudh, said to be an able man, now in the employment of Sir Salar Jung, stating this very strongly. And his is no more than an echo of what is said ‘‘under the village fig tree,’’ say officials of our own of twenty years standing. We do not breed disaffection. It is there already. Whether this is so, you will know more than I.

94 An allusion to John 1:48.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 529 Source: From six letters to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

3 April 1879 I am told that this ‘‘new Bengal Rent Act is not yet passed.’’ Would it be possible to urge the secretar y of state [Lord Cranbrook] to desire that this bill as finally settled should be sent home before it is passed? I do not like to trouble you with an analysis of the way in which it will vitally affect the interests of millions and is only favourable to a noisy class, the zemindars, without knowing whether you think it possible to do this, with the secretar y of state. And it is probable that you have had this bill before you and have analyzed it yourself. But if not, I would thankfully submit to you how this bill seems actually a taking away of the rights established by Act X of 1859, which did so much for the ryots, and is a sort of return to the worst principles of 1799 and of 1812. The difficulty of course is that the zemindars are strongly represented in the Bengal Council while the ryots are not at all, except so far as the official men protect them. These say—one of them said so in the discussion on the bill—that the procedure (for summary realization of arrears of rent) is amost summar y and severe procedure, as indeed it is. It appears to be no part of the scheme that there should equally be a summar y remedy by process within reach of the ryots against attempts to exact more than the established rent without any regular and legal enhancement. The fairness of the arrangement altogether depends on an adequate provision of that kind of course. The boon which Sir A. Eden proposes to give them (the ryots) is to make their hereditar y tenures freely saleable and transferable in the market. But here comes in the broader question whether the right of sale and consequently of running into debt and pledging their properties might not be as fatal a gift to the Bengal ryots as it has been to the Deccan. I call upon you in my trouble; but I will not go on now lest I break my promise not fully to go into the bill to you unless you desire me. The amazing interest of the discussion in the Bengal Council lay in this: 1. The tremendous case made out by the British speaker against the ‘‘Permanent Settlement,’’ as strengthened by 1799 and 1812; 2. His admission that, while ‘‘the ryot has absolutely no inducement to begin any improvements,’’ we must look to him and to no one else (to no zemindar) for all improvements. 3. But yet more strange than this is to hear an English government holding up the superior condition of the ryots under native rule and citing the ‘‘flourishing’’ ryots under the Banaras rajas.

530 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 4. Lastly the British tribute to the ryot that there is no more zealous improver of the soil, ‘‘when his tenure is assured,’’ even when ‘‘his rent’’ is ‘‘cr ushing.’’ 7 April 1879 Private. New Bengal Rent Act. I am greatly obliged to you for your note and greatly encouraged by the hope that there is still ‘‘ample time to secure’’ for the Realization of Arrears of Rent bill ‘‘full attention.’’ If I venture to offer the following considerations, it is because they are addressed to me by native Bengal gentlemen in Bengal who are in favour of the ryots, and therefore curious and interesting in themselves, not because I am not aware that anything I could say of myself would be, as you say, only ‘‘second-hand and superficial information.’’ But I think my Bengal friends’ thoughts deserve attention in themselves. It seems as if this bill were actually going back from Act X of 1859, which did so much for the ryots, and were a sort of return to the principles of 1812, if not of 1799. The ryots’ friends think the new bill ‘‘calculated to operate most injuriously on the tenants’ interest,’’ but that ‘‘the Bengal government . . . is determined to pass this bill and no amount of discussion will dissuade it from its intention. On such an important question, one which vitally affects the interests of the millions of H.M.’s subjects, only six weeks’ time has been allowed for discussion.’’ This is however not so. (Sir Ashley Eden has certainly been a friend to the ryots and would not willingly injure them. The difficulty in all these cases is that the zemindars are strongly represented in the Bengal Council, while the ryots are not, except so far as the official men can protect them. You will remember what a strong and just protest was made by an ex-governor of Bengal against Sir Richard Temple’s proposal to make a radical change in the rights established by Act X of 1859. And Sir Ashley Eden did say that he was determined that should not be carried out. At the same time he said that there is need of an easier and less expensive process for realizing undisputed rents in the interests of the tenants who have to pay costs. But it should certainly be a part of the scheme that there should equally be a summary remedy by process within reach of the ryots against attempts to exact more than the established rent without any regular and legal enhancement. The fairness of the arrangement altogether depends on an adequate provision of that kind.)

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 531

I return to the Bengal people’s arguments. Take them for what they are worth—you will hear enough on the other side. They say— and in the discussion on the bill the British speaker says so himself— that the procedure (3) for summary realization of arrears of rent is a most ‘‘summar y’’ and severe procedure, that (4) ‘‘fourteen days’’ is too short a time, that (6) ‘‘appeal only on amount of decree being deposited’’: where is he to get the money to make the deposit? (We take your money and then we say whether we will keep it. Pay us your debt, whether it is a debt or not, it will do afterwards to decide whether it is a debt.) That (9) ‘‘landlord must prove that rent at the rate claimed has been paid in former year or has been agreed to,’’ it is ver y easy to prove this. (The fairness or otherwise of a very summar y adjudication of rents depends entirely on the nature of the evidence accepted as to past payments. If the old law as requiring a regular register of these payments by official accountants—patwaris and canongos—were put in force, would it then be objectionable? The road cess returns have indirectly furnished a register, if they are accurately kept up.) The friends of the ryots say that (12) ‘‘occupancy tenure heritable and transferable’’; there is a partial and not an absolute right of alienation. (On the side of the ryots, the boon which Sir A. Eden proposes to give them is to make their hereditar y tenures freely saleable and transferable in the market, while Bengal zemindars—and Irish landlords equally—oppose it. No doubt it is honestly meant as a concession to the tenants. But here comes in the broader question whether the right of sale and consequently of running into debt and pledging their properties might not be as fatal a gift to the ryots as it has been to the small proprietors of Bombay. But good Anglo-Indians say, the Bengal men are more accustomed to the law and might be more careful.) [They say] that (13) ‘‘occupancy ryot not to sublet without consent of zemindar’’; the section does away with the system of subletting. (Perhaps the ‘‘section’’ is right here.) That (17) ‘‘Transfers of occupancy tenures to be registered’’; this is too great a power in the hands of the zemindar. That (20) ‘‘Execution may issue on verbal application of decree holder’’: it is a most unjust procedure. So also (22) ‘‘The court may in certain cases award to the plaintiff additional damages not exceeding 25 percent.’’ That (26) ‘‘Arrears of rent’’—what they are, ‘‘quarterly days of payment, interest at 12 percent on all that shall remain unpaid by sunset on any quarterly day shall be awarded,’’ will prove a deathblow to the tenants’ right. (This does seem a most arbi-

532 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India trar y proceeding. One knows a good many people in Europe who would not like to pay ‘‘12 percent’’ on bills remaining unpaid ‘‘at sunset’’ on quarter-day.) Are the zemindars to refund their ‘‘abwabs’’ by ‘‘sunset’’ on quarter-day? That (28) ‘‘Ser vice of summons in suits for arrears of rent’’: the British speaker takes objection to this sort of procedure ver y rightly, and then they place the ryot under this disadvantage. In the discussion Mr Mackenzie says, ‘‘personally’’ he would like to ‘‘secure the actual attendance of the ryot before a decree.’’ He says, against the ‘‘process serving peons,’’ what we all know to be a fact. And yet he places the ryot under this process, when what we want for the ryot is just this—is it not? . . . They say, of the bill’s two objects, No. 1, ‘‘Yes, it strengthens the hands of the rent receiver,’’ but No. 2, ‘‘it attempts to strengthen the position of the cultivating ryot.’’ ‘‘No, it attempts to weaken the position of the ryot.’’ The British speaker appeals to certain native gentlemen. And we answer: these are members of the Landholders’ Association and first-class zemindars of Bengal. And we say that the sum and substance of the whole bill is that the ‘‘landlord has only to file his plaint to secure x x failing which (suit) the plaintiff will at once obtain a decree.’’ Mr Mackenzie says himself (in the discussion): this is a most summar y and severe procedure and that it shifts entirely the onus on the ryot. He says this himself. But Mr Mackenzie appears to rely on the ver y section 9 which is not sufficient. And what is far worse he says that the bill is ‘‘tenderness itself compared’’ with the landlord’s powers under Reg. VII of 1799 and Reg. V of 1812. This is what irritates people so much: Is it desirable to return to 1799 and 1812? . . . Mr Mackenzie again repeats that the zemindar is not to be allowed to turn the bill into an ‘‘engine of oppression.’’ But what is there to prevent the proposed law from being an ‘‘engine of oppression’’ in the zemindar’s hands? And how does he propose to prevent it? By, he says, section 26, which, they say, is one of the most objectionable sections of all. And by section 27, a ‘‘proper system of rent receipts,’’ ‘‘an improvement advocated by the zemindars themselves.’’ Is this any improvement at all? It is a pity that no real ‘‘debate’’ is possible in the Bengal Council. The government ought to pay an Opposition. The conclusion of all this is however a most lame and impotent conclusion and, except in discouraging subletting among the ryots (not the zemindars), he, Mr M., the British speaker, reverts again directly to strengthening the hands of the zemindars.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 533

I have a great deal more to say from my ‘‘clients’’ but, from my last letter from Bengal, it seems hopeful that the shape in which after discussion it is proposed to pass the bill may be greatly modified. Since I began this, I have had a letter from Calcutta, dated 14 March. The Select Committee (upon the new Bengal Rent Act) have made a preliminar y report upon the bill. They say that ‘‘they have taken it up without waiting for the criticisms and suggestions of the officers of government and others who have been consulted, because they thought that it would eventually save time to clear the ground as far as possible and endeavour to come to some understanding among themselves as to the principle and details of the measure.’’ The individual members have not pledged themselves to any part of the bill. They say: ‘‘The individual members of the Select Committee in making this preliminar y report reser ve to themselves the right to modify, change or reject each and any portion of the draft bill as now amended. There is still considerable difference of opinion in respect of many of its provisions, and one of the main objects of this report is to invite attention to the points of doubt, a financial settlement as to which is not likely to be arrived at until all the mofussil reports have been received and duly considered.’’ Further on they state: ‘‘Generally the committee are inclined to the conclusion that, in view of the great importance of the matters treated in this bill and of the amount of discussion that is likely to be raised in respect of them, the government should not attempt to pass it through the Council too rapidly, or until full opportunity has been given for considering the detailed criticism of mofussil officers and of non-official persons interested in land.’’ Of course you know all this much better than I do. At any rate I am devoutly thankful that there is, as you say, ‘‘ample time for securing full attention.’’ 31 May 1879 Private and Confidential. Bengal Arrears of Rent Realization Bill. Do you remember, about the beginning of April, being so good as to inquire about this bill, and finding that it had ‘‘not yet reached the stage of formal consideration’’ here? Might I ask what further you have done about it? Have you seen the ryots’ petition against the provisions in Part 2 of the bill under the head ‘‘Procedure for summary realization of arrears of rent’’? The circulation of the petition for signatures was however stopped because the lieutenant governor [Ashley Eden], in

534 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India accordance with the suggestion of the Select committee, postponed the further discussion of the rent bill till next session. May one not be ver y glad of this? He has appointed a commission, as you know, for revising and amending the entire Rent Law: how important this might be! . . . Are these good men? And do you augur well of it? The petition dwells much upon the fact that, whereas the zemindar’s rent is the same now as in 1793, the ryot’s rent is from three to twentyfold what it was in 1793 (this, I suppose, is strictly true) ‘‘so that even if the zemindar had to wait a year for his rent, he could not complain of inability to pay the government assessment from the previous year’s rent.’’ . . . The note [appended to the petition] dwells particularly on the fact that ‘‘a zemindar, by simply stating an untruth, can either consign a man to prison or sell off his property by distress’’ x x and that ‘‘this power is not only in the hands of the zemindars, but also in the hands of their agents, gomastahs, petty farmers, in fact of anyone who pleases to assert falsely, whether in part or entirely, that a cultivator is in balance of rent due to him’’; that ‘‘the tenants have no effectual remedy,’’ because ‘‘for a poor man to find security is almost impossible,’’ and that it must be security to the satisfaction of the ferosh ameen or the nazir, both of whom are probably bribed by the more powerful party to reject it’’; x x that ‘‘the zemindar has, in effect, arbitrar y power,’’ for the ‘‘zemindar acts on his own legal responsibility and the ryot is left to enforce that responsibility by process of law (all which, I suppose, is beyond contradiction). . . . ’’ The petition was drawn up, I believe, by ‘‘a lawyer of some standing,’’ a vakeel [authorized pleader in a court of justice] of the High Court of Calcutta, and was circulated in mofussil for signatures. Can Part 2 of the Bengal Rent Bill be worked in such a way as to prevent its becoming ‘‘an engine of oppression in the hands of the cor rupt amlah of the absentee Bengal zemindar’’? . . . How does the evidence of corruption furnished by the natives themselves confirm the plan of putting natives into government situations? This seems to me the real fount of the whole difficulty. What system do you propose to reform cor ruption? . . . We promised to redress their [the poor indebted people’s] grievances and we have done nothing: nothing but report and lay fresh ones on. (Sir R. Temple himself admits the dire distress in Deccan.) 1. Those who knew prophesied that when the public works, essential to employ the people now in this second scarcity, were stopped

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 535

and there is no work, no natural work to be had before July or August, the people would squat before their huts, then they would certainly steal a little, then they would join the armed gangs, and those who were unsuccessful as robbers would starve and come upon famine relief. So the last state would be worse and more costly than the first. It was prophesied that it would be so and it has been so. 2. A poor indebted Deccan peasantry: can nothing be done for this fine people? It does not signify whether an assessment is light or heavy, for they have nothing. They must go to the moneylenders to pay it. That makes them slaves. But such were the exigencies of the Government of India that, whereas the ‘‘remissions’’ were enormous and necessarily so in Madras, in Bombay the government boasted that it would make no ‘‘remissions,’’ only ‘‘suspensions’’ (as you know by Sir R. Temple’s minute) and would finally collect nearly all the revenue. And it has done so. It was prophesied by those who knew that, if this were done, the ground-down people would rise at last. And this much enduring, patient Maratha peasantry have risen at last—twice, this is the second time. 3. It is now prophesied by those who know that, should there be another sepoy mutiny (which there will be, I suppose), the Maratha peasantr y, formerly our staunch friends, will join it to a man. This is prophesied. May it not be so. May we learn in time. Mr Gladstone says that Mr Fawcett’s motion will be the prelude to much greater things—retrenchment, but retrenchment to spend more wisely and more well. Meantime the accounts from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south of India are terrific. It is a dreadful day that is come. From the very opposite side of India to Bombay, an old official writing to me says (of the Famine Commission) there are the men who with few exceptions are directly responsible (for the poverty and famine) because they have reported for years that ‘‘the country was flourishing’’ and ‘‘the people prosperous.’’ They ought to be on their trial instead of being the judges! . . . May I be assured by your kindness that, if it appears from past correspondence that information from India reaches me which does not reach the government, you have never, you will never betray the source of your information. Otherwise it (the information) would be stopped to my address. Excuse this long rambling letter. I seem to be trying to gather up the ravelled threads of our past correspondence and only to tangle them more.

536 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 7 July 1879 Private. The Commission to Revise the Entire Rent Law of Bengal. I cannot tell you how much I thank you for your letter. It is quite certain that, however discouraging Indian public affairs are, it is an immense engine for good for India your being at the I.O., and if a man attains his ideal he must be in a bad way, for his ideal must be low indeed. With reference to the Rent Law of Bengal, have you seen the supplement to the Calcutta Gazette of 23 April 1879? It is extraordinar y— extraordinar y, I mean, as showing the things acknowledged by government? And it is only as such that I venture to direct your attention to it. In this case, it is not, as you say, people ‘‘disagreeing, as they almost always do.’’ It is the High Court of Judicature which speaks. (‘‘British calves attend!’’) After a minute by the secretar y to [the] Government of Bengal in the ‘‘appointment of a commission to consider the question of amending the rent law of Bengal,’’ in which he says that zemindars! declare the amended bill to be of little use to them, and it is they who ask for the commission! (It is something, I suppose, on our side that there should be ‘‘free discussion and deliberation’’ upon the subject, but will the members of the commission examine the ryots and ascertain what their actual condition is?) The High Court of Judicature begins: ‘‘The judges’’ ‘‘desire to reiterate,’’ ‘‘The judges’’ ‘‘desire to express their astonishment.’’ The ryots’ riots, they say, are all the fault of the zemindar, of ‘‘his impatience, pride, and preference for illegal courses.’’ I listen in delighted silence to the words. But only imagine the chief justice and courts of law in England reading such a lecture to the body of English landowners, and her majesty’s govt putting it in the Gazette: ‘‘the blame’’ in riots ‘‘must generally rest with the zemindar,’’ ‘‘the court’’ says. The documents following after this by an official district judge, etc., upon which the minute of the High Court is based are painfully, frightfully interesting. But of course authorities can always get out of facts by saying that the judge is ‘‘mad’’ or the like and perhaps he sometimes is. (I know Indian judges and collectors who grind their teeth ‘‘in rage’’ at the injustices they are obliged to commit.) Nor should I take up your time with this, but that you will observe it is endorsed and urged by the High Court of Judicature:

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 537

The fact is the zemindars seeking enhancement get the best of it either by open decree, favourable compromise, or other settlement agreeable to the zemindar. The ryots cannot afford to carry on appeals. The zemindar can and does. xx

And further on (I am still in my Gazette): It is ‘‘district judges’’ who speak: Zemindars sell out by auction the right of determining, of collecting, and above all of screwing up the rents. When the disagreeable task has been effected, the zemindar re-enters on the estate and claims to work on the enhanced rent roll, for the ijaradar’s [zemindar’s agent] rent collection papers are always carefully stipulated for beforehand. When a substantial but refractor y ryot has managed to hold his own against a series of successive ijaradars, then the zemindar or the later ijaradar selects him for the ultima ratio of an enhancement suit. x x It is only as a last resource that a x x zemindar betakes himself to anything so decorous as a suit at law in order to obtain an enhancement.

Is this trickery true? this ‘‘system of periodical usually triennial, ijara auctions’’? It is stated that the zemindar takes to it in almost every district. The same judge x x goes on (naming some zemindars by name): ‘‘By undisputed rents is meant what the zemindar chooses to describe to the executive authorities as undisputed rents.’’ ‘‘As a rule, enhancement suits are almost avowedly mere engines for harassing by expensive processes. x x ‘‘The device is to allege all the possible grounds, increase in area, increase in fertility. x x The judge’s name appears to be Geddes and Jenny Geddes’ ‘stool’ would come in with great effect.95 ‘‘Increase in crop value, increase in rates payable by neighbour ryots of the same class, to hop from the one ground to the other, to fence over all of them and to prove none.’’ This from a judge! endorsed by a high court. ‘‘As a rule, rent rates have already been screwed up too high, thanks to the high-handed practices which prevail among ijaradars.’’ (This is from the district judge of Tipperah, but it is stated that the zemindars do these things in almost all cases.)

95 In 1637 Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the dean of St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, in protest against the re-institution of high-church practices, provoking a riot; the Civil War began a few years later.

538 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Zemindars and ijaradar substitutes for zemindars, on finding themselves checkmated by the prescribed test of law as to increase in values, have resorted largely to the other test—that of the increase in rent rates paid by similar ryots for similar lands. Then in too many cases the result was intriguing and manoeuvring. The standard device was to bribe this or that member of the ryot class to tell a lie that he was paying at such and such rate, when in reality by a secret treaty he was to pay only at such or such a rate much lower. It was this extremely reprehensible intriguing which called forth combinations to withhold all rents as the only means available to resist improper enhancement of rents.

(Should we not call perjur y what he calls ‘‘reprehensible’’ and prosecute accordingly?) There never yet was any sustained combination to withhold rents, which was not a perfectly legitimate reply to a challenge thrown down by the rent claimant himself.’’ But what a state of things in a country nominally governed by law! really governed by perjury! The judge virtually says to the people: ‘‘we cannot protect you by law, you must protect yourselves by riots.

Now these gazettes and official documents are of course read by the daily increasing class of educated Hindus (not zemindars)—daily increasing under our own influences—at Calcutta, Bombay, etc. In fact, I not unfrequently receive these gazettes, copiously marked, from Hindu correspondents of mine at Calcutta. One asked me what questions to ask of ryots, and I told him and he has printed them and circulated them among his mofussil friends—not with my name and extremely without my consent—and is himself making a tour in the country to collect exact information from ryots. Do not think me a firebrand and ‘‘Latter Day’’ man. And what must they think of us? There is a public opinion rising up now. And whether they think of us or not, what must we think of ourselves? 23 Februar y 1880 Privat e. Commission to Revise Bengal Rent Law. I hear from a ‘‘native correspondent’’ at Calcutta—a native who has really devoted himself to the good of the ryot—that the report is supposed to have been submitted to government, but is not yet made public and that the introduction of a new rent bill may soon be expected in the Bengal Council. My ‘‘information’’—excuse my talking like a newspaper—is ver y discontented and says that ‘‘the interests of the ryots are to be sacrificed to those of the zemindars.’’ . . . However, much of this may be gossip. The only thing I venture to ask is: is the repor t gone in to government? and what do you think of it? . . .

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I hope I shall be able to make better use of the invaluable information which from time to time you are so ver y good as to send me. I can but say that I can scarcely have another six months like the last. Illness and overwork I have had for three and twenty years. But the last half year ending with the death of my dear mother can scarcely come again—without death. Therefore I trust in your kindness not to throw me over. 5 Febr uary 1881 Bengal Rent Law Bill. I have ‘‘refrained my mouth from speaking— even from good.’’ Please reward me by letting me ask you now what is doing here about the Bengal Rent Law question. Two copies of the report have been sent me from India and letters and reports upon it. What you think upon the question I feel so very anxious to ask as far as I dare, and what is likely to be pronounced upon it here that I cannot help writing. You know I dare say that, for the first time I believe, in rural Bengal, 8000 or 9000 common ryots have assembled at a peaceable meeting, on the question of this draft bill. And resolutions were carried all in order, as at the House of Commons, I was going to say— but not as at the House of Commons but as at an assembly of gentlemen. . . . I have a long letter from a genuine Hindu, who often sends me reports: the gist of which is: ‘‘The bill in its present form concedes too much to one party. . . . ’’ You have always been so very good as to be willing to hear indications of what is ryots’ public opinion, or rather ryots’ friends’ public opinion, what I am going to say is merely as pegs to hang questions upon. Is anything being done yet here about the Bengal Rent Law? . . . They, the ryots’ friends, say: The new bill not only enables zemindars to collect the regular rent of occupancy tenants but also to enhance through a government officer, which the zemindar was never able to do before; that there is in fact here a ver y great move in favour of the zemindar although the enhancement is to be carefully and systematically done and once done not to be repeated for ten years. ‘‘They, the ryots’ friends, say that the penalty for illegal exactions is wholly insufficient.’’ . . . On the whole, say the ryots’ friends, if the present draft bill could be carried out in its entirety with some improvements, they would rejoice in accepting it. But is not their fear quite reasonable that, before the

540 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India bill is passed, the zemindars, who command the press and all that makes a noise in speech and in associations and in law, will get all the bill gives them and perhaps something more (some say they have got it already) while many of the concessions to the ryots may disappear? Is not there an impression in India, doubtless quite groundless, that the secretar y of state is in favour of the zemindars? What people in India feel is: that there is here a great disposition to secure to the zemindars their rent and their right to enhance—with some safeguards against carrying that right quite beyond bounds, and some provisions in favour of the Bihar ryots (on paper at least, and likely to remain on paper, they say) and stave off all the rest for ‘‘future consideration.’’ Unless the matter is taken up strongly by the higher powers in the sense of giving real security to the ryots, people in India seem to fear. I always feel your great goodness in allowing me to write. The above matters are three months old in India. I am old in not liking to trouble you before. The subject is of such immense importance that this must be my excuse for writing now. [continued] 6 Februar y 1881 There are many interesting signs, cropping up in the more educated Hindus near Calcutta, of progress. One sends me a report on agriculture, and (though it is much like the ‘‘Chapter on Snakes in Iceland’’: ‘‘There are no snakes in Iceland.’’) it says, what we have all along said, that there are more ‘‘graduates’’ in the university than the government can provide for but that no one thinks of going into agriculture, manufactures, trade or commerce; that, though the banyans supply money to Europeans for these occupations, ‘‘we’’ (the Hindus) ‘‘have never been able, except in a few cases, to become merchants, bankers, and manufacturers from the degraded position of banyans.’’ ‘‘Those who have landed property are content to screw their tenants and do nothing.’’ ‘‘A zemindar offered to give to government 3 lakhs of rupees for a public purpose. The tenants asked the government to take the amount from them, instead of from their zemindar who would, they represented, levy from them 6 lakhs to pay 3 lakhs to government. And government declined the zemindar’s present.’’ Se non è vero, è ben trovato [if it is not true, it is a fine invention]. Our triumphant reception of General [Frederick Sleigh] Roberts in England has excited a good deal of indignation in India. They recall Lord Hartington’s attack in the House of Commons and the duke of Argyll’s in the House of Lords on the occasion of General Roberts’s ‘‘executions’’ of

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Afghans.96 And then, they say, we make a hero of this man! But all this shows how Hindu public opinion is awakening. Source: From an incomplete draft letter not in Nightingale’s hand to Sir Louis Mallet, Add Mss 45806 ff119-24

[ca. 5 Februar y 1881] The Bengal ryots fancy that this Irish affair [the Irish Bill of 1870 on compensation for land seizure?] has ‘‘thrown everything out of gear’’ for them—all their hopes and all their case. Is this so? [From the resolutions of the rural Bengal ryots] 1. That the draft bill would with some modifications be beneficial both to zemindars and ryots. 2. That it does not contravene the power reser ved to the government under clause 7 of Regulation 1 of 1793 for marking the interests of dependent talukdars, ryots and cultivators of the soil. 3. Approving of Sections 20, 26, 28, 29, 36 and 77. 4. Forming a committee to memorialize the Government of Bengal. 5. Thanking the framers of the draft bill for their good intentions. They said they always paid one anna for the road cess to their zemindars, whereas the act required that they should pay only half an anna. They did not like that their holding should be made mortgageable as that would, they thought, give a handle to their creditors. They understood that, as long as the law was not changed, they were bound to pay the same rent to their zemindars and not to rebel. Many more meetings were to be held.

96 On the murder of Britain’s envoy to Kabul 3 September 1879 Roberts took revenge with a much-protested massacre. This is presumably what speeches later in the House of Lords were referring to; the (Liberal) duke of Argyll criticized the previous (Conservative) government’s ‘‘violent and unjust conduct’’ of the war (Hansard, Parliamentar y Debates 3rd series, January 1881:302). The (Liberal) Lord Hartington spoke in the House of Commons a few days later, referring to the court-martial of an officer (Hansard, Parliamentar y Debates 13 January 1881:1731).

542 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From three letters to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

14 July 1881 Private and Confidential. Bengal Rent Bill. May I trust that you will excuse me reverting to the question, under its altered circumstances, of what the Government of India and the India Office propose to do as regards Mr Reynolds’s draft bill. My Hindu correspondents and their friends seem very justly alarmed at the modifications introduced into the rent commissioners’ draft Bengal rent law/bill by Mr Reynolds. At a meeting held by the ryots in Calcutta, Resolution 2 says: ‘‘That this meeting desires to enter its protest against the provisions of Sections 6 and 16 of Mr Reynolds’s draft bill, as being calculated to deprive the ryots and under tenure holders of an important right which they have enjoyed since 1859. . . . There are other resolutions at this ryots’ meeting. But this seems important because this provision of Mr Reynolds’s draft bill seems to put the ryots entirely at the mercy of the zemindars. And I know that in England a day or two ago, it was desired but for the lateness of the season to ask Lord Hartington to receive a deputation on the subject and I was asked to furnish some information and a copy of this resolution. I will not trouble you with the aspects of Mr Reynolds’s bill with which of course you are much better acquainted than I am. I have a note from Lord Hartington written in April to my brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, saying ‘‘in India the report with the draft bill proposed by the commissioners has been circulated for the opinions of the High Court, the services and the public, and when these have been considered the government will frame a bill for introduction into the Legislative Council,’’ etc. What really happened was this, as far as my Hindu correspondents inform me: Mr Reynolds was deputed to go to the mofussil and collect opinions of all classes of people. He went to East Bengal and Bihar. But he consulted the zemindars and the pleaders. The latter for their own interests side with their rich clients. Mr Reynolds did not consult the ryots. He then prepared an outline of the draft rent bill that was to have been introduced into the Bengal Council. In this he made large concessions to the landlords and curtailed some of the existing rights of the ryots. The only concession he made to the ryots was to extend the right of occupancy to the kholkhasi ryots, i.e., the resident cultivators living within two miles of a village. The zemindars clamoured even against this concession. . . . A memorial on behalf of the ryots is now to be submitted to government. But the ryots have few able supporters, while the influence

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of the zemindars is considerable, and they have able spokesmen. I have been urged for the last twelve months to write an article on this whole Bengal Rent Law and ryots’ question in relation to zemindars and Permanent Settlement, for which I have ample materials, but I have been withheld by the idea that it would be better to let the Irish land question be settled in Parliament first and that indeed such an article might be actually playing into the hands of Parnell and Co.,97 who I know have desired, merely for the sake of making capital, to take up the Bengal land question. So I declined (again and again). Still, if the draft bill of Mr Reynolds is to be the direction that the Government of India and at home is to take, I shall have been sorry not to have done my little best. What I want is to ask of your kindness, if it is not too indiscreet, whether ‘‘the Government of India will frame a bill for introduction into the Legislative Council ’’ this year, for which of course they will have ‘‘to ask the sanction of the Secretar y-of-State-in-Council,’’ that is, whether there will be a Bengal Rent Law Act passed this year, embodying perhaps Mr Reynolds’s draft. One hears on good authority that anything of this sort would infallibly bring about a rising and perhaps a jacquerie in parts even of peaceful Bengal, and that the state of Bihar particularly is becoming year by year as regards the well-being of the ryots more unworthy of a civilized government. It is a common toast in Russia: to ‘‘the emancipation of the serfs in India,’’ and even the ‘‘ser fs in Ireland.’’ Speaking of Ireland, I cannot help being thankful that the House of Commons affirms the principle in this Irish bill that land is not like houses or cattle but that the tenant in occupation has an interest in the land as well as the proprietor, is co-partner with his landlord. I have always thought that land is like the air or the water, the rivers (the landlord cannot be sole proprietor). This principle is of enormous importance for India. But I dare say I am talking nonsense, and if it is sense you do not want it of me. . . . N.B. There is an enormous question which I have long wished but feared to ask you about, and that is whether, through the civil service commissioners, it would be possible to introduce agriculture and forestr y as a subject, in which the young civil servants going out to

97 Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91), Parliamentary leader of the Irish independence movement.

544 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India India must qualify. And also, out there in India, we bring up ten times as many natives in our higher education as we can find government places for, and we don’t give them or the zemindars any knowledge of the land, a country of agriculture. The European professors we send out don’t know a cabbage from a turnip—except on table. Might I someday venture to lay some part of this tremendous question before your kind attention? 25 January 1882 Privat e. Revised Bengal Rent Law Bill. One of my ryots writes to me a distressing account of the corruption which still prevails in the courts. He says, very fairly: x x Then again as regards the zemindars no speedy mode of realizing undisputed rents from the ryots has been devised. There will still be room for the ryot for filing false receipts, proving false payments and producing false evidence in rent suits in our courts of justice. Mr Reynolds’s bill meets the questions of rent only halfway and as such will practically do very little good to the ryots. x x There is no check, no restraint of public opinion here. Corruption is systematically practised in our courts of justice (of course my!!! educated countr ymen are honest and true!). The ministerial officers—the amlahs of our courts of law—are proverbially corrupt. They extort large sums of money from the litigants. One can get plenty of witnesses in this country ready to swear by anything and to give false evidence for money. In not a few cases, forged documents are produced; sometimes the crime is detected, sometimes it is done in such an ingenious manner that it escapes the scrutinizing eye of the judge. Imagine the state of such a weak and unprotected class as the ryots in a court of justice. The ryots generally depend for legal advice on the law agents—the mooktars—those harpies who infest our courts of law and who fail not to rob them of the little they have. The field for work in this country is ver y extensive but alas! the workers are so few.98

98 A paraphrase of Matt 9:37.

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The rest of the letter reminds me of that man whom we may truly call the ‘‘late-lamented’’ judge, tr uly lamented, the judge in Tipperah, who was a ‘‘positivist’’ and who was known to you, ‘‘Geddes,’’ I think. [continued] 1 Februar y 1882 Might I ask if you would be so very kind as to let me know anything that I may rightfully ask for as to the present state of the (Bengal revised rent law question), as to your views on the Government of Bengal’s ‘‘amended bill’’ and let me see that or any documents that I might see. And I need not say that they would be kept in confidence. Might I ask if the ‘‘amended bill’’ has yet been introduced into the Legislative Council, and the sanction of the Secretary-of-State-in-Council been yet asked? or where it at present stands? And—another request— might I ask if the supplement to the Calcutta ‘‘Gazette’’ 23 April 1879 (containing a minute of the High Court of Judicature, based on papers, included, of district judges, and amongst them of the district judge of Tipperah—Geddes—containing also a minute by secretar y to Government of Bengal on ‘‘appointment of commission,’’ etc., the whole upon this ‘‘Ar rears of Rent Realization Bill’’): whether this No. of the Gazette of India could be lent me (I promise to return it in a month or a week, as directed so to do) or whether the I.O. could direct me where to get it in England? Source: From a letter to Sir James Knowles (editor of The Nineteenth Century), Wellcome Ms 5483/32

4 May 1883 Private. Your beneficent activity is still, I am sure, directed India-way, though we do not see so much of it in your Nineteenth Century. Thank God, the times in India now are tremendous—I mean, the dumb ‘‘scream’’ and make themselves heard. But also the gagging efforts are tremendous. I have long been asked by the East India Association for a paper on the condition of the ryot, and have been obliged to put them off more than once but am now getting it ready. (I may tell you that it is a summar y of all relating to the Bengal Rent Law Bill, than which nothing so important has happened since the Permanent Settlement of 1793, but which just on that account because it is so impor tant, impor ts the British public little. The rest regards agriculture, because there is no agriculture in India. . . . The moment I have got my paper off my hands, I shall begin, I know, recasting it.)

546 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India This morning, much to my surprise, one of your ‘‘contemporaries’’ asked me for my paper for his review (though it is not ready). Without this, I should not have thought of troubling you. It did not come into my head. Do you think it likely that it might be of more use to India if inserted in your Nineteenth Century? If so, should you be likely to have room for it? If so, would you like to look at it, when ready?99 Source: From a letter to Rev James Long, Add Mss 45807 ff63-64

14 May 1883 Referring to my paper on the Bengal Rent Bill to be read before the East India Association, I have seen Sir Bartle Frere and he could take the chair on Friday 1 June at 3 pm or at 2:30 pm, as is most suitable to yourselves. Or he could take the chair on Thursday 31 May if the room could be had. Indeed he could have been at your disposal on any of the latter days in May, except 27 or 28 May, as [he] had kept himself at liberty for our convenience, I am sorry to say. It remains now for yourselves to decide. And I must let him know not later than tomorrow. (I communicated to him Mr Hamilton Bur n’s letters.) I enclose the two letters, for reference, which please return to me. Would you be so good as to send this note to Mr Hamilton Burn (as I suppose the office at Charing Cross is not open) today, if you judge it necessary and let me know the result as soon as possible. Source: From a letter to Sir Arthur Cotton, Add Mss 45807 ff78-79

23 June 1883 Private. Thank you for coming to the reading of my paper on the Bengal Rent Law Bill: I only wish that you had spoken. I have been thinking of bringing my, or rather your, irrigation map of India (Stanford’s) up to date. You are, I trust, pleased with the opening of the Sirhind Canal. And have you any other motives of satisfaction which would so rejoice my heart? You know how Lake Fife ‘‘poudrette’’ [powdered manure] from the municipality have transformed the district round Pune from a ragged millet crop of 5 Rs. to 10 Rs. per acre to a sugar cane garden of 500 Rs. worth per acre.

99 Nightingale seems to be refer ring to ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill’’ which finally appeared in the Contemporar y Review (see p 602 below).

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But to return to the map: I could have it now entirely set to rights by a gentleman who is willing to correct the errors in the features of the irrigation works and natural channels, etc., e.g., round Bombay and in Gujarat, and give a ‘‘complete examination.’’ Also to add the Swat River irrigation and the new irrigated grounds, if any, to insert (in the Arabian Sea) a complete list of every distinct irrigation system in India and also their important divisions, etc. Private. The India Office to our great joy is about to undertake a new irrigation and general hydrographic map of India as a part of a series of physical and statistical, etc., maps of India for the decennial statement. And I am kindly warned of this ‘‘before I go to further expense,’’ viz., that my map must be entirely ‘‘recast from the beginning’’ in order to ‘‘bring it up to the same level.’’ Source: From an undated note to Benjamin Jowett, Add Mss 45804 f65

What are the laws in England against usury? Is interest recoverable in courts of law above a certain rate? Above 5 percent? or 7 percent? Remedies: In Oudh when we take over insolvent talukdars’ estates, we do not pay interest to their creditors above 7 percent. But we extend no such protection to poor debtors who are daily sold up for rates of interest guaranteed by our courts of 50, 100, 200 percent. Pray, have you been making ‘‘prophets’’ among your Hindu undergraduates, as I enjoined? I have made one. Source: From undated notes, Add Mss 45805 ff192-94

We have kept the headman and increased his power without the checks which the village community system, including that of quietly ‘‘getting rid of him,’’ imposed upon and corrected unscrupulous or tyrannical headmen. Now under us the name of the corrupt headman is Legion.100 Our inflexible law and justice applied to an Asiatic community has as so often happens made offences against law, order and good administration easy. . . . In Madras and Bombay presidencies the mone ylender is the headman of the village who, as head of the community and as the servant of government, is all-powerful. The fact that the headman is the money-

100 An allusion to Mark 5:9.

548 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India lender (when he is) explains what seemed utterly inexplicable, that while ryots refused government loans for works of improvement at 5 percent, they readily accept loans from moneylenders of rates varying from 15 and 20 to 100 percent and more. The village headman when he is the ‘‘moneylender’’ would of course permit no ryot of the village to accept a loan from government on terms lower than those he usually exacts. (And all ‘‘moneylenders’’ band together. They never underbid each other.) The headmen have enormous powers, their corruption, especially during the famine relief, was and is hideous.

‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear,’’ 1883 Editor: ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear’’ is Nightingale’s polished statement on the Bengal rent and tenancy issue, prepared from the preceding correspondence and notes. This long paper deals with the condition of the landless classes and those who lorded over them in Bengal. Nightingale makes it very clear that the British erred in believing that the zemindars would be satisfied with the fixed allowance granted them for the collection of taxes: instead, the zemindars exploited their position for self-aggrandizement, to the detriment of the ryots. The paper was written in anxious anticipation of the consequences of the new Bengal Rent Bill, now called the Bengal Tenancy Bill. The majority of Indians living in villages depended on the produce of the land for subsistence; the zemindars’ advantages, given by the British and added to by their own greed and trickery, was a source of suffering and injustice for tens of millions. The land question had to be solved if riots were to be prevented and peace maintained. The bill had seen many drafts since 1878, as documented above. It was difficult to curb the zemindars’ abuses in collecting rent (the zemindars wrongly thought of themselves as proprietors rather than middlemen, and used force to collect arbitrary taxes) and to be clear about the ryots’ rights, which were older than the zemindars’. The bill aimed to revert ‘‘to the original land tenure of the country’’ (see p 552 below), and so correcting the injustices inherent in the Permanent Settlement, ‘‘one of the most unfortunate but best-intentioned schemes that ever ruined a country’’ (see p 578 below). However, as Nightingale clarified, ‘‘the question is not to abolish the Permanent Settlement but to carry out the Permanent Settlement’’ in its good intentions (see p 580 below).

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What was at stake in the bill was nothing less than the emancipation of the peasantry. To free the ryots from the clutches of the zemindars, where the government itself had put them, the ‘‘inter ference of government’’ was warranted (see p 563 below) to redress a wrong and to put an end to exactions at the hands of the zemindars. Legal, not violent, ‘‘remedies’’ were sought ‘‘for the condition of the ryots’’ ‘‘as regards land tenure and Permanent Settlement, or rather violation of the Permanent Settlement’’ (see p 582 below): there should be strong measures in favour of rights of occupancy, fair rents, free sale of rights of occupancy, prevention of a ryot’s contracting himself without legal provisions, regular surveys of rent practices, effective penalties for illegal exactions, criminal (not civil) prosecution if need be, revival of village communities and encouragement of trades and industries. The present bill, if complemented by the recommendations of the Bengal Rent Law Commission report and the resolutions of various people’s petitions, had the potential to improve the condition of the peasantry. Nightingale’s indictment of the zemindars in this paper was based on an impressive depiction of the bleak situation of the ryots ‘‘at the mercy of’’ the abusive power of the zemindars, ‘‘in a country where custom, not contract, is the rule’’ (see p 576 below). ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak’’ evidently borrows considerably from the ‘‘The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot,’’ but it is both better organized and even more pointed. There are apt quotations from newspapers, petitions, official reports, draft bills, notes and private correspondence. It is clear that much of the material was to be used in her article, ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill.’’ A summar y of the present paper was read by Frederick Verney to the East India Association meeting; a discussion followed. Source: ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear; or, the Ryot, the Zemindar and the Government,’’ paper by Miss Florence Nightingale read at a meeting of the East India Association on Friday, 1 June 1883, Sir Bartle Frere in the Chair, published in the Journal of the East India Association 15,3 (July 1883):163-238

Bengal Land Questions: Interests so large that we are not interested in them The time has now come. A tremendous wave is rolling over India— India which we cannot colonize and which, unlike the colonies, has the land question in all its intensity. The new Bengal Rent Law Bill is afloat—a measure which will decide the fortunes of the Bengal agri-

550 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India cultural classes for the next century almost as completely as the Permanent Settlement has done for the past. It is from the growing discontent of the country, so urgent that we do not care for it. This is no paradox: the interests involved are so enormous that we prefer to turn away our head, saying that we cannot understand them. We will not look them in the face; we shut our eyes; they are too big for our vision. The land question in India dwarfs all others in importance because India, unlike England, is almost solely an agricultural country. (90 percent of the rural and 80 percent of the total population of India are agricultural. Estimating the adult men of India at 62 millions, of these 343⁄4 millions are returned as agricultural, or 56.2 percent, besides large numbers of women and children, besides 71⁄2 millions of agricultural labourers, or 12.3 percent. Three classes—potters, weavers and beggars, one million—with the labourers, number 13 millions of adult males and represent a population of 40 millions or about one fifth of the whole population. They are always the first to fall in famine. The next class above is that of the small tenants, little better off than the labourers and only next to fall.) ‘‘The Hindus,’’ says the Permanent Settlement, ‘‘are compelled by the dictates of religion to depend solely upon the produce of the lands for subsistence.’’ The suffering or happiness of tens of millions is what we have to deal with when we speak of land in India. For years and years every month has been entangling and increasing the confusion and the problems to be solved; for years and years every month has added alike to the difficulty and the necessity of solving them. There must be some further step in our relation to the Indian land questions—in the relations between the West and the East. They cannot remain stationary. What is it to be? Difficulty by delay becomes impossibility in solving Bengal land questions At last the difficulty can no longer be staved off; at last an act can no longer be delayed, both lest difficulty become impossibility and lest cultivators, sometimes expressing themselves in agrarian riots, murders and always in litigation, should altogether take the matter into their own hands. Now is the hour. The viceroy, the Government of India, the Government of Bengal, the Government of India at home: all have their attention seriously fixed on it. Reports upon reports and draft bills on draft bills have been issued. Everything is ripe. The English in England have too long said, What is the use of taking up this abstract question? The English in India reply, It has come to the front.

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The leader of public opinion here has taken it up. (The Times of 13 November 1882 has so masterly an article on this subject that we cannot but quote it. It says that we are now ‘‘concerned with questions which touch the very foundations of society,’’ ‘‘questions of enormous difficulty as well as of enormous importance,’’ and that we ‘‘must rejoice that the Government of India is making an honest and earnest effort to settle them.’’ ‘‘The British raj will be weighed in the same scales as the dynasties it has supplanted and, if found wanting, will share their fate.’’ ‘‘The impoverishment of the Indian cultivator’’ is discussed and it is said ‘‘that, in varying degrees,’’ ‘‘life has been made harder for the tillers of the soil by a government which has honestly laboured to benefit them and has, in fact, removed or mitigated many grievous evils formerly suffered by them. x x Where once land competed for cultivators, cultivators now compete for land.’’ x x ‘‘But these unavoidable difficulties, inhering in the very nature of our civilization, are aggravated by cause due to, and therefore removable by, legislation.’’ [quotation from the Times begins] The Bengal Rent Bill is an attempt to deal with the evils which have grown during the last ninety years out of one of the most remarkable blunders ever made by well-meaning rulers. When the East India Company sought to place the revenue of Bengal upon an intelligible and satisfactor y footing, it found itself confronted with a mass of customary rights of the most intricate kind, based upon a general principle quite incomprehensible to the Englishman of that generation. Between the actual cultivator and the sovereign there was no one possessing rights over the soil. The revenue consisted of the rent and the occupier, so long as he paid the stipulated sum, had an indefeasible title. A land system without a landlord appeared so strange an anomaly that the first thing the officials of the day did was to cast about for some set of men of which to create a landlord class. After much sadly misused research, they came to the conclusion that the zemindars, or tax-farmers of the old régime, were the proper persons to erect into the missing class. Although, theoretically, these revenue collectors had no rights over the land beyond that of collecting rent and retaining for themselves a certain fixed allowance, they had, through the laxity or weakness of the rulers, acquired great weight and influence. They exacted, as taxfarmers in the East invariably do, a great deal more than their legitimate claims and they probably paid in many cases a great deal less to the Exchequer than the area under their management ought to have produced. They were able to make themselves heard and they bore a

552 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India super ficial resemblance to the English landlord. Lord Cornwallis accordingly made them the cornerstone of his system by declaring them owners in perpetuity of the land they formerly farmed. x x The ryots were known to have rights of an extensive kind, but it was assumed x x that the pleasant relations obtaining between English landlords and tenants would spring up in Bengal and that a fair rent would be settled by contract. The zemindars very shortly began to employ the vast powers thus left at their disposal as well as to sublet their rights to men who pressed them even more harshly, and soon it was found that the condition of the agriculturist was becoming deplorable. Power had, however, been very carefully reser ved in the regulations by which the Permanent Settlement was carried out for the Government of India to inter fere for the preser vation of the ancient rights of the cultivators. In virtue of that power attempts were made from time to time to protect the ryots from the effects of unlimited competition, but the difficulty of discovering their actual rights was further complicated by the artificial system grafted upon the old customs, and the principal result of the acts passed for their benefit has been to make the relations between landlord and tenant more and more bewildering. The Bengal Rent Act now under consideration is an attempt to revert, in some degree, to the original land tenure of the country. . . . It need not be said that such an attempt now wears the aspect of interference with private property. The zemindars are in possession of rights conferred upon them by ourselves, but which were not ours to confer. x x The chief justice of Bengal takes the view natural to a conservative lawyer. The proposed interference with vested rights appears to him a ruinous policy of confiscation. But the vested rights of the ryots are older, greater and more important to the state than those of the zemindars. The great injustice of the Permanent Settlement must be remedied under terrible penalties for those we govern and for ourselves. [quotation ends] The spirit of the day is with us. Spirit of the day all for improving condition of peasantry The spirit of the day all tends to improving the condition of the masses and above all of those hitherto escaping observation—the peasantry—all over Europe. India, almost as big and as thickly populated as Europe, is nearly all peasantry. In Europe we have been working up to this climax. Had it not been for the emancipation of the peasants in Germany during Napoleon’s time, would Germany ever have been what it is?

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Then there is Russia’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861, though as yet it has not done all it ought. France has vastly multiplied her peasant proprietors. Spain and Portugal have thrown off their ancient customs of entail and primogeniture. Ireland has its Lend [Land] Act. Advantage to Bengal landlord of proposed new bill as well as to cultivator in really carrying out Permanent Settlement Even in India something has been done. For example, in Bengal the Act of 1859 and other similar enactments for the ryots, but still insufficient. Could the land question but be really well settled in Bengal, could the Permanent Settlement of 1793 but be really carried out, what an advantage to both zemindar (landowner) and ryot (cultivator): to the zemindar in giving him a contented and thriving peasantr y, instead of one often on the verge of starvation, always on the verge of refusing to pay rent at all; to the ryot in securing him such rights as will prevent the oppressions by which ‘‘the relations between the landlord and tenant are strained to the utmost degree,’’ and the general discontent which will go on increasing ‘‘till the amendment of the rent laws lays the foundation for a better state of things.’’ If not, what a future of trouble, ending we know not how, not only for Bengal, but for India! (To study this Permanent Settlement of 1793 is to receive a revelation of rights we knew not of. And therefore I shall make no apology for giving copious extracts from it in notes. Much of the first part about improvements and security would seem to apply to the ryots now instead of to the zemindars. ‘‘We are yours but the land is ours,’’ says the Russian peasant.) (Who is a ryot? The Rent Law Bill’s definition is: a tenant who holds land for purposes of agriculture, horticulture or pasture, or who has come into possession for such purposes. A tenant may be a tenure holder, a ryot or a person holding under a ryot.) The night is far spent. The day is at hand101 And there is not an hour to be lost. It has been truly said that it is not despair, not utter want and misery, which leads to revolution: it is the gradual awakening from this state to know our higher wants. Education commissions, local self-government schemes, show which way the tide is turning. The ignorant ryot is learning his rights; he is learn-

101 Rom 13:12.

554 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ing that a higher rent cannot be legally demanded than that entered in the road-cess registers. But abwabs or illegal exactions are levied instead of or over and above enhanced rents. Cesses are not calculated on the abwabs, but on the rent. ‘‘And in this way the arrangement is used to reduce the government demand.’’ And what is to come of this? Corroboration and correction alike invited It seems almost an impertinence to lay my facts before any who have been in India—which I have not—and who may even have seen great service in India, but what I have to try to state on these vast questions rests upon a mass of documentary evidence which few in India and very few in England have seen. India has been familiar to me for more than twenty years from documents—the plain unvarnished evidence of plain witnesses. I do most earnestly beg alike for support and friendly opposition— alike for corroboration and correction—from those who know India, perhaps by their own splendid services. Present condition of ryots in Bengal and first as to land tenure and Permanent Settlement, or rather violation of Permanent Settlement (It will be remembered what the regulations of the Permanent Settlement were, but it may be useful here to insert in notes some of its principal provisions. a.d. 1793 Regulation II. [quotation from Regulation II] In the British territories in Bengal, the greater part of the materials required for the numerous and valuable manufactures and most of the other principal articles of export are the produce of the lands; it follows that the commerce and consequently the wealth of the countr y must increase in proportion to the extension of its agriculture. But it is not for commercial purposes alone that the encouragement of agriculture is essential to the welfare of these provinces. The Hindus who form the body of the people are compelled, by the dictates of religion, to depend solely upon the produce of the lands for subsistence; and the generality of such of the lower orders of the natives as are not of that persuasion are from habit or necessity in a similar predicament. The extensive failure or destr uction of the crops that occasionally arises from drought or inundation is in consequence invariably followed by famine, the ravages of which are felt chiefly by the cultivators of the soil and the manufacturers, from whose labours the country derives

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both its subsistence and wealth. Experience having evinced that adequate supplies of grain are not obtainable from abroad in seasons of scarcity, the country must necessarily continue subject to these calamities until the proprietors and cultivators of the lands shall have the means of increasing the number of reser voirs, embankments and other artificial works, by which, to a great degree, the untimely cessation of the periodical rains may be provided against and the lands protected from inundation, and, as a necessary consequence, the stock of grain in the country at large shall always be sufficient to supply these occasional but less extensive deficiencies in the annual produce, which may be expected to occur notwithstanding the adoption of the above precautions to obviate them. To effect these improvements in agriculture, which must necessarily be followed by the increase of every article of produce, has accordingly been one of the primary objects to which the attention of the British administration has been directed in its arrangements for the internal government of these provinces. As being the two fundamental measures essential to the attainment of it, the property in the soil has been declared to be vested in the landholders, and the revenue payable to government from each estate has been fixed forever. These measures have at once rendered it the interest of the proprietors to improve their estates, and give them the means of raising the funds necessary for that purpose. The property in the soil was never before formally declared to be vested in the landowners, nor were they allowed to transfer such rights as they did possess or raise money on the credit of their tenures without the previous sanction of government. With respect to the public demand upon each estate, it was liable to annual or frequent variation, at the discretion of government. The amount of it was fixed upon an estimate formed by the public officers of the aggregate of the rents payable by the ryots or tenants for each begah [small quantity] of land in cultivation, of which, after deducting the expenses of collection, ten elevenths were usually considered the right of the public, and the remainder the share of the landholder. Refusal to pay the sum required of him was followed by his removal from the management of his lands, and the public dues were either let in farm or collected by an officer of government, and the above-mentioned share of the landholder, or such sum as special custom or the orders of government might have fixed, was paid to him by the farmer or from the public treasur y. When the extension of cultivation was productive of only a heavier assessment, and even the posses-

556 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sion of the property was uncertain, the hereditar y landholder had little inducement to improve his estate, and moneyed men had no encouragement to embark their capital in the purchase or improvement of land, whilst not only the profit, but the security for the capital itself was so precarious. The same causes, therefore, which prevented the improvement of land, depreciated its value. Further measures, however, are essential to the attainment of the important object above stated. All questions between government and the landholders respecting the assessment and collection of the public revenue and disputed claims between the latter and their ryots, or other persons concerned in the collection of their rents, have hitherto been cognizable in the courts of maal adalat or revenue courts. The collectors of the revenue preside in these courts as judges, and an appeal lies from their decision to the Board of Revenue, and from the decrees of that board to the Governor-General-in-Council in the Department of Revenue. The proprietors can never consider the privileges which have been conferred upon them as secure whilst the revenue officers are vested with these judicial powers. Exclusive of the objections arising to these courts from their irregular summary and often ex parte proceedings, and from the collectors being obliged to suspend the exercise of their judicial functions whenever they interfere with their financial duties, it is obvious that if the regulations for assessing and collecting the public revenue are infringed, the revenue officers themselves must be the aggressors, and that individuals who have been wronged by them in one capacity can never hope to obtain redress from them in another. Their financial occupations equally disqualify them for administering the laws between the proprietors of land and their tenants. Other security, therefore, must be given to landed property, and to the rights attached to it before the desired improvements in agriculture can be expected to be effected. Government must divest itself of the power of infringing, in its executive capacity, the rights and privileges which, as exercising the legislative authority, it has conferred on the landholders. The revenue officers must be deprived of their judicial powers. All financial claims of the public, when disputed under the regulations, must be subject to the cognizance of courts of judicature, superintended by judges who, from their official situations and the nature of their trusts, shall not only be wholly uninterested in the result of their decisions, but bound to decide impartially between the public and the proprietors of land, and also between the latter and their tenants.

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The collectors of the revenue must not only be divested of the power of deciding upon their own acts, but rendered amenable for them to the courts of judicature, and collect the public dues subject to a personal prosecution for every exaction exceeding the amount which they are authorized to demand on behalf of the public, and for ever y deviation from the regulations prescribed for the collection of it. No power will then exist in the country by which the rights vested in the landholders by the regulations can be infringed, or the value of landed property affected. Land must, in consequence, become the most desirable of all property, and the industry of the people will be directed to those improvements in agriculture which are essential to their own welfare as to the prosperity of the state. The following rules, being the rules passed for the guidance of the directors and the Board of Revenue on 8 June 1787 and 25 April 1788 with alterations adapted to the principles above stated, have been accordingly enacted.) [end of quotation] 1. In what sense are the zemindars to be understood at all as proprietors, landlords, landowners? The answer to this question is simple. The zemindars were not originally proprietors or landlords, and it may be shown beyond contradiction that they were not made so by the Permanent Settlement in the feudal sense of absolute owners of the soil. What were they made? ‘‘Persons empowered, under certain ver y rigid restrictions, to receive from the occupants of the soil a fixed rental, settled by the government on ascertained principles.’’ ‘‘Neither by the terms of the original settlement and original laws of these provinces, nor by modern laws, are zemindars unlimited proprietors, or ryots without rights or claims to protection.’’ (The Code of 1793 recognized in the ‘‘fullest manner the rights of the ryots to hold at the established rates, and to be freed from abwabs, these vexatious imposts over and above the public revenue or rent; and that Code is full of provisions and declarations making it clear that the intention of the framers was by no means to abstain from inter ference between zemindars and ryots. On the contrary, the duty of protecting the lower mass of the community—the ryots—was recognized and asserted by the government of that day in the amplest manner. x x Rather would it be a ground of reproach to the government if under such circumstances it should fail to interfere effectually.’’) 2. What was the ‘‘contract’’ made, and with whom, by the Permanent Settlement? And has it been kept? [quotation begins]

558 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India (a.d. 1793 Regulation I. Assessment in former times liable to variation at the discretion of the government. VII. Article VI. It is well known to the zemindars, independent talukdars and other actual proprietors of land, as well as to the inhabitants of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in general, that from the earliest times unto the present period the public assessment upon the lands has never been fixed, but that, according to established usage and custom, the rulers of these provinces have from time to time demanded an increase of assessment from the proprietors of land, and that, for the purpose of obtaining this increase, not only frequent investigations have been made to ascertain the actual produce of their estates, but that it has been the practice to deprive them of the management of their lands, and either to let them in farm or to appoint officers on the par t of government to collect the assessment immediately from the ryots. Motives of the Court of Directors for abolishing the usage and fixing the assessment which is declared unalterable by any future government. The Honourable Court of Directors, considering these usages and measures to be detrimental to the prosperity of the country, have, with a view to promote the future ease and happiness of the people, authorized the foregoing declarations, and the zemindars, independent talukdars and other actual proprietors of land, with or on behalf of whom a settlement has been or may be concluded, are to consider these orders fixing the amount of assessment as irrevocable and not liable to alteration by any persons whom the Court of Directors may hereafter appoint to the administration of their affairs in this country. Proprietors expected to improve their estates in consequence of the profits being secured to them. But when ryots are left to improve their land, the profits are not secured them. Ryots are ‘‘expected to improve their lands’’ in consequence of the profits not being secured them. Au t h o r ’ s [FN] note. The Governor-General-in-Council trusts that the proprietors of land, sensible of the benefits conferred upon them by the public assessment being fixed forever, will exert themselves in the cultivation of their lands, under the certainty that they will enjoy exclusively the fr uits of their own good management and industry, and that no demand will ever be made upon them, their heirs and successors, by the present or any future government, for an augmentation of the public assessment in consequence of the improvement of their respective estates.

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Conduct to be observed by the proprietors of land towards their dependent talukdars and ryots. To discharge the revenues at the stipulated periods without delay or evasion, and to conduct themselves with good faith and moderation towards their dependant talukdars and ryots, are duties at all times indispensably required from the proprietors of land, and a strict obser vance of those duties is now more than ever incumbent on them in return for the benefits which they will themselves derive from the orders now issued. The Governor-General-in-Council therefore expects that the proprietors of land will not only act in this manner themselves towards their dependent talukdars and ryots, but also enjoin the strictest adherence to the same principles in the persons whom they may appoint to collect the rents from them. [quotation ends] [FN] Have they done this? No claims for remissions or suspensions be admitted on any account. Lands of proprietors to be invariably sold for arrears. He further expects that, without deviating from this line of conduct, they will regularly discharge the revenue in all seasons; and he accordingly notifies to them that, in future, no claims or applications for suspensions or remissions, on account of drought, inundation or other calamity of season will be attended to, but that in the event of any zemindar, independent talukdar or other actual proprietor of land, with or on behalf of whom a settlement has been or may be concluded, or his or her heirs or successors, failing in the punctual discharge of the public revenue which has been or may be assessed upon their lands under the above-mentioned regulations, a sale of the whole of the lands of the defaulter, or such portion of them as may be sufficient to make good the arrear, will positively and invariably take place. [FN] First point. There are to be no cesses, i.e., no arbitrary taxes levied at the pleasure of the zemindar. (Regulation VIII. Fur ther rules to prevent undue exactions from the talukdars. Proprietors not to demand an increase from talukdars, excepting in the cases herein specified. LI. The following rules are prescribed to prevent undue exactions from the dependent talukdars: First. No zemindar or other actual proprietor of land shall demand an increase from the talukdars dependent on him, although he should himself be subject to payment of an increase of jumma—amount of

560 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India rent or revenue payable, including all cesses, as well as land tax—to government, except upon proof that he is entitled so to do, either by the special custom of the district or by the conditions under which the talukdar holds his tenure, or that the talukdar by receiving batements from his jumma has subjected himself to the payment of the increase demanded, and that the lands are capable of affording it. Penalty for proprietors making exactions from talukdars. Second. If in any instance it be proved that a zemindar or other actual proprietor of land exacts more from a talukdar than he has a right to, the court shall adjudge him to pay a penalty of double the amount of such exaction, with all costs of suit to the party injured. Proprietors and farmers of land prohibited imposing any new abwab or mhatoot [illegal additional assessment on land] on the ryots, and penalty in case of disobedience. LV. No actual proprietor of land or dependent talukdar or farmer of land of whatever description shall impose any new abwab or mhatoot upon the ryots under any pretence whatever. Ever y exaction of this nature shall be punished by a penalty equal to three times the amount imposed, and if at any future period it be discovered that new abwab or mhatoot have been imposed, the person imposing the same shall be liable to this penalty for the entire period of such impositions.) [FN] What is the fact? 2nd. The revenue or taxes are to be paid by the zemindar, and not out of the rent. How has this been observed? 3rd. The zemindars are not to raise their rents, and on this condition the revenue or taxes on them are not to be increased. What do the official reports tell us about this? 4th. The zemindar is to undertake roads, lesser public works, etc. Has he done so? Does he not rather avail himself of public works undertaken by the government as a reason for raising his rents? But, 5th, the ryot was to have redress in case of exaction. He often fails to obtain redress. 6th. The governor general promises regulations for the protection of the cultivators of the soil. Were they ever fully carried out? 7th. The zemindar was to give leases. But are genuine leases granted? Or is there any proper system of subletting? [quotation from Regulation begins]

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(Regulation VIII. Ryots may demand pottahs (deeds of lease) of proprietors of land and farmers who are also required to grant them. Penalty in case of refusal. LIX. A ryot, when his rent has been ascertained and settled, may demand a pottah from the actual proprietor of land, dependent talukdar or farmer of whom he holds his lands, or from the person acting for him, and any refusal to deliver pottahs, upon being proved in the court of diwani adalat of the zillah, shall be punished by the court by a fine proportioned to the expense and trouble of the ryot in consequence of such refusal. Actual proprietors of land, dependent talukdars and farmers are also required to cause a pottah for the adjusted rent to be prepared and tendered to the ryot, either granting the same themselves, or entrusting their agents to grant the same. Restrictions on farmers and agents in granting pottahs. No farmer, however, without special permission from the proprietor of the lands, or (if the lands form part of a dependent taluk) the dependent talukdar shall grant a pottah extending beyond the period of his own lease, nor shall any agent grant a pottah without authority from the proprietor or dependent talukdar or the manager of disqualified proprietors. All existing leases to under-farmers and ryots to remain in force until the period of their expiration. Exception to the rule. LX. First. All leases to under-farmers and ryots made previous to the conclusion of the settlement, and not contrary to any regulation, are to remain in force until the period of their expiration, unless proved to have been obtained by collusion or from persons not authorized to grant them. No proprietor of land or dependent talukdar or farmer of land shall cancel the pottahs of khorkasht ryots (a cultivator of his own hereditar y land = a resident ryot), except in certain specified cases. Second. No actual proprietor of land or farmer, or persons acting under their authority, shall cancel the pottahs of the khorkasht ryots except upon proof that they have been obtained by collusion; or that the rents paid by them within the last three years have been reduced below the rate of nirkbundy [standard rate of the district] of the pergunna, or that they have obtained collusive deductions, or upon a general measurement of the pergunna for the purpose of equalizing and correcting the assessment. The rule contained in this clause is not to be considered applicable to Bihar.

562 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Time allowed to proprietors of land and dependent talukdars and farmers of land to prepare and deliver pottahs to the ryots. Claims on engagements contrar y to those ordered, how to be considered and decided on. LXI. The proprietors of estates and the dependent talukdars and farmers of land in Bengal are allowed until the end of the Bengal year 1198, and those in Bihar and Orissa until the end of the Fussily and Wallaity year 1198, to prepare and deliver pottahs to the ryots in conformity to the preceding rules (but after the expiration of the year 1198 no engagements for rents, contrary to those ordered, are to be held valid), and in the event of any claims being preferred by proprietors of estates or dependent talukdars, farmers or ryots, on engagements wherein the consolidation of the assul, abwab, etc., shall appear not to have been made, they are to be non-suited, with costs.) [FN] (3) Can the restoration of rights of the ryots, whether original or acquired under the present settlement, be deemed ‘‘confiscation,’’ as it is often called? Illegal exactions by zemindars The government accepted the right and duty ‘‘as sovereign’’ of ‘‘interposing its authority from time to time’’ as might be necessary ‘‘to prevent the ryots being improperly disturbed in their possessions, or loaded with unwarrantable exactions,’’ those exactions being any further demand, either by way of enhancement or cesses, beyond a definite prescribed rental described as the ‘‘pergunna rate,’’ and those disturbances being attempted ejectment. In No. 46 of the ‘‘Records of the Government of Bengal,’’ November 1871, we find: Not only is it the duty of the government to protect all classes of the people, and especially those who, from their situation, are most helpless—a duty the performance of which they have specially reser ved to themselves as a condition of the Permanent Settlement—but it is also their interest to carry out that duty, because the extent to which the burden, not only of the taxation, which should properly fall in certain specified proportions on different classes of the community, but even of the actual personal expenses of the proprietors, is thrown indiscriminately upon the lowest class, and that the least able to support it must of course interfere greatly with the legitimate power of government to impose fresh taxes, and such undue and illegal pressure, on the part of the zemindars on the great and indigent mass of the people, must be attended with great and imminent perils of a political character.

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It is the government which says this. ‘‘Such considerations fully warrant the interference of government in view to correct the admitted insufficiency of the existing laws enacted for the protection of the inferior tenantry of the country.’’ (Regulation I, embodying the famous proclamation of Lord Cornwallis to the zemindars in 1793. a.d. 1793 Regulation I of Permanent Settlement. Government to enact such regulations as they may think necessary for the welfare of the dependent talukdars and cultivators and proprietors: not to withhold the revenue on that account. viii. Article vii. To prevent any misconstruction of the foregoing articles, the Governor-General-in-Council thinks it necessary to make the following declarations to the zemindars, independent talukdars and other actual proprietors of land. First. It being the duty of the ruling power to protect all classes of people, and more particularly those who from their situation are most helpless, the Governor-General-in-Council will, whenever he may deem it proper, enact such regulations as he may think it necessary for the protection and welfare of the dependent talukdars, ryots and other cultivators of the soil, and no zemindar, independent talukdar or other actual proprietor of land shall be entitled on this account to make any objection to the discharge of the fixed assessment which they have respectively agreed to pay. [FN] And this, it will be observed, precedes, not follows, the ‘‘Declaration’’ given above. The protection of the ryots comes first. [quotation from Regulation begins] All internal duties that may be hereafter established to belong exclusively to government. Second. The Governor-General-in-Council having on 28 July 1790 directed the sayer = all other sources of revenue besides the land tax— collections to be abolished, a full compensation was granted to the proprietors of land for the loss of revenue sustained by them in consequence of this abolition, and he now declares that, if he should hereafter think it proper to re-establish the sayer collections, or any other internal duties, and to appoint officers on the part of government to collect them, no proprietor of land will be admitted to any participation thereof, or be entitled to make any claims for remissions of assessment on that account.

564 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Jumma that may be assessed or alienated lands to belong exclusively to government. Third. The Governor-General-in-Council will impose such assessment as he may deem equitable on all lands at present alienated and paying no public revenue which have been or may be proved to be held under illegal or invalid titles. The assessment so imposed will belong to government and no proprietor of land will be entitled to any part of it.’’ Police allowances in land or money received by proprietors whose jumma is declared fixed, resumable by government. Fourth. The jumma of those zemindars, independent talukdars and other actual proprietors of land, which is declared fixed in the foregoing articles, is to be considered entirely unconnected with and exclusive of any allowances which have been made to them in the adjustment of their jumma, for keeping up tannahs = police jurisdictions or police establishments, and also of the produce of any lands which they may have been permitted to appropriate for the same purpose, and the Governor-General-in-Council reser ves to himself the option of resuming the whole or part of such allowances or produce of such lands according as he may think proper in consequence of his having exonerated the proprietors of land from the charge of keeping the peace, and appointed officers on the part of government to superintend the police of the country. Allowances that may be so resumed not to be added to the jumma, but to be collected separately and applied solely to the police. The Governor-General-in-Council, however, declares that the allowances or produce of lands which may be resumed will be appropriated to no other purpose but that of defraying the expense of the police, and that instructions will be sent to collectors, not to add such allowances or the produce of such lands to the jumma of the proprietors of land, but to collect the amount from them separately. Estates of disqualified proprietors not liable to sale for arrears of assessment accr uing whilst they are deprived of the management of them. Fifth. Nothing contained in this proclamation shall be construed to render the lands of several descriptions of disqualified proprietors specified in the first article of the regulations regarding disqualified landholders, passed on 15 July 1791, liable to sale for any arrears which have accrued or may accrue on the fixed jumma that has been or may be assessed upon their lands under the above-mentioned regu-

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lations for the decennial settlement, provided that such arrears have accr ued or may accrue during the time that they have been or may be dispossessed of the management of their lands under the said regulations of 15 July 1791. It is to be understood, however, that whenever all or any of the descriptions of disqualified landholders specified in the first article of the last-mentioned regulations shall be permitted to assume or retain the management of their lands in consequence of the ground of their disqualification no longer existing, or of the Governor-General-in-Council dispensing with, altering or abolishing those regulations, the lands of such proprietors will be held responsible for the payment of the fixed jumma that has been or may be assessed thereon, from the time that the management may devolve upon them, in the same manner as the lands of all actual proprietors of land who are declared qualified for the management of their estates, and also of all actual proprietors who are unqualified for such management by natural or other disabilities, but do not come within the descriptions of disqualified landholders specified in the first article of the regulations of 15 July 1791, are and will be held answerable for any arrears that are or may become due from them on the fixed jumma which they, or any persons on their behalf, have engaged or may engage to pay, under the above-mentioned regulations for the decennial settlement.) [quotation ends] [FN] In one of those invaluable administrative reports of Sir George Campbell (1873), too little known, or rather not at all known among the ordinar y public in England, we find: The lieutenant governor’s attention was prominently called to the subject by the magistrate-collector of Balasore, in Orissa, where the system is peculiarly inexcusable, because in that province there is not the ordinar y zemindari tenure of Bengal. (His honour Sir G. Campbell believes that up to the time of the settlement under Regulation IX, of 1833, many of them, zemindars, had no such rights, proprietar y, but were sarbarakars or managers on behalf of government, and that only.) There all the old ryots have long leases from the government direct, and the zemindars are still in respect of them mere rent collectors, who have not the shadow of a right of any enhanced rent. Yet it was shown that they exacted eleven different kinds of annual cess, beside seventeen descriptions of occasional tax. Among the former were cesses to recoup themselves for the postal payments, cesses on account of the telegraph wire running through their estates (a pure imposition, as this cost them nothing), cesses to reimburse them for income tax, and so on. There were presents

566 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India exacted for the zemindari underlings, presents very compulsor y in their nature, on every occasion of a zemindar moving from home, or of a magistrate travelling through the estate, on account of fictitious expenses that were never incurred.

[FN] It is the government that say this. So far for Orissa. In ‘‘Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal’’ we find, referring particular to Burdwan, Rajshaye, Cooch Bihar, Dacca, Chitagong, Patna, Bhaugulpur, Chota Nagpur, Assam and Presidency Division, etc., that it is ‘‘clear that, in spite of the law, cesses in large numbers are levied from ryots by almost every zemindar in the country, the fact being that owing to the absence of sufficient agency in Bengal, those parts of the regulations which give rights and privileges to zemindars have not only been maintained, but stretched to the utmost, while those parts which restrained them and limited their rights have been utterly set at nought.’’ We read of ‘‘duress of violence used by zemindars to enforce illegal cesses,’’ etc. Among the ‘‘abwabs’’ or ‘‘illegal cesses’’ we find: ‘‘A charge for providing bracelets for the ladies of the zemindar’s family—there is no charge’’ for ‘‘providing’’ (not ‘‘bracelets’’ but) clothing for the ryot ‘‘and the ryot’s wife coming out of their close hut, half-starved and halfclothed, into the morning air and shivering with fever, nor for food, nor anything else for the sick. The charity or relief extorted is from the ryots to the zemindar’s ladies. We find ‘‘a cess levied by zemindars on their visiting their estates’’—what do they do so ‘‘on visiting their estates’’ for their ryots? ‘‘A charge on boats, a sort of landing fee.’’ ‘‘Presented to zemindars by washermen,’’ ‘‘by barber,’’ ‘‘by sweeper’’—do we English in England know what this ‘‘sweeper’’ [is] who has ‘‘presents’’ ‘‘levied’’ upon him? And all these are annual. Not he who eats but he who is eaten pays. One of these is for ‘‘eating mangoes by zemindars’’—not by those who pay. Another, for ‘‘use of tooth powder by zemindar.’’ A ‘‘marriage cess’’ is general (some of these abwabs or illegal cesses levied by the zemindars are ‘‘general’’; others are levied by ‘‘some’’ zemindars; others by ‘‘many’’; others are levied, one by this, another by the other zemindar: none by none, as one may say). In ‘‘Selections from Records of the Government of Bengal’’ we find, for the Presidency Division—that is, close to the headquarters of the English powers at Calcutta, which created these zemindars under

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special conditions: ‘‘A contribution made to the zemindar when he is involved in debt requiring speedy clearance.’’ (The ryot is always ‘‘in debt,’’ often compelled to work all his life in bondage to the usurers for his father’s debts. No one contributes for him.) ‘‘On occasions of religious ceremonies in the zemindar’s house.’’ ‘‘On the occasion of the audit of his own accounts.’’ ‘‘Forced labour exacted from the ryots without payment.’’ The ryot seems always to pay and not often to be paid. He pays on his own marriage, he pays on his son’s marriage, he pays on his daughter’s marriage, he pays on his second marriage (if he is of low caste and marries a second time), he pays on the zemindar’s marriage, he pays on the zemindar’s son’s mar riage, he pays on the ‘‘gomastah’s (agent’s) son’s’’ or ‘‘gomastah’s daughter’s’’ marriage, he pays on the zemindar’s son’s birth, he pays on the ‘‘zemindar’s son’s’’ ‘‘first taking rice,’’ he pays on the zemindar’s funeral, he pays on his own ‘‘ploughing of land’’; he ‘‘pays to the zemindar on his making a tour through his estates,’’ he pays for being ‘‘permitted to per form puja [act of worship] or any festival’’ himself; he pays equally for the zemindar performing puja; he pays a tax for ‘‘presents to fakirs’’ [religious mendicants]; the very drum pays for being beat ‘‘at processions, marriages and feasts’’ (when the zemindar goes to this estate, the ryot has to pay for everything, and also to pay the servants). When ‘‘a farmer’’ takes a lease, he does not pay any a fee: he ‘‘levies a fee at heavy rates.’’ The ryot ‘‘takes rice, fish and other articles of food on occasions of feasts in zemindar’s house.’’ Then come the ‘‘fines.’’ The very ‘‘hides from the carcasses of beasts thrown away’’ have a tax levied upon them. The ryot pays ‘‘for keeping and buying elephants,’’ ‘‘for court expenses,’’ ‘‘for keeping establishments.’’ ‘‘A fee charged on every oven made by a ryot for boiling the juice of the date trees and sugar candy,’’ etc. The ryot pays a fee for everything he does himself, and for everything the zemindar does not do for himself or the ryot, and makes the ryot do for him. And this paying is often by the most poverty-stricken creature in the universe—a ryot, who is generally on the brink of starvation and who, when drought or inundation comes, no longer on the brink, falls into absolute famine. There is a Bengali proverb, ‘‘The same love that the Muhammadan has to his fowl’’ (he fattens it in order to kill it), ‘‘the same the zemindar has to the ryot.’’ But the proverb lies, for the zemindar does not even fatten his ryot.

568 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘The magistrate of the district remarks that the road cess having given the zemindars a legal power to levy charges, it is reasonable to apprehend that the ryots will be more helpless than ever.’’ The ‘‘exactions’’ are fulfilled. But where are the ‘‘conditions’’? There are none fulfilled. The ryot pays ‘‘contributions to meet the expenses of district post,’’ one of the express ‘‘conditions’’ on which privileges were granted to zemindars being that they were to maintain the institutions of a civilized country. And he pays for the police. The ryot has to make ‘‘annual payments to the agents of the zemindars,’’ payments ‘‘at the opening of the rent year,’’ payments at the close, payments everywhere, payments everywhen. ‘‘Besides the above, contributions for the support of schools and for the construction or repair of roads and bridges’’—the zemindars having been created expressly to make roads, for one thing, among others—‘‘are often levied in addition to casual cesses on the occasion of marriage or other ceremonies, or on the occasion of the zemindar visiting his estate.’’ ‘‘Levy of fines for settlement of party disputes among ryots is also a common practice.’’ The very presentation of a ‘‘petition’’ to the zemindar is ‘‘levied upon’’—from the ‘‘petitioner,’’ of course. It is the government which says all this, and we must not think that the government is supine. It appears from these very documents that the result of a ‘‘crusade against cesses x x will be a very general move on the part of the zemindars to raise the rents, in which the weakest will go to the wall, and not without a great deal of individual suffering x x especially among the harder working and poorer class of cultivators.’’ ‘‘How few of these measures,’’ meaning the ‘‘best half’’ of Lord Cornwallis’s ‘‘great policy’’ the ‘‘conditions,’’ says a famed AngloIndian, Sir Bartle Frere, ‘‘were carried out or attempted up to our time; how many of them still remain barely attempted and incomplete may be seen by a reference to the excellent administrative reports of the late lieutenant governor, Sir George Campbell.’’ To the same I appeal. And since that time, while the ryot has learnt more of his rights, what has been done to give them to him or to raise his condition? Wages are rising a little, but prices are rising much more. We seem to have ‘‘confiscated’’ the zemindars’ duties, while confirming and enlarging his (so-called) rights; we seem to have allowed these fictions of rights—at first only winked at by government’s sleepy eyes—to become settled rights and ownership; to have allowed the duties which we forgot or neglected to require from him to become

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 569

nil, though he held the land on these sole conditions: to have conferred new rights without conditions or corresponding duties. (The government went to sleep. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that our oldest provinces, Bengal and Bihar, have always been the most undergoverned. We set up judicial tribunals and left them alone to do justice between man and man, as if oppressor and oppressed were ‘‘man and man.’’ Under the Permanent Settlement, government divested itself of revenue functions and there were no local administrative officers, as in other parts of India. For half a century there was no local government for Bengal. The country was divided into enormous districts with no subdivisions, and the few magistrates had little real control. In 1834, and indeed up to 1853, the administration of Bengal formed a part of the duties devolving on the governor general. He had to assist him a single secretar y for Bengal, a senior civilian with the usual establishment of a secretar y to government, i.e., deputy assistants and clerks. There was a revenue board which dealt with questions of land revenue and a Board of Customs, salt and opium. All members of both boards were European civilians, as were the judges of the Supreme Court of Control and Appeal in judicial matters. In each district were usually a judge, a collector and a magistrate— all European civilians, with occasionally a junior civilian as assistant. Over several collectorates was a commissioner of revenue and circuit. Such was the whole European administrative machinery for all the millions of the population. Since 1853 a lieutenant governor has been appointed and a gradual addition has been made to the local administrative machinery, but it is still far too small for the task of governing so many millions, and of what little machinery exists all the influential posts are in the hands of Europeans. Native zemindars exercise all sorts of administrative powers without any sanction of law. But legally till within the last few years, no native of Bengal had by law higher independent administrative authority than a village constable in England. The Permanent Settlement, as it regarded the weaker vessels, the ryots, became therefore a dead letter, for the government itself did not attend to it. We left all almost to chance, which means that the zemindars had and have the stronger cr ying-out power, the press power, the purse power, the greater command of law and lawyers and therefore carried all before them. In the end the reformed Puritan Muhammadan doctrines have made their democratic way among the Muhammadan cultivators, chiefly in East-

570 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ern Bengal, and these have formed powerful land leagues against the zemindars and have successfully rebelled against the indigo planters.) The law gives more or less protection to the ryots, but the landlord party cr y out against this as an infringement of the rights of property, forgetting that it was the condition on which their right of property was created. But if the law is there, why is it not carried out? Increased profits of zemindars without payment for them. To sum up: ‘‘Who stole the goose from the common? The common man. But who stole the common from the goose? The lord.’’ The zemindar has the increased profits of the land arising out of railroads, canals, progress of commerce, without paying for any of them. He gains more than anyone by all government works, towards which he contributes next to nothing, for he has the power, though not the right, of throwing many taxes upon the ryots. What security is there that he pays anything at all himself? What security is there that he does not extract the highest possible or more than possible rent from the ryots? The zemindar does not improve himself, and he does not give the ryot the security which makes it worthwhile for him to improve. If there is irrigation, the ryot says, and says truly, the zemindar takes the whole profits of the water. Colonel Haig found that, where the government had charged a rupee or half a rupee for water, the zemindar had added 3 rupees to the rent. No good laws or education can compensate India if we stereotype a form of society which ought to have passed away. A man must eat and live in order to be educated. It is no use to talk of educating the ryot when he is, as the missionaries urge, ‘‘cr ushed and spiritless under the accumulated evils of his position.’’ In a paper on vernacular education, signed by twenty-four missionaries some years ago, we find: ‘‘The uneducated ryot is utterly defenceless. Detection of forged documents by him is impossible. An ignorant people fall an easy prey to corrupt underlings of the zemindars and the courts, who are always eager for bribes. Moreover, if the people speak truly, even the police and petty officers of government greatly tyrannize over them.’’ It is a mockery to wait for education, though it has done much, to enable the ryots to do away with these evils for themselves. Rather what education we have given has enabled them to feel their evils more. This constitutes the danger of the situation. We boast, as our claim to hold India, of the security we give to life and property—to peace and justice. The property is poverty except to

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 571

a few; the life degenerates every year with the race. The peace and justice are for the usurer and zemindar. The people who used to be murdered under the native raj do not thank us. The Brahmin regrets his power, the Mussulman his supremacy. The ‘‘unlucky experiment,’’ as Sir H. Maine mildly calls it, ‘‘tried at the end of the last century by Lord Cornwallis,’’ has been an overthrow of rights of cultivators. They had clear and solid rights in the land. But modern ideas of political economy made them into a kind of serf. The weapon of the Bengal zemindars is litigation, but they want energy and a large proportion of them have not pressed their claims to extremity. Illegal exactions are, however—not were, but are—universal. In 1879 we find a minute by Mr Mackenzie, secretar y to the Government of Bengal, on the ‘‘appointment’’ of the ‘‘commission to consider the question of amending the Rent Law of Bengal,’’ in which he says that zemindars declare the amended ‘‘Ar rears of Rent Realization Bill’’ to be of little use to them, and it is they who ask for the commission. It is something that there should be ‘‘free discussion and deliberation’’ on the subject, but do we examine the ryots and ascertain what their actual condition is? Illegal courses (high court of judicature) 1879. We find much matter to the purpose in the Supplements to the Calcutta Gazette—to the purpose, as showing the things acknowledged by government. This is not the voice of people ‘‘disagreeing.’’ It is the High Court of Judicature which speaks. The High Court of Judicature begins: 4 March 1879. 13. The judges desire to reiterate once more what they have repeatedly asserted before, that organized resistance to the payments of rents by ryots is invariably due to systematic efforts to enhance them, with or without cause, that bad relations between zemindar and ryot are almost universally due either to property changing hands and to the speculator’s attempt to augment the yield of his purchase, or to the zemindar allowing someone, a middleman, to come between him and the ryots, the middleman talukdar, or whatever he be called, being left very commonly to raise the profit which he pays by putting pressure on the ryots. 14. The judges desire to express the astonishment that they feel at the observations frequently made on the subject of riots arising out of rent disputes. Zemindars and perhaps officials are apt to think that the ryots are to blame. Now it seems to the court that, from the

572 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India nature of the case, the blame must generally rest with the zemindar. Of course the judges do not mean to say that he is not more or less frequently subjected to great annoyance and perhaps to loss, but so long as he confines himself to legal measures for enforcing his right, there cannot ordinarily be a riot. If rent is refused, he can sue; if he is resisted in distraining, he can apply to a court for assistance; if he is entitled to measure lands and is opposed, he can do the same. There is a legal remedy in each case, and if there is a riot it can hardly be that it does not result from his impatience, pride and preference for illegal courses. An obstinate ryot can be coerced, but he can legally only be coerced by the aid of the court; if no other coercion is attempted there is no occasion for a riot.

[FN] The ryot’s riots, it is thus said, are the result of the zemindar—of his preference for illegal courses. The judges address the body of landowners and the government enforces it in The Gazette. ‘‘The blame,’’ in riots, ‘‘must generally rest with zemindars,’’ the High Court says. The documents following after this, upon which the minute of the High Court is based, are painfully interesting. Enhancement of rents (high court of judicature), The Gazette 1879. ‘‘The fact is the zemindars seeking enhancement get the best of it, either by open decree, favourable compromise or other settlement agreeable to the zemindar. The ryots cannot afford to carry on appeals. The zemindar can and does.’’ This has been forcibly stated elsewhere. But the remarkable thing is—all this appearing in The Gazette and—nothing being done. And further on (this is still from The Gazette) it is ‘‘district judges’’ who speak: Zemindars sell out by auction the right of determining, of collecting and above all of screwing up the rents. When the disagreeable task has been effected, the zemindar re-enters on the estate and claims to work on the enhanced rent-roll, for the ijaradar’s [zemindar’s agent] rent collection papers are always carefully stipulated for beforehand. When a substantial but refractor y ryot has managed to hold his own against a series of successive ijaradars, then the zemindar or the later ijaradar selects him for the ultima ratio [last reckoning] of an enhancement suit. As Mr Lyall truly observes, it is only as a last resource that a Tipperah zemindar betakes himself to anything so decorous as a suit-at-law in order to obtain an enhancement.

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 573

Is this ‘‘system of periodical, usually triennial, ijara auctions’’ an unusual case of trickery? It is stated elsewhere that ‘‘here’’ it is the ‘‘customar y method of dealing with ryots even on the zemindaris of really worthy gentlemen.’’ It is said elsewhere that the zemindar takes to it in almost every district. One judge goes on (naming some zemindars by name, but their name is ‘‘Legion’’): By undisputed rents is meant what the zemindar chooses to describe to the executive authorities as undisputed rents. As a rule, enhancement suits are almost avowedly mere engines for harassing by expensive processes. The usual device is to allege all the possible grounds, increase in area, increase in fertility, increase in crop value, increase in rates payable by neighbour ryots of the same class, to hop from the one ground to the other, to fence over all of them and to prove none. It is a judge who speaks: ‘‘As a rule, rent rates even in this fertile district have already been screwed up too high, thanks to the high-handed practices which prevail among ijaradars.’’ This is from the district judge of Tipperah, but it is not contradicted that these are the practices of zemindars in almost all cases. Combinations to withhold all rents are a legitimate sequel to the customar y measures for enforcing enhanced rents. Zemindars and ijaradar substitutes for zemindars, on finding increase in values, have resorted largely to the other test—that of the increase in rent rates paid by similar ryots for similar lands. Then in too many cases the result was intriguing and manoeuvring. The standard device was to bribe this or that member of the ryot class to tell a lie that he was paying at such and such rates, when in reality, by secret treaty, he was to pay only at such or such a rate much lower. It was this extremely reprehensible intriguing which called forth combinations to withhold all rents as the only means available to resist improper enhancement of rents.

[FN] (If this is ‘‘perjur y’’ it would almost seem a case for the criminal, not the civil courts.) ‘‘There never yet was any sustained combination to withhold rents which was not a perfectly legitimate reply to a challenge thrown down by the rent claimant himself.’’ State of things in a country nominally governed by law. The judge virtually says to the people, ‘‘We cannot protect you by law; you must protect yourselves by riots!’’ (Many things come out incidentally from these remarkable official documents, relating primarily to Eastern Bengal, but true as to zemindar practices in other districts, which illustrate what will be found in other parts of this paper. One is the

574 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India internal tendency to village ‘‘wrangling,’’ only ‘‘repressed’’ by the ‘‘external danger.’’ Another, ‘‘the collector magistrates’’ are ‘‘naturally impressed by the complaints which they hear from their zemindars’’—apparently from want of agricultural education of their own. Qualified exper ts in agriculture seem greatly wanted to make ‘‘calculations.’’ ‘‘The law says that any increase to the zemindar is to come out of the surplus which remains after labour and stock have been allowed for, in other words, that the zemindar’s rent is not to be taken out of the ryot’s wage earnings, or out of the ryot’s working capital.’’ x x ‘‘Unfortunately for the zemindar, the law has been reasonable enough to insist that the other, or disbursement side, shall also be looked to. There also the values are found to have increased considerably.’’ It is added that ‘‘such calculations’’ are ‘‘difficult.’’ And it seems a truism that agricultural ‘‘calculations’’ can only be well made by ‘‘officers well trained’’ in agriculture. Another, that practical measures ‘‘would do more than reams of reports and sheafs of bills to ensure the much-needed agrarian reforms.’’ How true is this everywhere! Another, ‘‘It seems easier to cure symptoms than to cure diseases,’’ says the judge, in reference to ‘‘the quartering of punitive police,’’ instead of going to the root of the evil. As to ‘‘agrarian outrage or reprisal’’: ‘‘That process first of all begins,’’ it is repeated, ‘‘in demands for enhancement, and not till thereafter is followed up by combinations among the ryots for the withholding of rent.’’ There are two curious papers by munsifs in the same Gazette, in one of which is an account of how the orthodox Hindus, or ‘‘respectable people,’’ ‘‘ver y seldom, if ever, come to give their evidence’’ at once, saying: ‘‘Though served with a summons that it would be derogator y to their dignity, if they come merely on a summons,’’ etc. Is this because false evidence hired and contracted for is so common?) These Gazettes and official documents are read by the daily increasing class of educated Hindus (not zemindars), increasing under our own influences at Calcutta, Bombay, etc. (‘‘When a village has gone on strike, the landlord singles out a few of the leading men and bribes them to his side with a false measurement, or he throws in a few begahs of land into their pottahs under some fancy name. These men then go to court ready to swear anything against the men on strike, and in a day or two some of them find their houses burnt down about their ears.’’ This was actually ‘‘set as a translation paper’’—‘‘appropri-

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 575

ately enough’’—‘‘at the half-yearly examination of assistant magistrates and deputy collectors.’’ Might not some such examination papers be ‘‘appropriately’’ set to civil service candidates for India here in England?) There is a public opinion rising up now, and whatever they think of us, what must we think of ourselves? Enhancement, ‘‘unearned increment’’ (high court) 1879. The Gazette (the High Court) goes on to comment upon the ‘‘unearned increment’’ and the absurdity of this. It says: Is the profit by the substitution of valuable jute for coarse rice to be treated as unearned? Is the bulk, or even a large share, of the profit of that change to pass necessarily into the pockets of the zemindars? x x If that is to be so, the ryots will be unwise if they go on introducing new and valuable staples to replace the old ones, that is to say, go on furnishing the means for raising rents on themselves and their neighbours.

This is the key to the whole problem. We see elsewhere a zemindar raising his rents on account of the ‘‘bountiful rain which it has pleased Providence to send.’’ We often see that ryots will not take the water provided by irrigation works on account of the absolute certainty of having their rents raised at once. So far the judge. That the ryots do say what the judge supposes, viz., that they will not furnish the means for raising their rents, is unfortunately too true. But it is strange for the judge to have to speak for the ryots thus. In England it would be an ‘‘agitator,’’ a ‘‘people’s delegate,’’ who would say these things. In India it must be a judge, and what is more, a High Court. And thus the High Court of Judicature issues a document speaking out from the whole body. It used to be a complaint that the thirteen or fifteen judges would not speak out as a body. But here, where the whole court has to make such a case, it should surely draw our attention. There are worse things which might be quoted, but it is not often one has judges as witnesses and a high court as prosecutors. But where are the native members of Council? Do these members help, or do they join against our own flesh and blood, like Saturn, devouring their own children?102 It was our lot to hear a prime minister of England say, with a gesture of grief, ‘‘It is enough to drive one

102 A gr uesome painting by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

576 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to despair,’’ referring to the want of help and energy in native members of Council, who should be allies in reforming these things for the cultivator, and who are, on the contrary, hindrances. I have thus endeavoured rather to put the state of feeling and grievances of the ryots as regards this momentous land question before those much better able than I to judge of what the remedies should be in the bill now drafted by the Government of India upon the basis of the Bengal Rent Commission’s Draft Bill, of the Government of Bengal’s and of various other reports. Summary of the present state of things. The condition of the ryot. He is underfed, yet always works hard. He is helplessly exposed to periodical famines. He is for the most part in debt. He is more or less at the mercy of the zemindar, in a countr y where custom, not contract, is the rule, and where he must contract himself out of all his rights—of the zemindar, who can raise his rents as much as he likes—and where there is such competition in land, the cultivator is helpless—of the zemindar, who can impose upon him what cesses or taxes he pleases, and he can only obtain redress by going to law, but he is ruined if he goes to law (unless indeed, he combines in a strong land league against the zemindar). He is overcrowded and degraded. He is morally and physically deteriorating, and will be worse in the next generation than in this, if nothing be done. He is expected to protect himself, and in some measures some have done so of late years by combinations. But he is not protected against the main things: absence of tenant right, meaning that the ryot is always to pay the same rent and, while he pays it, not to be evicted, and of illegal abwabs. That is to say, that the zemindars can impose any rent or cesses which they please, but are guaranteed against any raising of a rent charge imposed upon them. Hence any improvement in the value of property goes to them instead of going to revenue, public works, etc. (A sample case: the bailiff of a wealthy landholder in Bengal lately wrote to his law agent in Calcutta as follows: ‘‘His honour, my master, purposes to raise the rents on his estate 5 percent, in consequence of the recent providential fall of rain, and 2 percent more to meet the cess which the government has imposed on him, in order to diffuse the blessings of education amongst his tenants.’’)

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 577

The arbitrary creation by ‘‘proclamation’’ of a class which has not, as it were, grown up in the soil, could scarcely be expected to succeed, nor was the idea that, if the English government created a Bengal zemindar, he would turn into an English landlord, with all his power of duty and traditions of duty, less visionary than would have been the transplanting of tropical vegetation into the fields of England and expecting it to flourish there. The zemindars (about 130,000) have per formed perhaps not one of the duties of the landlord class in England. The cultivators (numbering about 10,000,000 holdings, not numbering the subordinate ‘‘tenure holders,’’ about 1,000,000) are in a state which calls more loudly for redress year by year (between the zemindars and the cultivators come 724,000 intermediar y estates, 620,000 being of a rental below £10). The revenue in 1793, at the time of the Permanent Settlement, was about 3 millions; the zemindars’ share was one eleventh of the revenue (see Bengal Regulations II, 1). In three quarters of a century the government revenue has increased to 31⁄2 millions, while the zemindars’ rental has grown from about a third of a million gross to more than 13 millions net. We have given away a land revenue as large as the whole land revenue of all India, for we have allowed between 25 and 30 millions, reckoning illegal exactions, etc., to be extorted from the occupants of the soil, out of which government receives, instead of ten elevenths, which was the rule at the Permanent Settlement, about one eighth. The loss to the ryots, six millions of whom have holdings of only between two and three acres, paying less than 10s a year, whose condition is deplorable, and nine millions of whom pay less than £2 a year, is as great as that to the state. And do the average zemindars, who are supposed to gain, prosper? But few. How can they? Few do aught which makes men prosper. Were a prophet to describe this state of things to the Englishman, as Nathan did to David, would not the prophet, on the Englishman rising in his righteous wrath, point to him and say: Thou art the man?103 You ask whether matters as described in the foregoing pages are so still? Here is the answer. As has been well said, though this state of things is now being removed by decentralization, ‘‘r yots have been toiling in Madras and starving in the Deccan in order that gentlemen in Bengal may enjoy incomes of hundreds of thousands a year free

103 2 Sam 12:7.

578 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India from taxes.’’ ‘‘The richest province of India has been to a large extent defended, administered, educated, supplied with roads, barracks, hospitals, railways and canals and relieved in famine at the expense of the rest of the community.’’ Bengal proper, with 69 millions of people and 54 millions of cultivated acres, pays £3,663,000 land revenue. Madras, with 31 millions people and 32 million cultivated acres, pays £3,296,000 land revenue. And Bombay with half Bengal’s cultivated area and one fifth her people, pays £3,344,000 land revenue. Madras and Bombay together, therefore, with an equal area to Bengal and a population one third less, pay nearly double the amount levied on Bengal. Well may Niebuhr call the Permanent Settlement ‘‘one of the most unfortunate but best-intentioned schemes that ever ruined a countr y.’’ But he was wrong in his word. It was not the Permanent Settlement, it was the violation of the Permanent Settlement that did this. The mistake arose ‘‘from describing those with whom the Permanent Settlement was made as the actual proprietors of the land’’: thus the Court of Directors wrote in 1819. The mistake arose from conceiving that if we described them as the ‘‘actual proprietors of the land,’’ that ‘‘description’’ would make them perform its duties. We must not stay to consider the famous Act of 1859, which seems to have done some harm in recognizing a wholly unprivileged class; in fixing twelve years for the acquisition of occupancy rights (as the bill stood, every ‘‘resident ryot’’ had a right of occupancy, and three years’ cultivation of land made a ‘‘resident’’ ryot even in lands not previously in their occupation, and for which they had no written lease); in restricting the right to sit at fixed rents to a very limited class; and in providing how to harass occupancy tenants, not so entitled, in order to enhance their rates. Landlords and tenants are alike dissatisfied. (A full account of this Act of 1859 may be found in a memorandum by Mr Mackenzie in the Rent Law Commission Report.) Twenty years afterwards, in 1879, the condition of the tenantry, a blot on civilized administration, is described by officials themselves, as we have seen. As we have seen, the reform which is every year more vitally imperative and every year more difficult of attainment, has been exhaustively discussed by government. And their bill is now launched. The moment for reconciliation between the classes has been strongly, it is hoped not rightly, said to have passed away forever. Something must be done, if only to avert political danger of the gravest kind. There is

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universal official testimony that nothing is softening down, but all and ever ything which concerns an impoverished, degraded and rack-rented peasantr y becoming more embittered and threatening every day. Adjustment must be effected, but each year matters for adjustments are becoming more entangled. So far from matters adjusting themselves, the efforts of the landlords to destroy occupancy rights are, where property is increasing in value, yet ‘‘more determined and successful.’’ (Loss to the ryots, loss to the state. Who gains? ‘‘Heads I win, tails you lose,’’ might be the motto of the zemindar. In rent suits and other forms of litigation, possession is nine points of the law. Here is a notice of appeal in a fine case: ‘‘Your honour may be right, I may be wrong; I may be right and honour wrong; let honour give me back the fine and then at Day of Resurrection, when all hearts will be open, if I am wrong, I will most gladly, Sir, return your honour with the money.’’ To shift the burden of proof in disputed rent cases is the landlord’s game, and to have the money till the tenant proves it is not due. The zemindars have more publicizing power than the ryots; they can command better advocates, better representation. There is always the danger that they will get all the proposed bill will give them, while concessions to the ryots will be lopped off). Summary for Bihar in 1878. And what is the state of things now in Bihar, a province of twenty millions of people? We will see what it was in 1878. It is declared that the ‘‘lawlessness’’ of the landlords, the ‘‘cr uelty’’ of their ‘‘illegal exactions,’’ keep the ‘‘deep and hopeless poverty’’ of the cultivators at only just above starvation point. In 1878 the Bengal government thus gives its own testimony: In Bihar, what is most wanted is some ready means of enabling the ryot to resist illegal restraint, illegal enhancement and illegal cesses and to prove and maintain his occupancy rights. Apart from the backwardness and poverty of the ryot, there are many points in the existing system of zemindari management which seem to call for speedy amendment. The loose system of zemindari accounts, the entire absence of leases and counterparts, the universal prevalence of illegal distraint, the oppressions incident to a realization of rents in kind, the practice of amalgamating holdings so as to destroy evidence of continuous holding, are evils which necessarily prevent any possible development of agricultural prosperity among the tenant class, and place them practically at the mercy of their landlords, or of the thekadars (contractors for a lease), to whom ordinarily their landlords from time to time transfer their rights.

580 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It is the government which says this. A committee of indigo planters and zemindars have themselves reported that the ryots had lost all their rights. You ask whether matters as described in the foregoing pages are so now? Here, then, is the answer. Bengal rent law commission 1880. We now come to the Commission on the Bengal Rent Law, which reported in 1880. In a memorandum appended to the report, after a statement in figures of the enormous increase of forced sales of ‘‘immovables,’’ most, if not all of the ‘‘movables’’ having been taken, showing that ‘‘forced sales of real property, which always affect the poorer classes,’’ have ‘‘doubled within the last four years’’; after a statement in figures of the increase within the last seven years of suits for arrears, with or without ejectment, to the enormous amount of 130,000 in 1878, mortgages and sales of less than 100 rupees having almost trebled within the same period; after a statement in figures that ‘‘the number of thefts last year has again risen to almost a famine height,’’ we are asked: Can we, then, say that the people who, in spite of the most solemn promises of the state to the contrary, have been deprived of a sum nearly equal to the amount of the Franco-German indemnity, whose movable property is almost nothing, whose lands are being sold twice as fast as they were five years ago, who are compelled to encumber their property three times as often as seven years ago, and whose criminal population has reached the figure it was in famine times, are in a fit state to have their rents increased and their customary possession destroyed?

We are asked ‘‘how far it is advisable to give any further facilities for enhancement without protecting the ryots from the ejectment theory, which has more or less developed within the last seven or eight years.’’ Mark well: the question is not to abolish the Permanent Settlement, but to carry out the Permanent Settlement. The government revenue of the Permanent Settlement was about £2,850,000, and eight tenths of the gross rental. One third of the land was waste, it is said. On these conditions, if the whole of Bengal had been under cultivation, the gross rental would be £4,764,000. According to the Report of the Board of Revenue, it was, in 1877, equal to £13,037,000. In other words, the rates of rent, which were intended to be fixed by the Permanent Settlement, have been trebled, and the ryots are now being compelled to pay an excessive exaction of £8,273,000 yearly. If this annuity be valued at twenty

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years’ purchase, it appears that we have deprived the cultivators of this enormous sum of £165,000,000 and given it to the zemindars, who still cry for more. What large portions of this enormous income are squandered by ‘‘mismanagement, extravagance and want of selfrestraint’’ may be gathered by a reference to the Report on Wards’ Estates for 1877-78, and other years. During the last few years the government has spent ‘‘crores’’ [tens of millions] (out of the public revenues) on famine. Every administration report since 1873 dwells on the bad feeling existing, and the riots and murders which have occurred through disputes between landlords and tenants.

Do we still say that our rule has brought peace and law and justice to India? ‘‘An Act to Prevent Agrarian Disturbances had to be passed, and a committee appointed to inquire why the ryots in Bihar had abandoned their holdings and fled to Nepal.’’ It is stated that the people in Bengal, at least in some parts, are so near the ‘‘extreme limit of self-support’’ that very little more will ‘‘compel government’’ to hold ‘‘a cadastral survey of the whole province and record, once for all, the rights of the people before they are swept away.’’ In another memorandum to the Bengal Rent Law Commission Report, on which were two native gentlemen representing especially the zemindari interest, it is pointed out that there is ‘‘much to be said,’’ for their, the zemindars’ view of the facts, and it is not at all likely to be left unsaid. The landed and wealthy classes of Bengal have powerful organs in the press and powerful friends both here and at home. They are, many of them, very amiable persons, of great intelligence and great benevolence. Officials are glad to do them favours and find it pleasant to be on friendly relations with them. Every prejudice arising out of the Western notions of property and the relations of landlord and tenant in Great Britain is entirely on their side. It is only at the cost of much dry study of old records, old laws and old books, and from a close and critical examination of certain apparently anomalous survivals in the rural economy of the province, that one comes to learn that there is, even in permanently settled Bengal, quite another side of the land question which is not represented in the zemindar’s statement of the case—which has been affected less than is supposed by modern legislation—which concerns the interests of vast masses of unfriended peasants and which the occurrences of recent years make it necessary, once for all, to bring prominently under the consideration of government and the legislature.

582 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Here are the wrongs, but where are the rights? What are the remedies? ‘‘Gentlemen,’’ said the last emperor of Russia, at once the champion of the principle and the victim of its failure,104 ‘‘if reform does not begin from on high, it will begin from below.’’ The dumb ryot is finding speech, the deaf government has long since awakened and heard, and the deaf zemindar will hear. We say no longer, we do not care for the people of India [a reference to her 1878 paper]: but—we would care, if only we could understand. This is a humble earnest contribution to our understanding of part at least of Indian legislative work, which is now being so actively undertaken by the viceroy and Government of India. This government is the true friend of the zemindars, because it seeks to give them good, prosperous, paying tenants instead of rackrented runaways. Capitalists are wanted as well as cultivators. Peasant proprietors are often opposed to improvements. They do not care for people twenty miles off. For instance, peasant proprietors care not for roads to distant places. Therefore we want landlords and capitalists. If there were no landlords we think we should have to create them. But we did create them. And this is the result. Neither do zemindars care for improvements or for people two miles off. What is the remedy for this state of things? Certainly not to murder the landlords. Violence is used to collect the illegal cesses. What is the remedy for it? Certainly not to use violence to resist them. A legal remedy must be sought. What is the legal remedy? Remedies proposed for the condition of the ryots in Bengal as regards land tenure and Permanent Settlement, or rather violation of Permanent Settlement. What was done under the Permanent Settlement compared with what might have been done? What may still be done (a) in protecting the ryot under the old settlements? (b) in giving new settlements, either making the ryot’s payment the fixed element, or enabling him to purchase on easy terms? 1. Rights of occupancy, or fixity of tenure. The laws of 1793 gave fixity of tenure to all resident ryots. This is not disputed. The zemindar appeals to the Permanent Settlement. So can the ryot. It is not now whether anything is to be done, but what is to be done?

104 Tsar Alexander II (1818-81), emancipated the serfs, but was himself assassinated.

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One remedy proposed is that the right of occupancy should be attached, not to the ryot, but to the land: that there should be people’s land, ‘‘r yottee land,’’ as in the old Aryan law, as in European laws, where land is kept for the people, whoever might be the holder. Another remedy is to give occupancy right to all resident ryots, a privilege on solid ground. Practically this amounts nearly to the same thing. A counterproposal is, if the ryot or his predecessor has held for twelve years in the same village or estate, though not the same land, this to constitute occupancy right. The khudkasht or ‘‘settled’’ ryot’s status to depend not on the holding of one and the same plot of land for twelve years, but on the holding of any ryottee land (whether the same or not, it does not matter) in the same village or estate for a period of twelve years, whether before or after the passing of the act. The general principle of the Act of 1859 was that any resident ryot, for the future as for the past, who had settled himself down for a long course of years, cultivated the land, set up houses and fences and so on, should be deemed to have a right of occupancy, unless it was shown that he held under a special contract. But the rights of the old-established ryots were seriously injured by the Act of 1859, which threw on them the burden of proving, not merely that they have held for twelve years in the village or estate, but further, that they had so held in every one of the particular fields or plots in respect of which they claim to have rights of occupancy—a burden which, it need hardly be said, it is impossible for them, in the absence of any trustworthy agricultural records, to discharge. ‘‘And as regards the acquisition of rights of occupancy by newcomers, a matter which is always regarded as absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the agriculturist class in this country, it becomes almost impossible under a law which enables the landlord to prevent it by the simple device of shifting the tenant from one holding to another before the period of twelve years has run out.’’ An amendment of the occupancy provisions of Act X of 1859 in the manner proposed, i.e., twelve years’ occupancy of land in the same village or estate to give the right, although the land or some of it may have been changed, as now proposed—the distinction between resident and non-resident ryots being practically given up—would not materially differ in practice from the proposal to give the occupancy rights to all ryots. (The terms ‘‘khordkasht’’ and ‘‘paikasht’’—purely Persian, Mughal official terms brought from northern India—were never quite applicable to Bengal, and now, when regular communities are not the rule in Bengal, and

584 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hamlets are much scattered, they define scarcely anything. Where, in regular village communities, each aggregation of cultivators live in their own village, as in most parts of India, the distinction between the cultivators of their own lands, i.e., of the lands of their own village, and the temporar y cultivators living in another village, is clear enough.) 2. Remedy: Fair rents, right of enhancement. The laws of 1793 clearly gave permanency to the ryots as well as to the zemindars, fixed rents as well as fixity of tenure. The law of 1793 gave no right of or facilities for enhancement against a ryot paying the ordinar y pergunna rate. Where the revenue is fixed, it is obviously unfair that fixity of tenure men should be liable to enhanced rents. Before the Act of 1859 there was no right of enhancement. By that act twelve years’ men were given occupancy rights, but liable to enhancement. That act declared the majority of the long-settled resident ryots of that day to have fixity of tenure, but not fixity of rent. It, however, laid down, regulated and defined the grounds upon which alone the existing rents could be enhanced. But the law was only enforced by the action of the courts. There was still no attempt to make a public record of the holdings of the ryots. In Eastern Bengal the commutations of the zemindar’s right of enhancement into fixed rents by voluntary agreements on payment of a fine have risen from 50,000 a year to 125,000 or 130,000 a year. The recent papers show this number as formally registered. This may indeed be thought a better course than one now proposed—viz., the right of enhancement to include leave to the zemindar to apply to the collector—the collector to act for the zemindar in order to carry a right of enhancement which he could not carry out for himself. This putting in motion the collector to settle and record the rents is entirely at the option of the zemindar. The collector is to make, too, a record of the prices of agricultural produce for future reference in enhancement suits. There is no provision whatever enabling the ryots similarly to call in the collector to make a record for their protection. Instead of this, assistance should be given to the zemindar to obtain a fair enhancement in the rare cases of his increasing by his own expenditure—e.g., by irrigation or drainage—the productive powers of land. As regards the unearned increment due to increase in value of produce, as well as increase earned by the ryot, no facilities should be given. But the object should be not only to prevent undue enhancement, but to allow existing unfair rents to be reduced. And for this due provision should be made. It, however, hardly appears to have been made.

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If the more summar y procedure for rent suits is to be given to the zemindars, then sufficient protection against illegal execution must be given to the ryots. If improved means of enhancing the rent are to be given to the zemindar, at the option of the zemindar, then the ryots should be entitled to come in and demand that a public record should be made for their protection. The zemindars should not have the sole option of this. This second remedy should properly be limited to sufficient facilities for collecting existing rents through summary and effective courts, i.e., improved facilities for collecting bona fide existing rents should be given, as a setoff to the twelve years’ right of occupancy to those who have held in the same village or estate, the zemindar taking the old law of 1859 and making effective the twelve years’ rule, with the provision that it is to be operative notwithstanding change of land within the same village or estate. 3. Remedy: free sale. It is proposed to concede free sale to all occupancy ryots, to put no check on forced sales, all ryots’ rights to be freely transferable, either by voluntary or by compulsor y sale, but the sale to be only to another cultivator, not to be to a non-cultivator, who might keep the old ryot on without any rights at all, as is often done by the moneylenders in the Deccan. But where, as in India, the cultivator has no inclination to emigrate, the right of free sale is not urgently desired by him. On the other hand, it is liked by the landlords on account of the facility for realizing rents which it gives them. Forced sales are an almost unmitigated evil, owing to the presence on the soil of an expropriated people, deeming themselves unjustly deprived of their immemorial rights, as in the North West Provinces in the time of the Mutiny, and as in the Deccan so lately. Suggested remedy, a Homestead Law, as in America. The holding of the Indian villager, having probably had its origin in a distribution of the community lands, might be protected for a time at least by a law that no man can be forced to divest himself of that portion of the community land assigned him for his living. So much land is treated as a trust rather than a property. This protects as much land as is necessary for his individual cultivation, together with the implements of cultivation. To give the power of free sale to a people unaccustomed to such rights seems to be giving them the power of killing the goose which laid the golden eggs. We become enamoured of peasant proprietors until we find out that they mean moneylenders. But the moneylender does wish to keep the goose alive. He wants to get as much out of it as he can. We shall not find it to be the same here.

586 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 4. There is one remedy as to the necessity of which all are unanimous, and that is to take from the ryot the power of contracting himself out of these provisions and so protect him in the privileges granted him. This refers more particularly to his occupancy rights, but also to other rights. A right of occupancy is to be acquired under the new bill by a settled ryot holding ryottee land ‘‘notwithstanding any contract to the contrar y.’’ It appears absolutely necessary to prevent our legislation from being overridden by contract. We seem fully justified in directing our courts not to enforce contracts, the clear intention of which is to defeat the intentions of the legislature. Here is a sample contract [kabiliyat and patta] said to be imposed by Bengal zemindars on Bengal ryots (‘‘an ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory’’) [the contract is in the left column, with comments in the right]: (1) Kabuliyat. I, cultivator x x take the lease of x x beghas of land x x I will pay the rent at your kachahri x x according to monthly a equal instalments. If I fail to pay the rent on due date, I will pay interest at the rate of b two pice per rupee per mensem x x I will cultivate the land with my own hands x x I and my heirs will never acquire a right of occupancy in the land. I will not sublet x x erect buildings, excavate tanks, plant bambooclumpsc and gardens x x or transfer or alienate the lands. I and my heirs will pay, in addition to the rent, road cess,d Public works cess,e zemindari dak cess f and any other cess which government may levy in future, together with any cess g which you may levy I will not cut any trees whatever. You are at liberty to cut trees on payment of one fourth of the price of the wood.h I and my heirs will not claim any compensationi that may be awarded under Act X of 1870 and under any other law. (2) Patta (pottah).j

a. Monthly instalments drive the ryot to the moneylender before the harvest, and they enable zemindars to wrong the ryot by bringing suits every month and saddling the ryot with costs. b. Thirty-seven and a half percent. c. Bamboo-clumps are ‘‘necessaries’’ for a ryot. d. By Act X of 1871, the ryot is bound to pay half the road cess. e. By Act II of 1878, one half only of the public works cess is thrown on the ryot. f. By Act VIII of 1862, all the dak cess is payable by the zemindar. g. The imposition of such cesses is absolutely illegal. See Reg. VIII of 1793 and Act VIII of 1869. h. Not the value of even one fourth the value of the tree. i. I.e., if the land is taken up for public purposes, the zemindar is to get the price paid by government, the ryot nothing. j. N.B. The kabuliyat is given by the ryot and remains with the zemindar. The patta is given by the zemindar and remains with the ryot. This latter document gives no details, so that

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 587 You shall enjoy the land paying rent x x and having rights as per kabuliyat. (This is all.)

the ignorant tenant never has an opportunity of understanding the nature of his rights and obligations; all these are only entered in the kabuliyat, which is in the custody of the zemindar.

This is the kind of document—contract we cannot call it—by which our legislation is overridden. Well may a recent despatch of the Government of India say: Such is the power of the zemindars, so numerous and effective are the means possessed by most of them for inducing the ryots to accept agreements which, if history, custom and expediency be regarded, are wrongful and contrary to good policy, that to uphold contracts in contravention of the main purpose of the bill would be, in our belief, to condemn it to defeat and failure. It is absolutely necessar y that such contracts should be disallowed and, in this conclusion, we have the support not only of the Bengal government, but also of the almost unanimous opinions of the Bengal officers.

[FN] What the present bill provides shall attach to the tenancy notwithstanding any contract to the contrary is briefly as follows: 1. The ryot may use the land in any manner which does not render it unfit for the purposes of the tenancy. 2. He may make improvements on it as provided by the bill. 3. He must pay rent at fair and equitable rates as determined by the bill. 4. He cannot be ejected, except under a decree passed for breach of certain conditions, or for using the land in such a way as to render it unfit for the purposes of the tenancy. 5. He may sublet the land. 6. His interest is to be transferable, subject to certain rights reser ved to the landlord. 7. His interest is to descend as if it were land. ‘‘These rights, it will be seen, include the three Fs: fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale.’’ 5. Remedy: A regular survey. In reference to 2, fair rents, right of enhancement, it has been proposed to have a system of district rates and produce rates, in other words, fixing tables of rates for particular tracts, fair rates instead of fair rents for particular holdings. Without a regular survey this would be impossible. On every ground, however, a sur vey is imperative for Bengal, and a survey and record of rights and payments, as at least regards wards’ estates and other special estates

588 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India and areas in Bengal, should be undertaken at once. We are ashamed that European official administration of wards’ estates has too often administered them oppressively, as if heaping up riches for the ward were the only thing to be regarded. The obligation to maintain district and village accountants has come down in the old laws, though it is now quite unheeded. The obligation to give written pottahs, or leases, to the ryots, much insisted upon in the old laws, is also little observed, or the pottahs contain no details. Where anything like a public record of cultivators’ rents has been kept, the cultivators, even in poor and dark Bihar, have ceased to be wholly at the mercy of landlords. Landlords in Bengal are, in accordance with the provisions of Sir George Campbell’s Road Cess Act, required to file in the magistrate’s court statements of their lands and of the rents paid to them by their ryots. It was, of course, of importance to the landlords for their own purposes that their receipts from rent should appear at as low a figure as possible. In Muzaffarpur, then, one and another of the ryots of the district came to learn that the record of rent filed by the landlord could be used as evidence against himself in any rent suit between landlord and ryot. Then for the next three months from every part of the district ryots came trooping into Muzaffarpur, paid their inspection fee, got a certified copy of the rent at which they were said to hold their lands, and from that time refused to pay the zemindar one rupee more than that amount which, it need hardly be added, was not in all cases identical with the rent actually paid by the ryot up to that time. (The rule that one half of the amount of the road cess is to be paid by the ryot, and the other half by the zemindar, is constantly infringed in practice. Sometimes zemindars realize the full amount of the road cess from the ryots.) It is a satisfaction to know that instead of the ryots being always at the mercy of their landlords, it is possible now for unjust landlords to be at the mercy of their ryots. The remedy therefore proposed is: A public record for the protection of the rights conferred by law on the ryots. That the holdings of the ryots should be recorded, as in the province of Banaras. That public accountants should be maintained. And that some such machinery as that of the North West Provinces for protecting the people should be adopted.

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6. Remedy: Effective penalties for illegal exactions beyond the rent. The present penalty for illegal exactions is that the ryot may sue for twice the amount in damages, e.g., for an illegal cess of 1 rupee, the damages, if the suit be successful, will be 2 rupees. This is a ridiculous remedy. In the Permanent Settlement regulations the remedy is confiscation. This is a tremendous remedy. There is absolute power provided to confiscate the estates of the zemindar if he fail in carrying out those conditions upon which alone he received them. He has failed, as has been seen, but his estates have not been confiscated. This has been disallowed, even in those worst instances which elsewhere would have been made use of pour encourager les autres [to encourage the others]. The argument for negativing it seems to have been: ‘‘All landlords are to be left to do illegal acts, because all landlords do do illegal acts.’’ Remedy: Instead of the tremendous, never-used remedy of confiscation, a thorough eradication of illegal cesses so generally imposed in defiance of law, adequate deterrent penalties being exacted. And as protection against illegal exactions, a public record for future safety. 7. Remedy: Criminal prosecution, not civil action, for breach of law by landlord. It has been suggested that ‘‘barefaced systematic violations of the law by the landowners’’ should be met, not by ‘‘a civil action by a frightened and resourceless peasant,’’ who has no money to pay the fees, but by criminal law—e.g., that illegal distraint (universally prevalent in Bihar) should be punishable by fine and imprisonment, that the omission to give written leases or receipts should be punished, ‘‘not by the possibility of a suit, but by the certainty of a criminal prosecution and a penal sentence.’’ It is answered: But you have the legal power of confiscation of estates, and you never use it. The reply of course is: there is a middle course between a tremendous and a ridiculous remedy. (It will be remembered that in 1860, in Bengal, a proposition actually passed into law for six months, enforcing contracts between the European planter and the ryot, not, as they are in all civilized countries, by an action for damages in a civil court, but by a criminal suit with the penalty of imprisonment. Sir John Lawrence strenuously opposed these ‘‘Specific Performance Clauses.’’ It may be said that the landlord ought not to be subject, though it is not in reality a similar case, to what is condemned for the ryot). And the ryot whispers, though a ‘‘dumb animal,’’ ‘‘We stand upon our immemorial rights of occupancy’’ and ‘‘We look upon a lease rather as a ‘long notice to quit.’ ’’

590 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Bihar. 8. Bihar, the evils of which are so much more crying than those of Bengal, must occupy a different category. The Bihar ryot will submit to be ousted from all his immemorial rights: he has no fight in him. The late commission of indigo planters and zemindars themselves admit that they have been chopping and changing the lands of poor ignorant ryots, so that there is scarcely a right left in Bihar. The Bihar ryot has lost the right of occupancy by one field being taken for indigo one year, another another. The Bihar Commission tells us that while 60 percent of the ryots have held land in the same village for more than twelve years, less than 1 percent hold exactly the same land as twelve years ago. Bihar has a different race, a different language and different social institutions from Bengal, and though Bengal without Bihar has forty millions of people, yet Bihar has half that number. Twenty millions of people is a kingdom, and of this kingdom the great zemindars have respected very few old rights and have adopted the worst system of all, that of temporary middlemen farmers (ticcadars). Under this system the villages are put up to the highest bidder and let to a speculator, from whose hands they have fallen into those of European indigo planters, who give very high village rents to the zemindar, but take his (ar rogated) feudal power and have no voluntary contracts with the ryot. There are ver y few Muhammadan cultivators in Bihar—the tough and resolute element of Bengal. The Bihar ryots are a mass of poor low castes. They were not strong enough to bring their cases before the courts, and this is the result. They are crushed by constant and excessive increase of rent. Rents have been doubled, and more, within a few years. Rack-renting is extreme. At least half the gross produce— but often more—generally paid in kind, goes to the zemindar, who supplies nothing but the land. There is scarcely anything like it in any other part of the world. Bihar: here are the wrongs, but where are the rights? The rights conferred on the ryots in 1793 extended to those of Bihar, as also did the Settlement of 1859. But as the mixed commission of 1878 tells us they have been deprived of all these rights and ground down to the lowest point. The Local Commission, the Bengal Rent Law Commission, the Famine Commission, Sir Stuart Bayley (commissioner in Sir George Campbell’s lieutenant governorship), Sir Richard Temple, Sir Ashley Eden, ‘‘all gave the same account of the ‘deep

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poverty and misery of the ryots,’ the ‘grinding traditional oppression,’ the ‘condition of the peasantry lower than that of any other peasantry with equal natural conditions.’ ’’ There can be no doubt whatever that the combined influence of the zemindars and the ticcadars (temporary middlemen farmers) has ground the ryots of Bihar down to a state of extreme depression and misery. The tenants are said to have no rights, to be subject to the exaction of forced labour, to illegal distraint and to numerous illegal cesses. It is this great curse of Bihar which makes the ryots of the richest provinces of Bengal the poorest and most wretched class we find in the country.

Bihar: what are the remedies? Proposed Remedy. Ever y ryot who has held for three years any portion of what may be called peasants’ land, as distinguished from lords’ land, and has held some land of this kind in the same estate for twelve years (though not the same land) shall have right of occupancy, as laid down by Act X of 1859. Every ryot who has not established a right of occupancy under the Law of 1859, but who has held for three years, shall have, if dispossessed, a year’s rent as compensation for disturbance, and also compensation for improvements. Another Proposed Remedy. Also to restore the old system of public accountants and public accounts, for any concession of rights is of little use unless these rights are recorded and protected by an accurate public register and by a much more active administration. This last is the more necessar y because Bihar, as has been said, is an immense province, the one division of Patna containing as many people as the presidency of Bombay, and several single districts as many as minor European kingdoms, while the subdivisions are equal to districts in other parts of India. Additional Proposed Remedy. To undertake at once the survey and settlement (i.e., record) of the Patna division, equal in population and probably in number of tenures to the Bombay presidency, in order to settle fair rents, to cut down rents plainly exorbitant and to bring up those beneath fair and prevailing rates to that standard on the zemindar’s demand. An actual existing remedy is a voluntary association of indigo planters, who have just appointed an agent of their own to go about and investigate complaints. Had the Bengal planters adopted the plan which these planters in Bihar have adopted with good effect, viz., of having a paid agent

592 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India whose special duty it is to inquire into all cases of oppression and of disputes between planters and ryots, the result in Bengal would have been very different. The Bengal indigo planters would not give way. They refused reform and revolution took place. The trade has, to a great extent, collapsed. Provision for an effective survey, record and settlement of rights in the Patna division, and eventually for the whole province of Bihar— and as regards Bengal for the survey and record of rights and payments in wards’ estates and other special estates and areas in Bengal— must be immediately made if any remedies are to be efficient, or any rights secured at all. I wish we had space to go farther into the exhaustive report of the Rent Law Commission, the draft bill which it prepared, the draft bill which followed, prepared by Mr Reynolds, secretar y to the Bengal government, and circulated by government for the opinions of the judges, the civil services and the public, and other draft bills, government opinions and amendments—papers which for intensity of interest are almost terrible—and for research and statesmanlike ability are almost equal to the transcendent importance of the subject. But before going into any question of indirect remedies, it might be as well to ask what speech, if any, has come from the hitherto dumb ryots themselves in all this stir and struggle? Ryots’ meetings 1881. During 1881 ryots’ meetings were held in Calcutta, Hugli, Burdwan, in the Twenty-Four Pergunnahs, Birbhum, in Nuddea and other places, showing how a public opinion is at last being created among them; at these, resolutions were regularly passed. And petitions also were prepared and signed. I propose to notice the resolutions only of one meeting—that at Calcutta—and two petitions. These resolutions concern Mr Reynolds’s bill. This bill gives all resident ryots right of occupancy, but requires ryots claiming fixed rents to go back to 1839, twenty years before the Act of 1859, instead of twenty years from the date of action. Resolution 2 protests against Mr Reynolds’s draft bill: as being calculated to deprive the ryots and under-tenure holders of an impor tant right which they have enjoyed since 1859. That inasmuch as these sections require ryots and tenure holders, in permanently settled estates claiming a fixed rent, to produce evidence to show that they have been in possession of their holdings at such a fixed rent ever since 1839, and not for twenty years before the institution of the suit, as required by Act X of 1859, and the draft bill of the rent commis-

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sioners, and that, inasmuch as in the vast majority of cases it will not be possible for the ryots to produce such evidence extending over such a length of time, this meeting is of opinion that the existing law on the subject should not be altered.

(How, indeed, could farmers in England bring such proof ?) Resolution 3: That this meeting, while it feels grateful to his honour the lieutenant governor for the intention he has expressed, to confer upon all settled cultivators the boon of occupancy right, is of opinion that the same right should be conferred upon paikast (non-resident) ryots who have been or shall be in continued possession of their land for twelve years or more, and this meeting views with regret that under the bill, as drafted by Mr Reynolds, paikast ryots are not allowed to retain their land against the will of the zemindar, though under the provisions of the bill as drafted by the rent commissioners, ryots who have held land for three years could not be evicted so long as they paid rent regularly.

(Paikast ryots are, however, few in number, and generally not poor.) Resolution 6: That this meeting strongly protests against the alteration proposed by Mr Reynolds, in sections 36 and 77 of the old bill, by which the right to build pucka [permanent] houses and to cut trees without the consent of the zemindar had been granted to the ryots, but which have been withdrawn under the provisions of the new bill. This meeting thinks it most undesirable that these rights should be withheld from the ryots, as in the first case they should be encouraged to build pucka houses, and as in the second to allow the cutting of trees, etc., to be regulated by local customs, would place the ryots entirely at the mercy of the zemindars and lead to constant litigations.

Ryots’ petition 1881. The ryots’ petition to Sir Ashley Eden, lieutenant governor of Bengal, from which I propose to quote, also states that ‘‘it is hopeless to expect that men in the position of your petitioners, without any education, and who cannot take care of their own interests, would be found able, as a rule, to produce receipts extending over a period of nearly forty years,’’ even ‘‘admitting that these receipts might be preser ved, if proper care were taken of them.’’ But ‘‘rent receipts are for the most part given in loose sheets of paper of the worst kind, which are stored away by the ryots in handis (earthenware vessels) and other receptacles of a similar nature, and it would be next to impossible, in a climate like that of this country, to pre-

594 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ser ve them for more than twenty years at the outside.’’ ‘‘A serious blow would be dealt at the interest of the ryots’’ if this were ‘‘to be incorporated in the proposed Rent Law.’’ (The state of ignorance of the ryots was thus described by a native gentleman: ‘‘The country is yet in primeval darkness; the millions are dumb; they do not know who governs them, what is finance, who makes laws. All that they know is that they live in Maharanee’s Moolluk (i.e., in queen’s dominions), and that the deputy magistrate, or the magistrate who governs them, is their hakim or judge. They therefore require a protector, a guardian, to save them from oppression of the strong and the rich, and from the freaks of the mofussil hakim’’). 3. Ryots who had been in continued possession of their holdings for a period of twelve years and more were declared occupancy ryots under the old bill. This right is taken away from paikast ryots under the provisions of the new bill. Your petitioners would respectfully pray that paikast ryots, who have been, or shall be, in continued possession of their land for a period of twelve years and more, may be placed on the same footing with khordkasht (resident or occupancy tenant) ryots, and may be declared to be ryots enjoying the occupancy right. It cannot be to the good of the state or conducive to the welfare of the agricultural community that any portion of the community should be reduced to the position of mere tenants at will, who may be evicted from their lands at the will of the zemindar, and who, in this respect, is at liberty to exercise an unbounded discretion, unfaltered by any salutar y provision of the law. But under the bill, as drafted by Mr Reynolds, paikast ryots have virtually been reduced to this position, for under its provisions ryots are not allowed to retain their land against the will of the zemindar, though under the bill, as drafted by the rent commissioners, ryots who had paid rent for three years could not be evicted as long as they paid their rent regularly. (The distinction between resident and non-resident ryots is practically abandoned. It is said that it never was quite applicable to Bengal, and it is shown that now, at any rate, when regular communities are not the rule in Bengal and hamlets are much scattered, those terms are not definite or sufficient.) The Permanent Settlement may be claimed by the ryots to maintain their rights, just as much as by the zemindars to maintain theirs. And the leading ryots seem now happily to have got hold of this. The petition says:

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4. The zemindars have been all-powerful, and though the rent payable to the zemindar was fixed in the same way as the revenue payable by him to government, the zemindar has gone on enhancing his rent, and what, indeed, is truly remarkable, the legislature has ratified with its authority the power of the zemindar to claim enhancement of rent—a power expressly taken away from him by the provisions of the Permanent Settlement. x x Your petitioners cannot but complain that the time during which rents shall be liable to enhancement has been limited to only ten years, which actually places the Bengal ryot in a worse position than that of the ryot in Upper India and Bombay, with whom the government fixes the rent for thirty years, during which it is not liable to enhancement. Further, your petitioners cannot but regret that it is proposed to allow the zemindar to raise the rent to double its former rate. 5. Your petitioners are of opinion that the cumbrous machinery provided for the disposal of rent suits in the Rent Bill is unnecessar y, and that the rapid disposal of such cases would be greatly facilitated by the appointment, if necessary, of additional munsifs who shall take cognizance exclusively of rent suits.

[FN] So far the petition. As regards the zemindars, no speedy mode of realizing undisputed rents from the ryots has been devised. There will still be room (I again quote from native authorities) for the ryot to file false receipts, to prove false payments and to produce false evidence in rent suits in our courts of justice. ‘‘You know the sad histor y of this unfortunate country,’’ say these native authorities, who are in favour of the ryots. There is no check, no restraint of public opinion here. Corruption is systematically practised in our courts of justice. The ministerial officers—the amlahs of our courts of law—are proverbially corrupt. They extort large sums of money from the litigants. One can get plenty of witnesses in this country ready to swear by anything and to give false evidence for money. In not a few cases, forged documents are produced; sometimes the crime is detected; sometimes it is done in such an ingenious manner that it escapes scrutiny. Imagine the state of such a weak and unprotected class as the ryots in a court of justice. They generally depend for legal advice on the law agents—the mooktars—who do not fail to rob them of the little they have. The field for work in this country is ver y extensive but alas! the workers are so few.105

105 A paraphrase of Matt 9:37.

596 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Indian association’s petition 1881. The other petition I propose to quote from on the subject is one from the Indian Association, also in 1881. It is the only association in Bengal which may justly be called the people’s association. It begins by noticing the ryots’ public meetings, which enable us ‘‘to form a tolerably correct idea of the views of the ryots themselves’’ and by showing the importance ‘‘that government should know what the views of the ryots are.’’ It shows ‘‘that the relations between landlords and tenants are in a most unsatisfactory state.’’ It quotes from the famous Regulation I of 1793, expressly reser ving the power of interfering for the benefit of the ryot. (First, it being the duty of the ruling power to protect all classes of people, and more particularly those who from their situation are most helpless, the GovernorGeneral-in-Council will, whenever he may deem it proper, enact such regulations as he may think necessary for the protection and welfare of the dependent talukdars, ryots and other cultivators of the soil, and no zemindar, independent talukdar or other actual proprietor of land shall be entitled on this account to make any objection to the discharge of the fixed assessment which they have respectively agreed to pay). The zemindars quote from the Permanent Settlement. But it is the ryots’ advocates, and not the zemindars, who are the true followers of the Permanent Settlement. There is a further quotation from a despatch of the Court of Directors, previous to the conclusion of the Permanent Settlement, about ‘‘interposing our authority in making from time to time all such regulations as may be necessary to prevent the ryots being improperly disturbed in their possession or loaded with unwarrantable exactions.’’ x x ‘‘Our interposition’’ being ‘‘clearly consistent with the practice of Mughal government’’ x x ‘‘that the cultivator of the soil duly paying his rent should not be dispossessed of the land he occupied.’’ 6. x x Under the Regulations of the Permanent Settlement, the zemindars have no power to enhance rents beyond the pergunnah rate—the rate that prevailed in the pergunnah at the time of the Permanent Settlement.’’ x x ‘‘But surely it is both opposed to reason and to all sense of fairness that zemindars should repudiate that portion of the regulations which would be to the benefit of the ryot, but that they should be allowed to seek shelter behind, etc. 7. x x ‘‘The prosperity of the peasantry means the prosperity of the zemindar. A teeming population of impoverished ryots is what no prudent zemindar would like to have on his state. If the ryots find it hard to maintain themselves, they will find it much harder to

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pay their rents. If, on the contrary, they are prosperous and well-todo, they will pay the rents punctually, the zemindars will get their dues; there will be less of litigation, less of those bitter and angry feelings which now unhappily characterize the relations between landlords and tenants.

We now return to the remedies, but have only space for two proposed remedies, both indirect ones, among many others to be hereafter touched upon, and on these two probably all will be agreed. 9. Remedy—revival of village communities. There is an increasing feeling in favour of reviving as far as possible the ancient village communities, of paying greater attention to the village system, indigenous to the soil of India, but much destroyed in Bengal, of making the immemorial headmen of the village act more as organs of the cultivators—in favour, too, of the custom of summoning village headmen by government officials as these make their rounds. It would appear as if Lord Ripon’s local representation scheme were to begin, as it ought, by village representation, which is almost identical with India. 10. Remedy—encouragement of trades and industries. The consequence of the want of other employments is excessive competition for land, upon which follows rack-renting. There is little competition in India, except for land. This immense subject, which is now receiving the attention of the Government of India, can only be glanced at here. If the condition of the peasantry had not been set to rights in the Punjab by John Lawrence, when the Mutiny broke out, where should we have been? At the outbreak of the Mutiny, in the west of Bombay presidency, the chiefs tried to make the ryots join the revolt. And they refused. They said: ‘‘When we were under you, what did you do for us? Therefore, we will not rise against the English who have improved our condition.’’ Our own safety is a reason for solving this tremendous problem. To sum up in a few words: what is wanted is: (1) Fixity of tenure, or occupancy rights. (2) Fair rents, in a country where from time immemorial the ryot’s right to have his payments fixed by the authority of government has been recognized. (3) A complete public record of the holdings of the ryots. (4) Free sale is doubtful, but if free sale, then the sale to be only to another cultivator. What is wanted is (5) to take from the ryot the power of contracting himself out of his rights. (6) Effective penalties for illegal exactions beyond the rent. (7) Above all, a regular survey in Bengal; the re-establishment of public accountants. (8) In Bihar all evils are intensified and the above wants and others more keenly felt. Compensa-

598 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tion for disturbance is wanted, an accurate public register and a much more active administration. As indirect remedies (9) revival of village communities, and (10) encouragement of trades and industries are wanted.

‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill,’’ 1883 Editor: In its October 1883 issue The Contemporary Review published two articles with the same title, ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill,’’ the first by John Da Costa (577-87), the second by Nightingale, with a decidedly contrar y point of view. Her article was yet another attempt to influence the writing of the legislation, then under consideration in India. In the paper Nightingale maintained that, for all its shortcomings, the bill’s intention was clearly to ameliorate the position of the ryot, and to reinforce the good elements of the Permanent Settlement. However, the bill itself was judged by the zemindars to infringe on their rights, while the ryots complained that the bill did not go far enough. Da Costa defended the Permanent Settlement, called the Bengal peasantr y ‘‘thriving’’ (587) and argued that the projected legislation was neither needed nor wise. A pencilled note in Nightingale’s own hand says: ‘‘Da Costa’s article is poor old-fashioned claptrap. It might have been listened to before we settled the local taxation question in Lord Mayo’s time, and before Irish land bills, but now it is quite out of date. Sir G[eorge] C[ampbell] 18 October 1883.’’ Nightingale’s article draws extensively on ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear.’’ The Bengal Tenancy Bill was again revised in 1884 and became the Bengal Tenancy Act in March 1885. Six letters written in the period leading up to the publication of the article precede it, three of which are to the editor of The Contemporary Review. Source: From a draft or letter to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45807 ff153-54

26 January 1883 Privat e . About the Bengal Tenancy Bill. How I wish we knew what you think of it. There seemed some dangers ahead in the last revised bill; it was like a dead set against the zemindars. If a zemindar buys his tenant’s land and lets it, the new tenant, ipso facto, succeeds, does he not? to all occupancy rights, without the three or twelve years or any other qualification, reverting to the principle of ryoti land, attaching the occupancy rights to the land. But if a moneylender or middleman buys the land he may sublet without the tenant having any rights at all. And thus a large class of tenants at will may grow up. Why this?

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I remember you said there were a great risk of the next generation seeing a class of tenants without any rights at all. There are some other flaws. And there is an immense correspondence and papers printed in the Gazette of India of 20 October, which doubtless you have seen. But it is hardly worthwhile to criticize the details of the bill as published. It is now being operated upon, is it not? by a select committee of which the lieutenant governor is president. He, they say, will greatly improve it. But, if he succeeds in that, what will happen, it is said, is this: the bill in one more new shape will be republished and time given for consideration while the Government of India goes away to Simla. The whole force of agitation against it will then have free scope and will end in a surrender, unless indeed such ‘‘an immediate surrender’’ takes place ‘‘as will square the opponents.’’ If the Bengal bill fails to benefit the ryots, it will be impossible, will it not? to hope for better success in regard to Oudh, etc. (which Lord Ripon contemplated), where the legal position of the landlords is stronger and where the cultivators seem to want redress even more. But as for Lord Ripon’s policy, nothing ought to discourage us. Ministers ought to say to the few Anglo-Indian agitators: We are sorry for you, we will do what we can to please you and make it easy to you, but we do not apologize for the grandest policy that has yet been tried and succeeded (by honesty alone) in tranquillizing a vast empire. Though we may regret the compromise on the Ilbert Bill (see p 799 below), this is what they appear to have been doing. And let us hope against hope that it will be the same with the Bengal Tenancy Bill—sticking to principles, ceding unimportant details. But for all this, is not Mr Gladstone committing a blunder, even an electioneering blunder, in not giving an active and even loud support to Lord Ripon’s measures, which are his own, in India? Source: From a letter to Trelawney Saunders, State Library of South Australia

24 May 1883 I cannot say how much I have felt for and with you in the troubles which you mention—the one loss especially which is irreplaceable. Silence is better than words in such grief. I have been ill and overworked or I should have written before to claim your kind promise. I still hope that you will appoint a time kindly to come and see me.

600 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Might I hope that it would be possible for you to go to a meeting where a paper of mine on the Bengal Rent Law Bill will be read and where you would join in the discussion afterwards to contradict and correct it? I venture to enclose a card: 1 June 2 p.m. (East India Association) Exeter Hall. The new bill has now been launched. And in the next winter session I suppose its fate will be sealed. With regard to the irrigation maps which you have been so good as to criticize and to encourage me to apply to you again, would it be possible to have (for Stanford then to engrave) the ‘‘corrections’’ put in under your most valuable supervision, ‘‘a complete examination made for errors,’’ the new Sirhind Canal added the ‘‘information’’ wanting ‘‘inserted’’ ‘‘a complete list of every irrigation system in India with statistics’’ ‘‘inserted’’ ‘‘in the Arabian Sea.’’ The whole as you suggest might return the map to you for the purpose? Excuse my delay in answering your most kind note. Excuse still more my for wardness in profiting by it and pray believe me, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff199 and 201-02

29 June 1883 Private. Of the Bengal Rent Law Bill which interests me so deeply, of your ‘‘suspensions’’ and ‘‘remissions’’ of (revenue) collections of assessment, of the proposed help to indebted agriculturists in land banks, with and not without the co-operation of the moneylenders and of government, I cannot speak, for I should say too much, but to wish them Godspeed. Of education too. All these measures and many others may be called the ‘‘saviours of India’’ without exaggeration. . . . I could say so much more about those great and good measures which he, who initiated them, must carry out and establish, if they are to be really brought into working order, if they are really to be safe. So much hangs upon the Bengal Tenancy Bill, upon the really carrying out the principles of the Permanent Settlement, which have been so violated. So much hangs upon the bringing capital at reasonable rates of interest into the hands of the indebted agriculturists in Bombay and elsewhere. Life or death hangs upon these things. But who am I that I should take up your time?

Land Tenure and Rent Reform / 601 Source: From three letters to Percy W. Bunting (editor of The Contemporary Review), University of Chicago

4 May 1883 It rejoices me more than I can say that the ‘‘silent millions’’ of India find a voice in your Review. This is a critical time in India, I mean that vital measures are at last beginning to run vigorously the race that has long been set before them. It is of untold importance that the great public organs of England should help them. I am extremely obliged to you for wishing to look at my paper on the condition of the Indian ryot, asked for by the East India Association, to see if it is suitable for your Contemporar y. It is not ready yet. I am an over worked invalid. Will you allow me to delay my answer a few days? 1 September 1883 Private. In May last you kindly asked me for an article on India (the Bengal Rent Law question). And I declined, because I was otherwise engaged. That measure comes on in the viceroy’s Council at Calcutta in November next for discussion and decision. The zemindars, who were ver y quiet, excited by the furious uproar that has been raised against the so-called Ilbert Bill in particular and against Lord Ripon’s policy in general, are getting up a tremendous opposition. It occurred to me that, as you had asked me for it before, you might like an article now upon this matter which dwarfs all others in importance and compared to which the Ilbert Bill, though not of course Lord Ripon’s policy, is a mere straw as compared with the millions of acres under cultivation in Bengal. To be of use the paper ought properly to be ‘‘out’’ before November. Do not trouble to answer this, if you see no opportunity for such a paper. I do not know whether you care about an attempt that has been made to give us the ‘‘public opinion’’ of native India, such as it is, by a monthly résumé of its newspapers called the Voice of India. But I trust you will forgive the liberty I have taken ordering it to be sent you for one year, beginning with the July No. Claydon House, Bucks 8 September 1883 Privat e. Bengal Rent Bill. Your October No. Discussion on such a vital, enormous question is indeed worthy of the Contemporar y, i.e., to admit both sides of the argument. But for the Contemporar y to go ‘‘against ’’ the Bengal Rent Bill while it so gallantly advocates another, really trifling, part of Lord Ripon’s policy, the ‘‘Ilbert’’ Bill, is this not as inap-

602 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India propriate as if it had fought for slavery or against the repeal of the Corn Laws in times happily long past, as the times of Bengal serfdom ought to be long past, or as if it had fought against education in India, or the admission of natives to judicial and administrative employment in India in times unhappily not long past? You ask me to ‘‘send you a few pages on the other side,’’ that is, on the side of the Bengal Rent Bill. And you ‘‘will put them in’’ (in your October No.). I send an uncor rected proof. This ms I wrote for my own use. The editor of The Nineteenth Century saw it in my room and asked me to give it him. He printed it. At my earnest request he has now returned it to me, because I said that I wanted it for another purpose, as it was urgently necessar y that whatever was published for the Bengal Tenancy Bill should be published before November. (He is gone abroad.) As to my ‘‘paper on India in The Nineteenth Century’’ of August [‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’] I ‘‘did not discuss this rent question there’’ (you ask). If you insert this you will of course allow me to revise it. There is some want of connection in it and I do not think it deals so exactly with the ‘‘remedies’’ in the bill as with the ‘‘remedies’’ needed (I have not even time to read it over before I sent it you). No one has seen it but the gentleman named. No use has been made of it. I am sure that you will be kind enough to return it to me in any case. . . . Now good speed to all your efforts for India, but bad speed to your article ‘‘against’’ the Bengal Rent Bill, which bill, between ourselves, does not go far enough and which is the smallest instalment of justice we could give the ryots. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘The Bengal Tenancy Bill,’’The Contemporary Review 44 (October 1883):587-602

The Bengal land questions concern interests too large for us to be interested in. India is almost wholly an agricultural country, or rather a countr y of tillage. The new Bengal Tenancy Bill will decide the fate of about sixty millions, almost as much as did the Permanent Settlement of ninety years ago. Each year adds alike to the difficulty and the necessity of solving these questions, but the difficulty becomes impossibility by delay. The spirit of the day is all for improving the condition of the peasantr y. The new bill does not violate the Permanent Settlement. It really carries out the Permanent Settlement. The advantages it gives to the Bengal landlord are as great as those it gives to the cultivator. To read the Permanent Settlement is to have revealed to us peasants’

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rights we wot [thought] not of. ‘‘We are yours, but the land is ours.’’ No time is to be lost! The ryot is learning his rights and his wrongs— his rights in that the law has fixed a limit to his rent, his wrongs in that this limit has been constantly and illegally transgressed. But a mere increase of rent has not satisfied the zemindar. Illegal exactions have been levied far more oppressive and arbitrary than anything that could be called by the name of rent. And what is to come of this? What are the regulations of the Permanent Settlement? and, first, as to the position of the zemindars. 1. In what sense are the zemindars to be understood as proprietors, landlords, landowners? The answer to this question is simple. The zemindars were not originally proprietors or landlords, and it may be shown beyond contradiction that they were not made so by the Permanent Settlement in the sense of absolute owners of the soil. What were they made? In the words of a lieutenant governor of Bengal on the ‘‘Code of 1793,’’ they were: Persons empowered, under certain very rigid restrictions, to receive from the occupants of the soil a fixed rental settled by the government, on ascertained principles. . . . Neither by ancient usage nor by the terms of the original settlement and original laws of these provinces, nor by modern laws, are zemindars unlimited proprietors, nor are the ryots without rights or claims to protection.

By the Permanent Settlement a contract was made with the zemindars, of which the following were the principal terms: (1) no arbitrary cesses are to be levied by the zemindar; (2) taxes or revenue are to be paid by the zemindar; (3) only on condition that the zemindars do not raise their rents is the revenue they are to pay not to be raised; (4) the zemindar is to undertake roads, lesser public works, etc.; (5) the zemindar is to give leases. Such was the contract made by the government with the zemindar as a condition of his tenure of the land. How has it been kept? There is scarcely a single term in the contract that has not been violated by the zemindar. Take the facts for the last three quarters of a century. The revenues imposed on the zemindar by law have remained nearly stationary. The rents raised by the zemindar from the ryots have been trebled in amount. In addition to this sum, as much again has been levied from the ryots by illegal exactions—a grand total of six times the return on any zemindar’s capital which the law contemplated his being allowed to receive at the time of the Permanent Settlement.

604 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 2. The rights of the zemindars as between themselves and the government were settled. But, as between themselves and the ryot, what are the rights of the ryot? The ryot was promised protection from illegal exactions and redress if they were levied on him. He has seldom got either the one or the other. Having been recognized as a ryot, he had a right to sit there at a definite prescribed rental described as the ‘‘pergunna,’’ that is, the customary rate, without further demand, either by way of enhancement or cesses. As to the wastelands, the Permanent Settlement only transferred the rights of government to the zemindars. The rights of the ryots remained the same. How have they been observed? 3. We have touched on the position of the zemindar and the ryot. What is the position of the government? The government shall itself define it: Not only is it the duty of the government to protect all classes of the people, and especially those who, from their situation, are most helpless—a duty the performance of which they have specially reser ved to themselves as a condition of the Permanent Settlement—but it is also their interest to carry out that duty, because the extent to which the burden, not only of the taxation, which should properly fall in certain specified proportions on different classes of the community, but even of the actual personal expenses of the proprietors, is thrown indiscriminately upon the lowest class, and that the least able to support it, must of course interfere greatly with the legitimate power of government to impose fresh taxes, and such undue and illegal pressure, on the part of the zemindars, on the great and indigent mass of the people, must be attended with great and imminent perils of a political character. (No. 46 of ‘‘Records of Government of Bengal.’’)

In one of Sir George Campbell’s reports (1873), too little known in England, we find that even in Orissa, where the zemindars are still mere rent collectors, They exacted eleven different kinds of annual cess, beside seventeen descriptions of occasional tax. Among the former were cesses to recoup themselves for the postal payment, cesses on account of the telegraph wire running through their estates (a pure imposition, as this cost them nothing), cesses to reimburse them for income tax, and so on. There were presents exacted for the zemindari underlings, presents very compulsor y in their nature, on every occasion of a zemindar moving from home, or of a magistrate travelling through the estate, on account of fictitious expenses that were never incurred.

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The illegal exactions levied on the ryots appear to be suited to the fancies of the zemindars. We hear of cesses extorted for bracelets for the ladies of their families, cesses for a zemindar’s tooth powder, cesses to pay a zemindar’s debts, and when he visits his estates, cesses to pay for his religious devotions. In fact, in the case of the zemindar, the ordinar y rule that you must pay for what you want is reversed. The zemindar seems to be paid whenever he satisfies his own pleasure and whenever his wants are supplied. Not he who eats, but he who is eaten, pays. The ryot seems to receive nothing, but his opportunities of giving are indefinitely multiplied. He pays on his own marriage, he pays on his son’s marriage, he pays on his daughter’s marriage, he pays on his second marriage (if he is of low caste and marries a second time), he pays on the zemindar’s marriage, he pays on the zemindars’s son’s mar riage, he pays on the ‘‘gomastah’s (agent’s) son’s’’ or ‘‘gomastah’s daughter’s’’ marriage, he pays on the zemindar’s son’s birth, he pays on the ‘‘zemindar’s son’s first taking rice,’’ he pays on the zemindar’s funeral, he pays on his own ‘‘ploughing of land,’’ he pays to the zemindar on his ‘‘making a tour through his estates,’’ he pays for being ‘‘permitted to perform puja or any festival’’ himself, he pays equally for the zemindar performing puja, he pays a tax for ‘‘presents to fakirs,’’ the very drum pays for being beat ‘‘at processions, marriages and feasts.’’ (See ‘‘Records of Government of Bengal.’’) The ryot pays a fee for everything he does himself, and for everything the zemindar does not do for himself or the ryot, and makes the ryot do for him. There is a Bengali proverb, ‘‘The same love that the Muhammadan has to his fowl (he fattens it in order to kill it), the same the zemindar has to the ryot.’’ But the proverb lies, for the zemindar does not even fatten his ryot. ‘‘Who stole the goose from the common? The common man. But who stole the common from the goose? The lord.’’ 4. To turn from official records, on which the whole of our story is based, to the opinions of lawyers, judicially given on what is to so large an extent a question of law, the following was the unanimous declaration issued by the Judicial Bench of Calcutta in March 1879. And considering how largely we have had the advantage of judicial opinion or proposed legal changes lately, it would be a grave omission not to quote their authority. We quote from the Official Gazette:

606 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The judges desire to reiterate once more what they have repeatedly asserted before, that organized resistance to the payments of rents by ryots is invariably due to systematic efforts to enhance them with or without cause; that bad relations between zemindar and ryot are almost universally due, either to the property changing hands and to the speculator’s attempt to augment the yield of his purchase, or to the zemindar allowing someone, a middleman, to come between him and the ryots, the middleman talukdar, or whatever he be called, being left very commonly to raise the profit which he pays by putting pressure on the ryots. 14. The judges desire to express the astonishment that they feel at the observations frequently made on the subject of riots arising out of rent disputes. Zemindars, and perhaps officials, are apt to think that the ryots are to blame. Now it seems to the court that, from the nature of the case, the blame must generally rest with the zemindar. Of course the judges do not mean to say that he is not more or less frequently subjected to great annoyance and perhaps to loss, but so long as he confines himself to legal measures for enforcing his right, there cannot ordinarily be a riot. If rent is refused, he can sue; if he is resisted in distraining, he can apply to a court for assistance; if he is entitled to measure lands and is opposed, he can do the same. There is a legal remedy in each case, and if there is a riot it can hardly be that it does not result from his impatience, pride and preference for illegal courses. An obstinate ryot can be coerced, but he can legally only be coerced by the aid of the court; if no other coercion is attempted there is no occasion for a riot.

The ryots’ riots, it is thus said, are the result of the zemindar—of his preference for illegal courses. ‘‘The blame,’’ in riots, ‘‘must generally rest with the zemindars,’’ the High Court says. The documents following after this, upon which the minute of the High Court is based, are painfully interesting. On the question of the increase of rents, the judges say: ‘‘The fact is, the zemindars seeking enhancement get the best of it, either by open decree, favourable compromise, or other settlement agreeable to the zemindar. The ryots cannot afford to carry on appeals. The zemindar can and does.’’ This has been forcibly stated elsewhere. But the remarkable thing is all this appearing in the Gazette and nothing being done. And further on (this is still from the Gazette): it is ‘‘district judges’’ who speak: Zemindars sell out by auction the right of determining, of collecting and, above all, of screwing up the rents. When the disagreeable task has been effected, the zemindar re-enters on the estate and claims to work on the enhanced rent roll. ‘‘As a rule, enhancement

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suits are almost avowedly mere engines for harassing by expensive processes.’’ The usual device is to allege all the possible grounds, increase in area, increase in fertility, increase in crop value, increase in rates payable by neighbour ryots of the same class, to hop from the one ground to the other, to fence over all of them, and to prove none.

It is a judge who speaks. The High Court also describes the intriguing and manoeuvring— not to call it worse—for enhancement of rents; also, how the so-called ‘‘unearned increment’’—i.e., made by ryots introducing new and valuable staples only furnishes the means to raise the rents on themselves. This is the state of things in a country nominally governed by law. The zemindar raises his rents for public works undertaken by the government, and for other things which cost him absolutely nothing, in one case even for a ‘‘recent providential fall of rain,’’ and in another for ‘‘education among his tenants.’’ The zemindar can impose any rent or cesses he pleases. The ryot can only obtain redress by going to law, but he is ruined if he goes to law. The ryot is always underfed, yet always works hard. He is expected to protect himself, and some have done so of late years by combinations. But this protection does not give him what he wants most, and what he can by law demand, tenant right, which prevents his rent being arbitrarily raised and defends him against eviction. Let us now look at a few revenue figures: the revenue in 1793 (at the time of the Permanent Settlement) was about 3 millions; the zemindars’ share was one tenth or one eleventh of the revenue. In three quarters of a century the government revenue has increased to 31⁄2 millions, while the zemindars’ rental has grown from about a third of a million gross to more than 13 millions net. But this rental of 13 millions is only an official return for road cess purposes, and the entire amount paid annually by the occupants of the soil is said to be between 25 and 30 millions. We have given away a land revenue as large as the whole land revenue of all India, for we have allowed between 25 and 30 millions, reckoning illegal exactions, etc., to be extorted from the cultivators of the soil, out of which government receives instead of nine tenths or ten elevenths—the rule at the Permanent Settlement—about one eighth. The government revenue of the Permanent Settlement was about £2,850,000 or eight tenths of the gross rental. One third of the land was waste. If all Bengal had been under cultivation, the gross rental would be £4,764,000. It was, in 1877, £13,037,000. The rent rates intended to be

608 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India fixed by the Permanent Settlement have been trebled and the ryots now pay an excessive exaction of £8,273,000 yearly. If this be valued at twenty years’ purchase, ‘‘we have deprived the cultivators of the enormous sum of £165,000,000, and given it to the zemindars, who still cry for more.’’ And this ‘‘in spite of the most solemn promises of the state to the contrary.’’ The ‘‘movable property’’ of the people ‘‘is almost nothing’’; their ‘‘lands are being sold twice as fast as five years ago’’; they are ‘‘compelled to encumber their property three times as often as seven years ago’’; their ‘‘criminal population has reached the figure it was in famine times’’; the ‘‘ejectment theory has more or less developed within the last seven or eight years.’’ (These are the statements of the Bengal Rent Law Commission reporting in 1880.) Among the twenty millions of Bihar the state of things is worse: universal illegal distraint, chopping and changing the poor ignorant ryots from one field to another, loss of all occupancy rights. And still the landlords cry for further facilities for enhancement. Loss to the ryots, loss to the state—who gains? ‘‘Heads I win, tails you lose,’’ says the zemindar. All zemindars must not be painted black, nor yet all ryots white. There are many amiable zemindars, full of intelligence and benevolence, very many who have not pushed their power of exaction to the extreme limit. But there are vast masses of unfriended peasants, rightly discontented or too wretched to resist, and some who have righted themselves. We call zemindars landlords or landowners; there is, perhaps, scarcely one resemblance between the English landlord and the Bengal zemindar. There are three great differences besides those named. (1) Interest on capital spent by the English landlord on farm buildings, drainage and the like forms a large portion of the rent paid by an English tenant to an English landlord. What is the case in Bengal? (2) The English landlord (or his agent) knows what rent his tenants pay and where their lands lie; the zemindar is always asking government to try and help him to find out just these facts—to help him in making up a proper rent roll. (3) Indian governments have fixed the rent from time immemorial. There is no such thing as an economic rent. By applying the political economy of English conditions to conditions in India, to which it is not applicable, we have committed the greatest mistakes. The Bengal ryot has been left at the zemindar’s mercy as to rent, a state of things unexampled in India’s experience. The zemindars number about 130,000. Among these are brilliant exceptions of admirable zemindars. The tenure holders (middlemen)

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number about 750,000, their annual income in 620,000 cases being below £10. The cultivators—who occupy about ten million holdings, nine millions of them so small as to pay less than £2 a year, and of these, six millions so small as to pay less than 10s a year, which represents holdings of only two or three acres—are in a state calling, we see, more loudly for redress year by year, except in Eastern Bengal. These are not figures, but human beings. Can you create a class with duties as well as rights arbitrarily by ‘‘proclamation?’’ All history answers, ‘‘No.’’ But we have ‘‘confiscated’’ the zemindar’s duties, after having conferred the land on the sole condition of performance of those duties, and have let new rights grow up without corresponding duties. From the ryots have been taken away all those rights that they undoubtedly had. This new bill is not a ‘‘confiscation’’ of the zemindar’s property, as it had been called, but a restoration of rights to the ryots. Meanwhile, from exceeding centralization, ‘‘r yots have been toiling in Madras and starving in the Deccan, in order that gentlemen in Bengal may enjoy incomes of hundreds of thousands a year, free from taxes.’’ Madras and Bombay, with an area together only equal to that of Bengal proper, and a population one third less, pay nearly twice as much land revenue as Bengal into the Imperial Exchequer. Of the total payments, including rent, made by the people of each province of India, much less finds its way into the government treasur y in Bengal than elsewhere. Thus, in Bombay, where the land tenure is nearly all ryotwari, 88 percent of the payments made are devoted to purposes of government, being either paid as revenue or for the support of public establishments. In Madras, where about four fifths of the country is ryotwari, the proportion is 69 percent. In Bengal, under the Permanent Settlement, the proportion is believed not to exceed 33 percent.

Something must be done. So far from matters adjusting themselves, efforts to destroy occupancy rights are becoming yet more determined and successful. Mark well! The question is not to abolish the Permanent Settlement, but to carry out the Permanent Settlement. 2. Before passing on to the remedies, we are led to touch on two or three questions which have arisen. (1) One, a rather undefined controversy, has been raised as to whether the ryots in Bengal are not, owing to the Permanent Settle-

610 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ment, better off than those of Bombay or Madras, where the state is the landlord. But, first, Bengal is a big place and a wide word [world], and Bombay and Madras, taken together, are also wide. And next, it is just in proportion as the ryots have gained occupancy rights or something more, as in Eastern Bengal, that they have become prosperous. There is little doubt that if the Permanent Settlement had been efficiently carried out, the Bengal ryots would have been for generations better off than almost any others, not complete proprietors. For the soil is fertile: the law gave them fixity of tenure and rent so far fixed that it could only be raised (if at all) under strict and equitable rules. But the present evil is that for the most part the laws of the Permanent Settlement have been set at naught. In Bihar the position of the ryots is probably the worst in India; in Western Bengal most of them are ver y poor and oppressed. But still there are some who have acquired permanent rights. In Eastern Bengal circumstances (among which a democratic Muhammadan religion is an important factor) have enabled them very much to hold their own—and they are decidedly well-off. (‘‘Land is dear, it is a second wife. And many Hindus have become Muhammadans for it.’’ From a native speech in the viceroy’s Council.) When we compare them with Bombay and Madras ryots, certainly those in the south who are absolute owners of the land are so far better placed. But then, under our rigid application of anachronous laws of political economy, we have enabled them to get into debt, and in some parts there is subletting. To decide as to the relative prosperity of the peasantry in Bengal and in Bombay or Madras, one must know the condition of the peasantr y all over those three vast provinces, which varies extremely in different places. The Deccan peasant is generally ill-off. So, notoriously, is the peasant of Bihar. The Gujarat peasant is generally very well-off. So is the peasant of Backergunge, in Eastern Bengal. But why? Because Backergunge is essentially a district of peasant proprietors. ‘‘Almost all the actual cultivators have to a certain extent a proprietar y right in the land they cultivate.’’ It will be said that the rise of the jute industry is the cause of their prosperity. But what was the first use to which their prosperity was turned? To acquiring such proprietar y right. In three years, 1877-80, 342,596 perpetual leases were executed, and mainly in five districts of Eastern Bengal, including Backergunge and Chitagaon. It is scarcely possible to imagine a greater contrast than between Eastern Bengal and Bihar—Bihar, perhaps the most fertile province of

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India. The difference can hardly be traced to anything but the different tenures, won or lost by different races: in Eastern Bengal, sturdy Muhammadans; in Bihar, poor, weak, low castes. A Bihar zemindar himself says that the ‘‘raiyats,’’ ‘‘though they labour hard, are in a state of almost utter destitution.’’ The Bihar committee says that ‘‘the zemindars of south Bihar practically take by way of rent as much of the crop as they choose to claim.’’ Permanent tenure is, too, exactly what the Bihar tenant has not got. If, again, we look in the Gazette for the average monthly wage of an able-bodied agricultural labourer, we find: Patna district 3 to 4 rupees (6s to 8s) a month Darbhunga 2 to 3 '' (4s to 6s) '' Gya 2.8 to 3 '' '' Shahabad 4 '' '' Elsewhere in rural districts of Bengal, from a minimum in Murshidabad of 5 rupees a month The usual rate being 7 to 7.8 rupees It rises in Backergunge, etc., to over 9 rupees (18s). Thus Bihar gives less than half the wages of Eastern Bengal. In the former the métayer [rent paid in kind] system prevails, with the absence of all rights, in the latter, peasant proprietors or tenants with occupancy rights. So far for different parts of Bengal. But we can determine generally in figures the comparative averages of agricultural wealth in Bengal, Bombay and Madras. In Bombay the yearly value of the crop per head of population is rupees 22.4, the payments for purposes of government and irrigation per head, rupees 2.2, the balance rupees 20.2. (Produce of the cultivated area is not the only source of income to the cultivators. Milk, ghee, curds, hides, wool, livestock and fuel have also to be taken into account.) In Madras, the yearly value of the crop is rupees 19.0, the payments rupees 1.7; the balance rupees 17.3. In Bengal, the yearly value of the crop is only rupees 15.9, the payments rupees 0.8; the balance only rupees 15.1. Under certain conditions the ryotwari and zemindari tenures may show an equal degree of agricultural wealth. But where the zemindari system exists, with the greatest pressure of population and no sufficient protection to cultivators against landlords, there agricultural wealth, as we should expect to find, is the smallest. This we find in Bengal. Agricultural wealth in Bengal, and in the North Western Provinces and Oudh, is much less than that of the other provinces of

612 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India India, Oudh, so notorious for its poverty, being in only a slightly worse position than Bengal. But one might almost as well lay down generally that: all tenants are prosperous, all peasant proprietors are ruined or the reverse, as that all Bengal is prosperous, all Bombay or Madras is poor or the reverse. (It can never be overlooked that the condition of the cultivators depends on many factors, including that of their tenure, doubtless the most important of all—e.g., the character of the race, the pressure of population, the nature of the climate, the fertility of the soil, the means of communication, etc. But if there is any truth at all in land tenure facts, the Bombay peasant must, ceteris paribus [all things being equal], be better off than the Bengal peasant.) But however interesting it may be to discuss the relative conditions of various sections of ryots in different parts of the country, such controversy is entirely outside of the scope of this paper, which is intended, not as an attack on individuals, nor as an indictment drawn against one class, nor even as a mere appeal for sympathy on behalf of another; but which has for its object to call the attention of those who care for India to the injustice of a system in which custom can trample on law, so that oppression is made easy, and redress almost impossible. 2. Another question started [stated] against the new bill, viz., that it may, by making the tenure valuable, create middlemen, whether moneylenders or larger ryots, who will grind down the ryots more than is done already by the zemindars—is a very serious consideration. This hits, in fact, what is perhaps the weakest part of the Bengal Rent Bill as drafted. It seems to have been found difficult to define a ryot, and apparently the privileges are to be conferred on those who are borne on the books as ryots without prohibition of subletting to unprotected cultivators. In Ireland the ‘‘fixities’’ are given to the actual cultivator. In the Bengal bill this does not seem to be so. The ryot is already not unfrequently a sort of small landlord, with tenantry under him, and it is possible that when his rights are well defined, we might more and more have small landlords under the name of ryots, as is the case in some other parts of India. Temporar y sublettings, in cases of minority and the like, must, perhaps, be specially permitted. But if we aim at peasant proprietors, rather than small landlords, great care must be taken in settling the details of the bill in committee. The provisions of the new bill certainly give the occupancy tenant the right to sell or sublet. But these can have no new or startling effect in the direction indicated, because the justification for them is that, wherever there is a margin of rent, the universal custom in Bengal is

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to sublet already. Besides, it must be remembered that, by the practice of sub-infeudation, the Bengal zemindars have already created middlemen to a vast extent. 3. A third point is, it has been said, and unhappily perhaps, too justly, that the government itself is sometimes the worst zemindar, that the ryots on crown lands and wards’ estates were treated like ryots on zemindars’ lands, without higher rights and with the wrongs of enhancement of rents and evictions. But that the government has done a worse thing is no argument for the zemindars continuing to do a bad thing. Rather is it an argument for the government watching that none of its departments do the same. The commissioners of woods and forests in England, the officials in government and court of wards’ estates in India, are said sometimes to think it their duty to exact as much as they can, and more than any private proprietor. Let the supreme government see to this, if it be true. But we have sometimes heard a truly strange argument, something like that of the Irishwoman to whom a jug was lent and who gave it back broken: ‘‘I never had the jug; the jug was broken when it was lent to me; the jug was not broken when I sent it back.’’ So it has been argued: ‘‘Zemindars have not oppressed their tenants; oppression of tenants by government has been as bad as or worse than that by zemindars; therefore oppression by zemindars is right.’’ Also: ‘‘There have been no evictions; government has evicted more than zemindars; as government has evicted, zemindars did right to evict.’’ Let, on the contrar y, government property and government wards’ property be a model of good administration and an example of prosperous tenantry. III Let us now pass on to the remedies. Here are the wrongs, but where are the rights? What are the remedies? ‘‘If reform does not begin from on high, it will begin from below.’’ That government is the tr ue friend of the zemindars, which gives them prosperous paying tenants instead of rack-rented runaways. Capitalists are wanted as well as cultivators. Peasant proprietors are often opposed to improvements, but neither do zemindars care for improvements. What is the remedy? to murder the landlords? Certainly not. To use violence to resist violence used in collecting the illegal cesses? Certainly not. A legal remedy must be sought. What is the legal remedy? 1. Occupancy rights, or fixity of tenure. The laws of 1793 left fixity of tenure to all resident ryots. It has been proposed to attach right of occupancy not to the ryot, but to the land—strenuous efforts having been made by landlords, especially in Bihar, to get into their own

614 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hands as much as possible of ryottee land, or land over which occupancy rights exist, and convert it into khamar land, or the private land of the proprietor. It is now proposed to be enacted that ‘‘the existing stock of khamar land cannot hereafter be increased, that all land which is not khamar land shall be deemed to be ryottee land, and that all land shall be presumed to be ryottee land until the contrary is proved.’’ A complete survey and record of the existing khamar land is also to be made. It has been proposed to give occupancy right to all resident ryots— three years’ residence to constitute a resident ryot. It is proposed, if the land has been held for twelve years in the same village or estate, though not the same land, that this shall constitute occupancy right. The grave objections to this are the landlords’ zeal to prevent the occupancy right from growing, or to destroy evidence of it; the hostility between two parties, one of whom will at a certain known period become entitled to privileges at the expense of the other. Landlords have been known to welcome famine as an opportunity of dealing with inconvenient rights, and not to welcome relief in the shape of concessions of revenue, because it would rob them of a useful weapon in dealing with tenants. It was stated by the zemindary interest with regard to the great bone of contention, the position of occupancy ryots, that 90 percent of the tenants in Bengal have got the occupancy right. ‘‘If 90 percent of the tenants in Bengal have got the occupancy right, the fact remains that they cannot prove it, and it would be ruin to most of them to try to prove it.’’ It was stated by one zemindar that most of the ryots on his estates had ‘‘morally a right of occupancy.’’ Does that mean that they had got it, but had not got it? To pass a law ‘‘by which the difficulties of proof should be minimized, by which the onus of proof should lie less heavily on these tenants, and by which they may be able to get a more effectual enjoyment of this already existing moral right,’’ is what every honourable zemindar would wish. 2. Fair rents: right of enhancement. The laws of 1793 left fixed rents as well as fixity of tenure. The ryot’s right, from ancient times to our own, through a succession of governments, native and foreign, to have his payments fixed by the authority of government, should be recognized. It was not an economic rent—not determined by competition, ‘‘the real competition being that arising from the necessity of large numbers who must live off the land and have no alternative but star vation.’’ It was a ‘‘customar y’’ rate, and it was the duty of the state

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to regulate this customary rate. Cultivation in India is not for profit but for subsistence. Before the Act of 1859 there was no right of enhancement. When the revenue is fixed, it is unfair that fixity-oftenure-men should be liable to enhanced rents. In Eastern Bengal commutations of the zemindar’s right of enhancement into fixed rents by voluntary agreements have risen to 150,000 a year. This is excellent, but it is undesirable to give the zemindar leave, as now appears to be proposed, to put the collector in motion to settle and record his rents. There is no similar provision for the ryots to call in the collector to make a record for their protection. A complete public record of the holdings of the ryots has still to be made. It is proposed to prepare a table of rent rates—to be in force not less than ten or more than thirty years (which will be in fact the ‘‘pergunnah rate’’ of the Permanent Settlement)—and an authorized table of prices. If it is feasible to ascertain this ‘‘pergunnah rate,’’ it will be a boon. But on this ‘‘if ’’ success depends. Also ‘‘the landlord can use the table of rates for levelling up; the tenant cannot use it for levelling down.’’ There is no proposal for a reduction of rents. A maximum is to be fixed, beyond which rent cannot be enhanced, for starvation rents ought not to be recoverable. Assistance might be given to the zemindar to obtain fair enhancement whenever he can prove that he has increased by his own expenditure the productive power of land, not as regards the (so-called) unearned increment. But due provision should be made for existing unfair rents to be reduced. Sufficient facilities for collecting existing rents through summar y and effective courts should be given. If these are given, then sufficient protection against illegal execution ought to be given to ryots. 3. Free sale. It is proposed to concede free sale to all occupancy ryots, to put no check on forced sales, but to allow the sale only to another cultivator—not to a non-cultivator, who might keep the old ryot on without any rights at all. Free sale and improvement of our civil courts, which unwittingly played into the moneylenders’ hands, have been a root of evil in Bombay, in enabling the moneylenders to dispossess the ryots. We become enamoured of peasant proprietors until we find out that they mean moneylenders. The cultivator’s power of free sale is liked better by the landlords, on account of the facility for realizing rents, than by the ryots. Forced sales are an unmitigated evil, owing to the presence on the soil of an expropriated people, who deem themselves wrongly expropriated out of immemorial rights.

616 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India A homestead law, as in America, that no man can be forced to divest himself of that portion of the community land assigned him for his living, has been suggested. Avoid giving the power of killing the goose which lays golden eggs. 4. To take from the ryot the power of contracting himself out of his rights is absolutely essential. The following is the form of contract in use on an Indian estate, and gives a sample of the covenants that may be imposed upon a ryot when he takes a lease: I, cultivator, will never acquire a right of occupancy in the land. I will pay, in addition to the rent, road cess, public works cess, zemindari dak cess (legally half the two first, and the whole of the last cess are to be paid by the zemindar) and any cess which you may levy (the imposition of such cesses is absolutely illegal). I will pay the rent by equal monthly instalments (these drive the ryot to the moneylender before the harvest). If I fail, I will pay interest at the rate of 371⁄2 percent, etc.

(It has been said that the government has an equally objectionable kabuliyat or contract with its cultivators, but if anything can be different from the form given in the text, it is this document.) To enforce such contracts is to condemn the present government bill to defeat and failure. 5. A regular survey is imperative in Bengal, a public record for the protection of rights conferred by law on the ryots, the maintenance of public accountants. Where, by the Road Cess Act, zemindars are required to file a record of their rents, and the ryots hear of it, they come trooping in, pay their inspection fee, get a certified copy and pay no rupee more than that amount. It must not be forgotten that records are untr ustworthy and oral evidence is worthless. There is no record of rights and the ‘‘managers,’’ not the zemindars, think nothing, it is stated, of ‘‘fabricating a set of papers.’’ Nearly one half of the litigation in Bengal arises, it is said, from the impossibility of ascertaining facts. And most of it would be rendered unnecessary if a real record of rights, and if trustworthy rent receipts, could be had. Surely this would be as great a boon to the righteous zemindar as to the ryot. There are two things wanted, viz., that the zemindar should have his rents paid, and the ryot his rights respected. But the zemindar, when the ryot is strong, does not get his just rents paid. And the zemindar, when the ryot is weak, ousts him out of all his rights. The zemindar wants the government to aid him to collect what he considers his rent. The ryot justly thinks that

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the government should settle what the y consider his rent. A record of rights and rent receipts is essential for both sides. Had the government from the first insisted that an authentic government record of rights and rates should be kept up, and that a reliable system of recording payments should be enforced, there would be no difficulty in complying with the demand of the zemindar, and it would be the clear duty of government to do so. But unless the government will resolutely determine to face this matter, it will never be able to do equal justice to the zemindar and the ryot: to give the ryot proper protection is one duty; to give the zemindar power to realize punctually from the ryot that rent or revenue, which the government exacts so punctually from the zemindar, is another duty. Neither of these duties can ever be effectually performed without an authentic record of rates and payments, and if this bill be not supplemented by vigorous executive action in this direction, it will join the long list of acts and regulations of high-sounding promise and little performance of which ryot and zemindar have been the subject.

6. Effective penalties for illegal exactions beyond the rent. Now there is nothing between the tremendous remedy, confiscation, and the ridiculous remedy, two rupees damages for an illegal cess of one rupee. All landlords are to be left to do illegal acts, because all landlords do do illegal acts. 7. Criminal prosecution, not civil action, for breach of law by zemindars, has been suggested. But there are obvious objections. The ryot who could not pay has been treated as a criminal. Lord Lawrence strenuously opposed this. 8. Bihar. All evils are intensified among these twenty millions of poor low castes. They are ground down to the lowest point by forced labour, illegal distraint and illegal cesses; in certain areas the average of rent have [has] been enhanced all round by 500 percent in the last forty-three years. They have lost all their rights, as admitted by the commission of zemindars and indigo planters themselves, who tell us that, while 60 percent of the ryots have held land in the same village for more than twelve years, less than one percent hold exactly the same land as twelve years ago, one field having been taken one year for indigo, and another another. The ryots of the richest provinces of Bengal are thus the poorest and most wretched class in the country. Remedies. Ever y ryot who has held for three years any portion of peasants’ land and has held in the same estate (though not the same land) for twelve years, to have the right of occupancy. Compensation

618 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India for disturbance, and also for improvements, to be given. An accurate public register. A much more active administration, the more necessar y because the one division of Patna equals in population, and probably in number of tenures, the Bombay presidency. An effective survey, record and settlement of rights in Patna division, to be undertaken at once, and eventually for all Bihar. A voluntar y association of indigo planters exists already, with a paid agent to investigate complaints and disputes. For want of this, Bengal indigo planters collapsed. The survey and record of rights and payments in wards’ and other special estates in Bengal should be provided for at once. The new Bengal Tenancy Bill does not embrace all these provisions and remedies. It deals principally with the three Fs [fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale]. Money, not law, is required for the survey, but the bill confers power to secure it. The bill leaves the zemindar all advantages gained during the last ninety years. It leaves him the rent he now receives. All it says to him is: ‘‘Your power of enhancement and eviction shall be, to a limited degree, brought back in the future to the position of ninety years ago.’’ It falls very far short of giving back to the cultivator his original rights. But it ‘‘endeavours to make a settlement which will restore to the ryots something of the position which they occupied at the time of the Permanent Settlement.’’ It ‘‘is not, and does not profess to be, a complete code of law of landlord and tenant.’’ ‘‘It is merely a bill to amend and consolidate certain enactments relating to that subject.’’ ‘‘And it expressly saves custom.’’ Its chief provisions are those stated as (1) relating to khamar land and occupancy rights—occupancy right to be obtained by holding, though not the same land, for twelve years; (2) fair rents, table of rates, zemindar to have the power of invoking the aid of the revenue officer; settlement of rents by revenue officer; recover y of rents by zemindar and power of distraint for arrears of rent of not more than a year; (3) free sale, but only to another cultivator; power of subletting; (4) taking from the ryot the power of contracting himself out of his rights. All the details will have to be discussed in committee when the bill comes on again for discussion in the viceroy’s Council in November. One word on behalf of the zemindar, a word which will not cancel one single syllable written on behalf of the ryot. The present race of zemindars have—every one of them—taken their places in a system which can exist only in continuous breach of a contract to which they individually were none of them parties, a breach which must have

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been known to the government, who were a party and who are ultimately, if not solely, responsible for allowing it to continue. In these circumstances, if any zemindar loyally accepts the Bengal Tenancy Bill, which is based upon the justice of the original contract, he must be one of those rare men whose love of justice is stronger than his fear of loss. And let us not think that the ‘‘dumb ryots’’ have been silent. The dumb will speak and the dumb have spoken for such a crisis as this. Ryots’ meetings have been held and resolutions drawn up and ryots’ petitions have been sent in to government, from which, had we space, we could cull the most telling extracts. The very government papers on this matter comprise upwards of sixty reports, besides draft bills and minutes, papers which for intensity of interest are almost terrible, and for research and statesmanlike ability almost equal to the transcendent importance of the subject. Had a prophet like Nathan addressed the Englishman as he did David, and described the state of things as we know it to exist in the most fertile provinces of this ancient country of India, whose welfare we have undertaken—as it has been established or, at least, allowed to grow up by us who govern India—would not the Englishman rise in his righteous wrath to redress the wrong, to punish the wrongdoer? And would not the prophet say: Thou art the man?106 But this reproach it is now proposed to take away from us. Government has bestowed an amount of labour, inquir y and thought upon these momentous land questions, which perhaps have never been equalled. The English statesman seeks to conceive and carry out a work of even-handed justice to both parties concerned. Let us see that the work be not left half done. Let the Government of India, the ryots and the zemindars of Bengal see that we care about it, and care thoughtfully and with knowledge. Let us see that all this great reproach is taken from us. It has been hanging over us for ninety years. As a matter of policy, and for policy’s sake, this must be done and done quickly; for the sake of morality, of humanity, for the sake of right, it must be done and done well.

106 Nathan described the injustices for which David was responsible in a parable, prompting the king to promise death to the supposed perpetrator; at this Nathan told him ‘‘thou art the man,’’ in 2 Sam 12:7.

620 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Nightingale paper to the East India Association.

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture

I

n addition to the important reforms needed to the key institutions of land tenure and rent, a whole range of other, related reforms were needed to ensure an adequate livelihood for rural cultivators. Nightingale’s aim was, if not the elimination of poverty, the establishment of basic income security measures to ensure health in good times and reser ves against famine in bad. Credit institutions were crucial in providing access to funds that would permit the sowing a crop without ruinous rates of interest or, in effect, bond servitude for non-payment. Nightingale was familiar with the growth of co-operatives in Derbyshire and thought they could be effective in India. She had discussed savings’ banks, or banks serving small-income earners, with Gladstone, and encouraged their use for all kinds of workers in Britain, including nurses. In the next set of letters, she and her correspondents explored the possibility of a national bank in India. A great range of educational reform measures also came under discussion in the following letters, beginning with the provision of basic schools in villages, which would include girls in their classes. Nightingale felt that classes at all levels should include education on issues of basic sanitation, health promotion and disease prevention, and felt that there was, perhaps, too much provision of literary education for the middle class. Her preference was for more practical, especially scientific, education, and this is what she urged in her letters. Agricultural colleges she saw as key to improving agricultural productivity.

Ryots’ Banks and Co-operatives As much material has already shown, the recurrence of drought and famine made the ryots’ miserable situation even worse. To sur vive those disasters ryots often had to borrow from moneylenders. Enormously high interest rates had to be paid, making repayment of the debt precarious. Borrowers ‘‘are ousted from house and home, made / 621

622 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India paupers and even slaves’’ (see p 623 below). Even in normal times ryots were regularly forced into debts by the machinations of the zemindars. The problem of ryot indebtedness led to consideration of alternative means for credit, such as national banks, co-operatives and monts de piété (usually state-owned pawnshops). Nightingale wrote about those remedies to Gladstone in 1879, urging him as ‘‘the greatest master of finance’’ to release credits to help the ryots. In another letter of the same year she again tried to move the chancellor of the Exchequer to action and she sent him the sketch of a national bank of India that could ‘‘enlist the co-operation of some of the best of the native bankers,’’ more able to manage the details of such an enterprise.1 The same concerns appear in the correspondence and notes below. Source: From a note for John Sutherland, Add Mss 45753 f246

[end May 1869] Lady Napier (of Madras) has effected the most wonderful reform in the charities of Madras, the worst managed in the world, has paid off the debts of all but one—all were in debt—by getting them out of the hands of Hindu malversation and working the supplies by co-operative stores and making the East Indian ladies (half-caste) interest themselves in the maintaining this system. She is the most plucky and efficient woman. But she too is come to England to collect money (she says only two people ever gave her anything) and work for her penitents to do. Source: From a letter to Henry Stewart Cunningham, in Margaret M. Verney, Sir Henry Stewar t Cunningham 80-81

29 November 1877 I am coming to London to see you, please God, before you leave us. . . . I would make any hour that is convenient to you suit me, as your time is too important. Two suggestions have been often sent me from Madras which, if they were of any value, have probably been thought over by you hundreds of times. One—that the orphans in the relief camps, who with the destitute children form their main population, should be taught useful trades, instead of going back to swell the agricultural hosts.

1 Society and Politics (5:451-53 and 462-64).

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The other—that the only way to raise the ryots, who seem to be getting poorer and poorer every year, out of the moneylenders’ hands (into which alone goes the ryot’s full crop—if he has one), would be a system of small loans at a moderate rate of interest—money supplied by English capital (I presume under official superintendence and management)—to the ryot, thus entering into competition with the native usurers on their own ground. Source: From two letters to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

5 August 1878 May I venture to hope that I was fulfilling your own wish in having done my little utmost to draw people’s attention to the Deccan Riots Report? The thought that I was doing what you considered right comforted me in wading through this terrible subject. I have ventured to send you my poor little article in The Nineteenth Centur y [‘‘The People of India’’] of which your kindness is indeed the father. And this above all strikes me: 1. Can there be any private enterprise in trade or commerce, manufactures or industries where, to mone ylending, are guaranteed by our own courts profits which no healthy enterprise can approach? I remember your saying that till private capital embarks in India in public works, etc., as in England, you look upon India’s economic state as almost hopeless. But is not this tying-up of private capital in usurious moneylending—moneylending too which makes the borrowers beggars instead of honest traders or manufacturers—one of the main causes that there is little or no private enterprise in India? (This has been pointed out to me even by native Indian gentlemen.) It seems the most terrible part of the whole terrible business, viz., that it is ‘‘hopeless,’’ if nothing can be done to modify by law a state of things so greatly encouraged if not produced by law—and by our ‘‘settlement’’—a state of things where the largest moneylenders and also land accumulators are the worst landlords and the biggest villains: forgers, thieves on as large a scale as they are moneylenders, as shown by official report living in open defiance of our law—our law, which crushes the poor borrowers only, these borrowers, who, not like English people manufacturing or farming on borrowed money, are ousted from house and home, made paupers and even slaves, as also shown by official report. 2. What is to be done? Your kindness has put me on this tack: will not your kindness and great economic wisdom and experience point out

624 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the remedies, whether public (legal) such as registration of debts or bonds, pawnbrokers’ acts, acts limiting the rate of interest; or private remedies such as municipal loan funds or private associations for monts de piété or combinations of native gentlemen in a kind of co-operative bank? In England, I suppose, any interest that has been ‘‘agreed on’’ by the borrower can be recovered. But the unhappy Deccan borrower can scarcely be said in any reasonable sense to make an ‘‘agreement’’ with his creditor. The wants of India are so ver y different from those of England, as we all know. Government has to do so much which in England is done by education, and the public opinion resulting from education, by private enterprise and private benevolence. In India the people suffer immeasurably more than English press or Parliament ever dreams of, not only from what government does but still more from what it does not do. In India has not the government to take upon itself many functions which in Europe fall to those qualities or institutions which India has not and will not have for generations? 3. Do you think (I believe that the idea of monts de piété conducted by government has been given up), do you think that a private association, supported by British capital, for establishing monts de piété in each large village—selecting one district at first—taking pledges, such as the women’s silver ornaments and interest to cover working expenses and say 5 percent to shareholders, might be feasible? (b) Or could municipalities in India start monts de piété, as in France, where not only they do immense good, I believe, to the people but actually remunerate the municipalities well? (c) Or could not the government loans be exceedingly facilitated and made more extensively acceptable? People in Madras think that if it were once thoroughly understood why the ryot refuses government loans at low interest and prefers paying his moneylender exorbitant rates, the difficulty would soon be overcome, but that those officials, who would rather know and benefit the ryots under them than please those over them, do not as a rule rise high in office. (d) And could not forger y of documents be widely prevented by an act that all debts and bonds should be registered before they can be enforced by law? 4. Could there be an act limiting the rate of usury recoverable by law? Practically such a law is, I believe, in force at this moment in Oudh. When we take a talukdar estate (in a case of accumulated debt) under government management, we do not allow more than 6 percent to the creditors, although the original loan has always been contracted at 24 percent and often at 60 percent. And indeed in cases

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where the moneylender has already realized more than double the principal in interest, we sometimes allow no interest at all. It seems very helpless to find it possible to make such a law for ourselves and impossible to make it for these wretched Deccan debtors. The rates of interest recoverable by law are, I believe, limited in Bengal and Madras. The usury laws were, I suppose, done away with in England as useless. This is very likely right in a country like England but not in India. Because India is so different from England, therefore, we say, we will give the laws and institutions of England to India. Sir Salar Jung has made a law, now in force in Hyderabad, that any Arab jamadar [officer] (I understand) lending money should do so at his own risk, and that the money should not necessarily be recoverable in a court of justice. This law has put an end to Arab usury in Hyderabad. (The jamadars used to lend money at enormous interest, on default of payment used to double and treble the interest, and enforce its payment by taking possession of person and property of their debtors, just as the Deccan Marwaris do.) So arbitrary a measure as Sir Salar Jung’s would not be possible or even desirable, were it possible in our parts of India, of course. And the Arab jamadars are servants of the state (Hyderabad) and can be dealt with arbitrarily. But is it impossible to find some act as a remedy? The great evil seems to be the enforcement of claims in an English court. Native gentlemen have written to me, asking that ‘‘in the present state of our society, where little or nothing can be expected from private beneficence,’’ there should be some ‘‘act of the legislature,’’ either ‘‘an enactment to the effect that, unless the interest was within a certain limit fixed by law, no action should lie’’ or, more practically, ‘‘that no court of justice should be allowed to decree, as it does now, the whole of the interest but only a reasonable portion of it—this portion being either fixed by law say at 6 percent, or determined according to the peculiar requirements of each case’’ (as is actually the law, for our own benefit, in Oudh). 5. You will have seen the bill before the Legislative Council at Simla for the ‘‘relief’’ of the Deccan debtor. How thankful I should be if you thought it satisfactory! (To judge by the mere abstract in the Times, it might almost as well be called a bill for the relief of the creditor.) I feel that no excuse ought to avail me for so troubling you but your own kindness. Thank you for telling me about the article in the Pall Mall Gazette of 25 July. I have sent twice to the newsman for it but it has not come yet. When it does, may I write to you again? I am almost glad to have a reason for doing so.

626 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I am now asking a great favour: the reason why the Deccan Riots Report tells so much more than reports in general with an ignorant or indifferent public is that it gives individual facts about individual ryots with name and place. Could you be so very kind as to give me titles of reports that do the same, e.g., as to (1) land assessment or land tenures, (2) condition of ryots under the zemindari tenure, (3) methods of agriculture, working of ‘‘takavi’’ [money advanced to cultivators for sowing], (4) municipalities’ methods of representation in giving the people a voice to tax themselves, (5) reports as to daily food and habits of people, etc. The India Office must have untold treasures in this respect. 27 January 1879 Private. I wonder whether that bill, which was before the Bombay government, of remedies for the indebtedness of the Deccan ryot has passed. It embraced, among three provisions, one that ‘‘more than a sum of interest equalling the principal could not be recovered in court.’’ What we, the ryots, complain of is not the disappearance of the usury laws, but that English lawhas obliged our civil courts to aid and abet the practice of usury. The ryots say, and with truth, that in this respect they were much better off under native than under English government. I confess I was eager to hear that that Bombay government ‘‘bill’’ had become law. It is not enough to say that it will be evaded, is it? Source: From notes, Add Mss 45805 ff186-87

1 May 1879 Sir Arthur Cotton. National Bank.’’ All will depend on the men who ‘‘work it and on the details to be worked. In present state of project one can only say that it would be a good thing if it is a good thing. Let him give us names: if it is not worked by good men and if its details of working are not good it would of course give room for endless jobbery. By underbidding the existing banks it would also make enemies of them. It asks a great deal of government making a first charge on the first crops, etc. And it would be impossible to ask the advice of any high official upon this without giving him a scheme, not a mere sketch, to take his advice upon. (A different kind of bank scheme fully workable has been, I know, privately submitted to the highest men of one of the presidency councils in India.) As to the need of such a scheme being carried out: co-operatives, monts de piété, national banks and the like, the want of them seems more crying every day or we would not say, we shall lose India, but India will be lost to herself.

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‘‘Letter on Co-operation in India,’’ 1879 Editor: Nightingale’s ‘‘Letter on Co-operation’’ was read at the opening of a meeting held on 13 March 1879, apparently at the offices of the Christian Vernacular Society in London. In it she put forward what she called ‘‘suggestions for applying co-operative machinery as a means of enabling the Indian cultivators to rescue themselves from the moneylenders,’’ according to another paper read at the meeting. An incomplete, perhaps draft letter to Elizabeth Adelaide Manning, gives much of the same material (see p 628 below). Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Letter on ‘Co-operation in India,’ ’’ Journal of the National Indian Association. In Aid of Social Progress in India 101 (May 1879):219-21

It rejoices me beyond anything that you are about to have such a discussion as that proposed by the National Indian Association next Thursday: a discussion as to how to introduce—rather, not introduce but ‘‘apply,’’ on the soil in all the world best calculated for it, the soil of village communities in India—a ‘‘co-operative’’ system. Co-operation against moneylending—moneylending which, as practised in India, ties up all capital, makes a poor people poorer and which is unhappily supported, much against the intention of our law-giving, by our law. The case is urgent beyond urgency: e.g., so fully aware are the Deccan ryots themselves that they are being sacrificed to the sowkars by the action of our civil courts, that certain villages, which were received a few years ago from the nizam’s territory into a Deccan collectorate, protested against being brought under the law of our civil courts, urging with truth that up to that time their lands had all remained their own, but that under our civil courts they would soon all pass into the hands of the moneylenders. These people knew what they said. They spoke the truth. The mistake which our law-givers have made has been to oblige our civil courts to aid and abet the practice of usury. We treat the cultivator as if he were an Englishman in England, with a lawyer at command. By all means let us treat him as if he were an Englishman in England with ‘‘co-operation’’ at command, provided ‘‘co-operation’’ can be and is applied (the ‘‘co-op,’’ as it is fondly called by the people ‘‘in my parts’’ in the country). As it is now, no wonder that the ryots say, ‘‘We were better off under our native rulers.’’ And where they do not say this, they feel it. But oh, beware, beware of making them say this! or worse still, feel it in silence.

628 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India There is not a finer race among our Asiatic fellow countrymen than the Maratha peasantry. The best qualities of the people are to be found in the ryots. If we alienate, if we allow to be impoverished and dispossessed these patient, much-enduring, striving people, we break the backbone of India. Tying up capital in usury, instead of putting it out to fructify in honest enterprise—manufacturing, commercial and agricultural—this is the ruin of India. May God prosper any attempt at systems, co-operative and other, to prevent this ruin. Another small instance. Sugar cane is the most remunerative of all cultivation. But the sugar-cane grower uses a machine which only ‘‘expresses’’ 50 percent of the sugar. He can afford no better. A cooperative sugar factory would bring the money to his door and make him independent of the moneylender—necessary now to him even to pay his government dues. Make the ryots mone ylenders to themselves, and a more prosperous peasantry would not exist in the world—thrifty, industrious, frugal, saving: like the French peasantry, they have all the qualities for prosperity. May God bless them! Three cheers for a ryots’ ‘‘co-op’’! And God speed the right! I ought perhaps to add: To show the ryots what arms they have— legal, social, economic, co-operative (not rioting)—against moneylending or usur y is of the first consequence to India. In Eastern Bengal they have themselves discovered this arm against oppressive landlords—in the rent league. Source: From an incomplete letter to Elizabeth Adelaide Manning (honorary secretar y to the National Indian Association), Add Mss 45805 ff266-68

[c1879] It rejoices me beyond anything that you are about to have such a discussion as that which you propose next Thursday. A discussion as to how to introduce—I do not mean—rather not introduce but ‘‘apply’’ on the soil in all the world best calculated for ‘‘co-operative’’ system, the soil of village communities, India, ‘‘co-operation’’ against moneylending, moneylending which ties up all capital, makes a poor people poorer and which is unhappily supported by our civil courts much against the intention of our law-giving. The case is urgent beyond urgency. For example, so fully aware are the ryots of the Deccan themselves that they are being sacrificed to the sowkars by the action of our civil courts that certain villages, which a few years ago were received in exchange otherwise from the nizam’s territory into Deccan collectorate, protested against being brought under the law of our civil

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courts, urging with truth that up to that time their lands had all remained their own, but that under our civil courts they would soon all pass into the hands of the moneylenders. Those people knew what they said. They spoke the truth. The mistake which we have made has been to oblige our civil courts to aid and abet the practice of usury. ‘‘The civil courts,’’ says an Indian judge, ‘‘often become the direct cause of the cultivator’s miser y,’’ that is, by treating him as if he were an Englishman in England with a lawyer at command. By all means let us treat him as if he were an Englishman in England with ‘‘co-operation’’ at command, provided ‘‘co-operation’’ can be if so applied (the co-op as it is fondly called by the people in my parts of the country). As it is now, no wonder that the ryots say, or worse still, feel in silence better off in the ‘‘native states.’’ There is not a finer race of men among our Asiatic fellow countrymen than the Maratha peasantry. The best qualities of the people are to be found in the ryots. Beware, beware. If we alienate, if we allow these patient, much-enduring, striving people ‘‘to be impoverished and dispossessed,’’ we break the backbone of India. Tying up capital in moneylending (usury) instead of putting it out to fructify money into honest enterprise, manufacturing, commercial and agricultural: this is the ruin of India. May God prosper any attempt at systems, co-operative and/or other to prevent this ruin! Another small instance: sugar cane is the most remunerative of all cultivation. But the sugar-cane grower uses a machine which only ‘‘expresses’’ 50 percent of the sugar. He can afford no better. Now a co-operative sugar factory would bring the money to his door and make him independent of the moneylender, necessar y now to him even to pay his government dues. Make the ryot moneylender to himself and a more prosperous peasantry would not exist in the world: thrifty, industrious, frugal, saving like the French peasantry; he has all the qualities for prosperity. May God bless the ryot. Three cheers for a ryots’ ‘‘co-op’’! And God speed the ryot! I shall wait to learn much from/of your Thursday’s meeting. To show the ryots what arms they have, legal, social, economic, cooperative (not rioting) against moneylending or usury, is of the very first consequence to India. In Eastern Bengal they have themselves discovered this arm against oppressive landlords in the rent league. Superstition: is it so much greater in India than in France or even in Paris, in Italy, Russia, Malta, Bulgaria?

630 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a draft letter and notes, Add Mss 45805 ff223-24

18 June 1879 Mr Fox. (Natal Society of Arts Journal 3 May 1878.) ‘‘Reform of Administration’’ of India. ‘‘National Agricultural Bank’’: nothing more wanted in India. Have you consulted Lord Northbrook as to its details? Everything of course depends on how these are worked out and on the men who take it up. Local knowledge in India necessary to say how it will work. Asked one or two of our ablest men but they say it is impossible to give an opinion upon the scheme in its present state farther than to say it will be a good thing if it will work. Cannot tell you intense interest I take in the government how to raise indebted poor cultivators of India out of their wretched bondage of poverty whether by monts de piété, by some national bank such as you propose, by some co-operative system, or by all or any of such means. God speed your endeavours. I will venture to offer some questions hoping that you will take some really good opinions from the high Indian officials and work out your scheme. 1. Government does already offer advances (‘‘takavi,’’ etc.) for the ver y agricultural purposes you propose to the cultivators at a very low rate of interest for India. But they will not take these advances. . . . They prefer going to their own moneylenders for advances at 20, 30 or even 100 percent or even more. In Madras and even in Bombay this is partly explained by the fact that the village headman is also often the moneylender. We have made the headman our own (petty) government official. This gives him enormous power. Of course he will not let the cultivator take the cheap government advances instead of his own usurious advance. The headman would be one and all against your bank. The moneylender is also often the village shop general dealer. In every way the moneylender has the ryot in his power. This is only one of the forms of rivalry which the so-needed ‘‘national bank’’ will have to incur. 2. A suggestion made to me by a financier I consulted: what savings banks are used by the cultivators? Are there any used? They don’t tr ust the government with their money, they won’t take the govern2

2 Francis William Fox sent Nightingale his pamphlet On Reform in the Administration of India, suggesting a national agricultural bank, according to Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:290.

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ment advances. How do you propose to ‘‘secure the sympathetic support of the people’’? . . . 4. The object of course is to substitute the bank for the moneylender. But how is this to be done? The government has entirely failed in substituting itself for the moneylender. And many Indian officials whom I once consulted consider that for the government to turn moneylender (in whatever form) as well as rent collector would only be another grievance in the cultivator’s eyes. The attempt to rescue the ryot out of his indebtedness is one of such vital, such mortal importance to India that you should be implored to find the way out of these difficulties. Source: From notes/draft letter, Add Mss 45805 f272

[c1879?] R.H.’s article on ‘‘Thrift’’ (August No. of Indian Association Journal) is also most instructive or rather I should say would be most instructive if only he would tell us exactly what he wants us to do. If he would only develop, for instance, that theme that ‘‘the spending side of thrift needs to be enforced even more than that of saving.’’ How true and how fruitful a theme. Enforce it especially upon the moneylenders who, if they would spend (thriftily) their gains in commerce and industries, might be a true benefit to India instead of a curse by creating riches instead of creating pauperism. Enforce it upon our masters who say that the way for nations to get rich is to save their money, yes, but also to spend and to borrow. What is England’s prosperity due to but to borrowed money? Then he truly says that the Indian labourer is ‘‘unskilled and inefficient.’’ Let him tell us how he is to be made other wise: whether by model farms and agricultural schools and native teachers or by what means? The Indian cultivator/labourer is so ready to learn, so much more so than the English labourer. Let R.H. tell us more precisely how to ‘‘meet’’ some at least of those ‘‘all-important problems of common life’’ which he only alludes to. Source: From a letter and a draft/letter/copy to Sir James Caird, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/82/7 and Add Mss 45807 ff81-82

4 July 1882 The paper which you were so good as to leave with me is simply invaluable. And I rejoice in the hope that you will speedily bring it in some forcible form before the public, especially the part which relates to land banks, a remedy which would probably produce a greater

632 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India change for the better in the state of the cultivators than any ‘‘act’’ whatever. . . . Have you spoken to Sir Louis Mallet again about them? 23 June 1883 I trust that you have been keeping Sir W. Wedderburn up to the mark in spreading information about Lord Ripon’s true policy. When is the reading of his paper on the ‘‘raiyat’s bank’’ to come on? . . . The amount of violence, continuous and virulent, against the Native Jurisdiction Bill and the whole of Lord Ripon’s acts under the colour of this is appalling. It is like the rush of the poor children at Sunderland,3 as blind, as ignorant and, it is to be feared, as much fatal to lead to disaster. If Sir W. Wedderburn could do anything to enlighten people, it were much to be desired. Source: Rough notes, Add Mss 45807 f82

[1883?] Lord Ripon’s policy: Important changes in favour of natives: 1. Encouragement of local industries. 2. Employment of native officials. 3. Influence of government. India formerly adverse now in favour of land bank. Recognizing true interests of state as general landlord, they offer to undertakings of this kind an action, support, administrative, financial and legislative. Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68887 f50

19 Februar y 1892 Thank you a thousand times for your two most important letters, which are a corroboration from native and European sources of what we learn from men like Sir W. Wedderburn, who have gone behind the curtain in sympathy and experience and from all really cultivated natives. . . . You know, I dare say, that the commission for inquiring into Deccan indebtedness under the new act reports, among other things, that it was just as bad under native rule and that when we took over the

3 On 16 June 1883 at Victoria Hall, where 1100 children were assembled for a show, treats were given from the stage. Children rushed down from the balcony but the door opened only inwards. Close to two hundred children were crushed to death.

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native Deccan in 1818, I think, and put it under Mountstuart Elphinstone, he said just as much about the distressed districts as we do now. One would like to know more about this—not that it alters what we have to do.

‘‘Can We Educate Education,’’ 1879 Editor: Nightingale’s democratic inclinations come through strongly in three articles she published in 1879 in the Journal of the National Indian Association. In them she set out the work that had to be done if education was to become general, to include the children of ryots. The ravages of famine had been a grave impediment to the proper functioning of the school system (see p 655 below), and much remedial work needed to be carried out. In her review, she then assessed the progress of primary instr uction in Bengal, Bombay and Madras and addressed the question as to why access to higher education and to higher government positions seemed to be limited to Brahmins and members of other high castes, and why it was in fact limited to boys(see p 634 below). She deplored the lack of reliable information on school attendance and insisted that sanitary progress was dependent on instruction in hygiene and rules of good health, which was conveyed mainly in the schools. Nightingale’s emphasis on the importance of educating girls had a clear purpose: ‘‘If the money spent on teaching your men in India the dead languages were spent in educating girls to be women all over the country, India would be saved in health, life and matters domestic’’ (see p 664 below). To do so, however, cultural and religious barriers had to be overcome, while some had just been crossed and gradually: ‘‘It is not twenty years since Brahmin students used to purify themselves and bathe after receiving a lecture from an English professor’’ (see p 671 below). Nightingale appealed in the papers to India’s ancient civilization, ‘‘the mother of the West’s,’’ and to the Vedas to help overcome caste separations: ‘‘Do we not hear the Vedas say: there is no distinction of castes?’’ (see p 652 below).

634 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Three articles by Florence Nightingale: ‘‘Can We Educate Education in India to Educate Men?’’ (the third article adds to the title ‘‘and Women?’’), Journal of the National Indian Association 104 (August 1879):417-30; 105 (September 1879):478-91; and 106 (October 1879):527-58

Part 1

Primar y Education

‘‘Education alone can raise the Indian peasantry out of their poverty.’’ ‘‘The remedy is education.’’ ‘‘Education will remedy the fearful evils complained of, and we must wait till it does so.’’ Having repeatedly seen and received this good advice, both in print and manuscript, I set myself to ask a few questions, and among these how long we shall have to ‘‘wait,’’ that the advice should not become a bitter irony, and, taking primary education first, methought it might help us in the quest to ascertain: 1. What proportion of the boys in our government schools are the children of ryots, and what of other classes? And 2. What proportion do boy-ryots at school bear to the actual numbers of boy-ryots who ought to be at school? In this vast, vast India of 200 millions of people which we are trying to govern, Bengal only has answered these two questions. (It is needless to remind the reader that in Bengal the ryot holds his land from the zemindar, his landlord, under the Permanent—zemindari—Settlement. In Bombay and Madras the ryot holds his land directly from government for a given term at a stipulated money rent. This is called the ryotwari settlement.) 1. In the year ending 31 March 1878, the latest for which complete returns are ready, out of 638,510 pupils in all colleges and schools in Bengal 269,940 (or in round numbers 270,000) are returned as children of ‘‘cultivators, gardeners, small ryots.’’ This gives a proportion of about 42.3 percent. The great majority of these pupils will be found of course in primary schools. These schools have 446,522 out of the 638,510 scholars mentioned. From the annual reports on education for 1876-77 and 1877-78 will be seen how small is the number of girls at school, so that for practical purposes we must call the scholars all boys. 2. Now for the second question. How many of the boy-ryots who ought to be at school are at school? In 1872, the date of the last census, there were 17 millions of cultivators (men and boys) of all ages. Reckoning the number of boys of a school-going age (or between six and fifteen) as one fifth of that number, there should be 3,400,000

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sons of cultivating ryots at school. What is the number? Not 270,000 actually at school, that is, only about one boy-ryot out of twelve or thirteen who ought to be at school. To go farther. In the same year there were 33 millions of men of all ages in Bengal, giving 6,600,000 boys of a school-going age. There are 638,510 boys of all classes actually at school, that is, about one in ten of those who ought to be at school. Eastern Bengal is the farthest advanced and accordingly there about one in six of the boys who ought to be at school is there. We anxiously ask: what classes of the people take so little advantage of the government education? And the answer is, as might be expected, the poorest, the most moneylenderridden, the most zemindar-ridden, those in fact who want it the most to show them how to live. There are certainly whole classes of the people of Bengal who come little if at all to school. Putting aside those large numbers, which belong to impure or degraded castes, the people’s poverty in India is so extreme, notwithstanding their frugality and industry, that to most of them how to live and not to die is the only question. They have no time, no energy, for anything that does not directly bear on how to keep alive, and the labour of their children is too valuable to be spared to go to school. Yet how eager is the desire for education all over India. And all over India no races in the world need it so much, whether it be the ryot of Bengal, who without education is at the mercy of his zemindar, or the cultivator of the Deccan, who is at the mercy of his sowkars (moneylenders), backed by our civil courts, in which case he is yet farther at the mercy of his vakeels (pleaders) if he can neither read nor write, but can only put his mark, perhaps a hook to any bond he knows not what, or whether it be the cultivator of Madras presidency who is at the mercy of a dishonest man among the headmen, or of our petty native revenue officers immediately above the headmen, who levy a blackmail from the poor ryots said to be almost equal to the revenue paid to government. (We trust this estimate is exaggerated.) There are schools now all over Bengal in which a cultivator can—it is not said he always does—learn what puts it in his own power to learn his rights, and each one that goes to school becomes a source of light and power to those who do not. Even primary education may enable these minds which are locked up and the key lost to find it— the key to progress and to honest independence. They have wits enough and to spare.

636 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It is delightful to be able to give an instance in Bengal, and in what was one of the poorest and darkest parts of Bengal—a district in Bihar—where two years ago it was shown that the cultivator need not be so wholly at the mercy of his landlord as might be supposed. Landlords are, in accordance with the provisions of Sir George Campbell’s Road Cess Act, required to file in the magistrate’s court statements of their lands and of the rents paid to them by their ryots. It was of course of importance to the landlords for their own purposes that their receipts from rent should appear at as low a figure as possible, thus making a profit out of the road cess, for the sums paid as road cess by the zemindar to government and by the tenant to the zemindar, being in proportion to the sums realized by the zemindar as rent from the tenant, the entry of a smaller sum as rent than the actually realized sum has for consequence the payment by the zemindar of a smaller sum as road cess than the sum actually realized from the tenant as road cess.

In Mazzaffarpur one and then another of the ryots of the district came to learn that the record of rent filed by the landlord could be used as evidence against himself in any rent suit between landlord and ryot. Then for the next three months from every part of the district ryots came trooping into Mazzaffarpur, paid their inspection fee, got a certified copy of the rent at which they were said to hold their lands, and from that time refused to pay the zemindar one rupee more than that amount, which, it need hardly be added, was not in all cases identical with the rent actually paid by the ryot up to that time. (The rule that one half of the amount of the road cess is to be paid by the ryot and the other half by the zemindar is often infringed in practice. Sometimes powerful zemindars realize the full amount of the road cess from the ryots, saying in explanation that a separate officer has to be kept for collecting the road cess from the tenants, that unless the latter paid the officer, whence is he, the officer, to get his pay? and that if they are unwilling to pay the whole amount of the road cess, let them go to the court and there pay up their tax. In some cases the ryot pays three fourths and the landlord the remaining one fourth of the amount of the cess. Small landholders and petty zemindars and talukdars do as a rule pay half the amount of the cess, the ryots paying the other half. The ryots individually cannot cope with the big zemindars with any chance of success, but they can when combined, profiting by their newly acquired education, very easily resist unjust

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demands on the part of petty landholders, and a big combination can resist a big zemindar.) This was a phenomenon in Bihar; in Eastern Bengal it would have caused no surprise. Education then has a direct bearing on how to live. And now we are eager to know, having heard much of the rent leagues in Eastern Bengal: (1) are they the leagues of educated ryots? and (2) do they do more good or harm? and (3) what instruction do we give in our schools so as to enable the future ryot to know what he is putting his signature to? to know what legal arms he has to use (not rioting, nor murdering obnoxious zemindars, nor burning moneylenders’ bonds, although often forgeries)—legal arms both as regards leases and illegal cesses and any kinds of illegal exactions, and as regards documents which bind him hand and foot to the sowkar? What do our government schools teach the boy-ryots as to these things? It would seem really as if nothing but education could guarantee the cultivator against exactions by his own countrymen. The answer to these questions is, the rent leagues of Eastern Bengal are leagues of all ryots, whether educated or not. But, as we have seen, primar y education has made remarkable strides in that quarter, and ver y many of the ryots, compared with those of other districts, have been to school. Of course all need not have been educated in order to join in a league, for every popular movement has its leaders of higher capacity and education than the mass. It is a satisfaction to know that instead of the ryots being always at the mercy of their landlords, it is possible now for unjust landlords to be at the mercy of their ryots. If the zemindars venture nowadays to return their rents lower than the reality, they must in that case put themselves completely at the ryot’s mercy. In Bengal the revenue is permanently settled and they have, unfortunately, no fear of an increase of revenue. Where the revenue is not fixed, it seems almost impossible to get a true return of the rent. They frequently put it lower than the truth. Or, which is very common, if the rent is really low, they make up by heavy cesses in addition to the rent. No doubt where such are levied the whole road cess is often levied with those illegal cesses. The illegal cesses have become so universal as to have a sort of sanction of custom, and as long as the zemindars keep within the accustomed bounds the ryot is very apt to submit in a good-natured way. When these illegalities and excesses are carried to extremes, the ryots can only resist the zemindar by combining. A small combination may defeat a small zemindar. It requires a large combination to defeat

638 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India a big zemindar, but such large combinations do exist and not unfrequently do defeat the big zemindar in Bengal. For the first year or two after the imposition of the road cess the belief was that the zemindars were in a sort of dilemma. If they put the rents too high, that involved a certain and immediate payment of tax; if they put them too low, the ryots might take advantage of their statement. (The zemindars in the road cess returns were sometimes tempted to enter a larger sum as the rent paid by the ryot, while in fact the ryot paid a smaller sum as rent; e.g., where the rent actually paid by the ryot is 10 rupees, the zemindar might enter 15 rupees as the rent paid, thus making the entry a documentar y evidence, with the help of which he succeeded or hoped to succeed in raising the actual rent. But generally, as we have seen, the temptation was to enter a lower rent than that actually paid by the ryot. The device of nominally raising rents by an agreement with particular ryots, and then using the result as a ground of enhancing the others, is doubtless a frequent one. ‘‘Secret treaties’’ and ‘‘secret trusts’’ are common among a people often accused of an universal bad faith, yet they seem to keep illicit agreements among themselves marvelouslly well.) And so it was understood that in this difficulty the strange and unprecedented course of telling the truth was often followed. It is certainly the case that the ryots very largely took advantage of the returns to obtain authenticated copies of their rents, as put in by the zemindars. It was anticipated that such would be the result of the system, and it was arranged with that object. But here comes the most important question—important also and essentially as regards the ryot’s truest interests. What are the dangers of leagues, the danger of committing murder, of using illegal means? Do the rent unions in East Bengal tend to do more good or harm by putting legal or illegal weapons into the ryots’ hands to sustain their just rights? The ryots have risen of late in Eastern Bengal again, and a zemindar in one district (I could give all the names, but for obvious reasons I suppress both names and details), who was a real tyrant, was br utally murdered by his tenants, goaded to madness by his exactions. They were after wards plundered and their houses burnt down by his successor. In September last a Muhammadan zemindar, in another district in East Bengal, was murdered by his oppressed tenants. In West Bengal a zemindar met with a similar fate the year before last. If these combinations had been led by men of true manliness, of high principle and real education, what immense good might they

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not have done! But such crimes as these of course injure the cause of the ryots more than anything else. The ryots must fight for their rights by lawful means. In fact, you must educate education to do real good, to teach the ryot his best course, to teach him to be a man. Let us try to see what this is. If the leaders of the unions are, say, village accountants, who know the A B C of letters and arithmetic—this is not education—but who know not the alphabet of morality—the very A B C of a man—the great laws of honesty, truth, humanity, not plundering our fellows, not telling or loving a lie, respecting the lives and interests of our neighbours, doing good not only to our family or caste but to all, for all are our brethren—if they know not these things, how can they lead others, except to harm rather than [to] good? I have mentioned the village accountants because those ryots who can neither read nor write appear to depend on the village accountants for the protection of their interests and rights. What is needed now is that education should explain to the ryots, among other things, the real advantages of a village union, the nature of the documents they have to sign, also teach them the industrial arts. Boys may learn to read and write and to keep accounts and it may do them little or no good. It may, as often happens with the petty or village officials, only teach them to oppress their poorer neighbour, instead of helping him. It may, as constantly happens, teach them to regard any manual occupation, such as agriculture or manufacture, as degrading. As one of India’s own people has said: ‘‘It is a great misfortune in India that labour is not reckoned honourable. He is regarded as the most respectable who does nothing.’’ To this question of industrial and moral education pray let me return in another number. I will now only add two or three extracts out of the report on public instr uction in Bengal of 1877-78 as some sort of guide to the quality of education given. In one division, Orissa: The introduction of the system of payment by results has led to a remarkable increase in the number of aided or registered schools. . . . The expansion of primary education has reached its utmost limits as far as mere number goes, but the results have been achieved by lowering the standard of instruction to a considerable degree, namely, to the level of the indigenous pathsalas (schools) of the province.

And the magistrate reports:

640 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The quality of instruction hitherto imparted in the indigenous schools of this district is remarkable for its badness. Children are only taught to scratch letters on palm leaf, to read letters so scratched and to practise a method of composition almost incredibly crude in its conception and awkward and troublesome in its use. A boy thus instructed cannot read a printed paper or even a manuscript; he cannot write out a pottah (deed of lease) or kabuliyat (written agreement), and he fails to answer the simplest question in mensuration. Primary schools therefore, so numerous in this district, do not even supply a standard of instr uction sufficient for the ver y moderate requirements of the peasant’s daily life.

The joint inspector, himself a native of the division, entirely confirms these remarks and adds that ‘‘the people of this province are just as keen’’ as those of the rest of Bengal ‘‘in their appreciation of elementar y learning.’’ ‘‘The want of books of every class, a subject which has now been taken in hand,’’ is strongly spoken of. In another division, Chota Nagpur, the experienced deputy inspector remarks: In most places the village pathsalas are old institutions, only subsidized by government, or brought under inspection with the view of improving their status gradually and raising them to a certain standard, while more than 80 percent of our aided primary schools in this district are new institutions, which would never have existed but for the help of the government. I do not mean that there were no indigenous schools before the introduction of the primary school system. Maktabs and pathsalas there were, and in pretty good numbers too, which the children of the rich and well-to-do men generally attended. The poor cultivator however had neither the means nor the ambition to claim any share in them. I can state, from my experience of eleven years in this province, that, before the introduction of Sir George Campbell’s scheme, one might go from village to village without meeting a man or boy who could read him a letter in Hindi. But what changes have been wrought in the short period of five years! Wherever you go now, the first thing that attracts your notice is the rural pathsala, and there is scarcely a village of average population in which you have not the institution, and in which you may not come across at least five or six lads who are able to read and write.

Only ‘‘five or six?’’ ‘‘But for the care and expense of government these would never have seen a book or worked a sum.’’

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But we are eager to know what is the state of education in the districts of Eastern Bengal, where rent leagues have ruled. After giving particulars of the Dacca division the report says of one of its districts, Dacca, whose population is 1,853,000, primary grant 10,000 rupees: All this shows how little encouragement is needed to bring schools into existence in a district like Dacca, and how fine a field is thus presented for the extension of primary education on a liberal basis. . . . The efforts of the local officers seem to have been directed to weeding out incompetent gurus (teacher or spiritual guide), that is, depriving of stipends those who fall short of a somewhat high standard. . . . Under the present system the aided schools in this district are probably surpassed by none. What seems now to be most needed is some scheme for fostering and liberalizing the indigenous schools of the country, between which and the aided schools a gulf is fixed4 that grows wider year by year.’’ Steps are taken to make it ‘‘an easy matter to introduce a system of payment by results in strict accordance with the merits of the pathsalas and the proficiency of the pupils, the goal to which by whatever road all our efforts should tend.

In another district—Firozpur—of this thickly peopled division: ‘‘Constant exertions are made to lay upon the villagers the chief responsibility for the support of the pathsalas,’’ without which they cannot really succeed. In another district—Mymensingh, population 2,350,000, primary grant 11,000 rupees—it is stated: ‘‘There is more vitality in these pathsalas than is often supposed, or at any rate there are ver y active causes at work in bringing them into being.’’ In another well-known district—Tipperah: ‘‘The classification of pathsalas and their teachers has been vigorously carried on, with the result of weeding out the least competent gurus, and it is now said that two thirds of the teachers are competent.’’ In the famous Pubna district, in another division—Rajshahye: ‘‘Pubna was one of the districts in which the old system of improved pathsalas was most largely introduced,’’ it is said; ‘‘its effects are conspicuous at the present time and distinguish Pubna among all the districts of the division.’’ Durhunga, in the Patna division, population 2,196,000, primary grant 10,000 rupees, gives a good account of itself: ‘‘Mr MacDonnell, the magistrate, has the primary schools well in

4 A paraphrase of Luke 16:26.

642 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India hand.’’ ‘‘The maktabs [schools] of Durhunga have long been remarkable for their enlightenment and for the great progress they have made in subjects of liberal instruction.’’ In the same division we come to our Muzaffarpur, which has shown such a resurrection of vigour out of feebleness, population 2,188,000, primar y grant 11,000 rupees: ‘‘The large increase of pupils in aided schools, confirming a largely increased return of private income, may be regarded as a very healthy sign.’’ Such are some few extracts from the Bengal report, a report which, though necessarily written for the government rather than for us, should be generally read for the lessons it teaches. In a succeeding number of the Journal we shall continue the quest how far we are educating education to teach the ryot his real interests. We shall have then to speak about primary education in Madras and Bombay as we have in this number about that in Bengal, and to continue the subject as to all three—Bengal, Madras and Bombay—chiefly and always with a view to asking what is the effect of education on the moral and material condition of the people. At this moment, thoughts must crowd into every mind in earnest about education—thoughts of the great proconsul, the soldier-statesman of supernatural strength for the right, who is gone into the presence of the Almighty Father of all races, whom he served so well—Lord Lawrence—how he educated the Punjab in the very highest sense— educated them into men, to be trusted to the last drop of their blood—how he pressed forward the cause of primary education in Bengal—and his last hours of work, only three days before his death, were given to an institute designed for Indians. In our thronging thoughts of the hand which swayed alike the ‘‘rod of empire’’ in India, and the small details of the London School Board, we exclaim, in the dean of Westminster’s words [Arthur P. Stanley]: ‘‘Where shall we look in the times that are coming for a disinterested love and an abounding knowledge of India like to his? Where shall we find that resolute mind and countenance which seemed to cr y to us, This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I?5

5 Sir Walter Scott, ‘‘The Lady of the Lake.’’

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P.S. In writing about Dacca and the zemindars it is impossible to take no notice of the news arriving by the last mails of the disastrous scarcity prevailing in Eastern Bengal. The collector of Dacca has made an appeal to the zemindars by name. He refers to the present high price of food and to the deplorable condition of ryots of the poorer classes, some of whom are said to live on one meal a day, while others are said to live on kumra, mangoes and fr uits and vegetables, for want of rice, which they cannot procure. 2. At this juncture it is the duty of every zemindar to come forward to assist his ryots and save them from falling victims to starvation and death, thereby showing his generous nature and public spirit. 3. . . . The mahajan (moneylender) having failed them, it is clearly your duty to fill his place as regards the ryots.

The Hindu Patriot of 16 June says that several zemindars have made noble exertions in answer to this call. ‘‘The public-spirited Kundu family, of Bhagucool, have given a prompt and generous response to the appeal of the collector. We are informed that they have opened relief houses.’’ . . . ‘‘We believe other public-spirited zemindars are also coming forward liberally.’’ The Brahmo Public Opinion of 19 June says that: The Kundu family have already opened three centres of operations, where they are selling rice below the market rate and are also freely distributing it among those who cannot pay for it. . . . In Manickgunge, Babu Brajender Kumar Ray is doing the same good work. He has remitted the rents due to him by his ryots and is helping them with rice and money to save their lives. . . . We hope their example will be followed by other zemindars and merchants, and that the zemindars of East Bengal will combine and meet the famine in a way to make their names gratefully remembered.

A private letter from a native of Manickgunge says: Scarcity is threatened here. Dacoities and theft cases are of frequent occurrence. Men and women are half starved, and there are some ver y pitiable instances of suicide committed by females on account of failing to feed their children properly. But relief works to some extent have been opened here—to an extent too inadequate however for the demand.

The Dacca people’s association have recently appointed a sub-committee to ascertain and report the extent of suffering prevalent.

644 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The Brahmo Public Opinion says that East Bengal is on the eve of a terrible famine. But the other Eastern Bengal districts are not suffering so much as Dacca. The Hindu Patriot says that ‘‘failure of rains’’ when rains were most wanted, viz., from March to May, ‘‘succeeded by sudden floods’’ towards the latter part of May and in June, ‘‘has caused the destruction of the harvests throughout Dacca, Backergunge, Commilla and Mymensingh.’’ . . . Our commissioner, Mr Pellew, in his last tour through the Manickgunge subdivision, while returning from Goalundo, found about 2000 people crying for want of food. He returned to headquarters and directed the magistrate to proceed in person to the scenes of distress. He has authorized him to open works for the distressed people in the way of metalling the road between Goalundo and Manickgunge and to distribute food for the relief of the actual sufferers.

I could not coolly write about the schools without noticing the scarcity. But there is nothing desperate here. The public spirit of the zemindars, the inquiries, the eagerness to help make one hope that good is being brought out of evil. In the language again of the funeral sermon on the great John Lawrence, whose life was spent till almost his last hour in working for the people of India, whose very name means enthusiasm for education—the ‘‘earnest expectation’’ waits ‘‘for the manifestation of the sons of God’’6—that is, for great and good men to succour us. And it seems as if it might yet be satisfied.

Part 2 Though this second part was to have told the progress of primary instruction in Madras and Bombay presidencies, yet the good news which has just come in from Bengal for the year ending 31 March 1879 leads us to give these new figures first. The number of schools aided from the ‘‘primar y grant’’ in Bengal, and therefore coming to a greater or less extent under the influence of the government system, has increased in the past year from 17,395 to 24,354 and the number of pupils in them from 406,000 to 490,000. What is the average size of these schools? It contrasts curiously with that of English schools. Yet Bengal is one of the most densely popu-

6 An allusion to Rom 8:19.

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lated countries in the world. The new schools have only about twelve pupils each, while on an average the old schools have nearly twentyfour pupils. A small school is by no means however necessarily a bad one, and if the schoolmaster have real influence for good that influence may tell directly upon a few more than upon many. (We learn nothing about any system of monitors, but when we come to Madras we shall give an old and wonderful experiment of the monitorial system which began there.) These are not only schools of primary instr uction; still less are they all the schools that the department is concerned with. The total number of schools, aided and unaided (exclusive of colleges), which have been returned for the year has advanced from 26,191, with 639,000 pupils in 1877-78, to 33,248, with 725,000 pupils in 1878-79. The numbers of girls at school have also increased. All these ‘‘primar y grant’’ schools have sprung from the indigenous pathsalas of the country. The great advance which they mark from year to year shows both how young the system is and what a surprising power of growth it has. For a school to come on government returns is not for it to begin to exist, or not often or necessarily so; rather it means that it begins to receive attention of a kind that it has not had before, and a new stimulus to progress and a new (and hitherto quite unattainable) standard. Dating from 1872, when Sir George Campbell first effectively took indigenous schools in hand, the progress has been marvellous. The indigenous schools of the country have their roots in the people’s hearts and habits. Rashly to improve them would be (as has often been said) to ‘‘improve them off the face of the earth.’’ The education department takes them up, adds the stimulus of rewards to teachers and pupils, and tries carefully to improve and control them, looking to the future for the results rather than to the present. Will not the educated native gentlemen help? Not only in seeking to increase the number of schools. This they do already. It may indeed be said generally that the enormous growth of the grant-in-aid system of education is due to the efforts of educated persons in spreading education. Wherever the ‘‘babu’’ [Indian clerk who can write in English] goes and settles he collects subscriptions, starts a school and applies for a government grant. In Bengal last year, out of a total expenditure on aided schools of £132,700, the people contributed £91,600 and government £41,100. The government contribution is practically fixed, but that of the people increases year by year.

646 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India How satisfactory this is. But not in this alone have native gentlemen to help, but they have to help in educating men, in educating themselves. We cannot know what has been stated in the last number without praying for the growth of education among zemindars no less than among ryots. In some parts of Bengal when a ryot enters upon occupation, a ‘‘pottah’’ (or lease) and a ‘‘kabuliyat’’ (or acceptance by the ryot of the lease on the terms stated) are regularly interchanged between zemindar and ryot; in this case the ryot not only gives but gets documentary evidence. In less advanced parts, like Bihar, the practice of giving and receiving agreements is only beginning. In such cases the custom has been to allow evidence from the zemindar’s books of the rent paid for three years to be good as against the ryot. And we have seen how even in Bihar the ryot can and does get certified copies of the rent at which he is held to stand, thus ensuring himself against any unjust enhancement. We know however that it is much oftener ‘‘customar y’’ oppression—oppression to which the ryot and his predecessors have been subjected from time immemorial, or oppression which his customary fear of the zemindar’s power prevents him from resisting—than oppression under legal process which the ryot suffers from. What a glorious career for zemindars to educate zemindars into men! 2. By education we can teach literature; we cannot teach truth and principle, high and honourable feeling and objects. That must come by intercourse with the true, with the high and honourable, either in books or in life, by a strong conviction developing itself among the ‘‘aristocracy,’’ whether in riches—aristocrats not plutocrats—whether in office—aristocrats again, not bureaucrats—whether in intellect or in power and in goodness—the conviction that all this is given them for their brethren, brethren not only of ‘‘caste,’’ but all and especially their poorer brethren. There is no distinctly ‘‘moral’’ teaching in the Bengal colleges, such for example as consists in exhorting those who are to be subordinate judges or magistrates that it is wrong to devour their poorer countr ymen or to take bribes. The education is liberal and general: it has its moral side in the association of the students with English teachers whom they respect, and in the study of English history and English literature. And is not this much more efficacious than dissertations on morality and moral systems? Is it not the result of some experience that the m.a.s of our colleges, those from whom deputy magistrates and subordinate judges are chosen, resemble the best Englishmen in

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all the manly virtues much more closely than do their less educated brethren? Let the best Englishmen be imitated—not the worst—let them be imitated in the good they have and not in that they have not. It is not enough to read Locke and Stuart Mill, excellent as such reading is. We must carry it out in life through life. As to the moral effect of higher education, Sir Richard Temple, the present governor of Bombay, who has had experience of nearly every province in India, lately gave most emphatic testimony to the good effect the universities had had in raising the standard of official integrity throughout India. Petty native officials in Bombay presidency learn reading, writing and arithmetic in the government schools, with perhaps a few of the most useful sections of some of the laws. These things are needful to them in their various positions as village patels (headmen), village accountants, peons, etc. (When we come to treat of Bombay, we shall see that many of the village headmen cannot read or write.) But as to their education in any way teaching them to protect instead of defraud their countrymen, we fear little or nothing can be said. A high standard of religion and of truth, intercourse with the High and Holy alone will really do that. Still from what has been seen it may be hoped that some of the highly educated of the upper classes in our Bombay government schools have learnt some higher morality. But in some of the collectorates is this tone [true] of more than a few? Many seem only the worse for their teaching. One hears so much in India—not indeed peculiar to India—of the corruption, the exacting of petty bribes, by the petty native officials from the people, the wretched cultivators, who are in their power, that one cannot but ask, does our education educate them out of this into men? What a splendid race to run for a band of young native gentlemen in India, not only to be quite inaccessible to every kind of corruption themselves (that, no doubt, they are already), but to set their faces like a rock, unwavering, like the bayonets of the British grenadiers at Waterloo, systematically against every kind of corruption, small or great, and probably it is in the universal taking of small bribes by the petty native officials that is the worst mischief—to use every means in their power, not only passively but actively, to establish a native public opinion against bribery—a manly horror of it—to raise the small official out of the habit of ‘‘palm grease’’—grease, dirty grease indeed— of taking ‘‘douceurs’’ [bribes] from the poor.

648 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India What a glorious object! That is the true ‘‘competition’’ race. It is impossible for British officials in India, incorruptible themselves, to check or even to know the bribe-taking in one presidency of the peons from the poor, in another, of the small public works irrigation overseers; in all, it is to be feared, of corruption in one form or another. And if they do find it out in one case, the man denounced and punished is sure to ruin the complainant. But is it impossible for native gentlemen to speak and work against cor ruption? And may God speed them! That they have already turned their attention to this is manifest from articles in native papers. The Banga Bandhu of 24 April 1874 has in an article called ‘‘What We Want from Sir Richard Temple,’’ quoted in this very Journal: ‘‘6. Attention should be paid to good moral character in officers: bribery should be checked.’’ But this is what India ‘‘wants,’’ not ‘‘from Sir Richard Temple.’’ She ‘‘wants’’ it from herself. 3. A commission has been appointed by the viceroy to revise the entire Rent Law of Bengal. The men selected for the commission are far from hostile to the ryot. It is to be hoped that they will examine the ryots and ascertain what their actual condition is. Some means must be devised for dealing with this land question, compared with which all others put together sink into insignificance. At the same time, it is to be feared that in any readjustment the men of money who command the lawyers and the newspapers and the native members of council will certainly not lose, and may not improbably gain. The first thing needful7 is that there should be lawyers, noble native gentlemen, men who have it in them like Daniel O’Connell 8—honest like Daniel O’Connell—who, ‘‘despising the loss’’9 and all worldly advantage, should be generously, as God is generous, at the service of the ryot interest, the weaker interest. The second thing: that there should be newspapers, newspapers of weight, fearlessly, but with the utmost attention to accuracy of facts, to advocate the ryots’ cause. And thirdly, we may hope that the day will come when the native members of council will not be only in the interest of the zemindar.

7 A paraphrase of Luke 10:42. 8 Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), Catholic barrister, leader of the Irish independence movement. 9 A paraphrase of Heb 12:2.

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But such things must be steadily, perseveringly, doggedly carried out and made, not the interest of a leisure hour, of two or three years, but the interest of a life. Clarkson who, with Wilber force, Zachary Macaulay, the father of the great historian, and others, among whom was my grandfather, William Smith, member of Parliament for Norwich,10 carried the abolition of the slave trade, began thus: at Cambridge University, when a mere lad, he was set as an essay for a prize, ‘‘the slave trade.’’ He put together his materials and promised himself a boy’s pleasure (this he told himself) in writing an effective essay that should bring him honour on so dramatic a subject. But as he continued the subject it so mastered him, so held him in its grip, that all his heart and soul became possessed with it. He forgot his essay, he forgot honours, he became the slave trade to be abolished: no writer, but a slave to writing to save the slaves, and henceforward to the close of his long life he worked for that and that alone; he lived for God and the slave. And he lived to see this most momentous of all modern social revolutions accomplished. Such must be the defender of the ryot: he must not take up the cause because he has small practice and wishes to bring himself into notice, to be a tribune of the people; he must not give it up because he has got into practice, because he has become rich. Such has been the end of many an able young man, not only in India. The cause must become himself: it must be his life’s work; it must end only with his life. And who can tell if such a career does end with life? It may be harder for the camel to go through a needle’s eye than to find a rich man who will be on the side of the ryot as a native member of council:11 such may have been looked for and in vain, or a lawyer in practice who will be even impartial towards the ryot, however well he may have begun, or a judge who will live and persevere. Alas! civilization may bring with it the vices of civilization: a man may cease to believe in his own religion without learning to believe in anything better. A Brahmin may cease to have a Brahmin’s virtues, without learning to practise the manly virtues of the West. And perhaps in a few years he falls away. But such is not the stuff of which reformers are made.

10 Leaders of the movement to abolish the slave trade: Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846); William Wilberforce (1759-1833); Zachary Macaulay (1768-1823); and Nightingale’s grandfather, William Smith (1756-1835). 11 An allusion to Luke 18:25.

650 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In the West such things have been known as young men patiently working their way up to riches, or at least to honours and influence, not for their own sakes but for the sake of their poorer fellows, of the people’s cause, till at last they were elected to representative political life, to rise to high official post, or even to the Cabinet, there to carry on their high and holy objects. Were Indian native gentlemen to fit themselves for representation, representation would as certainly become theirs as time would run its course. But what native representation there has been hitherto has certainly not been on the side of the people. Disinterested political, not party principle—how great, how divine that quality is. ‘‘It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.’’12 Might not such be the way that, were Christ or a Buddha to come again in our days, he would perhaps act to help and to save his people? 4. What tendency is there for Brahmins and the higher castes to monopolize education and subsequent government employment resulting from it? What proportion of the agricultural classes compete with the Brahmins and the higher castes for the university examinations? The question whether Brahmins and other higher castes monopolize government education and the employment resulting therefrom touches on a different set of questions. Caste means nothing in relation to government schools: all boys are admitted on equal terms who can pay the fees. Numbers of cultivating ryots in Bengal are of course Brahmins and Rajputs, while many men of wealth and high social consideration are of ver y low caste. Still the vast majority of pupils in our colleges are Brahmins and kayasths [literate persons], the explanation being that it is traditional with these classes to seek a literary career, and that since they form the backbone of the middle classes in Bengal they are generally able to pay for their education. The distinguished ones rise to judgeships. Do they persevere on a great career? May it unhappily be that some fall into evil ways? God forbid that we, who belong to a nation disgraced, alas! by the drunkenness of its lower classes, should cast the first stone.13 But copy us not in our vices but in our virtues. In Bombay the tendency of Brahmins and similar castes to monopolize higher education and the higher government posts has often been noticed. The tendency is natural enough, as the Brahmins are the most intellectual caste, and their original occupation as priests,

12 Portia in Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, scene 1. 13 A paraphrase of John 8:7.

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etc., becomes year by year less remunerative. The lower castes, too, find it difficult to qualify for employment. It is not that the government is averse to employing them. There are ver y few English officers who do not try to encourage the lower castes, e.g., if in Bombay a Brahmin and Maratha compete for an appointment, the Maratha (ceteris paribus) [all things being equal] is pretty sure to be selected. But the Brahmins and higher castes naturally monopolize most of the education: firstly, because they can best pay for it; secondly, because they see its benefit better; thirdly, because it benefits them at once in a pecuniar y point of view more than the agriculturist, as they gain their living in government service and such ways. If however the agriculturist knew his own interests, none should be more anxious to learn than he, as the ability simply to read and do plain arithmetic would save him from two thirds of the impositions of his moneylender. May we appeal to the higher castes? What truer ‘‘high’’-ness can there be than for the higher castes to raise the lower? We return for a moment to primary education. The Brahmins are the schoolmasters, but sometimes, often, the schoolmasters are not above their scholars in moral courage and goodness—in all that constitutes in the higher sense a man. The government schools are open to all castes, but it is said that if the children of lower castes were to come all the other children would leave. In a Bombay collectorate a Mhar father brought to the collector, in much distress, his little son to say that he had begun his education and was getting on well, but that he, the father, having had to change his abode, the master of the government school in the new village where he had settled refused to admit his son because he was a Mhar. The collector took up the case and got the boy admitted. His exclusion was quite illegal, and had the collector pressed the matter and found the charge established, doubtless he could have had the master punished. But as nearly every master is a Brahmin, it may easily be supposed what obstacles they throw in the way of the sons of low castes coming to these schools. Practically it is to be feared that they are still almost excluded. Nor can we force the change too much before the country is ready for it. In one great town of the Bombay presidency many Mhars are seeking education, and the American missionaries are doing much to meet the want. If low castes were to attend in government schools it is tr ue that all the high castes would in many cases leave, but it would

652 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India only be for a few weeks, and then all would come back again, or nearly all, and everything go on as before. The thing has been tried more than once in private schools in India. Will not a Brahmin soon ignore his caste prejudice if he sees his worldly prospects would suffer by it, or if he has to pay for it? Then why, O fellow subjects of the same sovereign, and O brothers and sisters, children of the same supreme and perfect Father above, should not that be done out of brotherly love and pity and charity which is done out of greed and love of money? We appeal to you all not to let caste interfere with your duty to all your fellow creatures. Reclaim, but do not cast out. Can no way be found to this in India’s ancient civilization, the mother of the West’s? Do we not hear the Vedas say: there is no distinction of castes? But what do I say, we appeal? God appeals to you all and to us too. We are ver y sure that the soul of a single Indian is of more value to the Supreme than all the castes and all the commissions and all the churches and all the creeds in the whole world. In India Hindus and Muhammadans alike, to our shame, support all their poor, except in times of famine, and without a Poor Law. We spend many millions ever y year, bad and good, in poor rates. Hindus and Muhammadans alike support their sick and their old and their infirm, and much better than we could do it for them. That shows how strongly God has implanted the feeling of pity and charity in their breasts. And will you shut out the child from education because he is not of the same caste as your own? The low castes or outcastes seldom attend a government school, but a few do, and in exceptional cases, as of bheels, coolies (i.e., kolees), etc., there are at least in one or two of the Bombay collectorates special government schools for them. Missionaries also do a good deal for them, where there are missionaries. It is not meant that no children should be excluded. In Bengal, where caste is becoming less and less day by day, the question of admitting children of dancing girls (an altogether immoral class) into general schools has lately been opened and discussed. The general opinion was that there was no objection to the admission of sons of a dancing girl, but that if the daughters (whom no one would marry and who are necessarily brought up to the same profession and prepared for it by very early initiation into vice) were admitted, respectable people would withdraw their own daughters. This is not caste prejudice: it is rather the reverse—it is proper parental care.

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The question of admission to ordinar y schools of children of dancing girls and of those who make vice a profession is now practically settled. (Must we not say a ‘‘profession’’ and not a ‘‘religion’’? Is more than a small proportion of the whole number attached to temples?) As regards low-caste, harmless girls, there is often the same reluctance which an English gentleman would feel at letting his daughter associate with a low-bred girl at school or elsewhere, perhaps less in India than in England, all things considered. But is there no way to educate these? And may not this tremendous power of caste, if it move to wrong, also ‘‘move all together’’ to right at some day, not far distant? 5. Everyone in India wishes to be educated. But he does not wish to go back to his own life and improve that life by his education. He wishes to be educated that he may become a government clerk. Now, if there were nothing else against it, it is impossible that everybody can be a government clerk. And what a narrow life it is, though not necessarily so! Some of your reformers have been government clerks. One of your own people has said: ‘‘One national prejudice is the dislike of industrial work, and indeed of any occupation which has not been consecrated by having descended from their forefathers.’’ This is the more to be wondered at and deplored because there are perhaps no races on the face of this globe more industrious and frugal, or more apt for the industrial and manufacturing arts, than some of the races of India, though it is true that a big carnivorous English navvy will do as much work in a day as a vegetarian Hindu in a week. This Journal advocates the principle that all primary schools for the people should embrace industrial work and training as well as that intellectual teaching which leads, as we have seen, but too many to seek to leave, not to improve, their own lives. (I have quoted one of your progressive social reformers, Babu Sasipada Banerjee,14 for this view and shall venture to quote him again in another number.) I had intended in this part to go into the facts of primary education in Bombay and Madras presidencies, but space compels me to delay to the next number. In this appeal to the higher castes of Bengal to educate themselves into men, as also to follow that grand reforming career which lies

14 Possibly Sevabrata Sasipada Banerjee (1840-1924), founder of schools aimed at the education of women, especially widows and child widows, or Surendranath Banerjea (1848-1925), founder of the Indian Association in Calcutta and convenor of the first Indian National Conference in Bengal, 1883.

654 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India before them of raising the lower castes by education to be men, we pray them not by our virtues, for none are more sensible of our own shortcomings, but by the common feeling which our common Father in heaven has planted within us.

Part 3 Our two questions—what proportion of the boys in our government schools are the children of ryots, and what of the other classes? and what proportion do the children of ryots at school bear to the actual numbers of the children of that class who ought to be at school?—cannot be accurately answered from existing information either from the Bombay or the Madras presidency at present, but more detailed returns will probably be made at no distant time. (It will not be overlooked that in Bombay and Madras presidencies there is no division of classes into zemindars (landlords) and ryots (cultivators), but the ryots or cultivators hold their land from government direct.) In Bombay presidency 248,140 children were attending school on 31 March 1878. Of these 207,281 were Hindus, of these 40,085 were returned as Kunbis (cultivators). ‘‘Ryots’’ may be of any caste or race, and of course many who belong to the Hindu castes called Kunbis do not cultivate at all. There were 20,111 artisans, 6786 labourers, 1649 low castes and 6718 unclassed. There were also 60,851 Brahmins, the largest proportion of all, 6344 Rajputs (so-called), 2830 Parbhus (best known as writers and clerks), 11,714 Lingayats [bearers of lingam, stylized phallus], 13,072 Jains,15 29,003 traders, 5886 shopkeepers and 2232 Amils [collectors]. Taking the government village schools separately and including Muhammadans, etc., with Hindus, the children of people holding land were for the lower vernacular schools 99,405 to a total of 157,312, and for the higher vernacular schools 2478 to a total of 5794. These figures give the landholders 42 percent for the higher and 63 percent for the lower vernacular schools. The question however rests on an entirely different basis from what it does in Bengal, owing to the ryots being themselves the landholders. The far more important question as to the number of children who ought to be at school cannot be correctly ascertained at present,

15 Jainism, an ancient, ascetic, religion with elements of Hinduism and Buddhism.

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though an attempt will be made further on to make a guess at an answer. In Madras presidency there are no statistics showing how many of the cultivators can read and write, but according to the census of 1871 only 9.3 percent of the whole male population, omitting Madras, could read and write. II. The famine told heavily against the Bombay government schools, and still more so against the indigenous schools. For these last—which are opened one day and closed another—there are no trustworthy returns. The loss for government schools was 177 schools, with nearly 16,000 children. The fathers could not pay the cess and so the schools were closed. To show how severe the famine pressure was in some of the Deccan districts, sixty-seven schools with 6334 children were closed in the central and northeastern divisions alone. The temporary closing of government schools in the famine was both because the people ran away and because the schools are mainly supported by the ryot class, from what are called local funds (school cess), and these could not always be levied during the famine. It would appear as if there were little hope of most of the closed schools being reopened. In Madras presidency the report for 1877-78 shows a decrease of nearly 1000 schools with upwards of 32,000 scholars, mainly owing to the famine. III. In the most elementary affairs of a good government a first necessity seems to be that officials, even the smallest, should be able to read and write. But the difficulty of finding even patels (village headmen) in India who can read and write stares us in the face: in registration, in obtaining the simplest village return, above all in making the patel do his life and death duty as sanitary head of his village. And in the now so urgent imperial question of the relations between moneylender and cultivators it need not be said what the fatal effect is of this, that not one tenth of the ryots are able to read and write. ‘‘To try and get the people themselves to assist us’’ in what we would fain do for their good is of course the cornerstone of the whole str ucture we would raise. But ‘‘it will be a very long time before we can hope for this assistance from the natives themselves, as the want of even elementary education among the people is one of our chief stumbling-blocks. In many villages the patels can neither read nor write.’’ (Read for a vast amount of information the Thir teenth Annual Repor t of the Sanitary Commissioner for the Government of Bombay, 1877.) 1. The Bombay sanitary commissioner tells us of the enormous difficulties of ensuring anything like a ‘‘correct registration.’’ ‘‘At present

656 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India a birth or death, even if reported to the patel, cannot be registered until the kulkarni (village accountant) has come, for I have little faith in the patel being able to get anyone to write down the information for him but the kulkarni whose duty it is. The result in a large village can be easily imagined.’’ Ever ything that happens is referred to the great festivals of the year. ‘‘They can always remember the Holi or Dussera or Dewali, but cannot recollect whether an event took place a month or six weeks ago.’’ They have scarcely any idea of age. One can fancy what the village returns are, and unhappily what the opportunities of foul dealing, which result from its being so easy to dispose of a dead body, owing to carelessness in registering deaths and to habits of trusting to memory in even (native) officials, and then one can understand how remembering they may forget to remember at convenient times when the English sahib comes. The sanitary commissioner, after recommending that ‘‘all funeral places should be registered in the name of the panchayat of each community, who should pay for the maintenance of a sepoy, . . . who should not allow a body to be disposed of until the requisite particulars regarding the death had been obtained,’’ admits the difficulty of ‘‘being able to find a sepoy who could write,’’ but hopes that even then there would be much more chance of his remembering the number of bodies than if the patel had to trust to his memory. Then comes in the question that meets one at every turn, whether each community might not be ‘‘too poor to pay for the maintenance of a separate sepoy.’’ In the wild tribes ‘‘any improvement is for the present out of the question.’’ The sanitary commissioner recurs again with a sort of desperate hope to the time ‘‘when the people may have received some sort of elementar y education.’’ And even then we are still as far off as ever from any accurate return of the causes of deaths. ‘‘But this must be so until the day in the far distant future when each village has its own medical registrar.’’ In England, where the census returns and the returns of births, deaths and causes of deaths are all, thanks mainly to Dr Farr, of the General Register Office, organized beyond almost the possibility of error, we can scarcely conceive the difficulties in India, and above all the hopelessness of making millions of people with hardly the simplest notion of education give information essential for their own benefit. All attempts at improvement must begin in municipalities. (There is no compulsory registration act for municipalities and towns in Bom-

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bay as in Bengal.) The returns from Sind are stigmatized by the authorities themselves as ‘‘manifestly absurd,’’ but in other parts we have this comfort that ‘‘the ratio of error is about equal,’’ ‘‘so that an opinion as to the relative number of deaths in districts can be formed,’’ but the relative number only. No reliance can be placed on the population returns in Bombay presidency. The people were so persuaded that they were to be enumerated in order to be taxed that they would not give information. But, were education in any true sense to be spread, they would see for themselves that not taxation but their own benefit is the object of the census, and they would help the government to help them by speaking the truth. In 1876 the supposed population of Bombay registration districts was 16,887,728. In 1878 children attending school were, as we have seen, 248,140. Everyone can make some kind of estimate from this how many go to school of those who ought to go to school. These calculations are, however, as we have seen, of the roughest nature. 2. One of the most really important, however, of all the functions which could be conferred on the patel, if he had an ordinar y amount of education, is what was contemplated by the Bombay Village Police Act of 1869, viz., that he should have authority given him by law to compel the people to clean the village, to enforce ventilation, to conser ve the drinking water, in other words to take care of their own earth, air and water. They would have no cholera and little fever then. It is difficult to speak with moderation, it is impossible to speak with too much earnestness on this vital point, which regularly consumes the lives of almost as many millions as are periodically lost by famine. There is not a shadow of doubt that the great mortality in towns and villages is produced by the people themselves with their unhealthy habits. (a) It is no exaggeration to say that the subsoil round every village home in India is saturated with human filth or decomposing organic matter. We hear a great deal about cholera being so ‘‘mysterious,’’ so ‘‘erratic.’’ The ‘‘myster y’’ of cholera, the ‘‘myster y’’ of fever is in the filth-sodden soil. The people themselves feel the misery of having no channels to remove sullage away clear from every habitation. I could tell of towns where on the setting in of the rains streets are converted into sewers, which discharge into the river above where the drinking water supply of the town is pumped. And the people not only suffer in health from leaving the surroundings of their houses and villages in a dirty state, but they so lose

658 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India a great deal that the Japanese or Chinese would use. And as owing to the wasteful destruction of forests that has taken place without replanting, the dung of cattle is used for fuel, agriculture in India loses largely, and the people do not understand bone and chemical manures. But this would lead us too far. There is no money whatever forthcoming for the execution of sanitar y works in villages. Sanitary measures are being slowly introduced into municipal towns, but in villages nothing whatever is done. But teach the people to help themselves, educate them into men, and the thing is done in a great measure. (b) ‘‘My house is like a box,’’ says the Bombay villager with pride. It is, indeed, Pandora’s box with all sorts of evils in it, and no hope at the bottom except from having these things all reversed. Windows are stoutly discountenanced for fear of robbers. So is a hole in the roof to let out the smoke, in spite of sore eyes. The door is tight shut at night. They sleep on the floor huddled together, with a sheet tucked in over head and feet, so as to bottle up all their own foul breath and foul skin emanations for them to breathe over and over again. A better or more certain source of disease can scarcely be devised. Hermetically sealed in with their own exhalations, they breathe death. Yet simple inlets and outlets are urged, and might be easily provided for the entrance of fresh air, if they did but learn to know the need of it. (While I write, I have received a copy of the rules for village conservancy, etc., which are being promulgated by the Bombay government for adoption in the districts.) (c) All slops are thrown onto the heap of rubbish in a corner of the courtyard, and this sometimes mounts half way up the outside wall, on the top of which are cow dung cakes drying in the sun. Outside is a sweltering cesspool. The Hindu is clean in his person and sluices himself with water on two or three stones in his courtyard, which water soaks into the ground. (d) Natives in the mofussil (country) bury their dead inside their enclosures, lingayats and Muhammadans often in the embankment of tanks, or within the very bed of a tank. (e) Last and most important, the drinking water is but too often diluted sewage. In seasons of drought you may see the poor people digging holes in the beds of nullahs [streambeds] a mile away for water; in happier times you may see native troops and women of course—the saddest sight in India—toiling through the hot sand to carry their water from the river a mile and a half off. Where there is

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tank water there may be burials in the gathering ground, and a large burial ground, as has been above said, in the embankment itself, and the catch water drains which feed the tank may pass through crowded places where they are soiled with night soil. Then, step wells ensure all the filth from dirty feet and dirty vessels being washed back into the well. Here is a striking fact: in one place the Hindus of caste have a step well and much disease due to foul water. The low castes have a draw well and no disease of that character. Orders regarding covering wells and fitting windlasses with iron chains and iron buckets round the parapet wall have not been carried out. People say this would be only a waste of money, as Hindus would not use the bucket. By no means. Caste does not override convenience. At the Lily tank at Solapur, from which the worshippers at a temple close by obtain their water supply, the energetic engineer blocked up the steps leading down into the water and fitted two wheels with iron chains and buckets, which have ever since been used without a word simply as a matter of course. The way the natives will in watering their cattle allow the beasts not only to stir up the mud, but to foul the water—which they are just going to take for their own drinking—in the worst manner, is dreadful to see. Then there is often no well for the Mhars and Mangs. No one but those who have witnessed it can form any idea of the misery these poor low-caste people suffer where there is only one well in the village. ‘‘I have seen them standing in rows,’’ says a sanitary commissioner, ‘‘not daring to draw water, but waiting until some kind-hearted Maratha would fill their waterpots for them.’’ Here are the abuse of caste and the love of kind, greater than caste, side by side. In the large town of Satara there are thirty-four water cisterns for Brahmins, thirtyfive for Marathas, eleven for Muhammadans, but, until lately, not one for the despised Mhars or Mangs. Even where there is a separate well for them, it is invariably full of filth, and full of disease-cause in consequence, for the patels and native officials always avoid if they can visiting them. These are only some of the evils which we must educate education to remedy. In most of these the people alone can help the people to save their lives. In others the government must do it. But the government are so ready and anxious to help the people, if only the people would let it, through their own headmen, by every means of legislation, by sanitary manuals, which must be taught in school in such a

660 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India manner as really to be applied in daily practice afterwards by the scholars. But elementary ignorance stands the mightiest engine of oppression of all, to stop the good work at every turn. IV. And who is at the bottom of all this? Who? No principalities or powers of evil,16 no fabled devil, no magic power. Who then? The graceful, timid, affectionate, self-sacrificing Hindu woman. If this noble womanhood, with her powers of self-devotion, instead of being a suttee,17 were an enlightened martyr, what wonders might she not work? If, not called upon to be a martyr, she were to give her powers to raise her family to the highest and wisest standard, what revolutions of love and mercy might not be made? But instead of this who is in the way of all reforms? The woman. What do the most intelligent and highly educated native gentlemen say? They wish to set an example to their poorer neighbours by carrying out certain reforms urgently needed in their houses. But they add: ‘‘I quite agree as to all this, but if I were to carry out these measures I should afterwards know no quiet minute. The ladies of my house would be so much opposed to any change.’’ If ever there were a need for the ‘‘schoolmistress at home,’’ this is the place. Read, for Bengal, in the education reports accounts, both pathetic and playful, of the ladies being ‘‘examined’’ (O, march of the times!) within the zenana of course, and the husbands giving them private assistance in writing their examination papers. And, as we have seen, though the husbands help with the examination papers, they do not help with the great simple elements of life. Where is the help in giving these women the most elementary notion of what constitutes the life of a race, of what makes a healthy home, of home happiness and domestic economy? Shakespeare would say that we are giving them the ‘‘mustard without the beef’’18 or, as we should say, butter without the bread. Are we not giving them the lace without the shirt? the bangle on a lifeless body? First, the necessaries and essentials of life, then its ornamental and artificial characters, would seem to be the right rule all the world over. And we must not trust too much to missionaries. These do a good work in education, especially among poor children. But they must have figures to show to their societies at home. And there is slow and

16 A paraphrase of Rom 8:38. 17 The death of the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. 18 Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, scene 3.

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sure work of another kind to be done among the women. To whom must we appeal but to the husbands to do it? Then here is another great need of education: the British government has justly forbidden the widow to be a suttee, but it has left her a slave. We want something more than merely making murder and suicide by fire illegal.19 We want education to prevent family and custom from making the lot of the poor little widow intolerable. And the women who will brave suttee are not only the widow, but also the attendant of the widow. What heroism, what power of love and self-sacrifice, what devoted attachment, what sense of honour she must have, if we could but turn it to its true account. But we do not. Not forty years ago a ranee [wife of a raja] burned herself with thirteen of her women. One was a child of only ten years old. The ranee tried to save her. The little girl burst into tears, ‘‘I desire nothing but that where you all go I should go also,’’ she cried. ‘‘If you do not suffer me to be a suttee with you I will die in some other way.’’ And the child suttee was burnt alive with her mistress. We have wept over the stor y of Ruth following Naomi, ‘‘Where thou diest, I will die.’’20 But what is this? What a sacrifice, so freely, so willingly made! Self-devotion will never be wanting in Hindu women. Do we think of the ‘‘Hindu’s love stronger than death,’’ and of ‘‘our own cold halfhearted ser vice?’’ The subject is too moving to dwell upon here. But let us English women just ask ourselves, are we ready to do the same, or rather to live the life instead of dying the death for God? V. Now for what the government only can and would do for health: 1. A resolution of last year by the Bombay government takes up the recommendation that for cleaning villages ‘‘systematic endeavours should be made to teach the people to help themselves,’’ and that as the preliminar y step ‘‘the patel should have authority given him by law to compel the people to clean the village.’’ It recognizes how ‘‘closely this matter concerns the public health and safety,’’ but ‘‘in many villages the patels can neither read nor write.’’ Where the patel is an intelligent man it recognizes with what great benefit he might be entr usted with powers under the Bombay Village Police Act of 1869.

19 The British deplored the Indian customs of murdering a wife with fire or acid when the dowry was not paid, or when her behaviour was judged immoral; they passed laws against suttee, but the practice continued. Little success was achieved in changing the attitudes at the base of these practices. 20 Ruth 1:17.

662 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India There is no class of men in the whole country so well qualified as the village patels to advance sanitary reform, if only they were taught themselves and taught to teach others. ‘‘The Governor-in-Council desires that all collectors will cause careful inquiries to be made in their districts with a view to ascertaining what patels can be invested with these powers,’’ and adds, ‘‘It should be the object of every collector to convince them of its importance,’’ and of every native gentleman too, one would think. 2. Much good work in the cause of health has been done in many municipal towns where the Bombay district municipal act is in force. But in the whole presidency there are only ten city and 170 town municipalities where it is in force, and there must be 2000 people to constitute a municipality, whereas India is a country of villages. There are 26,473 villages in Bombay presidency and, unlike Bengal, these are ver y much scattered. Still, the good of the municipal health work is not limited to the town itself, ‘‘for the simple fact of seeing what has been successfully carried out educates the minds of the villagers who go in on market days to the large towns.’’ There is much education besides school education to be given everywhere. But even the higher country natives have not, as a rule, the faintest conception of the connection between health and cleanliness, or that they are living under conditions where health is impossible for themselves and all dear to them. They wish, if they only knew how, to be clean. But I could name two considerable places where the municipal commissioners saw nothing horrible in the living and sleeping and cooking their food in an atmosphere ‘‘tainted with their own excrement,’’ in drawing their drinking water supply from the foulest wells or from village tanks soiled with indescribable abominations. It is difficult to put before the readers of this Journal, without telling facts which can hardly be put into plain English, how much must be done to bring the people themselves to know the terrible results of their daily habits, why the simplest laws of health must be obeyed, how they must be obeyed and how they are essential for the immediate and essential good of themselves and their children. Hopeless it would seem to try and teach such people to raise themselves out of their filth or to help themselves in these matters, but that we see how much we have yet to do in giving even elementary education and how much might be done by education in this matter of health. 3. To return for a moment to statistics. Out of 26,473 villages in Bombay presidency it would seem from an administration report that

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no fewer than 19,132 have no schools where even elementary education can be had. (Of 1875-76, schools have gone ‘‘up,’’ and in the famine, schools have gone ‘‘down’’ since then, as we have seen.) And this is reckoning 3330 indigenous schools over and above 4011 government primar y schools. Now if there were a school in every village and every schoolmaster would intelligently teach these matters of life and death, what might not be done? The educational department derived in that year 58 percent of its income, or 718,334 rupees, from the one anna cess paid by land on each rupee of the land assessment, but only 381⁄2 percent of the department’s expenditure was devoted to primary schools for boys. The defect in the government system of education is that even were we to leave large towns (municipalities) out of the question, yet even in rural parts the proportion of the children of actual ryots educated compared with those of the higher classes or castes is as nothing to what it should be. This, too, when the ryots pay nearly all the educational cess and cannot afford to educate themselves, whereas all the higher classes can, and many pay nothing direct to the educational cess or even to government. Besides, are not the ryots the class suffering most from want of education? But far and above all in importance in this health matter are girls’ schools, and there are only 233 girls’ schools in the presidency. It is impossible to make life life by carrying out the laws of life in the domestic arrangements of the masses of the people until the women know how to do it—are, in short, better educated in what makes home home. And at present they are hardly educated at all, neither high nor low, though the lower classes are frugal and hard workers. Can we educate women to be women is in this matter a yet graver question than ‘‘can we educate men to be men?’’ Because England was lately almost as bad is no reason for reconciling ourselves to India being worse. Such reasoning, and it has been made, reminds one of the child who was desired not to burn its mouth in eating and answered, ‘‘We always burn our mouths in the nursery’’ or of the young lady who bought an ugly bonnet and said, ‘‘There were [two or three] much uglier in the shop.’’21 (The lodging houses in parts of London and some typhoid fever cases caused by defective

21 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chap 39.

664 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India drainage in other parts have actually been adduced in India by distinguished natives as reasons for not improving India’s large towns.) I remember the time when the wife of a labourer in Hampshire, the mother of ten boys, told me with pride that no water had ever touched her boys, except their faces and hands. It is still a tradition among miners and colliers here that feet should never be washed nor any part of their bodies but faces and hands. But that very mother, become a grandmother, lived to be seen washing her orphan grandchild all over in a tub; such was her education in her old age. An old friend of mine learnt at eighty years of age to wash herself all over in cold water. She lived till ninety.22 Mothers have learnt here for themselves and their infants. In India the arrangements at births are still such that one wonders mother or child ever survive. We have seen what the Indian sleeping ‘‘box’’ and village are. It would take a volume to give even the heads of progress in practising the laws of health made in the last twenty-five years in this country. Thirty years ago these were all but unknown. Now they are all but universally practised in some degree, with what effect in lowering the death rate let the Registrar-General’s tables show. There is no space here to write a sanitary treatise. Let not India lag behind! She may be better than we were in personal cleanliness, but in matters of decency, in ever y kind of domestic ar rangement, in cleanliness out-of-doors, cleanliness of water, air and earth, she is immeasurably behind. And this, when giving the people pure water is a matter of charity, of religion, in the East. Men of the highest authority have said that if the money spent on teaching young men in India the dead languages were spent in educating girls to be women all over the country, India would be saved in health, life and matters domestic, and that if young men are to be highly educated by government at a nominal expense, it would be far better to educate them into men by natural history and the physical sciences than by Latin. But why not give both? 4. One thing can certainly be done without delay, and that is to make the Health Department in Bombay a kind of normal school, where natives should be trained so as to ‘‘supply municipalities, towns and cantonments with skilled inspectors.’’ Thus native inspectors would be made men and would make men.

22 From Notes on Nursing, in Public Health Care (6:111).

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5. This Journal has several times advocated the necessity of industrial schools. Here is a case in point: One of the greatest difficulties in Bombay presidency in curing the filth-sodden soil, the cause of the fevers which decimate the population, is that Indian potters have lost or never found the art of making pottery ware watertight by glazing. At Bijapur and Ahmadnagar and many other places, the Muhammadans in ancient times executed splendid waterworks by bringing in water from a distance with common porous baked clay pipes, swathed in cloth dipped in pitch and wax and cased in mortar. Glazed stoneware pipes brought from England are now cheaper. But Sind has the art, though rudely, of glazing pottery ware. The school of art in Bombay is encouraging this manufacture, and skilled instructors from this school might be sent into the Deccan to teach the indigenous potters. If the manufacture of glazed pipes could be generally introduced, the question of drainage and sewerage in country towns and villages would be all but solved. 6. In 1870 the Bombay government published a bill for the regulation of burial and burning grounds, of burning and burying corpses, etc. All these measures are absolutely essential for the protection of the public health. But this bill has never become law, though the present practices are a fruitful source of disease. 7. How a sanitar y manual, if really taught and practically understood and applied, would save millions of lives and put to flight cholera and fever. The Government of Bengal is now arranging for the compilation of a ‘‘sanitar y manual’’ for primary schools. It had offered a prize for one, but none of those sent in won it. The Governments of Bombay and Madras will also have theirs. Sanitary manuals to be taught in schools will therefore soon be in use in Bengal, Bombay and Madras, and each of these governments will watch their start and progress with interest. I shall be proud to report to you of these. 8. No manuals of agriculture of any kind have as yet been used in Bombay village schools, where alone sons of ryots are to be found, but several books are in preparation (one has been published by a native society), and as soon as the agricultural classes lately opened for the instr uction of teachers, etc., are fairly established, instruction is to be given in every taluka school (i.e., the chief vernacular school of a subdistrict). The agricultural class for instruction in scientific agriculture has been opened at the Science College in Pune. The government farm is

666 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India three or four miles off, but is used at present for practical instruction. Arrangements for taking up land near the college are in progress. Six other classes (each with land) were to be opened last June at certain district headquarter stations. These six classes (the number is to be increased hereafter if the plan succeeds, until every district has a class) will be subordinate to the college class at Pune. It must however be many years before this effort will affect the really agricultural classes. Classes for the taluka (vernacular) schools are to be opened hereafter, as above said. Though there is no agricultural manual yet in use in the government primary schools, yet there are scattered through the schoolbooks a few child’s tales on some matters useful for the ryots to know. Some of the books used were and still are miserable productions. The old government farms have been kept up mainly for experiments in cotton, cinchona [tree from which quinine obtained], etc. But at one farm in Khandeish Kunbi boys have for some years past been taken as apprentices. It is under consideration whether this system could not be applied more extensively. Expense is a hindrance to the plan of model farms. But are any of these farms fitted to help poor men with small means to improve their style of agriculture and make the best of what they have? John Lawrence, first in all measures to improve the condition of the people, said that model farms were usually set agoing on wrong principles, with expensive establishments and an undue outlay of money, whereas what is wanted is model farms car ried on in such a way as to instruct poor men, or men with moderate means, how to improve their agriculture by thrift and carefulness. Of course, he said, model farms for the culture of valuable produce like tea and cinchona come under a different category. It is said that Egypt produces cotton of a far better quality and in ver y much larger quantity than that of India owing to India making cotton a dry, not a wet, crop. 9. But when the manual is ready and the scheme prepared, how to make manuals into men? In Bombay presidency the schoolmasters are almost all Brahmins; they teach well by rote, but the pupils do not understand; the masters do not understand themselves what they are reading. When the sanitary manual is there and when the agricultural manual is there, they will learn it all off beautifully by heart. But if you ask them how to apply it to their father’s house, to their father’s land, that is quite another thing. There is no connection in their minds between what is to be read and what is to be done, between what is in

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their books and what is in their homes. It never enters their minds to apply anything from their books to life. Yet what there is to be applied from books, how their lives might be saved by themselves we have seen. Ryots are too much like parrots, or like clever children. In the standing orders for Madras government schools, 1878, there are some curious examples of the way in which English may be perfectly written and read, and imperfectly or not at all understood. Even at a matriculation examination the following incident actually occurred: one exercise for the candidates was to render into Tamil the following simple sentence, ‘‘Both father and son lived a riotous life.’’ They translated it into Tamil thus: ‘‘Both father and son spent their time in farming,’’ ‘‘Both father and son lived like ryots,’’ Lived by cultivation,’’ ‘‘Led a righteous life,’’ ‘‘Spent their time in performing religious rites.’’ These strange literary performances can only be accounted for by some candidates fancying that ‘‘riotous’’ was derived from ‘‘r yot,’’ others from ‘‘rites,’’ others thought it meant ‘‘righteous.’’ And these were youths supposed to have learnt English and to be going on to matriculation! It ought to be proclaimed by beat of drum that education can only be judged by its results, by its power of making men into men and women into women. ‘‘Results grants’’ ought to be grants for ‘‘results.’’ How can we bring this about? How can we bring it about in England? In England with this new fury for examinations, education is running too much to examinations—to what will tell in examinations. Tutors and schools advertise how many of their pupils have passed such and such examinations as a proof of efficiency. How can we bring it about in India, where education is only beginning? In Madras presidency the present director of public instruction proposed that agriculture should be made a subject for which grants might be obtained in ‘‘results schools,’’ and that the director of Madras government farms should prepare an agricultural class book. Agriculture forms now part of the curriculum for the fourth standard. But the class book has been only recently finished and it has not yet been published. In the meantime a small Tamil pamphlet, published by the School Book Society, containing the substance of two lectures on agriculture, is allowed to be brought up for results grants. But what would stimulate young men of spirit to make agriculture a practical career to be learnt? Government deplores the fact that so many natives fit themselves only for employment as scribes. But should not a government drawing upwards of £4,000,000 annually from agriculture as rents possess a few agriculturists at least in its establish-

668 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ments for administering the land revenue? From government civilians at the head down to the natives who collect the rent, are all ignorant of even the A B C of agriculture? What would be the result in England if our landowners and their stewards or agents were equally ignorant? In India, were some of the best agriculture college students to be gradually absorbed into the establishments for managing the land revenue, with the view of giving these establishments by degrees something of an agricultural character, this would be the way to stimulate scholars to put their books into the land. Perhaps government civilians pride themselves on their management of the land and will have nothing to do with those who have been taught the mismanagement of the land. Perhaps this is a chief cause of our recent troubles and the present deplorable state of the countr y. (Perhaps the best way of seeing Indian farming is not what can be gathered during a rapid journey to the hills, or during some half dozen visits to be paid to rajas or to places of antiquarian interest, visits made in the company of the usual attendants and of the usual pomp. Perhaps travelling rapidly by rail—chiefly by night—and inspecting towns decorated with flags and newly cleaned and whitewashed, after a long official notice of the intended inspection, is not the best way of getting a knowledge of the real state of the country.) 10. In Madras presidency there are ver y few government schools, and these are chiefly secondary schools in towns. The rural schools are mainly local fund schools and results schools. In the local fund schools in many districts no school fees are levied, and also in many of the result schools. This eleemosynary [supported by alms] education is, however, of a ver y poor kind. In government and aided schools generally the principle of levying school fees is maintained, and many boys are obliged to discontinue their studies at various stages from inability to pay the fees. There is much poverty even among the higher castes, and many Brahmin boys support themselves and obtain money to pay their fees by begging. Government does not directly interfere with the reading books used in rural schools, but do any of the books in use contain lessons on such subjects as the true interests of ryots with regard to farming, to borrowing from government at cheap rates instead of from moneylenders at dear rates, to digging wells, to capital, seeds, cattle, etc.? Why do not native gentlemen see to this? There was an English Cobbett, an English Cobden. Let us see Indian Cobbetts, Indian Cobdens, Wilber forces, O’Connells, Rowland

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Hills,23 Indian educational enthusiasts, and in time Indian Mrs Frys24 and Indian Sisters of Charity. (It is singular that one of the most famous systems in elementary education originated at Madras. Its author, riding by a Malabar school, noticed the children seated on the ground writing in the sand with their fingers. He desired the alphabet to be so taught, in sand strewn upon a board, in an apparently hopeless half-caste school under his charge. The plan failed. He then ‘‘appointed’’ a child of eight years old to teach the alphabet class, ‘‘told him that he should hold him answerable for success. And success followed. This mere child effected without difficulty what the classmaster had declared to be impossible.’’ Other boys were placed as assistants to the lower classes, under the superintendence of the first named child. The masters were converted into overseers of this monitorial method, which became the seed of our ‘‘pupil teacher’’ system. This was in 1791. This was Dr Bell.25 ‘‘The boys ver y soon surpassed their former masters, gaining sound instruction in arithmetic, bookkeeping, grammar, geography, geometr y, mensuration, navigation and astronomy.’’ And this success was with boys of the ‘‘weakest possible grade in moral and intellectual faculties.’’ ‘‘An eager demand’’ was made for the pupils ‘‘to fill important situations.’’ And Dr Bell wrote three years afterwards that he had ‘‘his reward’’ in ‘‘giving to society an annual crop of good and useful subjects, many of them rescued from the lowest state of depravity and wretchedness.’’ When Mr Edgeworth,26 the educationist, applied to him to recommend books, Dr Bell answered, ‘‘There is only one book which I take the liberty to recommend. It is a book in which I have learned all I have taught, and infinitely more—a book open to all alike and level to ever y capacity, which only requires time, patience and perseverance, with a dash of enthusiasm, in the perusal—I mean a school full of children.’’ Has the monitorial system been applied to the larger schools in India? The rural schools are, it is true, remarkably small, as we have seen. But is there no plan for forming schoolmasters?)

23 William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language, 1835; Richard Cobden (1804-65), leader of the movement for free trade; Rowland Hill (1795-1879), credited with the origins of the modern postal service in the UK, by making it available to the poor through the penny postage. 24 Elizabeth Fr y (1780-1845), prison reformer. 25 Andrew Bell (1753-1832), British divine and educationist. He initiated a system of education in Madras, which he called ‘‘mutual instruction.’’ 26 Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), published Practical Education, 1798, with his daughter.

670 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 11. The Madras education reports for 1875-76 and for 1876-77 will show the enormous preponderance of the Brahmin element in the university examinations. In round numbers about two thirds of the successful candidates are Brahmins, although Brahmins constitute only about three and a half percent of the population. The number of these men who obtain government employment is very large. In Bombay the upper (i.e., the Brahmanical) castes always had the chief share in government ser vice under a native or under the British government. All that the government system has done has been to enable the natives (1) to quality for more important posts than those formerly given them by the British, and (2) to enlarge the area of their trade operations and to compete with English merchants. (Were there space, most curious particulars could be given of how native traders in Madras presidency are discovering the advantages of the English banking system, and going on to unbounded prosperity, while adhering to the most frugal habits of life.) With regard to agricultural and low castes, the government system has as yet had no direct effect in the way of enabling them to improve their holdings, but they have the advantage of knowledge being brought rather more home to their doors, and are more likely ultimately to profit by model farms and instruction in agriculture. During the late famine an officer of life experience, who always maintained that the efforts of government to encourage primary education have resulted in nothing but the loss of the little education the natives had before, was surprised to find common cartmen reading letters giving information about the rainfall and the crops in their home villages 100 miles away. Sir Rowland Hill, whom, in his ripe old age, we have just lost, invented letter writing, it may be said, by penny postage, among the large masses of this country. We wait for an Indian Rowland Hill. VI. Caste. We have spoken about caste in Bengal. In Bombay also theoretically the government schools are open to all. Practically the custom varies in each place. In some places there are special schools for Mhars and other low-caste people. In other places these children are admitted to the classes but sit apart. In other places they are not admitted to the same room. The feeling of the people is gradually changing in this matter. It is not forty years since the principal of a college (an English officer) was refused admission to the institution of which he was the official chief. It was the custom that he should stop at the entrance door and make a few inquiries, of the native teachers, but not cross the threshold.

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It is not twenty years since Brahmin students used to purify themselves and bathe after receiving a lecture from an English professor. And it is not ten years since large schools of three or four hundred boys were entirely broken up because one or two Mhar boys were ordered to be admitted. Again, the position of different races or castes changes. There is now no objection to the admission of Muhammadans, of native Christians (possibly converts from the lowest classes) or of bheels. In some places, especially in the town of Bombay, no questions at all are asked, and any healthy and clean children are admitted. Even in a girls’ school, maintained by a committee of the most influential Brahmins in the town of Bombay, outcaste children have lately been admitted, after an inquiry in which the relations had proved that they were leading respectable lives. May the committee reap a tenfold harvest for this. This is true religion, true charity. Much of course remains to be done in this matter for Mhars, Mangs and others. And away from the big towns the natives often show as much intolerance as ever. But the evil is one that cannot be cured by any high-handed order. Native gentlemen, and may we add ladies, must educate education to cure it as they have done in several instances. In Madras presidency government schools are not only theoretically but practically open to all castes. In former times government schools were sometimes almost emptied by the admission of a single pariah boy. Such an occurrence now does not produce the same excitement. Ver y few outcastes resort however to the class of schools maintained by government. They chiefly attend mission schools, and some mission schools are specially intended for outcaste children. VII. But after all the one pressing question before which all others sink into insignificance, as in Bengal it is the land question—so in the Deccan it is the relation between moneylender and ryot. And here education must educate the ryots to be men. The ryot is sharp enough. So is the moneylender. But the vast difference between them is education—not only school education but real education—the school of practical experience, the ‘‘results grant’’ of life. The moneylenders acquire their acute business knowledge and habits in the same school that the workers in brass and wood and ivor y, etc., acquire theirs, i.e., in the school of practice. Every man in India is a proficient in his own trade or business after a fashion in his own way, for they all learn it from infancy with their parents. Every man follows his father’s business and thus so far as can be with their

672 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India poor appliances every man attains a really surprising amount of efficiency in some thing or other. It is often true he knows but one thing, and he gives a life to labour at that, but his proficiency in it would often astonish us. But how is it if it is proficiency in ignorance, as it so often is, when a ryot signs away a sum which represents much more than his all and which he can never pay, to sowkars for sums which he has never received? What arms does his trade in ignorance lend the sowkars? If the agriculturist knew his own interests, none should be more anxious to learn at school than he, as the ability simply to read and do plain arithmetic would save him from two thirds of the impositions of his moneylender. But the really agricultural classes or ryots get after all as we have seen very little education. They have little time or money to afford for it and do not half see the good it would do them. Also, schools are too few. And the fact is that the boy-ryot is so young and stays so short a time at school that it may not be easy to teach him much. Still, when we have brought the children of ryots to attend our schools it would be well to try and teach them more, viz., a little about account keeping, civil court procedure, registration, etc., in fact the few things connected with money matters and law which they cannot do without. We may imagine what kind of evidence in our civil courts is that when ryots cannot read or write, and especially when they cannot even sign their name. And yet this evidence is accepted against ryots. So-called documentary evidence (bonds, agreements, receipts, etc.) are all so much waste paper, and should have but little weight except as proved by testimony perfectly independent of the moneylender. Village registration may also be only another arm in the sowkar’s hands. Suppose a bond drawn up, the sowkar to give the ryot 125 rupees. If for greater security a zealous village registrar makes the sowkar give the 125 rupees in his presence, the ryot gives it back the moment they are outside the door. Then this transaction appears against the ryot in the registrar’s hands, he has received 125 rupees, of which he has received nothing. What Englishmen do not understand is this: the bond which passes between sowkar and cultivator, and upon which the whole system of our civil courts is based—for once the ryot acknowledges his signature to the bond, no more is asked. This bond is always a nominal, never a real transaction: it is for a fictitious, not actual sum, no money passes at

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all. Then the bond is produced as evidence in the civil courts. Then the lawyers say: ‘‘No, if the ryot is stupid and signs that which has no existence, but is a fiction, the bond must stand as evidence in court; he must pay the penalty of his stupidity.’’ The old Maratha system of accounting was this: an immense long roll or book or ledger; the cultivator had a right to its counterpart. On this was entered all the transactions of years: what the sowkar advanced—never in cash; what the ryot repaid—never in money, always in produce. And as the whole village knows the produce of ever ybody’s field, these books were not so far wrong. But the sowkar found that in our civil courts he had nothing to do but produce a bond signifying a wholly fictitious transaction—the ryot never knows, never understands, what is in the bond; the ryot will sign any bond to keep his land and to keep himself out of prison. The bond system was so very convenient for the sowkar, who is uncommonly well ‘‘up’’ in law, that it became the pivot on which all the relations between sowkar and ryot rested. And hence nine tenths of the mischief. A serious effort is being made to protect the Deccan ryot by Mr Hope’s bill now before the government at Simla. If an European official does really go ‘‘behind the bond’’ and ask the ryot what he owes the sowkar, the ryot may answer, ‘‘Why, he owes me 60 rupees.’’ The Englishman says, ‘‘Do you know he says you owe him 250 rupees?’’ And if the English official calls two or three of the villagers to come and sit beside him, as arbitrators, he will find after going over the produce paid, in nine cases out of ten, that the sowkar does owe the ryot not only 60 rupees, but more. But then there is the bond: the ryot acknowledges his signature or mark; against this there is no law to save him. This is the state of things. Education has to educate the ryot into a man who can save himself out of the pit. Cultivators are in no way directly taught in school better to understand their own interests. But did the cultivator only receive the education at all, such as it is, that would be a great thing. It cannot be too often repeated that, whereas the cultivating classes are as perhaps 100 to 1 in the rural districts of the Deccan, yet there are probably twice as many children of the non-agricultural classes as of the agricultural classes in the schools. The moneylenders, as has been said, had their very clever knowledge of accounts before there were any government schools. Certain castes are ‘‘born’’ accountants, that is, they are educated from their mother’s milk into accountants—observe, not into men—and the

674 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India capacity descended from father to son for generations. The indigenous school looks only to mental arithmetic (the native tables go to 100 × 100, and include fractional tables of all kinds), accounts of the Maratha kind and current handwriting, excluding all printed matter, and all such subjects as reading books, history and geography. (The way in which these people correctly calculate not only their own but their neighbour’s produce, and keep the numbers in their heads for years, is astonishing.) The moneylenders can do without government schools and a sowkar (Brahmin) in a wild place has been known to set up a private school for his children and relations in order to close a government school open to all classes. In Madras presidency we have seen that less than one in ten of men and boys can read and write. We may judge how much they are at the mercy of moneylenders, petty native officials of all kinds. The present director of public instruction in Madras was for many years inspector general of registration. One of the rules which he framed under the Registration Act, and which is still in force, was the following: 10. Documents executed by persons who are unable to read shall be read out and, if necessary, explained to the parties, and the registering officer shall ascertain that they clearly understand the purport of the document executed by them. Documents written in a language not understood by the executing party shall in like manner be interpreted to him.

What an idea does this beneficent rule give of a maleficent state of things—a state of things where the want of education puts helpless ignorance in the power of clever fraud. This rule was framed because of the attempts made to cheat old women, or both sexes, by making them execute and present for registration an instrument which they imagined to be a mortgage, but which was really an absolute sale. No rule or government, however, can prevent a ryot from being cheated if he himself becomes a party by evasions of the act to cheating himself. If a ryot admits before the registering officer that he has received 50 rupees when he has only received 10 rupees, or if the 50 rupees are actually paid to the ryot before the registering officer and if, as soon as the parties have left the registration office, the ryot gives the moneylender back his money and takes only what he is willing to give him (and what the willingness of the moneylender is we know—it is like the love of the fox for the fowl), no registration act will help him. The courts will consider that there is a prima facie case against him.

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The power to go behind the bond forms one of the features of the new bill introduced by Mr Hope for the relief of the indebted agriculturists in the Deccan. VIII. We cannot appeal to native gentlemen without also recording their munificence in the cause of education. In Madras the late maharaja of Vizianagram established a large number of schools of various grades for boys and girls. Many of the pupils who attend these schools are poor, but it is stated that all the schools are intended for caste Hindus. The schools maintained by the trustees of Patcheappali and Govinda Naida’s charities are to some extent charity schools, although they are also attended by the children of rich parents. The late Chengal Roy Naick has left a bequest of about 400,000 rupees to the trustees of Patcheappali Moodelliari’s charities for the express purpose of educating poor boys of the lower classes, to which he himself belonged, but the schools have not yet been established. Space is wanting to speak further of Bombay native munificence in schools as of many other things. And as subjects crowd upon the mind in writing this, in which I should have wished to seek information as well as to bring any to the common stock, and cannot bring before you one hundredth part of the materials—the subjects of school cesses, primar y education, female education, remarkable classes of traders in southern India, the whole subject of village headman action, a possible co-operative system in obtaining agricultural machines, the bill for indebted agriculturists, the sanitary commissioner in Madras, as he has been given in Bombay, which would require a paper to itself, etc.—I feel that I should want twenty times the space and one hundredfold the time to do any justice to the subjects I have touched upon, or even to glance at, much more to touch upon these other matters of vital interest. To conclude: much has been said and done lately about retrenchment, but chiefly, if not wholly, in retrenching public works—the thing which mainly affects the people. Other retrenchments, lately discussed in Parliament, would seem as if more wanted. For local governments to be able to carry out material improvements absolutely necessary and to complete, among other things, half-measures taken for the education of the people is of the first importance. Half-measures are often nearly as costly as whole measures would be, because there is a permanent staff which could do much more work, and because of the waste of capital incurred by the slow and interrupted growth of undertakings.

676 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India But what can come of this appalling news from Kabul? Nine short weeks only since Lord Lawrence’s death and his terrible foresight has been justified—a foresight which wrung his heart and ours and but too probably hastened his end—a foresight built on his exact experience and almost unbounded knowledge. And we have no Lord Lawrence now to win over Afghans to right as he did Sikhs. What can come of this new war but a check on industrial and constructive works, on education and what secures the prosperity of the people, with an urging forward of destr uctive and military and unfruitful works at a fearful cost to look forward to? Then now is the time, ye gentlemen of India, to step forward more and more wisely and nobly. There is too much of waiting upon government. We need not wait. Let us help the local governments in all good works. Let us work ourselves. It shall not be Ye gentlemen of India that sit at home at ease27

but ye gentlemen of India that abound in good works, in all wise and great enterprises for the good of your peoples. Soldiers of God, God speed you.

Education, Agriculture and Public Works Editor: In the course of her India work Nightingale realized that political and social reforms were essential to improve public health, and that extensive reforms in education were essential to attain them. For such reforms to succeed, she believed, they had to be a joint venture between British and Indians. Missionary schools had been introduced early in the nineteenth century and government schools gradually followed. The first indigenous education system was started in 1849 by Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy28 and his wife. Its schools spread through western

27 From Martyn Parker’s (d. 1630) song: Ye gentlemen of England that live at home at ease, Ah! little do you think upon the dangers of the seas. See John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919:176. 28 Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (1783-1859), Parsi merchant and philanthropist, founder of schools and hospitals.

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India, educating Parsi and other Indian youth in English and the vernaculars, and came to include girls in 1850.29 Ever ything, from elementary lessons on hygiene to primary education for ryots up to and including school and university education, was needed. However, Nightingale was aware that regular schooling often prepared only an ever-larger number of clerks to seek government office jobs and did not help the fight against social evils, nor ser ve such practical needs as the increased production of foodstuffs. Famine continued to kill millions in India, making the need for greater food production a matter of life or death. Nightingale accordingly urged that greater attention be paid to education, especially basic training in agriculture and the industrial arts. Trained people were needed to improve productivity in agriculture and manufacturing, to develop methods of production adapted to India and to monitor practices. Efforts needed to be made to lift off ‘‘the burdens of an industrious and energetic people, allowing free course to their enterprise.’’30 Model farms and specialized colleges for the training of Indian farmers seemed to promise needed advances, causing Nightingale to write to W.R. Robertson in 1879: ‘‘The prospect of model farms, agricultural colleges and native teachers and managers . . . cheers and warms one’s heart’’ (see p 678 below). Progress on all those fronts meant progress toward self-sufficiency, particularly for the ryots. The situation of the ryots was particularly desperate in times of famine and drought, with debt to the zemindars adding misery to their harsh life. Nightingale tried to find innovations that could help: improved agriculture for the greater production of food, irrigation, better means of storage and transport of foodstuffs, as well as co-operatives and other financial institutions. Investment in infrastructure and public works was essential for all these initiatives. She gradually gained the conviction that agriculture had to be systematically promoted, which required an infusion of new money. The correspondence below addresses these interrelated issues, starting with Nightingale’s views on education and agriculture around

29 At the same time other indigenous initiatives were launched; we can single out the schools for youth started by the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society, and especially the work of Manockjee Cursetjee (1808-87) for the education of Indian girls along Western lines. 30 Health in India (9:749)

678 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 1879 to show how those issues later moved to the front of her concerns for Indian nationals. Source: From a copy of an incomplete letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263, ff1-4

7 March 1879 I do not know whether it is to you that I am indebted for so kindly sending me your two lectures of 1873 on ‘‘What Modern Agriculture Can Do for the Indian Farmer,’’ but whether it be or no, pray accept my warmest thanks for the information on a subject so very interesting to me. I have always read whatever I could lay my hands upon of yours. Your report of 1877 was very suggestive. The prospect of model farms, agricultural colleges and native teachers and managers, taught by you, cheers and warms one’s heart. Might I ask if any of the mone ylenders, particularly those from Bombay (I see a proportion of Bombay men in your college) who have acquired large properties in land, have sent sons or relatives to your Farm and Agricultural College in Madras to learn how to improve these lands? . . . One would feel encouraged if one heard that the sons of these new proprietors were learning to manage the acquired lands from you. It is an encouragement to see the Parsis—whose energy has been I suppose so conspicuous in commerce—carrying that energy into ‘‘land’’ and sending their young men to your agricultural college, as well as the Brahmins. If this process of agricultural education extends, if there could be model farms and native teachers and managers in every province, and these be widely imitated, much of the desperate condition of India might disappear. It moves one to see how the accommodation in your college is restricted, classrooms and lecture rooms so bad. You say that improved accommodation has been estimated for, and you ‘‘hope’’ that ‘‘before another year,’’ it may have been ‘‘provided.’’ Might I ask if this has been done? I have always greedily read all your ‘‘reports,’’ especially about manures, their wickedness of letting manure be used as fuel, how to grow fodder crops for livestock, etc. . . . 2. Your reports, both on Madras and that terrible report on Coimbatore, throw so much light upon the state and ways of the people, by no means always a favourable one—I mean their tricks and their deceptions but also their eagerness about the use of water, etc., and

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the reasons for the failure of experiments—that I wish these could be better known to practical Englishmen. Often these things ought to give one hope—instead of the reverse—for they show that, if we knew the natives better and how to deal with them, experiments which seem to be failures might be made successes. Two failures often = a success. Facts, personal narratives of individual natives with name and place: how I wish these could be brought into the popular literature of England—then England would discover India, instead of being, as now, certainly more ignorant of our own vast dependency than of Turkey. . . . The Times and Daily News correspondents have discovered Cyprus. Why could not the Madras Times and the Madras Mail send ‘‘special correspondents’’ to discover the interior, the agriculturists, of India, writing in that lively manner which Englishmen will read? There would not be that difficulty about the languages which prevents an English ‘‘special correspondent’’ from London being sent into the interior of India. O if an Indian Dickens would tell us something about the ryots! 3. Might I ask what have been the after-consequences of the famine on the survivors? Has there been a money famine following in the steps of the grain famine? and what have been the steps taken to meet it, whether by employment on public works, advancing ‘‘Takavi’’ for wells, etc., advances for seed, bullocks, etc.? 4. Might I ask further, are there in the village schools of the Madras presidency any manuals of agriculture to give simple information, in an interesting way, on common agricultural subjects? Source: From a letter to Major General James George Fife, Wayne State University, Folder 37 (17)

3 April 1879 I am so ver y glad that your paper, ‘‘The Civil Engineering Profession in India,’’ is finished. It is of very great importance, particularly at the present time when everything seems to be seething up and brought under discussion in our Government of India and when it would seem that we must admit natives much more into public and professional life, and govern less by departments, as you say, if we are to go on at all. I was rejoiced to hear such an eminent engineer say that there was so much talent for engineering among the natives. (Mr Caird, the famine commissioner, is enchanted with the results of Lake Fife, which he has just seen.)

680 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From notes on or draft letters to A.W. Croft,31 Add Mss 45805 ff189-95 and 254

9 May 1879 I feel the greatest interest in knowing how far standard of instr uction prepares a boy-ryot for his daily life, whether he can read or write on any one of those bonds, agreements or what not, which concern his relations with the moneylender, with the zemindar, etc., which prevent ryots being cheated whether by these or by the petty native official? Documentar y evidence is being continually used against the ryot who can neither read nor write. Our instruction will no doubt enable the future ryot to know what he is putting his signature to. The new Arrears of Rent Realization Bill (not yet passed) will require fresh knowledge of this kind for the ryot, will it not? How is he being prepared for it? I beseech you to believe that it is rather because Englishmen have so high an opinion, both of the great ideal which can be attained for India under English rule, and of the will and the power of the English high officials in India to accomplish this great ideal, that we venture to trouble you, not in any low spirit of carping. And if I may be allowed to say so, it is also because no documents that the mass of English readers will read ever reach the mass of English common readers. Out of the House of Commons there are perhaps not ten people who read Blue Books that I am so anxious that the interest of all England in India should be practically and rightly laid hold of. In India, there being no English reading public beyond the official public, and India being unrepresented, reports are naturally and cannot be otherwise, reported to government and not to the public. We want to interest the people of England who are now almost wholly ignorant about India. The magistrate of Balasore p. 27 gives the ‘‘instr uction’’ in the indigenous schools as only ‘‘remarkable for its badness.’’ All over India one hears of the eagerness of the people for instruction. And please believe that we are not so base as not to see, as you say, how the ryot’s interests are protected by the English officials whether in the Education Department or in the government. And Sir G. Campbell’s reforms of 1872, to which you point, are the subject of our liveliest admiration.

31 Alfred Woodley Croft (1851-1925), surgeon general, director of Public Instr uction at the time of this letter, later president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

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1 August 1879/25 September 1879 Industrial schools: should this element be introduced wherever possible? Manufacture of glazed pottery pipes for drainage: could it be taught in India? Industrial element in schools important bearing on Indian poverty. Source: From an incomplete letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff5-8

5 May 1880 If there is anything that England wants to know about and knows nothing about [it] is: agriculture in India. And when one thinks that we take 20 millions land revenue out of India’s agriculture and give nothing back, one almost wonders that there is not an universal agrarian mutiny. But the day cannot be far distant if we still continue doing nothing. You have doubtless heard from Bombay presidency what part of your scheme for agricultural education they have taken up. I had a long private letter about it and should very much like to hear your opinion as to whether it will do any good. But far more than this do I hope that you will see some of the great Indian officials and the people at the India Office while you are in London. I would not hurry away from London now, if I were you. I telegraphed to you at Scarborough this morning to send your address in London to me at Seaton. Please leave it also at the Society of Arts. You will of course call at the India Office. I do trust to see you and shall come up to London on purpose if I am able. . . . But far more important than that I should see (much as I desire it) is that the great Indian authorities should see you. Now is the time, when there is a new minister at the India Office [Lord Hartington] and a new viceroy [Lord Ripon] is going out for them to learn of you. . . . Are there model farms not only for the culture of valuable produce, but carried on in such a way as to instruct poor men with small or moderate means how to improve their agriculture and make the best of what they have, e.g., with regard to the rotation of crops and the chemical laws on which these are founded, to manures—fodder crops for cattle—the introduction of new plants, deeper ploughing with English ploughs, irrigation with relation to manuring? How are these taught?

682 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

6 May 1880 Private. What do you think of the new state of affairs? And what do you think of the new viceroy? Philip II is made to say: ‘‘O for one pulse beat only of omniscience!’’ I say: ‘‘O for one pulse beat of Mr Gladstone as chancellor of the Exchequer for India!’’ But I am not going to waste your time with ejaculations. Do you know Mr Robertson, superintendent of government farms in Madras? He gives a lecture on ‘‘Agriculture in South India’’ on Friday evening (tomorrow) at 8 at the Society of Arts (John St., Adelphi). I have no hopes that you will have time to go. Nor does that signify if only you could see him. And, if then you thought well, if you would ask Lord Hartington to see him. Or, above all, Lord Ripon, before he sets forth. Mr Robertson is only in London for a few days. But he must be made to stay if you will see him. I take the liberty of enclosing his address. . . . Mr Robertson is certainly the man who knows most about agriculture in South India (Mr Caird thinks him a little too ‘‘scientific’’), perhaps in all India, excepting Mr Hume. (You know Mr Hume’s pamphlet on ‘‘Agricultural Reform in India.’’32) When one thinks that we take out of the land of India 20 millions a year revenue and give little or nothing back, one feels that the day must come when the cultivators will ask account of this. Some think the day is not far off and that the people of India are beginning to say: ‘‘England does not wish us to learn about agriculture, because then we should ask for roads and irrigation and improved implements, etc., in agriculture, and something to be put back into the land for all that is taken out of it.’’ Mr Robertson was employed by the Government of Bombay to make a scheme for agricultural training, including some agricultural instr uction for the native revenue officials—it does seem wonderful that we require no agricultural knowledge in these native officials of agriculture. The scheme was negatived, I understood, by the S. of S. here, because it would cost £1000 a year!! Is it true that the war expenses of last year are 3 millions more than they told us?! About all this, however, you know much more than I. And I ought to beg your

32 Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912), civil servant, co-founder of the Indian National Congress; the pamphlet was published as a book, Agricultural Reform in India: A Plea for a Well-Organised Separate Agricultural Department.

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pardon. I have never seen Mr Robertson (though I have corresponded with him). And I could fancy that he is not at all a ‘‘persona grata’’: perhaps not quite a gentleman. But when one can get facts out of a man of his information about a subject of such all-importance to India as agriculture, I cannot understand the great (or as our Egyptian dragoman called them, the bigs33) caring for this. Perhaps they don’t. I want so much to ask you about the Famine Commission Report and other things of countless importance that I forcibly stop myself. Source: From a letter to Lord Houghton,34 Trinity College Cambridge, Houghton Collection 18/142

18 May 1880 What worlds there are even in this world; there is India, which a centur y of statesmanship and a ‘‘wilderness’’ of statesmen would be not too much to set even on the first step. What have we done for the people of India? There is a countr y, farther from us than India, in one end of London, there are whole lands, un‘‘visited’’ and un‘‘blessed’’ by us, in England, there is Ireland, there is Liverpool and the big towns, there is education, there is pauperism. . . . Is there any reason but our own fault why we should not have apostles of agriculture now for India, out of whose soil we take 20 millions a year and give nothing back. Or to save £1000 a year here or even £100 there, take back the little we have given. Why should there not be a political and an administrative ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ with a new birth35 in all these vast vital interests? I agree and I don’t agree in what you say about the ‘‘real education’’ young men ‘‘get in the society of married women.’’ I think I see creeping over, not only women but men, a forsaking of solid practical administrative things for glittering politics, a belief in substituting a vague general (so-called) ‘‘influence’’ for real practical acquaintance with the ways the world’s business is managed and the ways it might be managed. It is so easy, so attractive, talking and declaiming politics like a German newspaper. It is so difficult, so unattractive to know really and to administer whether public or private things, so as to

33 See Mysticism and Eastern Religions (4:247). 34 Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-85), made Lord Houghton 1863, poet, friend and unsuccessful suitor; one of the original trustees of the Nightingale Fund. 35 An allusion to John 3:5.

684 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India bring about effectively a high end. People actually talk now as if they thought that a good wife would enable a viceroy of India to reform the crying land tenures. And there is something of the breath of magazine-ing everywhere, in which the ink bottles, guiltless of all accurate knowledge, of all but ‘‘good motives,’’ gracefully write of what they know nothing about. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

18 August 1881 Private. Subjects of Training of Indian Civil Servants. Would you think it well to have an inquiry about the subjects of training of the civil service candidates? Perhaps you are doing this already. My own poor little interest in great India in asking this centres of course in the agricultural subject, in the absolute necessity of the civil servants in an agricultural country knowing something of agricultural science including forestry, this forestr y being essential for the vital question of manure, manure being now burnt for fuel. Is not the want of knowledge in the governors and governing classes in India the main cause of the want of improvement in agriculture, forestr y, sanitar y matters, technical science? They come out knowing little but what an Eton boy knows, plus the languages. They have never heard the word sanitation; forestr y, botany, agricultural chemistry and geology (soils), animal physiology, including animal breeds and veterinar y matters (diseases of animals) are all dead letters to them, of course, yet upon these things depend the life or death of perhaps 150 millions or more of our fellows, our countrymen and countrywomen, that is, our native fellow subjects. It must happen to you at the I.O. continually to find men old in high office in India not only ignorant of, but from ignorance dead against, such vital subjects as forestr y. The collectors are generally quite ignorant; the people talk them over, persuade them that their own plans are the best. Then the collectors become dead against all improvement. Our civil servants when they go out don’t know a cabbage from a cauliflower, except on table. They go out knowing nothing but ‘‘literae humaniores’’ [literature]. It is not in the land, I suppose, that the people fail unless it is that they have no deep ploughing? The land is much better tilled than it is here. Still, I suppose, it grows about half what it ought or less? But where they fail in is in manure—all manure being used for fuel and in the processes and machines for (say) cotton, or (say) some other crop after it is grown. . . .

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Why is forestr y almost totally neglected in India? The people don’t like it; the governing classes know nothing about it; the people set the collectors against it. Virgin soils are no doubt beautiful, but land perishes for lack of manure. To introduce science—technical, agricultural, sanitary science—into the higher education in India, is not this most necessary? A beginning has been made in Bombay: they have a science degree, which ranks as a degree. The higher education in India, does it not fit the students to be only government clerks and lawyers? It does not fit them to go into agriculture, industries, trades (so cruelly wanted in India). No man brought up in our colleges carries improvement into his own land. We don’t want to make India into a literary countr y (the Brahmins are too much inclined to be literary already); we want, do not we? to make it into an improving agricultural, industrial, commercial country. But must not all this come from home? If it is true, will you not tell the civil commissioners to inquire into the whole subject of the civil ser vants for India having some ‘‘realistic’’ as well as ‘‘humanitarian’’ knowledge, e.g., passing an examination in agricultural science? Why have model farms been a failure in India? Because men who knew nothing of agricultural science were ‘‘pitchforked’’ into them (as we pitchfork a man into the Board of Works who knows nothing about building, etc.), men who have failed in the Police Office or something else, and think they would like to ‘‘do’’ agriculture. Or a man who comes out from England, really scientific, dies, and then some man of the ignorant sort is put in (the governors knowing nothing of agriculture in a world of agriculturists) and makes ‘‘model farms’’ ridiculous in the eyes of the natives. Does not a great part of the evils of India arise from the way in which the civil servants who are to go out to India are educated, or rather not educated, in what are the peculiar wants of India? Would not a little knowledge of technical science on the part of governors, members of council, collectors or civil servants generally, have prevented the most glaring evils or the stoppage of all improvement or progress? . . . When I approach the sacred soil of Oxford, my hair stands on end, my teeth chatter and my pen trembles: I do not presume even to suggest; the two years are so full, the young men are so young, mere boys; their brains might be addled by putting in fresh subjects, whether they could possibly have three years in England? whether they might have a year before they go to their posts in India with professorships of agriculture at the three universities in India? This last suggestion of a year

686 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India in India which has been made would be fraught with practical difficulties, whether they could have a theoretical course at Oxford, to take up after wards a practical course in India; whether they should have, e.g., a professor of forestr y at Oxford, as they have at the German universities—have not they? . . . You see I am good enough to drop sanitation and technical science for a time for our civil servants, and not to enter for the moment into that terribly important matter of making agricultural knowledge, and sanitary too, a subject for examination and a means of promotion and advancement for all native revenue officers (in a wholly agricultural country like India) and an educational test for all village headmen and accountants whose hereditar y appointments have to be confirmed by government. I truly ask your pardon for writing and for writing at such length. But if you knew how much more I could say! If you have already initiated an inquiry into the subjects of training of the civil service candidates, I can only be too thankful. Source: From a letter to Charles Benson,36 Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C136

11 October 1881 It seems that agricultural affairs in Madras are ‘‘looking up,’’ and prospects improving. Surely the stipendiaryship in the college for each collectorate in the presidency must do good. We have long wished for an agricultural test, as being quite essential for Revenue Department candidates. Is it for European as well as native candidates? And this, it seems, we are to have. And also agricultural classes in the high schools of the presidency. I am so glad to hear that your college buildings will soon be ready. All this is good news. But Mr Robertson must miss you very much. Your new governor, Mr Grant-Duff, is quite interested in agricultural progress and will, I trust and believe, do great things for it. I will lend the copies of reports you have been so good as to send me to those I think will be interested. And interest in India is, I am happy to think, increasing. And, as you have kindly given me leave, I may apply to you to send another copy or two to people. And I should be very glad to see the report on the Bellary district which you so kindly promise me.

36 Charles Benson, superintendent of government farms in Madras, then on sick leave in England.

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It would be most exceedingly interesting to know how the native ‘‘graduates’’ of your college are turning out. All particulars of this kind would be very welcome. Source: From two letters to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

9 December 1881 Private. Agricultural Improvement in India. I have now what I hope is a ver y modest request to make. But to explain even this, I must begin by a little about Madras agriculture, although I am sure you know a great deal more about it than I do. (I am nervously certain that this letter which I shall not have time to shorten will be incoherent and ill-put like all mine.) Things seem to be looking up a little in Madras as to our agricultural views. (1) I had a letter from Saidapet, dated 11 September, saying that ‘‘government have just sanctioned a stipendiaryship (in the Madras Agricultural College) for each collectorate of the presidency to be filled by each collector. . . . ’’ (2) But what has been so long the bar to any really useful action in the way of agriculture, by the native ranks of the Revenue Service (which is, I need not say, solely concerned with land and agriculture), is: agriculture was optional as a subject in the schools and in the examination, but there was no teacher. And—this above all—it was not a means of advancement or condition for promotion. Of course, no Brahmin took up agriculture out of enthusiasm or dilettantism. Hardly ever would an Englishman do this. In September, I heard from the head of the Madras Agricultural College [W.R. Robertson] that government ‘‘have just called on me to submit an agricultural test for the examination of all future candidates for the Revenue Department—agriculture having been prescribed as a subject for examination. And I have been called on to draw up a scheme for establishing a number of agricultural classes in the high schools of the presidency—these to be feeders for the agricultural college.’’ These are two good hearings. But I have quite lately seen a gentleman [C. Benson] from the Madras Agricultural College—at home on sick leave. And he fears that ‘‘the proposed test in agriculture for the Revenue Department is to be applied only to the deputy collectors’’ (nearly all of whom are natives). I need not say that it is still more required amongst the lower ranks of the Revenue Service (the so-called native ‘‘inspectors’’), upon whom the Revenue Department hinges, and who are in direct and immediate contact with the ryots.

688 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India And hereby hangs a tale. These ‘‘inspectors’’ are what is usually called a ‘‘bad lot.’’ They are generally the refuse of the taluq officers. They levy ‘‘blackmail’’ on the people—not exactly in bribes—but they live on the village wherever they are and take the village’s animals for their own transport. Their returns of livestock, etc., are said to be quite haphazard. And the tehsildar, whose immediate subordinates they are, is too busy, being both magistrate and revenue officer, to overhaul them. The examination which they must pass is quite elementary (reading, writing, accounting). And they need not go to any high school. These inspectors are chiefly Brahmins. (I hate Brahmins, don’t you?) The tehsildars have been greatly raised and improved of late years by education, but they know nothing of agriculture. Now one would think that nothing would raise the all-important class of the ‘‘inspectors,’’ through whom only the ryots judge of us, for the ‘‘inspectors’’ represent our government to them, as agricultural instruction, an agricultural test, agricultural proficiency to be the means of advancement and condition of promotion. This was refused in so many words by the late government not so long time ago. Then the ryots would see that we cared for them and the inspectors would see that we choose the ryots to be cared for. At present the inspector’s only object—his only condition for advancement—and he knows it—is that he scratches together ‘‘a good revenue’’ somehow. (These inspectors may grow to be tehsildars and deputy collectors.) These inspectors must perforce gain experience in agriculture in the course of their collections. It rests with us whether this experience shall be a means of improving the people’s tillage or of ‘‘screwing’’ the people. I believe it is all in train. But I know your sympathies are all in favour of this (I am not asking anything) as well as of the scarcely more important matter of the agricultural education of the Civil Service. I come now to my first (and more modest) request: Are not the two great (material) wants of Indian agriculture manure and improved agricultural implements? With regard to the latter, the great English firms are but too anxious, as a mere matter of business, to find out what will suit India, and at what price, for the purpose of supplying it. The Ransomes of Ipswich37 have said this. I happen to know that they, the Ransomes of Ipswich, too, are desirous to have a visit from some trained English Indian agriculturist to point out what is wanted in India. . . .

37 A company making agricultural machinery.

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Would it not be well for him [C. Benson] to have a commission to go to the great agricultural implement manufacturers, e.g., at Ipswich, Bedford and Leeds, and tell them what they could do for India in the way particularly of ploughs, what articles would suit India and at what prices? etc. Those manufacturers, at least the Ipswich one, have said that they would gladly send out specimens to be tried in India. If some agricultural officer like Mr Benson (who could tell them for Madras, and Madras is the only government which has an agricultural college, the only one which has sent out trained agricultural teachers to others) would visit manufactures and advise. And of some things, such as the steam plough Mr Benson would take or send out models. . . . To return to our civil servants’ instr uction in agriculture: Could not an inquiry into the manner and subjects of education of the Indian candidates at least be instituted? (Some authorities are for a third year in England.) Sir G. Birdwood,38 it is said, would be a very good man to apply to to lay down a course of agriculture. (I do not feel sufficiently impudent to apply to him myself.) It has been suggested that the civil servants might go to Cirencester39 for the long vacation. 12 December 1881 I could not for shame make my too-long letter to you on agricultural Improvement in India, but chiefly as regard Madras, any longer. But I am afraid I ought to add that energetic Bombay is quite behind old Madras. What had been initiated has stood still; what was meant to be initiated has not been begun. From a quite ‘‘confidential ’’ letter I have received from Government House, I gather that ‘‘hereditar y officers are not required to pass examinations of any kind.’’ (We were speaking of headmen and other village officers being subjected to an educational test—perhaps ‘‘sanitar y’’ and agricultural too, before their hereditar y appointments were confirmed by government.) And it is even added that it is doubtful ‘‘if it would be legal to impose such conditions on their offices now. (But it was the very point of great authorities that it might be made ‘‘legal.’’) A beginning even had been made.

38 Sir George Christopher Birdwood (1832-1917), professor at the Grant Medical College, then at the India Office. 39 The Royal Agricultural College, the first agricultural college in the Englishspeaking world.

690 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 2. I gather that ‘‘native revenue officers are not required to pass examinations in agriculture before receiving appointments.’’ This was to have been initiated. It is true the Bombay government adds: ‘‘but in the disposal of appointments preference is to be given to such of the candidates as have passed such examinations.’’ (I heard a baddish account from quite another source of the agricultural classes instituted at Pune and in the Bombay presidency. But it was not a source ver y much to be relied on.) No doubt you will be kind enough to treat my poor little communication as quite ‘‘private,’’ as you always have. I am always penetrated with the kindness of any government giving information, upon which I have no sort of claim. And they are ver y much afraid of ‘‘hostile criticism’’ and deprecate my ‘‘public use’’ of what they say. Source: From a letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff9-14

9 December 1881 Private. How is your new governor entering upon office with regard to agriculture? And what are your financial prospects, now that the decentralization scheme is, I suppose, taking effect? Is agriculture getting its proper share? I was glad to hear that you had your Pound Fund and its accumulations, and your Imperial grant this year. But I hope the same command of money will continue under the provincial arrangements. 3. Your buildings, I trust, are now complete. 4. But more important than even these is the ‘‘establishment of a number of agricultural classes in the high schools,’’ your being able to provide masters for them, the agricultural test for the examination of all future candidates for the Revenue Department and success being not merely a paper honour but a means of promotion and condition of advancement. Agriculture is NOT to be optional as it has been. 5. Have they teachers yet from you in the high schools? Where do the inspectors and lower Revenue Department ranks obtain instruction in order to pass their examination? And where do they pass it? 6. Your stipendiaryships, I hope, are already in train. I understood they were to be thirty, ten (for each division) a year for three years. I tr ust you are satisfied with this. Very sor ry indeed was I that you should be deprived of your two assistants just at this critical time. But I trust Mr Schiffmayer is come back and that your native assistant turns out well, and that you are in good health.

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7. Mr Buck, the new head of the Agricultural Department, should be helping you by this time. He is said to be an able man. And is the question of the trained agricultural officer and director for each local government settled? I earnestly hope it is for Madras. And what is Bombay doing for its agricultural classes? 8. I have not yet received the list you were so good as to promise me of how each of your graduates is employed. It is a great thing to have given so many good graduates to India. And I trust that not only will agricultural proficiency be now the surest means and condition of advancement in the revenue service, but that, notwithstanding your former great difficulties owing to the cutting down of your stipendiar yships, you will be able to supply instructors to the new agricultural classes. May this great work prosper! You know, I dare say, that Sir Ashley Eden, urged by the supreme government, has sent home two very good men, one a Bengali babu and one a Muhammadan, to Cirencester for two years. Will they be able to instruct when they return without further experience in India? Have you any thoughts about our giving the civil candidates—now passing their two years’ course at Oxford and elsewhere for the Indian Civil Service—some instruction in agriculture and forestr y, etc., before they leave England? Should you prefer a third year in England for this? or should you wish them rather to have a third year in India before they take up their posts—supposing there were an agricultural professorship, etc., at each presidency capital? Could anything be done, now [that] Mr Benson is in England, about improved agricultural implements for India? For instance, he might go round to the great agricultural implement manufacturers at Ipswich, Bedford and Leeds, and say what they could do for you in the way of ploughs, what articles would suit you, etc. These manufacturers would send out specimens to tr y out in India. And of some things Mr Benson might obtain models, such as of the steam plough. Have you or would you recommend, at least for Bengal, steam threshing machines for threshing rice? (like wheat?) One threshes as much in a day as sixty men. Sugar mills, I understand, are now manufactured in Bengal. The new irrigation works projected (for Public Works), are they satisfactor y to you? And are you one of those who think that Indian cotton, with tillage and wet cultivation, could be brought up to the standard of Egyptian and American cotton? Or are the wants of India such that where she has irrigation she must always grow food? . . .

692 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Now I have written you, I fear, a ver y troublesome letter, so full of questions. But you will kindly pardon my great interest. I very much hope that your own prospects are settled as you and we would wish. Source: From two letters to Charles Benson, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C139 and C140

10 December 1881 One of the many questions that I wished to take advantage of your valuable presence to ask, when you took me by surprise, was: a pupil of Howard’s of Bedford told me that there should be steam threshing machines for threshing rice (like wheat) for Bengal. (One threshes as much in a day as sixty men, he said.) Could you kindly tell me whether steam threshing machines are among those which you think suitable to India and of which you purposed to take back models? I derived the greatest possible information from your too short visit. But I trust some day to have a less hurried one by appointment. I have so many questions to ask. 16 December 1881 Private. ‘‘The best thing will be for Mr Benson to write to Sir Louis Mallet officially, asking the question; he will do his best to have his and Mr Benson’s suggestion favourably considered.’’ This I learn direct from the India Office on inquiry. The ‘‘question’’ of course is what you mentioned to me, viz., that you should be commissioned by the I.O. to visit Ransomes of Ipswich, Fowler of Leeds, Howard of Bedford and others, in order to tell them what agricultural implements and machines are suitable for India (and what else you mentioned to me), with a view to their sending out specimens to be tried in India, etc. I would add that the sooner you write the better, as the India Office does not answer in a day. And the Christmas holidays will be upon us directly. . . . I earnestly hope that all your plans for the good of India will succeed to our hearts’ content. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

23 January 1882 Private. Agricultural Resolution. Government of India. It might not be disagreeable to you to hear how some agricultural authorities in India take the resolution by the Government of India regarding the new agricultural department. Its first business is to be a ‘‘systematic agricultural inquiry, through the authorities in each province.’’ What authorities? If introducing the

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settlement officers, it will mar the effect on the minds of the people. The system is to be ‘‘worked by the ordinary official staff supplemented, where necessar y. My correspondents—they are from Madras, the only presidency that has really done anything for agriculture—write: The new resolution of the Government of India x x is most disappointing. The worst feature is the proposal to combine settlement work with that to be done to promote agricultural reform. Nothing could be more unwise unless the object was to prevent the new department doing any work. The Settlement Department is the one department ever y ryot dreads. However just may be the work of the department, ever y ryot knows that it is the special work of that department to get as high a rent as possible from the land—all their field experiments, all their minute inquiries—open and secret, being instituted solely to determine whether the land can bear any higher rent. Imagine then when their officials come, in their agricultural capacity as agricultural reformers, with what suspicion they will be viewed by the ryots! Already the one great hindrance to government work in the direction of better staples, better stock, etc., is the almost universal suspicion with which our advances are received. In many places the ryots will not accept good seed, good rams, etc., though offered without any reser ve, because they believe that all such offers only cover some possible attempt to be made to raise the rent. . . . Any little good we have done amongst the ryots has been effected only by the repeated assurance that our Department had nothing to do with settlement operations.

Do you think that this may possibly be tr ue? And if so, could you not exercise your good influence before what they, if it is so, so truly call the ‘‘fatal step’’ is taken? (In the only abstracts I have seen of the resolution, it is not specified what the ‘‘ordinar y official staff,’’ or what the ‘‘authorities’’ are through whom the new system is to be worked. Of course the object is to save expense. But if the ‘‘ordinar y official staff is to be ‘‘supplemented, where necessar y, to meet the special circumstances of the case,’’ European officers are, and almost must be, dependent on their native subordinates. To introduce some better men into the subordinate ranks of the Land Revenue Department will be a very good reform. Good men would benefit the revenue administration, and they would do much to aid in spreading sound views of agriculture. Without any agricultural education and some agricultural test, nothing can be done to raise these men,

694 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India pivots of our system. And of agricultural education and agricultural examination, not one word in the resolutions. And still no word of the introduction of an agricultural test for the higher revenue ranks. The Revenue Board in Madras are certain to oppose it. It is to be hoped that government will insist upon the test being adopted. Is it not almost a scandal that the department which manages (?) our 30 million acres of land does not contain a single officer who has any knowledge of agriculture except what has been learnt in the worst school—from native subordinates, most of whom despise husbandr y, are bred up and bound to despise it by all their ties of caste and religion—and all connected with it. And in the majority of cases know far less of it than do government clerks in London of British agriculture. ‘‘We are certain to have another famine before long,’’ say the Madras people. And how are we preparing for it? The ‘‘resolution’’ speaks of famine as one of the principal objects to predict and avert. And these are the men whom we employ to do so. . . . The establishment of a small branch of the Settlement (rent-fixing) Department for conducting agricultural inquiries seems to be going on. Surely this is a fatal blunder? It has been done in Burma as a result of Mr [Edward] Buck’s visit there. And the Times (Madras) says a settlement officer has been appointed director of agriculture for Burma. Mr Buck was coming to Madras, to repeat, it is said, the same operation. Could not he be put on a better scent and plan? But this is immediate if it is to be done at all. [continued] 2 Februar y 1882 Since I wrote the preceding I have seen the ‘‘resolution’’ of the Government of India. It is ver y disappointing, is it not? In England we should call its duties those of a royal commission entrusted to the ‘‘ordinar y official staff.’’ And should we not ask, when is inquiry to come to an end? and when is improvement to begin? . . . The people are already sufficiently set against all we have been trying to do to help them in forestr y and the like without our ‘‘condemning’’ it ourselves altogether by putting it in the hands of what they think their standing enemy, Satan of India, the Settlement Department. In [point] 7 the resolution appears to view with approbation the making ‘‘duties’’ per manent of the ‘‘existing settlement staff’’ instead of ‘‘its connection with any particular district ceasing on the completion of assessment.’’ But is it not to be feared that this will

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make the dread and distrust of the ryot ‘‘permanent’’ instead of only periodical? . . . My correspondent goes on: ‘‘Further agricultural inquiry can never be complete, in the sense mentioned in the resolution, unless experimental agriculture be carried on, continuously with other systems of inquir y, to see what agriculture conducted on Western principles can do for the ryot of any particular district or tract.’’ (This is almost a truism, is it not? Why should it be put off? The great Bengal Anglo-Indians answer: ‘‘Oh but experimental government farms in Bengal have all been failures.’’ So do we say too. But why? Because they have had no ‘‘experts’’ as farmers.) . . . It is just the same as what we do in our Christianity. We say over and over again that we are ‘‘weak,’’ which is quite true but makes us no stronger. And we don’t tr y, we (scarcely) acknowledge any system of improvement to make us stronger. . . . This delights our souls, but it is all at an indefinite distance. I am like a thirsty bird with a long stork’s beak who is offered water in a plate, or like a pilgrim who sees the mirage in the desert which he thinks will slake his thirst. All this, if now, would save India. All this is just what we want our civil service candidates to learn. All this is indeed a pointed summing up of what are the peculiar wants of India. . . . But what is the ‘‘most lame and impotent’’ conclusion? ‘‘Recognizing, however, the existence of these great wants, the Government of India does not now invite any proposals to supply them.’’ Source: From two letters to Charles Benson, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C141 and C143

18 Februar y 1882 I assure you that I am quite as much distressed by the character of the ‘‘resolution’’ of the Government of India on the new Agricultural Department as anyone can be. To connect agricultural ‘‘improvement’’ with settlement operations is completely to close the door on all possibility of ever helping the cultivator of India. Anything that you can tell me will be put to use. And not a word will be lost. (I have a copy of the resolution.) 2. I bear in mind what you told me about the ‘‘native inspectors.’’ It is doubly alarming now when we think of what new powers may be put into their hands? Can you tell me what is the native name of these inspectors? Also, who appoints them? how many (about) there are to each tehsildar? or each taluq? or district? and how the selection is made?

696 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 3. Have you heard what has been the result of Mr Buck’s visit to Madras, if indeed it has already taken place? That the Government of India should have a considered policy as to agricultural reform—including of course education, and that it should systemically admit ‘‘qualified experts’’—seem two vital conditions of any improvement. 4. Could you tell me how far the use of steam agricultural implements will be affected in India by the want of fuel? What will be the fuel used? and, whatever it is, is it not so expensive as to make the use of steam in agricultural machines almost beyond native capability? Do you use steam for any agricultural operations at Saidapet? and what fuel do you use? (I was told of some sort of fuel, but I could not read the word in handwriting.) I trust that you have received your commission to visit the agricultural implement makers, and that you have completely lost any trace of bronchitis in this lovely spring weather. I entirely agree that without agricultural education the government can do nothing to improve the land of India. 2 March 1882 Private. Would it not be a great thing if a qualified agricultural expert, an Englishman whom they knew, would take a few Indians, zemindar or ryot, [on] a tour to, say, Italy and Egypt, a winter in China and a summer in England? Their reports would be worth having. Source: From a letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, Mss Eur B 263 ff15-16

16 Februar y 1882 Private. One line to thank you for your letter of 26 December 1881, for the copy of the Government of India resolution on the new Agricultural Department and for your important papers of 16 January and manuscripts. I hope to make use of them. I wish everybody here were as alive as I am to the truth and importance of what you say. I entirely agree as to the purport of this famous resolution. But few had seen it here. I congratulate you on your governor and still hope he will find a way out. I shall be VER Y anxious to know the result of Mr Buck’s visit to Madras. Still you seem to be doing great things at the college. May God speed the work.

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture / 697 Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9009/22

27 March 1882 Sunday I was entirely engaged in seeing the new legal member of Council previous to his departure for India. Monday (yesterday) in preparing papers for him and in the evening in seeing another gentleman about agricultural education for the civil servants/ser vice previous to going out. Editor: Letters to Arnold Toynbee,40 lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, call to mind the role played by Balliol in training British and Indian candidates selected for the Indian Civil Service and Benjamin Jowett’s contribution to that enterprise. Because of his friendship with Nightingale, Jowett over the years was the intermediar y between her and the civil servants departing for India. It seems that Nightingale and Toynbee met early in 1882, for a note of hers mentions his lecturing on political economy, supply and demand: ‘‘On certain conditions (Orissa) if those conditions wanting, then administration (government) must step in, where there is no competition . . . old political economy at fault.’’41 Source: From a typed copy of a letter to Arnold Toynbee, Add Mss 45806 ff 258-61, with a correction from Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:333

30 May 1882 I cannot thank you enough for your kind letter of 16 May, for its most interesting, most exhilarating enclosure from the Punjab [Mr Wilson’s letter]. I am carried along with him in every line. I bless God for him, for his interest in the people, for the foundation so evidently laid, one might almost say for eternal good, by Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. Though Sir J.L. would not quite agree with him, Mr Wilson, that, in all ‘‘cases,’’ to ‘‘decide’’ ‘‘in a way [?] with the ideas of the people’’ was ‘‘therefore’’ ‘‘in accordance with justice and good policy’’—for the very secret of Sir J. Lawrence’s extraordinar y success was that his ‘‘policy’’ was always to [?] ‘‘ideas of the people’’ to an ever higher ‘‘justice’’—do you remember the formula he made each Punjabi repeat as he settled the claims of each to the land? Yet it is undeniable and delightful that it is only through such sympathy as Mr Wilson’s that it is possible to do

40 Arnold Toynbee (1852-83), appointed lecturer to candidates for Indian Civil Service at Balliol College c1882, social reformer and historian. 41 Note 5 Januar y 1882, Add Mss 45827 f158.

698 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the people good, that such sympathy is as rare as it is essential and that the want of it is the very secret of our ill-success with the people. For alas! at this moment, while Mr Wilson writes with such wellearned and justified pride in the Punjab results, and such confidence in those of our rule all over India, there is in this big India a [?] province near him, namely, Bengal itself, where by our own avowal the land question has become so burning that, while every year almost and ever y month makes it more difficult to settle, every year and [?] makes it more imperative that it should be settled; for, a few [?] years and it will be impossible. The question of representation, which Lord Ripon has so started, has a terrible significance, all its own, in India and positively makes the settlement of land questions impossible in Bengal and perhaps in parts of Madras. For whom are you to represent? The zemindars? All the representatives will represent the zemindars. These are 100 times more anti-people, anti-own people than the straightest English officials are. The most powerful element against the good of India is secured in the first representation of India. The cultivators have no one to represent them. See what enormous, what priceless good you are [doing for] this most populous fifth of the earth: Balliol sends forth new [Cook: raw] missionaries. And in four years from the time he was a Balliol undergraduate, see what Mr Wilson has done. I know nothing that tells so soon, so widely and so vigorously as Indian civil service education, because nowhere is there such a field. Please be so good as to let me know your impression of Sir Campbell’s two lectures ‘‘as an experiment’’ when they have been delivered. It is an ‘‘experiment’’ crowded with consequences. Source: From a typed copy of a letter to Arnold Toynbee, Add Mss 45807 f14, with additions from Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:333-34

20 October 1882 I am truly distressed that I have kept this valued letter [so] long before returning it to your kindness, which lent it me. Pray do not punish me by declining my interest in all the Indian work, which is indeed great. Your correspondence with your pupils now in India must be invaluable. I hope that lectures on land tenure, provincial administration, etc., will form part of your future course as you desire. And more: if your two years can be made into three, that something [ . . . ] of instr uc-

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tion on agricultural and technical science, including forestr y, may direct your students’ attention at least to what are the peculiar wants of India, a knowledge often absent in her rulers. In agricultural chemistr y, in botany (as regards plants and woods), in geology (as regards soils and water supply), in forestr y (as regards rainfall and fuel), in animal physiology (as regards breeds, fodder and cattle diseases), there is much ignorance in India. What if scientific agriculture could be taught at Oxford? I give the Balliol civil service candidates joy of their position with you. The future of India depends, more than on anything else, on the rulers we bring up. May that position be ever more and more making progress in accordance with your wishes. Source: From a letter to Charles Benson, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C144

20 June 1882 I cannot tell you with what interest I watch what passes in India agriculturally and I thank you much for your letter at the end of May. You say you will be in London ‘‘early in July’’ and would see me. . . . I delight in hearing of your progress in Madras, but I am very sorry that you think of leaving Mr Robertson. It will be a great loss. Mr Robertson has been appointed a fellow of the Madras University. I have been interrupted and must stop. You do not tell me whether you have done your agricultural machine makers’ inspections. Source: From a letter to Sir James Caird, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur A 119

20 October 1882 I am almost equally interested in an agricultural education for the Indian civil service candidates of Mr Jowett, now vice-chancellor at Oxford, and we shall probably again seek your valued advice for Balliol College. Your agricultural review of the year, in a letter to the Times, was very encouraging. How I wish you would give us each year a sort of similar review of the Indian agriculture of the year. How thankful we must be that the war in Egypt is over. But now will come the ‘‘inquiries’’! Our nurses are now concentrated at Alexandria, where there is a good deal of fever among the men, Malta and the Car thage hospital ship, in which good work has been done bringing home wounded.

700 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to M.E. Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/1

26 January 1883 Private. I cannot thank you enough for your very great kindness in giving me such information on two subjects so near my heart: the Madras drainage and the Agricultural new Department. Your despatch with enclosures on the drainage of Madras to the India Office has been ‘‘put forward.’’ You are ver y angr y with the Army Sanitary Commission, as you well may (so they say themselves). We have now the whole case, viz., the disease case on one hand and your proposals on the other. Your views are noble. Good speed to them! And may Major Baring be able to give you the pecuniary imperial help you so well deserve is my most fervent wish! If I might dare to ask, it would be to know this—may I write again about the drainage despatch? 2. Is there anything feasible in establishing agricultural land banks, as they are making a beginning of in Bombay, or as Major Baring appears to advocate? 3. As to agricultural affairs, your name is blessed all over India. We hear constantly from high officials: ‘‘The Madras Agricultural Department is flourishing. But there the local government is liberal and gives it the strongest support. The only province outside Madras, wherein agricultural work proper has begun, is the N.W.P.,’’ etc. I wish the highest success to your new agricultural director, and tr ust that he will fully respond to your instalment of him in the post which, considering the circumstances of India, almost dwarfs every other, not of the highest class, in importance. I know that Mr Robertson will answer to your kindness and your expectation as second in command. Thank you for telling me about that. I am going to ask your leave to write again on both these subjects. If I may, I send you my very best and deepest New Year’s wishes for 1883. Private. On all your wise and beneficent plans for increasing the wealth of Madras and your kingdom. And may 1883 be a year of progress to poor India. There has never been such an awakening to the interests of the cultivators—in Madras, in Bombay, in Bengal, N.W.P., Punjab. Of course the devil’s advocate is busy. So much the better. It is sleepiness we have to dread, not the clash of minds in a constitutional way. ‘‘Her majesty’s opposition’’ is a great ‘‘institution.’’ In ever y institution I have ever known, hospitals not excepted, we never can do any-

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thing good, unless there are two, or better still three constitutional elements, keeping each other up to the mark and acting as a check on one another. This is the great difficulty in the army: we have it not. We are just now having a tremendous committee on the failures in Egypt, hospital, sanitary and transport, not attacking men but systems. But we are a great deal too civil—not in words but in action. We are ‘‘fortiter in modo’’ [forceful in words] but too ‘‘suaviter in re’’ [gentle in action]. There is a deal of self-excusing. But ‘‘qui s’excuse, s’accuse’’ [one who excuses himself accuses himself]. And ‘‘je suis’’ [I am] not ‘‘de l’avis de Monsieur pour la raison contraire’’ [of the opinion of the gentleman, but for the opposite reason], but ‘‘pour la même raison,’’ ‘‘de l’avis contraire’’ [for the same reason of opposite opinion]. But I am taking up your time, too valuable for this. I trust that India suits the health of you and yours, and pray believe me, with every good wish and expectation of your highest success, ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale P. turn over. You are good enough to send a kind message to the Verneys. My sister, I am sorry to say, has been seriously ill for three months and though they have been able to move her to Claydon last week, she is still quite a helpless invalid. The Buckingham people celebrate Sir Harry’s Jubilee next week, when a Cabinet minister or two grace the occasion by much speaking. He is eight-one, a most wonderful man for his years but still he is much aged by my sister’s illness. We have had a busy and rather disastrous winter. Source: From two letters to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff17-18

26 January 1883 Privat e. Godspeed to your new Agricultural Department and though perhaps some disappointment is felt at the inevitable necessity of a civilian head, yet possibly even more good may be done, as I know you will strive to do it, by you as the skilled and trained prime minister, than as the titular head. Just as in England the sovereign reigns but does not govern, the prime minister governs but does not reign. You will be sure to make it so. . . . I have been rather uneasy at not hearing from you and should be glad of a line, when you have time, to tell me how things are going on. You have at all events a governor [M.E. Grant-Duff] anxious to give the Madras Agricultural Department the strongest support and to

702 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India bring you forward and make you a position which you could fill with pleasure. No other province can say the same, not even the North West Province. And it is universally said that only in Madras has agricultural work proper begun. Mr Buck has expressed his great admiration of you in Madras. And I trust that what we feared as to the bad effect of having the Revenue and Settlement Department as the reformer in agriculture will be averted. 31 October 1884 Private. I would fain know how the present division of the all-important agricultural work succeeds. All the training and teaching is, I understand, in your hands—a work enough for any ambition—and which we are sure you are doing nobly. But how does the farming go on which is not in your hands? and how do the native deputies do their work? and how is Mr Benson doing? But as to the agricultural classes in the mofussil schools, so essential, I should be interested beyond measure to know how they prosper, and have you carried the proposal for bringing agriculture on the syllabus of the tests for employment in the Revenue Department? and do they now employ the college graduates, whom you have trained, as officers of the Revenue Department? Source: From an undated draft letter to an unnamed recipient, National Librar y of Scotland Ms 10086 ff226-27

[1880s] During the last few months the Government of India have ordered one at least of the provincial governments (Madras—query perhaps Bombay too?) to revise at once all their educational rules ‘‘so that reasonable encouragement may be afforded to technical and scientific instr uction as well as to literary instr uction.’’ Quer y: does the word ‘‘agricultural’’ follow the word ‘‘technical’’ in the minute? as ‘‘one of the most important subjects’’? For in an agricultural country like India, is not ‘‘agricultural’’ to ‘‘technical’’ as 100 to 1? If it does, it is the first time ‘‘agricultural’’ has been put ‘‘in orders’’ by the Government of India. And is not this too actually a political matter? Our education has made the young babus all look to government situations—not one in ten can have them. That makes them home rulers, seditious writers in newspapers. The professions of law and medicine are also overstocked. Unless government directs the attention of these young fellows to the land, to agriculture, as a profession, what opening is there for them? And in the primary schools, everything is alluded to but agriculture.

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You were speaking of the dangers of local self-government. Yes, it is ver y true. And, also, people will try to get a majority—to befriend their own poor relations. But is there not a greater danger on the other side? N.B. Madras has taken the Government of India order as it was meant. In their new educational, technical scheme, agriculture is ‘‘one of the most important subjects.’’ And there are several examinations under the scheme, leading up to the examination for a diploma in agriculture. I am sure that if you are kind enough to moot either of these subjects, sanitary or agricultural, with Lord Reay or Lord Dufferin, you will do so as from yourself, without mentioning poor me, which would take away all the authority. Good speed to your enterprise and a happy return full of India. Source: From an incomplete letter to an unknown recipient, Add Mss 45807 ff 149-52

[c1884] 2. Madras agricultural grievances. For reasons I do not presume to teach you, Mr Wilson has been made a member of the Board of Revenue, under the control of which he is, as Settlement and Agricultural Officer; and the Board have given him separate charge of agriculture to the Board. Is not this rather like Mr Wilson, as Settlement and Agricultural Officer sending up a reference, and as Agricultural member of Board, in the name of the Board agreeing in the view expressed by the Director of Revenue Settlement? It was bad enough when the Government Farm and College were under the Board. But there was some redress by government for all their papers were sent up to government. Now all their reports are sent up to Mr Wilson who may either record them (i.e., put them aside for months or altogether), or send them up to the Board of Revenue when he, as the Board of Revenue, agrees with Mr Wilson, the Director y of Settlement. This probably ends in the paper not being printed. At least we know that generally under this kind of system, everyone being all the while all that they ought to be, it is useless to report anything that it does not suit the Settlement Department or the Board of Revenue to make public. I have been hearing a great deal lately of assessment and Settlement Department in Bombay. But that is such an enormous subject. This little definite matter in Madras seems within the compass of mortal man to redress. Mr Grant-Duff is exceedingly good to me, but it passes even my impertinence to represent this to him, which probably was arranged by himself.

704 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India The Agricultural Reportership, as I think it is called, is quite useless under these circumstances. There was some talk of an Agricultural Inquir y Commission from England. Could the director of the Government Farm be on it? He is the ‘‘Agricultural Reporter.’’ About Madras agriculture: it is easier to see the difficulties than to remedy them. I will not allow that any ryots are worse off than my ryots, the zemindari ryots. But good Bombay and Madras men sometimes tell you with so many facts that the condition of the government ryots is as bad, that one can hardly help listening. The Settlement Department, or the Unsettlement Department, as Lord Hobart42 called it, is the principal offender. Its ver y raison d’être is not to make land revenue but to raise land revenue. That is an immense subject: I do not presume to give you information upon it. But is it not true that it has been a great mistake in Madras joining the Agricultural to the Settlement Department, a department so hated by the ryots that as settlement officers the agricultural reformers must lose the influence they had gained amongst the farmers of south India. Every suggestion now made can be looked on by the ryot only as some means of raising the rent. Mr Grant-Duff is most favourable to agriculture but does he think that Mr Wilson, the present head of the Agricultural and Settlement Department (I do not know the exact term)—a capital man, I believe—is as favourable to the Agricultural College and the Saidapet farm, as their long services deserve? or that he ties down their action, files and ignores their reports and does not attend to them? Mr Gladstone’s Liberal principles in India ought to make their voice heard in England. So ought the Government Farm and College of Madras in India. But so far from this they have no appeal. Indian grievances have no appeal in England but to the India Council—capital good men, the strongest men perhaps in the world, but not exactly the best Court of Appeal for reasons you ought to teach us. Source: From a letter to Sir M.E. Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/5

31 October 1884 Your last pregnant words when you were so good as to come and see me were: ‘‘India is a vast estate which we have to administer.’’ And how grandly they have been acted out by you. May success attend your ever y step!

42 Vere Henr y Hobart Hampden Hobart (1818-75), governor of Madras 1872-75.

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Pardon me for asking two questions very near my heart. Might I ask whether you have seen your way to carry out a proposal, which I believe you entertained, to make agriculture one of the tests for employment in the Revenue Department? And second, to give employment as officers in the Revenue Department to graduates whom you have trained in the Agricultural College? I could overflow with questions, so interesting are they to me. But I must not abuse your great kindness. Pray believe me, ever your faithful and grateful servant Florence Nightingale It must make it very lively and pleasant to members of the House of Commons to have a personal ‘‘row’’ in there ever y night, and ‘‘jackals,’’ ‘‘badgers’’ and ‘‘bonnets’’ flying about as names (not by Irish but English spokesmen) of respectable experienced members and statesmen. But it does not conduce to either business or dignity. And it makes one’s blood boil to see our Cabinet’s time and brains and work wasted after this rowdy fashion. You have nobler work in India. F.N. .

Source: From a letter to Charles Benson, Columbia University, Presbyterian School of Nursing C163

31 October 1884 Private. I am so anxious to know how it fares with Mr Robertson and the college and the education, and with yourself and the farming, and with all the mofussil in these respects. You are so kind as to offer me information: all information is most welcome to me. You mentioned your tour to the Godavari and Kistna Deltas. Those have been a main object of my interest for years; I should so like to know the results you saw. The copy of your report, which you so kindly promised me, has never reached me. Indeed I have had no reports at all from you or Mr Robertson lately. But chiefly I am anxious to know whether agricultural tests have yet been adopted for employment in the Revenue Department. . . . How do improved ploughs and improved agricultural implements fare? and improved seeds? Source: From a letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff22-23

15 January 1886 Private. I was so ver y glad of your letter and especially for the good news that a large scheme for technical instruction is about to be instituted, in which your college will hold so large a place. The (compul-

706 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India sor y) course of science instruction, including agriculture, at your college for schoolmasters is a grand thing. And I give you joy that one of your wishes has so marked a success. Indeed there can be no doubt that, notwithstanding drawbacks, you are doing a great work for all India, whose great question is agriculture. . . . I should congratulate your student association for the journal it produces. Source: From a letter to Sir M.E. Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/10

15 January 1886 Private. I hailed your kind letter with the utmost interest—especially that part where you tell me of that large scheme which you are launching for the encouragement of industrial and technical education. This is a matter of such vital importance for India. Attendance on a course of science instruction, including agriculture, no doubt will be compulsory for some. (I always remember your pregnant words upon India being a vast estate which we have to administer.) This will indeed worthily celebrate your last year. No doubt civil servants will come in for their share of the immense advantages which you are preparing. And it will be remembered that they should be allowed to pass in agriculture or technical science, and should receive the same rewards and increased allowances for it that they receive at present for passing in languages. (It is a subject eagerly canvassed now at Oxford and at the India Office, canvassed without much of the practical action following that should follow at the latter.) But you will steal a march upon them. You will have the whole machiner y with you there and the power of applying such knowledge to the country. In England the knowledge can only be obtained with difficulty and without any reference to India. Oxford is however endeavouring to follow suit. It would rejoice my soul if you were kind enough to order any part of your scheme that would not be improperly made known to be sent me. It should be quite ‘‘Private’’ if desired. It does rejoice my soul that you think the taking away of so much of the provincial income, owing to the war scare—this was heart-rending last year—will not prevent much good being done this year. Our very best New Year’s wishes are for you and yours and for your ‘‘vast estate’’ that the highest New Year’s blessings may be poured upon you all, without limit but that of Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom and Power, and upon Mrs Grant-Duff’s noble works.

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I say nothing of the extraordinar y and critical state of public affairs here, especially as regards Ireland. You have better informants than I. The next two years will be specially interesting, but the next two months specially critical. Sir Harry Verney and my sister are coming to London today. And I will give them your kind message. Sir Harry and Buckingham have gone out of the House of Commons together. Captain Verney, the eldest son, has won North Bucks by a very large majority without asking a single man for his vote or spending a single penny in getting one, simply by holding (more than a hundred) meetings, generally with his wife with him, instructing and explaining to the people— often in the mud with his back to a wall, or in a wagon with his back to a tree by the light of a single lantern, wife by his side, who has made 5600 and odd intimate friends, or in a cowshed with the toil-worn rugged faces looking over the stalls by the ‘‘lantern dimly burning.’’43 Fred Verney, the youngest son, pursued the same tactics, in S.W. Kent, also with his wife, but he was too late in the field and lost by a small majority in a very heavy poll; defeat means victory, conducted in such a way. Now the election is past and gone, one does not want to use ‘‘bad words’’ about the squires and clergy who closed all schoolrooms to Liberal candidates. The public houses were engaged on the Conser vative side and not even a Liberal horse could obtain a shelter. Success to the right in the forthcoming struggle. Source: From a letter/draft to an unknown recipient, Add Mss 45807 ff291-92

[ca. 1886-87] You have now done your duty wisely and well by the peasant proprietors, or rather against them. Will you not go on and tell us what to do, if not peasant ownership, by agriculture? This is what I am trying to do for Indian agriculture where we have (1) peasant proprietors, directly under the owner, the state, (2) zemindars who as a rule do absolutely nothing for their tenants, who constantly raise their rents, whose own rents are never raised by the state. The two great wants are: 1. Capital, 2. Manure, improved agriculture. The two great defects:

43 Probably an allusion to Mark Twain, from ‘‘The Burial of Sir John Moore.’’

708 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 3. Periodical resettlement, generally after each thirty years. (Lord Hobart used to call the Settlement Department the Unsettlement Department.) 4. Want of irrigation. Where there is irrigation, it is no consequence of our destruction of the village communities, in the hands of ill-paid corrupt native petty officials, instead of the decent villagers. There are of course many others. As to capital, the system of advances by government having totally failed. Source: From a copy of a letter draft to Mr Chatfield,44 Add Mss 45807 ff248-49

Januar y 1887 I have not forgotten your great kindness in years past in furnishing me with so much valuable information about the elementary education of ryots’ sons, the proportion in primary schools, etc. . . . Indian sanitation and agriculture and popular education have always been matters of the deepest interest to me. Someone says that ‘‘la reconnaissance n’est qu’un vif sentiment des bienfaits futurs’’ [gratitude is but the keen anticipation of future blessings]. I am afraid you will say so of me. I feel it almost impertinent to ask whether it would not be a great advantage to India if information regarding agricultural subjects could be given in the textbooks used in the primary schools of India, that is in the Bombay presidency. I would fain add on sanitar y subjects also, but am afraid of asking too much. Source: From a draft letter to E.C. Ozanne, Add Mss 45807 ff250-51

Januar y 1887 Sir William Wedderburn has encouraged me to write to you, Indian agriculture having always been a subject of the greatest interest to me—and ‘‘bones’’ and night soil of cities and lotus plants in tanks, as manure. I have read your Annual Report for the year 1884-85, the only one with which the India Office could furnish me, with the greatest eagerness. Where you have done so much in prizes for fairs and large agricultural shows, it seems impertinent to be proffering a request, suggested to me by educated natives from the Bombay presidency interested in agriculture, which most educated natives are not, are they? One of them is a member of the Royal Agricultural Society. It is this: to take advantage of all the fairs of India, that is, of the Bom-

44 Possibly K.M. Chatfield, chief secretar y of Public Instruction in Bombay.

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bay presidency, by awarding small prizes, even if only medals, first, second and third, to the best breeds of cattle and the best agricultural produce. Then, though the medal be of the lowest pecuniary value, the natives get the seed of the plant or crop which has won its medal, or take care to feed up their half-starved cattle. Source: From a letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff26-27

15 June 1888 Private. How can I thank you enough for your valuable letter, for the report you so kindly sent me, with your own important paper in it, which report I shall ask to be allowed to keep. I am most unwillingly obliged to excuse myself for not having written from illness. But I have not been quite idle—I have submitted important points in your letter to those who might be able to further them. But progress is slow. You are so good as to say that you would answer any further questions. You told me—this is a point on which people are anxious—that the rules laid down by which there is to be no enhancement of assessment except upon intelligible principles have been eluded in Bombay and not at all followed in Madras. What are the particular points by which they contrive to set these rules, so essential to the ryots’ (or cultivators’) improvements and welfare, at defiance? Of course all improvements stand still when resettlement is coming on, if this is the case. Is the Survey and Settlement Department, which it was supposed was to be disbanded, still in full force? I will not write more now, but I will write again when I have had your kind answer. Source: From a typed copy of a letter to John Murdoch, Add Mss 45809 ff 234-36, 239

[after October 1889] I was extremely glad to have that conversation with you on Saturday. You were so good as to ask me to think over, and you talked it over with me, what subjects seemed most pressing for your admirable small cheap tract for working people in India. 1. You told me that botany was a great favourite with Hindus, and it seems to me that little books really about trees, plants, leaves and flowers, their ways and habits, not their nomenclature, is quite a sine qua non, not only for Hindus but for English children. . . . 2. Next to botany I would put zoology. . . .

710 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 3. Parables to replace the abominable little tales of successful cheater y which Hindus read seem to be the great desideratum. . . . 6. Only one thing more. Would it be possible to make a very brief simple transmogrification of the Pilgrim’s Progress45 fitted for Hindus? Source: From a letter to W.R. Robertson, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur B 263 ff28-29

31 March 1890 Alas! that you should not be going to carry on your inestimable work in India. But I hope that you will still instruct us in our Indian agricultural duties here. I trust that you think well of what the governments of India have done in having out the secretar y (or whatever he is called) of the Agricultural Society for a year. The Government of India does so little for agriculture. I augur great things from your ‘‘farm’’ here. . . . I have found seven nos. of your admirable Saidapet Journal of the ‘‘Agricultural Students Association,’’ which I trust continues. It is so profitable to young men to write exactly. But I hope that they will not go mad about ‘‘bacilli’’ and ‘‘germs’’ and ‘‘bacteriology,’’ which has been the ‘‘fad’’ here. But I think it is passing away in its dangerous aspect (Koch’s), viz., that of considering the ‘‘germs’’ as the origin, not the product of disease, of which uncleanliness, bad drainage, bad water supply, etc., are the origin. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff39-40

22 July 1891 Private. Sir W. Moore. Sanitar y. I have had a long interview with Sir William Moore. He read me headings of his paper. It is long, exhaustive and logically arranged, I think. But still how differently Dr Sutherland would have done it. Fortunately Sir W.M. is anti-quarantine and there are no bacilli that I could find in his paper. I had a long talk with him. I wish you would have, sometime. He is full of knowledge, though not always sound. (He did not know of the existence of the present A.S.C.). I had a long talk with him (1) on the facilities of teaching sanitation in India. He says: ‘‘Absolutely none. But even if there were any,’’ he says, ‘‘they could not be used.’’ The medical establishments are strictly limited. And with twenty men, say, in Bombay always on leave, do you

45 John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678-84.

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture / 711

think they would leave a man for six months in a Bombay hospital learning sanitation? Impossible. Whatever a man learns, he must learn before he leaves England. ‘‘Netley men are much the best as to knowledge. I won’t say anything about their manners.’’ (2) (inter alia) He says the present sanitary boards are just as useless and just as powerless and just as moneyless as any of the previous systems we have had. Also, engineers know nothing who are put on the boards. He says there is only one way out of it: to have a superior sanitar y member at the head of the department on the viceroy’s Council and another at the India Office (if we have them, there must be an act against quarantine and another against bacilli). Editor: Nightingale was involved in 1891 with the attempt to establish a chair or readership in ‘‘social physics’’ at Oxford University, the institution that trained the most politicians and senior civil servants for Britain. She thought that this applied work was needed especially for India. Her (unsuccessful) efforts to establish a chair or readership are related in detail in Society and Politics (5:110-13). The points specific to India occur in a letter she wrote to the anthropologist and eugenicist Francis Galton (1822-1911): India, with the 250 millions (200 millions being our fellow subjects, I suppose) enters so little into practical English public life that foreigners scarcely know where this small country is. It forms scarcely an element in our calculations (though we have piles of Indian statistics), whether the peoples there are growing richer or poorer, better or worse fed and clothed; whether their physical powers are deteriorating or not; whether fever not only kills less or more but whether it incapacitates from labour for fewer months in the year or more. What are the native manufactures and productions (for the largest customer in the world, the Government of India) which could be had as good and cheap in India as those to be had from England? Whether the native trades and handicrafts are being ruined or being encouraged under our rule. What is the result of Sir C. Wood’s (1853) Education [Act] in India? These are but a very few of the Indian things which are I will not say hotly contested, for few care, either in the House of Commons or out, but the opposites are asserted with equal positiveness.46

46 Letter to Francis Galton 7 Februar y 1891, University College Archives.

712 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Notes (for Frederick Verney leaving for India with Prince Damrong), Add Mss 68889 ff163-70

30 November 1891 Training Schools in Bombay Presidency: Four government training schools for masters: Pune, Ahmedabad, Dharwad, Hyderabad (Sind). Two government training schools for female teachers: Pune, Ahmedabad. . . . 2. Victoria Technical College being organized in Bombay in 1885, probably it has a normal branch. Lord Reay, who took the greatest personal interest in these subjects, could give all recent information. 3. Most excellent college for young chiefs at Rajkot in Kathiawar, Rajkumar College. Mr Bhaunagari could give all particulars. Also one at Ajmer, called the Mayo College. Sir W. Wedderburn believes both these colleges were started and are maintained by the chiefs. 4. Female Education: Pune High School. Prince Damrong should certainly visit this school started by Sir W. Wedderburn. Lady Superintendent: Miss Hurford, perfection. She has now been placed by government in charge of the Female Normal School at Pune. This Prince Damrong should visit. It is under the supervision of a committee of leading Indian gentlemen. Madras: Be sure you see the Victoria Hospital for high-caste Hindu women and Muhammadan purdah women, the only one, I believe, in India (it was Mrs Scharlieb’s). Also see the Agricultural (government) College at Saidapet near Madras, the only one, I believe, in India. (We rave at the English-educated Hindus for not putting their education into their agriculture and give them no education to put in. But Bombay has, I believe, begun.) Letter to John Murdoch Esq., LlD, agent of the Christian Vernacular Education Society. This insignificant-looking little man knows real India better than anyone. He has spent forty years at his own expense in making tours of India, each taking two years. He is all enthusiasm without any fanaticism, cares neither for life nor death. His little sanitar y books, Way of Health, etc. are better than anything we in India have done. Lady Dufferin knew his worth, had his Way of Health adopted by government and placed him by herself at dinner at Government House. I have written to him fully about you and the prince. He is now in England till the 3rd [30th] (today). Bombay presidency. Pune. Rao Bahadur Vishnu Moreshwar Bhide, chairman of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha at Pune. They are, I believe, the old Marathas. They do an immense amount of public work with very little money. They know the people well, who have the greatest confidence in them. They are now consulted by government.

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture / 713

Ahmedabad: Rao Bahadur Runchorelal Chotalall, chairman of municipality, a most active and enlightened man, has encountered a great deal of opposition, even from his own people, a truly religious man of the highest type, a Jain, an excellent sanitarian, an authority, of course, in municipal administration. I shall hope for an account of the Bombay Village Sanitation Act, how it works, when you come back, through Sir Raymond West (to whom pray give my kind remembrances) and others. Calcutta: Manmohun Ghose47 (brother of Lalmohun) and his most excellent wife, both most enlightened people. I should like to send my love to Mrs Manmohun Ghose. He is said to be making £10,000 a year at the ‘‘Bar’’ (strong opponents say that he and other natives are far before any English at the ‘‘Bar’’ or judges we have out there. And so are called ‘‘mutinous dogs’’). Mr Manmohun Ghose begins at the beginning: he is a thoroughgoing reformer, he sends out lecturers to teach the rural people the first elements of English administration. . . . Mrs Manmohun Ghose is interested in the medical education of women. I shall hope, when you come home, to hear from you through Mr Ghose of the working of the Bengal Tenancy Act. I have written to all these people something of what each could tell you of interest to you and the prince [and six further letters of introduction]. Source: From a letter to Margaret Ver ney,48 Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9014/126

Embley 24 September 1893 Would you be so good as to give the enclosed letter and read it to Sir Harry, explaining to him that it is from a Mr Robertson, who was for many years head of the Madras Agricultural College and Farm, where he did an immense work among his students, especially among the Brahmins, who always had despised agriculture and all; I believe ever yone has got a place as agricultural agent to a zemindar or otherwise. This was really doing good. He left India to our very great regret, because government would not ensure him a pension or put him

47 Manmohun Ghose (1844-96), barrister, president of the Indian Association and one of the founders of the Indian National Congress. 48 Margaret Verney (1844-1930), friend, daughter-in-law of Sir Harry Verney.

714 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India among the covenanted [regular members of the service]. The enclosed letter is simply to give Sir Harry information about Hampshire agriculture. Source: From two letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff106-07 and 121-22

16 December 1893 Private. Sanitary Teaching for India Civil Service at Oxford. This is about civil service inIndia’s ignorance of sanitation. Private. I saw Sir W. Markby49 last night. He was one of Mr Jowett’s best helpers at Oxford and, as you probably know, the man in charge of the India civil service students at Oxford. Among many other things we spoke of Mr Jowett’s desire that the students should learn something of elementar y hygiene (it is a cry which reaches us from almost all the best Anglo-Indians; the power of a district officer is and ought to be so great but he generally knows nothing about sanitation or hygiene) or how to keep the people alive. Sir William Markby said at once: ‘‘We could give the men who go off from Oxford ever y year at least one lecture and tack it on to the Indian Institute at Oxford. But who shall be the lecturer? It ought to be a man not only conversant with sanitary principles but conversant with India’’ and in sympathy with the peoples and he, Sir W.M., asked me to name one. I come to you, of course. He also asked for books on the subject for the men to read. And again I ask you. You see we can only get these small things as yet. Let us hope for more. At present the time at Oxford is so short (and sanitation would not tell in the examinations) that they, the men, have not time to learn how to keep the Hindu alive. Please help us. 23 January 1894 Indian Civil Service Lecture and Books. You are going to have an A.S.C. meeting today, you said, and that you would be so very kind as to ask Dr Cuningham or others for a sanitar y lecturer who had been in India to give one lecture a year on elementary hygiene and sanitation to the Indian civil service students at Oxford just before they leave Oxford. It is very important that it should be well done as this is the first opening I have had. And it was only brought about by its having been wished

49 Sir William Markby (1829-1914), judge of high court at Calcutta 1866-78, reader of Indian law at Oxford 1878, vice-chancellor of the University of Calcutta 1887-88, fellow of All Souls and Balliol College.

Reform in Credit, Co-operatives, Education and Agriculture / 715

for by Mr Jowett. One lecture is all that is asked for now, as I understand. But it probably may grow to more if this is well done. . . . I am asked at the same time for books for these young Indian civil ser vants to read on the same subjects, Indian elementary hygiene and sanitation, to put the idea into their heads that they owe something to the natives, and how to help the natives in this line. (I had rather not be quoted please.)

716 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Nightingale letter to Lady Grant-Duff.

The Condition of Women in India

N

ightingale believed that in order to achieve a good standard of public health in India, the active participation of women was required. In a message she sent to the viceroy, while thanking him ‘‘with all our hearts and minds for what he is doing for the improvement and enlightenment of his people concerning their health,’’ she stressed that it was ‘‘the peasant women, in whom really lies the way to health, the key to health and to disease, have yet to be reached’’ (see p 388 above). This understanding of the crucial role women could play in the improvement of public health would become eventually standard development policy, but the colonial powers at the time held no such views. To compound the negative effects of official attitudes, there were numerous cultural barriers to women’s participation. Nightingale believed that women had to be encouraged to play an active role, while still observing traditional sensibilities. It was necessary, for example, for women to teach women. Girls had to be included in education at all levels. Correspondence shows Nightingale, while comparing educational opportunities for landowners’ sons with those of peasants, asking about access for girls (see pp 634 and 736 below). The provision of health care to women themselves was only one goal and a difficult one, especially for women in purdah, but broader education for women, especially of the great majority of the population in villages, was always a parallel concern. To accomplish both Nightingale hoped to ‘‘introduce native women health missioners to bring health among the native rural mothers’’ (see p 773 below). The grinding hard work that was the lot of rural women had to be alleviated. Nightingale noted the need for labour-saving devices for them. For religious reasons Indian women would not go to men doctors when they needed care, hence the necessity to train women doctors. As Nightingale explained in arguing c1888 for a new women’s hospital, nothing would induce Hindu or Muslim women in purdah, and many Indian women not in purdah, ‘‘to allow a medical man to / 717

718 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India approach them.’’1 Separate facilities indeed were required: dispensaries, clinics and hospitals. Nightingale sought the collaboration of other able, committed women. Much material on her collaboration with leading women has already appeared in Women. Here we relate women collaborators on India, notably Dr Mary Scharlieb,2 the first British woman doctor to practise in India; Lady Dufferin,3 vicereine and the founder of an association to provide medical care for women, and Lady Grant-Duff, wife of the governor of Madras 1881-86 and a crucial supporter of Scharlieb’s work. Among other British women collaborators was Mary Carpenter, a social reformer who visited India for considerable periods and wrote on it. Gradually we will see Indian nationals themselves emerge in the correspondence. Thus there are references to Dr Ganguly, the first Bengali woman to become a doctor, who worked in the Dufferin Fund Hospital. Dr Scharlieb was a collaborator for decades. She had gone with her barrister husband in 1866 to Madras, where she studied at the Madras Medical College. She did further work at London University, where she passed brilliantly. To the grand duchess of Baden Nightingale described Scharlieb’s mission in glowing terms: Her object is to return to practise in the zenanas [women’s quarters] at Madras. She is so impressed with the hopeless uneducated state, over fed and lost in laziness of the richer women in the harems, who may see no man, and with the half-starved or wholly starved, violently over worked and equally uneducated state of the poorer Indian women.

Scharlieb had had ‘‘four years’ medical training at Madras,’’ Nightingale continued, ‘‘and a further three years’ course’’ at London University: ‘‘I have been for just twenty years working for India, an enormous subject, and I just hail this sort of devoted woman.’’ She contrasted Scharlieb with the ‘‘many ladies [who] come to us at our training school asking just to ‘pick up’ a little among our nurses at the hospital, as if that would qualify them to go out and practise among the women in India, where no doctor can be admitted.’’4 1 From a letter 1888, in Women (8:64). 2 See the biographical sketch in Appendix A. 3 See Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 237-44; Margaret I. Balfour and Ruth Young, The Work of Medical Women in India; Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, ‘‘ ‘Merely Birds of Passage’: Lady Hariot Dufferin’s Travel Writings and Medical Work in India, 1884-1888,’’ Women’s History Review 15,3 (July 2006):443-57. 4 Letter 31 March 1879, in Women (8:834-35).

The Condition of Women in India / 719

In preparation for Scharlieb’s return to India Nightingale wrote a warm letter to the governor of Madras (M.E. Grant-Duff) to recommend her (see p 727 below). Dr Scharlieb then had the support of the governor and his wife at this crucial stage. She practised in Madras, setting up her own hospital, the Queen Victoria Caste and Gosha Hospital. It seems that Scharlieb and a woman missionary, Elizabeth Bielby, who later qualified as a doctor, were instr umental in getting Queen Victoria to take up the cause of female medical aid to women in India. Bielby, as a missionar y of the Zenana Medical Missionary Society, had successfully treated the maharani of Punna, in central India. On Bielby’s departure for England in 1881, to take medical training, the maharani charged her with conveying a message to the queen, which she insisted be written down ‘‘small,’’ put into a locket and kept around her neck until she could deliver it personally. The meeting duly took place at Windsor Castle, recorded as follows in the queen’s diar y (spelling errors corrected): Also received a Miss Bielby, a medical missionary, who had attended the maharani of Punna and brought a large silver locket containing a petition from the latter, praying me to sanction female doctors being sent out to attend the ladies in the zenanas of India, many of whom died for want of proper medical attendance, no man being allowed to go near them. Miss Bielby gave a melancholy account of these poor ladies, and of the widows, or in fact, only betrothed women, who were treated like menials from the moment their bridegrooms died. I expressed my deep interest and hope that something might be done in this matter.5

Two years later the queen received Scharlieb, also at Windsor Castle, describing her as: a real female doctor, who is going out to India, sent by several doctors and people in England, who know the dreadful need of doctors for women of all ranks in India. They are not allowed to have a doctor, even if they wished it, and in consequence quantities die in childbirth, or never recover well. Mrs Scharlieb is a nice intelligent person, but quite unconnected with any missionaries. (Entry 12 July 1883).

In 1884, on the appointment of Lord Dufferin as viceroy, Queen Victoria acted on their pleas. She summoned Lady Dufferin to Bal-

5 Queen Victoria’s Journal, 13 July 1881, Royal Archives, Windsor Castle.

720 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India moral Castle and gave her the task of improving health care and education for the women of India. Lady Dufferin in turn established the National Association for Supplying Medical Aid to the Women of India, the ‘‘Lady Dufferin Fund,’’ which lasted long after the Dufferins’ term. In the beginning, Queen Victoria was patron, Lord Dufferin the patron in India, Lady Dufferin president, and the governors and lieutenant governors of the provinces vice-presidents. A central committee was established in Calcutta, with branches in every province. Better training of traditional midwives (dais), using modern Western sanitation and medical knowledge, was a major objective. Gradually the Fund opened dispensaries, female wards in hospitals and even zenana hospitals exclusively for women. Lady Dufferin’s journals record this ongoing work, including the founding of institutions, arrival of women doctors, etc., in her journals.6 Before the Fund was established, some Western medical care was provided by medical missionaries, notably, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.7 These also provided some health education, especially in the villages. Nightingale had heard from a doctor friend, Elizabeth Blackwell, of the work of Dr Frances Elizabeth Hoggan, the first Welshwoman to qualify as a doctor. Hoggan had published an article on the need for medical assistance by women in India in 1882.8 There had been considerable resistance early on to sending out women doctors to India, as women were seen as unsuited for such high duties. Nightingale was frequently pressed to assist in the sending out of unqualified women as doctors, missionaries or nurses without medical training, who asked to be allowed to ‘‘pick up’’ a few months of midwifery training, for example, prior to departure. Nightingale resisted, as noted above, citing Dr Scharlieb as an example of a highly qualified doctor. Progress was slow but gradually Indian women were trained as doctors.

6 H.G. Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, The National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India; for a retrospective see the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My Journal 1884-1888; Balfour and Young, The Work of Medical Women in India, 33-53; and Seán Lang, ‘‘Saving India through Its Women,’’ Histor y Today 55,9 (September 2002):46-51. 7 See Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 232. 8 Letter from Blackwell 16 Februar y 1883, Add Mss 45807 f37; Frances Elizabeth Hoggan, ‘‘Medical Women for India,’’ Contemporar y Review 42 (August 1882):267-75.

The Condition of Women in India / 721

Gourlay states: ‘‘By the end of the nineteenth century a number of medical schools and universities opened their doors to the women of India and in the course of time produced a large number of female doctors and nurses, totally indigenous and well suited to the needs of the country. By 1895 at least 300 Indian women were preparing themselves for medical degrees.’’9 Henceforth ‘‘the need to import medical women from abroad declined gradually’’ (257). Much of Nightingale’s work with Lady Dufferin was on health promotion and disease prevention through basic sanitary education. To do this ‘‘sanitar y primers’’ were needed, ‘‘little books in Hindustani,’’ for English books even in translation would lack coverage of Indian conditions. A great deal of Nightingale’s correspondence with Lady Dufferin consists of discussions over the choice of books, lists of recommendations and actual parcels sent. We see Nightingale pulling strings and calling upon various people to help find the best books available. Nightingale became impressed with Lady Dufferin’s seriousness and competence over the course of their working relationship. After the Dufferins’ return to England, she described Lady Dufferin as ‘‘such a very different person from what I expected to see, so thorough, so simple, perfectly ‘up’ in every detail, with clear ideas and experience.’’10 Lady Dufferin and Nightingale remained in touch but did not work together any further; Nightingale declined (painfully) to join Lady Dufferin’s ‘‘general committee of the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India’’ (see p 768 below). Naturally this did not stop Nightingale from approaching her in 1892 for her signature on a ‘‘memorial’’ in favour of a pioneer school for girls in Bombay (see p 772 below). Lady Lansdowne, who succeeded Lady Dufferin as vicereine in 1888, called on Nightingale before leaving for India. Nightingale encouraged her to carry on the work of the Lady Dufferin Fund. Lady Dufferin discussed the Fund with her successor on her arrival in Calcutta, and received her assurance that the Fund would be carried on. It seems that Nightingale had no contact with the next vicereine, Lady Elgin, but a message Nightingale sent Lord Elgin through his secretar y, a friend of Arthur Clough, Jr.’s, pressed again for the needs of

9 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 243. See David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India 87-91. 10 Letter to Henry Bonham Carter 31 March 1889, Add Mss 47721 f165.

722 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India peasant women. She had correspondence with various people as late as 1896 and 1897 on these concerns. In addition to the women collaborators already mentioned, Nightingale had contacts with the wives of other officials. Correspondence with men officials (indeed throughout the Collected Works) often includes greetings to the wife. Wives often acted as secretaries for their husbands, a further point of contact. Some of these wives wrote Nightingale directly, providing her with their own much-appreciated insights and experience. An excerpt from a letter Nightingale sent to her brother-in-law refers to Lady Trevelyan, whose husband was governor of Madras 1859-61, recalls one such early relationship: Sir C. Trevelyan. I found almost accidentally such an interesting letter of Lady Trevelyan’s to me from India. Do you think that Sir C. Trevelyan would like to see it? He has so forgotten me, of late years, that I felt it would be an intrusion to write to him on her death what I felt for her. And I did not. . . . I shall never forget her coming to see me, thirteen years ago, immediately after her brother Macaulay’s death. He seemed to be to her brother, husband, son and father, all in one: ‘‘Father to me thou art and mother dear/ And husband too, kind brother/ Of my heart.’’11 (Do not tell him that I said so.) This was just before she joined him in India. For a few years my communications with them were incessant. I don’t know anyone who seemed to enter into my work more than Sir C. Trevelyan. Now that is all over.12

Concerns about child marriage emerged late in Nightingale’s India work. In 1886-89 she did some background work on a case of child mar riage, that of a young Hindu woman, Rukhmabai (1864-1955), who became a cause célèbre when she refused to consummate a marriage made as a child. Rukhmabai herself became a pioneer woman physician in India, after qualifying in London. Little material has survived on Nightingale’s participation on the matter, but what little is available is given, with notes from coverage in the Times. Nightingale and Scharlieb evidently discussed child marriage and enforced widowhood, for the latter’s memoirs give a vivid account, which is worth recounting in some detail:

11 Homer, Iliad 6.450. 12 Letter to Sir Harry Verney 14 March [1873], Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9006/30.

The Condition of Women in India / 723

Miss Nightingale was deeply interested in the circumstances of women in Eastern lands, especially in Hindu and Muhammadan women. She was never tired of hearing my stories of their lives, their manners, customs and sufferings. One phase of Hindu woman life that greatly appealed to her was that of the widow. Under the British government no widow may become sati (suttee). She may not mount the funeral pyre and attain purification and salvation in the arms of her departed lord. The British raj is able to prevent this material sacrifice, but no human power can prevent the death in life that is the Hindu widow’s portion. The fact of widowhood is considered to be proof of sinfulness. It matters not whether the wrongdoings that drew down the wrath of heaven were in her present life or in one of her former lives. The crime has been committed, the stain is hers, punishment falls on her in the loss of her lord and master, and for the sake of her eternal welfare, the cleansing fires, actual and material, or potential and spiritual, are her only means of purification, restitution and, it may be, of eventual forgiveness. As the actual fire is forbidden the spiritual purification of humiliation, fasting and prayer must be endured. A year after the husband’s death the widow is dressed in her richest silk and golden robe; she wears for the last time her valuable jewellery; she is conducted to the sacred tank, and there, to the accompaniment of chants, prayers and music, she is stripped very roughly of jewellery and rich clothes, she enshrouds herself in a length of unbleached longcloth, her head is shaved—all actions typifying her utter humiliation—then she is immersed in the sacred water, a mystical washing away of sin. She emerges dripping, shivering with cold, with sorrow and with fear. Her calico shroud must dry on her person, and from this time until the day of her death she knows no comfort, no consolation, no ordinar y clothes, only her shroud, no nourishing and pleasant food, only cold rice and water—her touch, her very presence, is pollution. Who can wonder at Florence Nightingale’s generous sorrow for such sufferings, and who cannot understand her desire to help anyone who was able and willing to give such relief as might be possible to these patient sufferers? Miss Nightingale threw herself enthusiastically into my work; she shared my hopes and fears, and by her great sympathy and powerful interest she helped materially in the completion of the task I had set before me.13

13 Mary Scharlieb, Reminiscences 46-48.

724 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India In 1892 Nightingale wrote a preface to a biography of Behramji Malabari, a leading campaigner against child marriage and enforced widowhood, taking advantage of a further opportunity to deal with the issue. She shared his concerns about the bad effects on girls and women, while remaining sensitive about state interference in Hindu customar y law. This remained a thorny cultural issue, for even the most advanced social refor mers in India who were Hindus were often married as children, such as, for example, Dadabhai Naoroji. Malabari, a Parsi, belonged to a small religious group which was much more ‘‘Wester nized’’ than Hindus in this respect. British officials in India were anxious not to offend ‘‘Indian,’’ meaning Hindu, opinion. Malabari conducted a survey of opinion, which he published, which showed the great divergence of opinion and the clear reluctance of British of ficials, however sympathetic they were to the victims’ plight, to inter fere.14 The letters at the end of this section return to the attempt to introduce training nursing into India. Nightingale’s concerted, unsuccessful efforts made in 1865 are reported in Health in India. Here her later, more ad hoc efforts are reported, with further editorial material below. Often these letters simply show Nightingale encouraging British women going out to nurse in India. Nursing during the 1897 plague in Bombay is the last substantive issue addressed. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC3/SU216b

18 May 1876 I saw Miss Carpenter after her return from India. She gave me a most outrageous account of the indoor cesspits and foul smells which seem to do duty as house conveniences in the native ladies’ quarters at Dacca, Banaras, Baroda, etc., and even at Calcutta, where we had hoped the proper connection of houses with main sewerage was going on. Instead of that, excreta go into an indoor cesspit and soak into the soil under the dwelling rooms. In some cases, where residents’ wives (English ladies) had begun to visit the native ladies and become ill from the foulness, their husbands (English gentlemen) had forbidden their vis-

14 Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India, Being a Collection of Opinions, For and Against, Received by Mr Behramji M. Malabari, from Representative Hindu Gentlemen and Official and Other Authorities.

The Condition of Women in India / 725

iting. To go to jail seems, in India, the most efficient and immediate thing to do for health. . . . ever your old friend and comrade Source: From a note for A.W. Croft (director of Public Instruction), Add Mss 45805 f190

9 May 1879 [I] read chapters on zenana system with keen, it may be sad, interest. We know too well how the ‘‘mission’’ agencies15 are obliged to compete not alas! as to who can raise the highest standard or do the best work but as to who can show the largest figures to the home society. Is there no way of bringing them into a common organization and under the common supervision of government? This has been done very successfully in France with regard to charities. In England we know something of what you suffer from in the competition of charities and suffer more than you in one sense, for many of them only pauperize and demoralize the people they profess to serve. Then we pay to a Poor Law and pay to charities to keep people off the Poor Law. It is confusion twice confounded. It is competing against our own government. But no Englishman would listen for a moment to the French system of charities helping government relief, government working in with the charities and weaving them into a common organization— with women (soeurs et religieuses) doing a good deal of the work of relieving officers and of course of nurses and attendants. In India, however, government is everything while in England it is comparatively nothing. One smiles at the husbands doing the girl-wives’ examination papers for them (in the zenana examination organizations). . . . It is a new sort of Eton ‘‘cribbing’’ and ‘‘fagging.’’ At Eton and Rugby the big boys did or do their fags’ lessons. In India the husbands those of their wives. There is a ‘‘deal of human nature ever ywhere’’ as the Yankees say. In our ‘‘Local Cambridge Examinations and London University Examinations for Girls’’ (now gaining ground) much of the same thing, viz., spasmodic work . . . cramming for examination—then books put away—it is not always a natural healthful progress in education.

15 By 1870 there were over 2000 girls’ schools in British India. For women obser ving strict purdah there were zenana schools, or zenana teachers would visit them in their homes.

726 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Don’t think we can’t feel for your difficulties, we have the same mutatis m[utandis]. Instr uctor’s inspection over the indigenous schools, lady inspectors over the Zenana Missions must be, as you say, the crying want. The ‘‘retaining fee’’ for furnishing returns must be an unsatisfactory way of aiding unaided schools. Source: From two draft letters to or notes for A.W. Croft, Add Mss 45805 ff 196-97, 257

16 May 1879 Impertinent of me to give an opinion, so as a woman I am going to trouble you with a woman’s question for my poor Indian sisters. The girl mothers suffer great injury in health from the constant work of husking rice, pounding it with heavy pestle in stone? mortars (information comes from another presidency, is it the case in Bengal?) Good has been done in South India by the agricultural model farm letting at cheap rates improved implements of irrigation [?]. Never heard anywhere of the poor woman having anything done for her. Could there be or have there been any attempts to save the women’s labour in husking rice? Are there simple forms of machinery moved by cattle power, or could water mills or windmills be available? Some cheap form of grinding or husking mill moved by water could scarcely be impossible. Government says, and most truly, that it would be difficult to introduce, that there is no function so deeply rooted in the Indian household as the pounding or husking of the grain, that it is almost a sacred labour, that there is so little money to purchase implements or even to rent, and the labour of cattle would often not be available, but the maternal machine is always there and can always alas! be put in motion. Still these have been the conservative arguments from all generations and ought not to be final. 9 October 1879 Sanitar y primer sent by Dr Cuningham: difficult for one who knows so little of the tone of mind—mind so distinct from memory—of Indian schoolchildren to suggest anything to one who knows so much. But main thing remains for you to do, viz., to make it not only taught but practised among your immense family of little people. But how about the women? What educated natives say, nothing can be done till the women know what is to be done and how to do it in health matters. Are matters of health now taught to them? If you do in

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your girls’ schools and zenana examinations, you are greatly ahead of us. Source: From five letters to M.E. Grant-Duff (governor of Madras 1881-86), British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32, 2, 4, 6, 9 and 8

20 July 1883 I am now only troubling you, in order, if I may be so fortunate, to win your and Mrs Grant-Duff’s help and protection in the medical career of Mrs Scharlieb among the native women subjects of her majesty who number above a hundred millions. She sails for Madras on Tuesday. Her medical career was, as you are aware, started by the Government of Madras. Many and many an English lady, especially those on medical missions, comes to us and asks us to put her in the way of ‘‘picking up’’ enough (!!) nursing and doctoring to be useful in India. And, on our remonstrating, they say: ‘‘Something (of doctoring) is better than nothing.’’ Mrs Scharlieb is quite of a different opinion: nothing is good enough for India. She has, with untiring genius and perseverance, gone through five years’ hard practical and theoretical medical, surgical and midwifery education in England (besides her previous education in Madras). Her success at the examination has been triumphant. She goes out to India the first fully qualified lady doctor. The case about lady doctoring is so entirely different in India, where the women must have women doctors or none, from what it is in England, that we hope for your support. But I believe Mrs Scharlieb would meet with your support anyhow. You know how native ladies follow the lead of Government House. A word from yourself and Mrs Grant-Duff would give Mrs Scharlieb a good start in her great career. I earnestly hope that her first dozen cases will not be hopeless cases, but cases which can be cured and which she will cure. She has qualified herself to take every kind of case. The queen has seen her and expressed her sympathy with her, and sent a message of sympathy to her majesty’s subjects, Mrs Scharlieb’s future patients, native women. I long to hear about the Madras drainage and water supply. 3 October 1884 Private. I trust that Mrs Scharlieb, the lady doctor, has made the progress among native ladies that her own great industry and genius

728 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India and full preparation for her profession and the support of government house should ensure her. Her practice is large, of course, among poor women from whom she will not take a fee, almost beyond her strength. She greatly needs a qualified lady assistant from England. But till her remunerated practice is assured, or till she has some regular government appointment, she can hardly venture upon sending for such an assistant. She works on with unflagging spirit and great success. All eagerness to know what you think of Lord Dufferin’s appointment, I scarcely dare to ask you. Your friend, Sir Louis Mallet, is much better in health, and preparing for some work in writing, we hope. 28 November 1884 The energetic Mrs Scharlieb I can fancy giving her first lecture two hours after her appointment. We were so ver y glad of her appointment, glad and thankful. The Verneys came up to South St. for the autumn session. But poor Sir Harry has scarcely been able to go down to the House except to pair. I have given them your most kind message, which they, I am sure, reciprocate. And will you excuse this petty scrawl on the plea of the constant ever-deepening interest in India’s peasants, of your faithful ever loyal devoted servant Florence Nightingale 23 January 1885 Private. With regard to Mrs Scharlieb’s work, we have to thank you for the kind promise, I believe through Dr Cornish, that, for the Caste and Gosha Women’s Hospital which she wishes to start and which is so necessar y, government would provide her salary, that of a lady assistant and drugs. This would leave that which would cost about Rs. 200 a month, to be provided by the native gentry of Madras, for a small hospital of twenty beds. But this part rather hangs fire. It is so desirable to open this small hospital at once that Mr Ragoonalha Rao, the late diwan [financial minister] of Indore, has offered to guarantee an income of Rs. 100 a month for one year, if the other Rs. 100 could be raised. The very appointment of Mrs Scharlieb to the lectureship makes the little hospital still more important, for there is no opportunity of giving her ‘‘female students’’ any clinical instr uction, which is hard on them, on her and still more hard upon their future patients. Mrs Scharlieb could not have a qualified lady assistant from England,

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which is a pressing need indeed, without offering her some certain prospect. A definite appointment of even Rs. 150 a month would be sufficient, because Mrs Scharlieb could add a sum to this. A native gentleman has offered a suitable building. Your protégée (Mrs Scharlieb) is working hard and successfully and justifies your and Mrs Grant-Duff’s kindness. She is happy and full of interest. But her morning round is often one of twelve miles in scattered Madras and she cannot attend to nearly all who need her care, unless those whose position would not forbid their entering a hospital could be gathered into one place. Pardon my writing this, for I know that Mrs Grant-Duff has been kindly interested in this part of the business, which is so important to the poor native women. Her great ‘‘party’’ is delightful to hear of. There is no position like that of a governor’s lady for a noble usefulness, because there is no class in Europe, I suppose, like that of native ladies to whom her word is law. I have written about Mrs Scharlieb without her knowledge. We are enveloped here in black frost and yellow fog. I do not mean that politics are, but I am not worthy to be your political correspondent. 15 May 1885 Please return. How true and noble a work you and Mrs Grant-Duff have done in establishing this hospital for caste and gosha women, and in putting Mrs Scharlieb, a woman fully trained and qualified not only in head and hands but in heart, to give effect to these kind and wise intentions, generations after you will show. God bless you and Mrs Grant-Duff, and not for this only but for all she has so wonderfully done in bringing the native ladies under good influences and her own. Those are ‘‘good words’’ she said about our Almighty Father, who is the God of the Christians and the Muhammadans and the Hindus. We so often forget that. And nothing can conduce so much to make the native women feel it as bringing real thorough Western medical practice in the hands of a woman, who thinks ‘‘nothing good enough for native women,’’ as she said to me, to bear upon them in their hour of pain and sickness. May she go on and prosper and train others like her! You have been so very kind in giving me the most valuable papers from time to time upon your great reforms. They have not been wasted. And if I have not troubled you with long letters, ascribe it first not to my forbearance but my inability. I have been almost entirely laid up, but this house has been a rendez-vous for our trained nurses

730 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India going to and from Suakim with charges of severely wounded from Suakim home and also for comforts to the men out in Egypt and the Sudan. The uppermost wish in my heart now is: may this hideous Russian imbroglio not interfere with the course of your beneficent reforms in India, or cut off the money supplies needed to carry them out! Sir Harry Verney is still as active as ever. The last of the members for Buckingham, he will cease to sit in the House, and Buckingham will cease to be a Parliamentary borough this year. He was asked to stand for North Bucks, but has declined. His eldest son is the Liberal candidate. What do you think of this vast change in the representation? But at this moment no one thinks of it even here. Everyone is absorbed in wars and rumours of wars, and in India, but not alas! in her administrative reforms. Source: From a letter to Sarah Elizabeth Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff314-15

14 November 1885 Dearest, kindest old friend, Now I am going to ask a great favour: the little simple sanitary books, which I hear are exceedingly good, published by the Ladies’ Sanitary Association in Berners St. to which you used to belong: how should I get them? what ask for? which are the best? What I want is sanitary books to send out to India to undergo a process of translation, revision and adaptation there, according to Lady Dufferin’s rather exacting request to me, as the basis of a sanitar y catechism and simple sanitary class books and tracts for women’s and girls’ schools. It is to be an adjunct to Lady Dufferin’s scheme for providing ‘‘female medical aid for the women in India.’’ It seemed to me (what she asks of me) so wild a scheme, considering the absolute difference between Eastern and Western female habits, and the immense difference between the habits and houses of different provinces of India that I took the opportunity I had of asking three men who happened to be in England, Dr Hewlett, Mr Hume (returned to India), Manmohun Ghose (of Calcutta). The last says that there are no ryots’ girls’ schools in Bengal, that the ryot women can’t read, that native ladies lecturing to them would be of use (and he gave me the name of two educated native lady doctors, one of them a cousin of his own), who could teach and address ryots’ women on sanitary subjects, for Christian women to address them, he says, would be of no use. Dr Hewlett says that one of the best sanitary books is written by a Punjabi native, that Lady Dufferin could get

The Condition of Women in India / 731

good advice for her scheme in India (what?) and he told me some extraordinar y habits of Bombay women, which certainly no English ideas could reach; he also spoke of the extreme difference in different parts of India and commented on the same barrack plans being given for all parts; he also says Maratha women can read. Source: From a letter to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff195-98

27 November 1885 Sanitar y tracts for India. I am ver y much obliged for the parcels I have received from the Ladies’ Sanitary [Association]. 2. But also I should be very much obliged for a list marked by yo u rself and Mrs Sutherland of those which you think might possibly do, adapted, for India. I am also grateful for the caution conveyed in Miss Adams’s letter about translation or adaptation, which I will carefully transmit to Lady Dufferin. But I could very much have wished that nothing had been said to Miss Adams or Jarrold about leave to translate or adapt till we had decided whether we should have even one book or tract to recommend to Lady D. for translation or adaptation. At present I have not one. And I had made up my mind to tell her so. Now, if she puts that ‘‘Cleanliness is necessary to health,’’ Jarrold will say it is ‘‘adapted’’ from him. I have other books to send to Lady Dufferin which I have just ordered from my bookseller, but without any intention of asking for leave to translate or adapt till we know whether we want it. I have got together such a mass of information and advice for Lady Dufferin that I hardly know how to arrange it for her: from Dr Hewlett, from Mr and Mrs Manmohun Ghose (she is like a highly educated English lady), from Mr Hume and others. 3. Dr Hewlett recommends that in each province should be selected an Indian native to write, under the superintendence of the sanitary commissioner of that province, a sanitar y home manual for women and girls. But what sanitary commissioner is there besides himself and Dr Bellew of the Punjab, who is fit for the task? No one knows so well as you. Please tell me. (The Madras sanitary commissioner is nobody. Dr Cuningham’s successor with the Government of India is much worse than no one.) Could you kindly send me a list of the present sanitary commissioners whom you would consider fit for supervising the writing a home manual for women, each for his own province? and I shall take care to include in my letter to Lady Dufferin (when it gets written) your excellent suggestion for teaching home sanitary practice in any pro-

732 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India posed Ladies Medical College, that the lady doctors may lecture to the women—one of the principal suggestions of Mr Manmohun Ghose (a ver y superior brother of Lalmohun’s). Ever y one of my advisors has considered adaptations or retranslation from any English books as useless except that, as you say, hygienic principles are the same everywhere, but we need not ask Jarrold for these. According to Dr Hewlett, it is also useless to send these kinds of things to Parsi women, whose habits and superstitions are unknown to English people. . . . We are ‘‘cast down but not destroyed!’’16 about the elections.17 Source: From a letter to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff1-4

27 November 1885 Private. Again I have to ask your indulgence for not being able to forward a full answer to your desires, as I hoped, by this mail. I have collected a number of sanitary tracts and books, as you wished, but there is scarcely one to be recommended for translation or even for adaptation—the Western and Eastern habits and ideas are so different. You mention sanitary tales. These are far the most popular of the sanitar y tracts here, but these are wholly unsuited for Indian women and Hindu homes. I have taken a great deal of advice from AngloIndian sanitary men and also from natives and their educated wives over here, to lay before you, and I hope by next mail to be able to submit to you what may be useful for your purpose. It is the woman whom we must lay hold of to produce any real sanitar y effect in India. At present she is the bar to everything which her better-instr ucted man, her husband, would do in private sanitar y works, i.e., in his own home. If they, the men, are addressed by, say, the sanitary commissioner and urged to this and that sanitary reform at home, they answer, ‘‘I throw dust upon my head’’ (for his shortcomings) ‘‘but how can I coerce the ladies of my family? I should never have a moment’s peace’’ (if he did this or that sanitary work). Everybody ought therefore to help in your noble scheme for the women and girls, who is interested for India.

16 An allusion to 2 Cor 4:9. 17 In June 1885 a Conservative government was elected, with Lord Salisbur y as prime minister. The Liberals came back to power in Februar y 1886 under W.E. Gladstone.

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Pray believe me, dear Lady Dufferin, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to T. Gillham Hewlett, Reynolds Historical Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham 5071

2 December 1885 You are aware of Lady Dufferin’s scheme for ‘‘reaching’’ the native ‘‘female population’’ of India, in order to ‘‘teach the most ordinar y facts relating to health to the women themselves and to the young girls in schools.’’ You have kindly offered to give your invaluable help in this important matter which must be begun quite from the beginning. The special points of information required as a very first step would be, as I think we agreed: 1. How to organize a female sanitary mission. 2. What books or sanitary primers to put into the hands of the (socalled) ‘‘missioners.’’ 3. If a sanitar y primer for native women is requisite, who should write it? (And, what is of equal consequence, who shall read it?) 4. To find out a native gentleman who could write a practical sanitar y primer and submit it before publication to the sanitary commissioner who, if he approves of it, would send it on to government with a request that it might be translated and printed in the vernaculars. 5. To inquire from your native friends (medical men) whether they know of any woman who would go into the native houses with these tracts. The advice you would give on these points would be simply priceless. Success to the endeavour to get the women of India on our side. And success to all your noble endeavours in the great cause of sanitary progress in India, which have wrought such great results as to be almost a revolution to the right way. Source: From a letter to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff9-32

3 December 1885 Privat e. I am honoured by your commands to give ‘‘advice and assistance’’ in your noble scheme for ‘‘reaching’’ the ‘‘female population’’ of India, in order to ‘‘teach the most ordinar y facts relating to health to the women themselves and to the young girls in schools.’’ It is indeed a noble scheme, because there is no hope for real sanitary reform—home sanitar y improvement—till the women are on our side.

734 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India And I am sure there are some who would work night and day to further your plans. There are of course great difficulties in the way or rather I should say difficult and special points to be attended to, such as these: 1. At present the highly educated women—e.g., in Bombay, where the women possibly are the best educated—are no better in sanitary arrangements than the poorer. 2. Also the appliances, the habits, the conditions of woman’s life are so different—one might almost say opposite—in Eastern and Western life that one does not know the books or sanitary tracts or booklets which, translated, even if adapted ever so much, would be of use. In fact, they can hardly be adapted. 3. Not only this, but the appliances, the habits, the homes are different in each province—there is a style of house to each province. A sanitar y primer for women would have to be written for each province— a native to be looked out (probably a medical man or a clerk to a sanitar y commissioner) to write this primer for each province—to be submitted to the sanitary commissioner or to some Anglo-Indian sanitar y authority who is conversant with the homes, the domestic family life of the women. 4. But there is the difficulty: the Anglo-Indian gentlemen who are known to possess both these qualifications could almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. 5. Also Hindu women are only open to a Hindu woman, Muhammadan women to a Muhammadan woman. None of these to a Christian woman. But this difficulty will be got over by your native lady doctors if trained and taught in hygiene. The Maratha women are much more open, not bigoted against Christians. And the Parsis are open but quite as insanitary. Also (6) there are still large classes of the agricultural women and girls and even of the lower middle class, especially in Bengal, I believe, and also Madras, who cannot read. These could only be reached by native lady lecturers (and do these yet exist instructed in hygiene?) and the girls by establishing village schools for girls, where they would learn to read the forthcoming sanitary primer or manual for women. This must be written in the simplest idiomatic language—one for each province—and translated into the other vernaculars by natives (Maratha women generally are said to be able to read). I am sure that your kindness will believe that I have not lost a day in tr ying to obey your behests to give ‘‘advice and assistance.’’ I have had

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the advantage of consulting viva voce Anglo-Indian sanitary authorities who have spent long years in active work in India. Also educated native gentlemen who have busied themselves in benevolent efforts for their countrywomen and even educated native ladies. And this from several provinces. II. I am now venturing to proceed, as you desired, to several suggestions. It seems as if these following were the special points of information to be obtained from a first-rate sanitary (Anglo-Indian) authority in India who is also well acquainted with the native homes and the native ‘‘woman at home.’’ 1. How to organize a female sanitary mission. 2. What books or sanitary primers to put into the hands of the native ‘‘missioners.’’ 3. If a sanitar y primer for women is requisite, who should write it? And what is of at least equal importance, who shall read it? 4. To find out a native gentleman who could write a practical sanitar y woman’s primer and submit it before publication to the sanitary commissioner or the best Anglo-Indian sanitary authority who, if he approves of it, would send it on to government with a request that it might be translated and printed in the vernaculars. 5. To inquire from his native friends (medical men) whether they know of any native woman who would go into the native houses with these tracts or primers. III. There is one man, the sanitary commissioner for Bombay presidency, deputy surgeon general Dr Hewlett, who unites the rare qualification of knowing the native homes with being one of the highest sanitary authorities (and thirty years in India). One may thoroughly recommend that, if you think well, you should write to him asking these or similar questions, before he goes on tour in January . . . and desire him to find a native gentleman to write. But one would still more, and besides, recommend that you should send for him to inform him of what you want viva voce, for him to give his advice and take your orders. He might also be able to advise about some other provinces. Of course if Lord Reay is written to, he would let Dr Hewlett come to Lady Dufferin. Punjab. There is a clerk in the sanitary commissioner’s office in the Punjab, who has written a capital book on general sanitation (in English and Urdu, I believe). If Lady Dufferin would write to Dr Bellew, the sanitar y commissioner of the Punjab, to send his clerk’s book to her. If the clerk is married, his own wife might be able to write a sanitary

736 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India simple primer for women—i.e., her husband to write it for her and she to act as missionary. The clerk might give valuable advice as to who would take up sanitary mission work among the women. There is a capital ‘‘Sanitar y Dialogue’’ prepared by Dr Bellew, in which all the difficulties of the people are dealt with (this has also been translated and circulated in the Punjab). It is in the Annual Report for, I think, 1882. I have tried to procure a copy here to send out by this mail, but have not yet succeeded. Of course Dr Bellew would be only too happy to send one, if asked, from the Punjab. IIIa. This is essentially a woman’s work. What is desirable (if practicable) is that Lady Dufferin’s native lady medical students should be taught sanitary principles. And then they would be tenfold more useful in giving oral instruction in patients’ houses, or reading and explaining practically to patients’ families the little tracts or primers to be prepared. IV. Ultimately it might be well to offer prizes to native ladies for the best essay in home sanitary subjects. There are sanitar y professors in each presidency town. Whether these could teach the native lady medical students home sanitar y (women’s) practice is doubtful—that is, for the native lady doctors to teach again in the homes—but might be ascertained? V. Bengal is a great difficulty, though the nearest at hand. For whereas the girls in general in Bombay presidency appear to go to school till the age of nine or ten or eleven, even the agricultural girls, the Bengali native ladies say that the want is great of small day schools (with small fees) in every village for agricultural girls and small tradesmen’s girls, that these classes are most helpless. There are native ladies in Calcutta who would gladly work under your inspiration to fulfill your objects, such as Mrs Manmohun Ghose (a highly educated lady), Mrs Ganguly18 (a cousin of Mr M.M. Ghose, and already lady doctor who has passed or is going to pass her medical examination) and Miss Abala Das, two native ladies of Calcutta who would lecture on sanitar y things to women. Both are (or are to be) educated lady doctors, Mrs A.M. Bose, Mrs Gupta. I give these names because these ladies have worked amongst the poor and are most willing to work. But ever y native lady’s power of sanitary teaching is doubtful. And it should be ascertained whether they know sanitary

18 Kadambini Ganguly (1861-1923), first female graduate and medical practitioner of Bengal, known as Kadambini Bose.

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practice themselves enough to spread it among the tradespeople’s and ryots’ women. And if not they must be taught. And how? VI. Madras. You are well aware (and this does not apply only to the mofussil of Madras presidency) how, outside the presidency towns and municipality towns, girls’ schools are not common. Ver y few of the women and girls can read or have any education whatever. The cultivators’ women are bowed down by hard work. You doubtless also know well (and this applies particularly but by no means solely to the Madras presidency) how grossly superstitious the women are (it would be easy to give instances to make one laugh, but the subject is too sad). These superstitions must be attacked not directly but indirectly, and by primary education and by couplets in the vernacular, which couplets the people are so fond of, by primary textbooks. Give me the people’s songs and you may make what laws you please. Given the primar y school textbooks and you have the coming generation in your own hands. Do you know a pamphlet by Dr Murdoch of Madras, addressed to Lord Ripon? (It is well worth reading.) To return to Madras, there is a sanitar y manual written in, I believe, English and Tamil and Telegu by Dr Dhanakoti Raju,19 of Madras. He would, I am told, be able to write a simple sanitary primer for women. Eurasian doctors also might be found probably who know the homes, possibly who know what home sanitar y practice should be. To teach the ignorant women in the villages, a caste woman must be found, that is, a Brahmin woman who may teach all castes. A Muhammadan woman must teach Muhammadan women. These talk Hindustani. The village schools if established must interest the girls. And so must these women sanitary missioners. There is a first-rate English lady doctor at Madras, a friend of mine, Mrs Scharlieb. She has no time to spare. But she would be a famous person to give advice. She has already a large practice among native ladies and women. She is of course a Christian, and a devoted Christian, but, or rather therefore, objects to making medicine a vehicle for proselytism, as you do. I have not only sought but employed people to seek for me sanitary tracts, according to your desire, for ‘‘translation’’ and ‘‘adaptation.’’ But we have found none. I send out some examples of homework for your kind acceptance, as containing the principles which the Ladies’

19 Dhanakoti Raju, author of The Elements of Hygiene, or, Easy Lessons on the Laws of Health.

738 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Sanitar y Association here have thought desirable to teach. But the language and thought idioms are those of England. In India the language must be, of course, ordinar y Indian domestic language and the method different in different parts to such local habit (if the authority of the Ladies’ Sanitary Association here is used, it might be due to the publishers to say that the tract is on the same subject). I have some more names of native doctors and native-trained lady midwives to give but will not trouble you now further. Pray believe me, dear Lady Dufferin, with a fervent ‘‘God bless’’ all your work for Indian women, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: Printed letter to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff34-36

11 December 1885 Private. With your good leave I humbly append a note to my too long letter of last mail. (1) I have seen Dr Bellew’s capital ‘‘Sanitar y Dialogue’ in his Punjab Report for 1882. But the whole report is too bulky to send. And Dr Bellew, sanitar y commissioner for the Punjab, will be, of course, too happy to send it you. (2) Dr Murdoch’s pamphlet, ‘‘Education in India’’ but referring particularly to Madras, I take the liberty of sending (through Lord Dufferin) though printed in Madras, because it is interesting reading, because it shows most distinctly what primary textbooks should be and their incalculable importance in a country like India, and because it gives some insight, though scarcely enough, into the superstitions which, for want of education, form almost the groundwork of the minds of women and girls outside the presidency towns, and which must not be attacked or pooh-poohed, as we are only too fond of doing and as is bitterly resented by the natives, and no wonder. The existence of devils, which idea permeates the whole life, and astrology, which even among the educated governs the life even of men, especially in Madras presidency, are two all-pervading superstitions. (3) Your questions, if you will write to Dr Hewlett, D.S.G., sanitary commissioner for Bombay, will receive a worthy answer. And if you will empower him to find you a native to write a sanitary primer for women and girls, under his direction and revision, you will get the best that can be made. But if you will send for him to come to you, before he goes on tour in January, you will obtain the very best advice

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and information that can be had. His extraordinar y knowledge of native homes and habits, including the native women’s, and his unique sanitar y knowledge and practical experience make him the prince of advisors. By this mail I will only wish you success from the bottom of my heart, and beg you to believe me, ever your faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to Henry Acland, Bodleian Library, Ms Acland d70 ff111-15

17 December 1885 Privat e. I only received your letter of questions anent the Zenana Medical Mission subject late last night. And you have ‘‘to preside’’ tomorrow. It may be said at once, some of the very best Anglo-Indian women, Lord Lawrence’s widow among them, are in favour (ardently) of these missions, Irish-like. I will ask you some questions to answer yours: 1. Do the missioners embark on their most important enterprise with the minimum of baggage in medical knowledge, i.e., as doctors, where the maximum is wanted, viz., among native women? (Your friend and mine, Mrs Scharlieb, always says: ‘‘It is thought, a little is better than nothing for India; I say, India is a place where you cannot have enough of medical education, experience, etc., if you want to do any good and not much harm.’’) 2. Do the missioners confuse medicine and nursing? We understand nursing to mean, acting under doctors. (In the training schools for nurses with which I am identified, we have constantly had applications to admit ladies for a few months or even weeks to ‘‘pick up’’ medicine by acting as probationer nurses for these missions.) 3. Is it desirable to take the hour of the native woman’s pain and danger to urge upon her the greatest, the most momentous of all changes to a native woman, one which involves the greatest sacrifice, viz., Christianity? The most devoted Christian, one of the best lady doctors in India, says, ‘‘It is cruel.’’ 4. Does it close the doors upon lady doctors of the zenanas— fathers and husbands very naturally not choosing to have this sort of ‘‘occult’’ practice going on? These questions are suggested by years of friendship and acquaintance with Indians. I only submit them to you for you to resolve. I think, if I were speaking to zenana missioners, I would impress upon them that India is of all countries the one where you can least dabble with medicine.

740 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Lady Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/7

1 Januar y 1886 First let me wish you with all my heart and soul a good New Year, a happy New Year, to you and to the ‘‘Victoria Caste Hospital’’ and to all your good works and influence among the native women and ladies, and send our heartfelt thanks for your admirable speech at the opening of the hospital, which must have touched them all. How kind of you to write to me. How we must rejoice that you have so won the native gentlemen as to make them so generous in their help. There is no greater step in civilization, I suppose, than this care of native gentlemen for their poorer sisters, and the increasing cultivation—increasing at least in the presidency towns—of the ladies. I think we may give you joy of Mrs Scharlieb as we may indeed give her joy of her excellency’s true excellence as the chief of women in the presidency. May poor India have a truly blessed New Year still. And will you accept me as ever your faithful servant and India’s Florence Nightingale Source: From an incomplete draft letter to Lady Dufferin, Add Mss 45807 f216

[ca. January 1886] We hear with hope and admiration of your intended meeting on ‘‘Female Medical Aid’’ this month. May it prosper as it deserves. May good speed follow all you do for India. May what you allow us to do be not quite in vain for you is the warmest wish of your excellency’s devoted servant Florence Nightingale Source: From a letter to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff39-47

2 July 1886 Private. ‘‘Suggestions’’ and ‘‘Books’’ (sanitar y) for the ‘‘European Girls’s Schools.’’ (Lady Dufferin’s letter of 1 June). May I, in thanking you for your kind letter of 1 June, beg you to excuse me for writing only a brief answer today as, at all to make an answer worth your having, I must consult many, and there has not been time to have considered answers, except from one or two. I ventured to recommend in my last letter that you should summon Dr Hewlett, sanitary commissioner for Bombay presidency, as the very best sanitary advisor viva voce that could be had, alike con-

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versant with Indian and English sanitary problems and who, if you thought well to place the matter in his hands, would see that it was done and well done. I know not whether you have already summoned him to your presence but would, if not, venture again to make this recommendation. 2. We will collect and send you a ‘‘list of books’’ used at present in primar y schools, secondary schools and training colleges here, according to your request, as soon as possible, for the ‘‘European Girls Schools.’’ But I should sadly doubt if any would answer for India. The great disease causes are so ver y different in India and various local governments have issued instructional rules for the guidance of the people. 3. Would not these rules form a far better basis for an Indian domestic sanitary guide than all the English books put together? 4. Would not your excellency think well to send to all the local governments and ask them to send you copies of any village rules they have issued? And how these have worked in practice? If they did so to advantage, then Dr Hewlett of Bombay, Dr Bellew of the Punjab, the sanitar y commissioner of Bengal and the N.W. Provinces, etc., could these not easily draft an instructional manual for school use or for home use? Dr Cuningham’s primer contains the principles already but these require to be applied. I have just seen an admirable little sanitar y primer, The Way to Health, published at Madras, founded on Dr Cuningham’s and others’. 5. As regards the printed copy of a ‘‘private’’ letter, the five heads in it (except No. 4) are all Indian in character, referring not to Europe but to India. Could not the sanitary commissioners deal with them and give Indian answers and instructions? Your excellency desires me to give ‘‘suggestions.’’ May I offer the suggestion that medical practitioners among civil European families, and army doctors for these, and for soldiers’ wives and children could furnish experience? 6. Any books sent from here would have to be rewritten for India, except the title. We should rather regret to have sent books from England to be merely ‘‘adapted’’ for India. Must not books required for Indian sanitary work be prepared in India by men acquainted with India and its disease causes? Must not the basis of an Indian manual for native use be laid on the experience already attained in the working of local sanitary rules? And for European girls the best authorities, would they not be the medical officers who attend in families? . . .

742 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I crave pardon for this rough disjointed letter, which yet I thought I would not delay, especially the word about Dr Hewlett and also about the local governments’ sanitary rules, their working and their sanitary commissioners. . . . Your commands shall not be neglected a single day and I hope to write by next mail. Men are so held in the grasp of this general election, going on at this moment, that they cannot give their attention properly to useful questions now here. Let me give you joy of the great good being effected by the medical training. We earnestly wish you good speed. May I beg you to believe me, dear Lady Dufferin, ever your excellency’s devoted servant Florence Nightingale Privat e. P.S. Is not a cheap simple book to be compiled in Calcutta on diseases of women and children (native) and on midwifery the desideratum? Pardon me for seeming impertinence in repeating what is in fact a truism or rather three truisms: 1. The natives will say to Lady Dufferin: ‘‘That is just the thing we want,’’ whatever the book proposed. 2. Lady Dufferin should not be her own publisher. Better the government or private societies or individuals should do it. 3. To have anything like a circulation among natives, the book or sanitar y tract must be sold. One anna is the extent of their means. And therefore that the book or sanitary tract must be cheap is a sine qua non—is it not? May we say how truly we rejoice with you at the recover y from fever of one so dear to you under your care? F.N. There is a Miss Hewlett, a medical missionary at Amritsar, said to be a valuable person, who might give you her sanitary and medical experience. Probably you know of her. Source: From a letter to John Murdoch, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur A 192

6 July 1886 I consider it a privilege to enter into correspondence with you whose good work in India, which interests me so much, it would be impertinent in me to praise. (Your letter to Lord Ripon on education20 I have read

20 John Murdoch, Education in India: A Letter to the Marquis of Ripon.

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again and again, and I asked a number of copies to be sent to me from Madras.) I thank you for The Way to Health, which seems to me exceedingly good, and for your India’s Needs, which I was going to procure. The request to give a list of ‘‘suitable easy English (sanitary) tracts,’’ etc., to be adapted for use in India has been made to me twice in the last twelve months from India. And I have sent over all I could recommend to India, but with the special warning that they could not be adapted to native or Indian circumstances—for reasons I would like to submit to you who know India so thoroughly. At the same time I ventured to suggest means by which suitable tracts could be written in India ‘‘for use in India,’’ which also I should like to submit to you. But I will delay no longer answering your note. Could you let me know how long you are likely to remain in England, as I should much like to be allowed to seek information from you, who are so well qualified to give it, upon educational matters in India, if you would be so kind. I am a great invalid and always overworked, so that I must crave your indulgence. Editor: John Murdoch paid a visit to Nightingale on 16 July 1886 and wrote in his diary: Was chiefly delighted to hear that she and Dr Sutherland . . . thought that The Way to Health was the very book they could send to Lady Dufferin, who wished to get out a series of simple sanitary tracts. Miss Nightingale had applied for a list of books used in school on hygiene and promised to let me have a copy.21

They met again presumably in 1897, as a late letter relating the unhappy circumstances of India at that time indicates (see p 845 below). Source: From two letters to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff49-54 and 59-70

16 July 1886 Private. I am so very sorry that I have nothing more satisfactor y to send by this mail, as I had hoped. I have applied for a list of books on sanitar y matters and domestic economy, etc., used at present (things are improved every year) in the primary schools, secondary schools and training colleges, and hope to forward them to you by next mail, still

21 Henry Morris, Life of John Murdoch, LlD, The Literary Evangelist of India 218.

744 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India with the caution that ‘‘rules for the conservation of health,’’ ‘‘diet,’’ clothing’’ and ‘‘sick room management,’’ as you will well tell, are almost diametrically opposite in India and in England. Fever is the main cause of sickness and of death in India and we need hardly tell you how different it is here. Elementary instruction in physiology was considered here enough to begin with in our schools and training colleges but, since then, books have come out for school purposes in legions and perhaps we may take those in use as being considered by teachers as the best. But we should doubt if any would answer for India. Take clothing alone. But the great disease causes are those connected with compounds, houses, wells and want of drainage, and different governments have issued instructional rules for the guidance of the people, which rules would form a good basis for an India domestic sanitary guide. The primer published at Madras, by the ‘‘Christian Vernacular Society’’ founded on ‘‘Ladies’ Sanitary [Association]’’ tracts and some others and on Dr Cuningham’s, the late sanitary commissioner’s primer, has already shown that they, the Madras Society, are ahead of the same literature in this country. I tried to get a copy to send you by this mail but hope to do so by next. If you like to order it from Madras, its title is The Way to Health. It is impossible to overrate the importance of the movement which your excellency has set on foot, and we may indeed give you joy for that which relates to the medical training. This is also, it would appear, more likely to lead to the spread of sound sanitary knowledge, as we so earnestly desire among native women, than by means of examination on it in European girls’ schools. The estimate of the losses in childbirth among Indian women is far higher than in England. Under your beneficent régime this may, we trust, be reduced. I must again crave your pardon for the deadlock we are in here in doing even the business we most desire. The general election which ends tomorrow, with the exception of a few places, has put a stop to all useful business. Pray believe me with the utmost admiration and sympathy for your work, dear Lady Dufferin, your excellency’s devoted servant Florence Nightingale 23 July 1886 Privat e. I beg to enclose the little ‘‘sanitar y primer,’’ the Way to Health, which I think I mentioned as one ahead of anything that has been done in England. It has, I am told, been authorized for use in the govern-

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ment schools in Madras. They could not have done a better thing. With regard to Indian publications, and chiefly for the other object you have in view, viz., European girls’ schools, the three Indian books which I am told will be useful I do not know them. [They] are Goodeve on the Management of Children, revised by Birch, published at Calcutta by Thacker Spink & Co.22 (2) F.R. Hogg’s Practical Remarks, chiefly concerning the health and ailments of European families in India, with special reference to maternal management and domestic economy, Medical Hall Press, Banaras 1877. (3) Dhanakoti Raju has written a good book, I am told, called Elements of Hygiene, published at Madras (but this is perhaps best for natives and for the Madras presidency). Pardon me if I have mentioned this gentleman’s name before to you as one whom you might possibly think well to employ in writing primers of a sanitary kind and tracts for natives. ‘‘Sanitar y science,’’ as it is called, resembles medical lecturing and book learning. Sanitary practice corresponds to clinical medicine. And we cannot from here prescribe for the individual case, Indian peculiarities being so great and also the peculiarities of different places, any more than doctors in England could prescribe for patients in India. Native Schools. Does not the Government of India employ people to write elementary books in sanitary science and practice and domestic economy (and pay them) for each province, as part of the general scheme? It is so very important. And would you think well to suggest it, if not already done? But this work would have to be carefully supervised by competent persons: native gentlemen are often so fond of merely exhibiting what they know in their writings, and indeed we others too. The person who wrote The Way to Health and other primers and many more valuable class books, is a John Murdoch, LlD, who for the last forty years has travelled for six months of the year all over India and is an agent of the Christian Vernacular Society at Madras. He has had great experience in the circulation of ‘‘literature,’’ for natives and schools of all kinds. He, Dr Murdoch, is now in England, but returns to Madras via Ceylon, which he also visits, leaving this country at the end of October. I think I have mentioned him before. He would prove most helpful if you thought well to make use of him. . . . He will be in Calcutta in Januar y. Lord Dufferin has, I think, his pamphlet, ‘‘Education in India.’’

22 Edward Alfred Birch, The Management and Medical Treatment of Children in India, 2nd ed, being the 8th ed of Joseph Ewart Goodeve, The Management of Children, in the Absence of Professional Advice.

746 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Another thing which suggests itself to me to say—you are so ver y kind as to invite suggestions, is: the religious element is wanting in some provinces in the schoolbooks; it is present in other provinces’ schoolbooks. Is it possible to overrate the importance of having this moral element, this natural religion element in schoolbooks, especially in those for women and girls? The natives, so far from objecting to it, approve of it, and where it is absent, disapprove of us. Native Schools. Would you think well to take ordinar y popular habits which influence health one by one and let someone give instructions in them clearly and briefly, and print these in a neat ornamental manner or even as cards to be hung up or as school prizes? The tracts must differ from the primer in dealing with someone’s habit. But above all things they should be brief. Is it not so difficult to get people, even educated people, to consider a sanitary question? Simple instr uctions will therefore be the best. Dr (Miss) Edith Pechey23 of Madras lately has issued a report (India is such a big place!). She deals in this with this very subject as regards women. She takes successively several habits which injure health. She might have taken many more, e.g., Muhammadan girls, while allowed to run about, are per fectly healthy; when secluded in close ill-ventilated zenanas, die of consumption. Muhammadans say: ‘‘All our women die of consumption.’’ The shutting up of lying-in women in the dampest, closest part of the house kills woman and child or destroys health. Early marriages = puny offspring. It occurred to me how usefully she might be employed in writing tracts on these and other such subjects. She who has seen the evil in its intensity, if you thought well. You probably know A.L.O.E.’s24 excellent little book, called the Zenana Reader, published at Madras. There is also an excellent girls’ Reading Book published at Madras (Christian Vernacular Society). I cannot sufficiently express lest I should become impertinent, how vast is Lady Dufferin’s influence and employed in causes than which there can be none worthier. Never before in the history of India has

23 Mary Edith Pechey (1845-1908), later Phipson, senior physician at Cama Women’s Hospital, Bombay, the first woman elected member of the Senate of the University of Bombay; Pechey also raised funds to bring Rukhmabai to London (see p 774 below). See ‘‘Medical Report, 1885,’’ in George A. Kittredge, A Shor t Histor y of the ‘‘Medical Women for India’’ Fund of Bombay. 24 A.L.O.E. (A Lady of England, pseudonym for Charlotte Maria Tucker), Zenana Reader.

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such an opportunity been presented for promoting sanitary reform. This promises to be one of the most useful of all her many good works. Good speed to them all! I must ask you to excuse me one more remark: it is of the highest importance that native Christians, however few, should be instructed on the subject, that they might be taught how to improve their habits and dwellings and so to be examples to their non-Christian neighbours. A.L.O.E. has a good lesson on this in her capital Zenana Reader. And your intention of teaching the European girls’ schools in Bengal may be a great step in this direction. Again pardon this letter. You probably know much better than I do what good manuals and books can be found on India. I am only pressing the point that the books in India are better for India than anything we can do. Pray pardon so disjointed a letter. I have to seek information, sometimes unsuccessfully, from many places. And I have no time to make it shorter. European Girls’ Schools. I hope not to be another mail without sending you at least the list of sanitary books used in girls’ schools and training colleges here. Also of those used by the teachers themselves to supplement the textbooks used by the children on sanitary practice and domestic economy, also of those used in London school board schools. May I again wish you every highest success in your noble undertaking and beg you to believe me, your excellency’s faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: From five letters to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45758 ff214-15, 221-23, 224-27, 234-39 and 240-41

9 July 1886 You will see that Dr Murdoch makes me almost the same request that Lady Dufferin did. It is curious and hopeful, this awakening desire for teaching the girls and boys of India, European and native (and the women), sanitary things. Let us try and help them. (You probably remember Dr Murdoch. He has travelled forty years in India at his own expense, urging primary education. His ‘‘letter’’ to Lord Ripon on ‘‘education’’ urging that, as we had the textbooks of the schools in our hands, we could, without interfering one tittle in religion, have the minds of the future native generation in our hands. Showing the way by illustrations was the very best practical thing I ever saw. I sent

748 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India for a number of copies from Madras and gave them to Lord Reay, Lord Dufferin, Dr Hunter25 and others.) Now, what shall I answer him? Ver y much the same that I answered Lady Dufferin? No, for you see, he has begun already (which she has not done) publishing a native sanitary primer, and touching on the principal disease causes of India, just as you advised. 1. Will you look at the primer, which I enclose, and tell me if it is very good? 2. Will you kindly send me again a marked list of the Ladies’ Sanitary Association tracts, that I may give them to him as illustrations and also of any others that you approve? 3. Will you suggest how he shall go on to publish more tracts in the style of the one I enclose? As he wishes, I shall see him next week, if I am able, and will tell him all you suggest. 20 July 1886 My immediate object is to ask you whether, as I propose to send to Lady Dufferin Dr Murdoch’s Way to Health, which you approved, I shall send her the two other little tracts I enclose (which please return by return of post as nearly as you can), also given me by Dr Murdoch. He has given me a quantity of little books which appear to me admirable. Thank you for your letter. He, Dr Murdoch, sued hard again for a marked list of sanitary books. But, as it is not to be, it is not to be. He asked at least for the Ladies’ Sanitary list (for April) to be marked for those which are fittest for children. He asked that ‘‘Dr Sutherland’’ should do this and that and that. But I supposed it is no use asking or recapitulating what he told me. He goes to Scotland on Wednesday (tomorrow) and returns to India in October (he has been in India forty years, travelling over the whole, including Ceylon, for six months of every year). He is a man whom one might utilize to an extraordinar y degree: his knowledge of the natives, his extreme acuteness and activity, his devotion. If you can give me any hints either for him or for Lady Dufferin, to whom I write again this week, they will be gratefully received. Would you kindly send me another copy of report (the last) of the Ladies’ Sanitary Association?

25 William Guyer Hunter (1827-1902), later Sir, favoured sanitation measures over germ theor y; see Health in India (9:615).

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18 August 1886 I hope you have returned from Scotland a great deal better and Mrs Sutherland not the worse. While you have been away, events have been marching. But I have no time to recall my recalled letters. I write now to Lady Dufferin every mail: a very bad plan. 1. Dr Murdoch—who asked, as you know, to have hints given him as to the best English sanitary primers and tracts, who himself prepared the best Indian sanitary primer (which I sent you in English), who knows Indian native schools and life as no other man does, having spent forty years in travelling into every corner of India—proposed to draw up the ‘‘Hints,’’ of which I enclose a rough first proof, and wished them to be freely criticized, pulled to pieces and revised. He would of course, if I wished it, omit the second line (of ‘‘prepared for’’ me). My feeling is (1) that there is so much about Medic al works, of which I have always steered clear, except where lady doctors for India [are involved], that my name is inappropriate, as also his suggestion of five royal commissions. Also (2) that he assigns so little to Lady Dufferin’s association to do. At the same time, his remark that ‘‘medicine’’ is the only ‘‘Hindu science’’ is striking, as [his remark] that Hindu medical literature is enormous and perhaps one must hang hygiene on that. At all events, one cannot ignore it. And in his little sanitar y books (of which I sent you two more while you were away but recalled them) he gives the simplest receipts for fever, etc., not medical at all, simply hygienic and nursing, quite right. I think these hygienic rather than medical receipts are what he means for his proposed medical manuals. His remark about Hindu resentment against our meddling with their drains is characteristic and [his remark] upon the most ‘‘illiterate coolie’’ expounding ‘‘medicine.’’ His knowledge of Indian native books is probably unrivalled and we must not cast it aside. But I confess I wish first and foremost to get what I can out of this proof to help me how to do Lady Dufferin’s work. Will you help me? 2. It would not do at all to assign so small a place to Lady Dufferin’s association, especially if my name is to be mentioned. I am in fact her agent. What was it that she asked me to do last winter for her, and I did? It was not solely for ‘‘women.’’ His remark that the ‘‘work must be self-supporting’’ and therefore cheaply done is important. Now, will you be so good as to criticize largely, fully, this proof ? I wish we had Hewlett at hand. God bless the work. ever yours faithfully Florence Nightingale

750 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I had perhaps better add (1) I think Dr Murdoch has mixed up medicine and sanitary things, but unintentionally; as I say, in his little books he puts in excellent sanitary treatment for fever, etc., and that, I think, is what he means by what he calls medicine in manuals. (2) When he first spoke about writing and sending me this proof, I understood it was for the ‘‘diffusion’’ of sanitar y knowledge by Lady Dufferin’s association. And it was that which I encouraged him to do. (3) He told me that he was going to collect from every province in India everything, both in English and in the vernacular, that had been written on sanitar y things. Here he calls them medical. 22 August 1886 Dufferin. Sanitar y. Thank you very much for your letter on the Murdoch proof. The issue of the whole thing is rather changed by a letter from Lady Dufferin last night. And I need to consult you again how it affects our criticisms. (N.B. Another man whom I consulted on the plan of ‘‘commissions,’’ etc., said that they were necessar y for the object of introducing the teaching systematically by the assistance of the ‘‘high authorities in the provinces,’’ specified as to be on the commissions, that they had nothing to do with ‘‘works.’’) 1. Lady Dufferin has referred her scheme to the ‘‘Home Office’’ (I presume the Home Office in India) and has now what she calls her ‘‘definite answer from the ‘‘Home Office.’’ And the ‘‘Home Office’’ answer is ‘‘that I (Lady D.) should get the best books on these subjects, and that a prize should then be offered for the best primer, the compilers being provided with a list of the books we wish to recommend to them.’’ (I am more sorry for this than I can say: the ‘‘prize’’ plan has never answered and she has the names of those who are capable of writing sanitary primers, etc., to her hand). 2. Farther, she says: ‘‘As the inspectors of schools have taken it up, it is now a government matter, but I am helping to push it on.’’ That it is a ‘‘government matter’’ ‘‘now’’ is doubtless necessary for success in a bureaucracy like India. But if it is to become a mere clerk and bureau and aide-de-camp ‘‘matter,’’ it will fail. (She does not know as we do that the ‘‘Home Office’’ in India means clerks and under secretaries, that under secretaries and clerks know nothing of India beyond their own desk.) But how does this affect the ‘‘commissions’’? I suppose the answer is that these, the commissions, to which you so direfully object, concern the great question of sanitary manuals for the natives of the province and that her ‘‘government inspectors’’ concern (for the moment) her ‘‘European girls’ ’’ schools only.

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3. I think it is clear that the ‘‘compilation’’ of the ‘‘primer’’ concerns the ‘‘European girls’ schools’’ only. But it is always difficult to make out from her letters whether she is speaking of these or whether of her former larger plan of sanitary primers and tracts for native girls and women and their schools all over India. 4. She further says that we ‘‘in England exaggerate the difference between a book appropriate for England and one for India.’’ I wonder whether she has ever been in an Indian village or a poor native house. 5. Farther—and more important—she says that I am to send her all the books that will be useful for her plan, I presume for the ‘‘European girls’ schools.’’ Would you be so very good as to send me a marked list (mark them all, if you like) and repor t of the Ladies’ Sanitary Association (I only wish we had done this before). And if Mrs Sutherland would be so very good as she did before as to direct Miss Adams to send me two complete sets, to be paid for of course? Must I say anything about there being copyright? I have sent Lady Dufferin all the books which girls’ high schools and female training colleges recommended. She has written to Mr ‘‘Hart, of the National Health Society,’’ also for books. And she sends me a printed list of subjects, drawn up by herself, very numerous—Irish, not Indian—upon all of which I am to send her books. (Murdoch’s list is much better.) This, she tells me, is for the ‘‘European girls’ schools.’’ She says: ‘‘I have now received permission to get the books from which our primer is to be compiled. The government wish to offer a prize for the best compilation,’’ etc. Farther, she says: ‘‘The Health Society of Calcutta is trying to get the subject taken up in boys’ schools and universities.’’ So it seems there is a stir. And this is good. But oh that it could be kept out of the hands of clerks and aide-de-camps! 6. Farther, she says that she ‘‘hopes it (the primer) can be adapted to suit native girls, adapted for India and for natives.’’ But she winds up with ‘‘the grand principles for health are the same everywhere.’’ Yes, but not their application. 7. Farther, she says: ‘‘We also wish to have one book and not many, so that our primer must be a compilation’’!!! (So much the greater risk of failure.) A primer to comprise all the subjects in her own printed list would be as big as a London director y. 24 August 1886 Thank you for your letter, which simply says what I can’t say to Lady Dufferin: ‘‘Don’t teach and do execute.’’ Thank you very much for

752 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the marked list. But if you read my letter to Mrs Sutherland, you would see that I sent over a messenger expressly with that printed paper of Lady Dufferin’s in order that you might mark or recommend ‘‘the best books on all these subjects for the manual to be compiled from, adding to this list of subjects, which is incomplete,’’ if necessar y. She did not at all want us to say whether or what part of the list of subjects was to be ‘‘issued,’’ but ‘‘to recommend books and tracts, which should include instructions as to all these things’’ (not to say whether ‘‘the marginal headings simply should be issued’’). Source: From a letter to Arthur Clough, Jr., Boston University 5/18/8

23 August 1886 I cannot thank you enough for the books you have sent me, all of which are now on their way out to Lady Dufferin (Please send me your bill—not for the kind trouble you have taken, that I cannot repay—but for the books). But my lady is headstrong and Irish, and expects everything to come by telegraph. She writes to me that she has referred the matter (of the ‘‘Manual’’ for the ‘‘European Girls’ Schools’’) to the ‘‘Home Office’’—I presume the Indian ‘‘H.O.’’—that they have authorized and desired her to get many copies of each of and all the books from England, and to offer a ‘‘prize’’ for the best compilation—a thing which has failed in India as often as it has been tried. She sends me a list of subjects, arranged by herself, and desires me to send her the best books on them. I shall send her a great quantity of the National Ladies’ Association sanitary tracts. But I am afraid the thing is doomed if it is to be done by prizes. She says the thing is now ‘‘in the hands of the government; the inspectors of schools have taken it up’’ and this is good. She is ‘‘to push it on.’’ The letter is a long one and I will not further discuss it. I shall send as many books as I can by next Friday’s mail. Source: From seven letters to Lady Dufferin, Florence Nightingale International Foundation ff75-81, 71-74, 55-58, 86-96, 82-85, 98-105 and 112-19 (arranged in chronological order)

6 August 1886 Privat e. The eight little books (under cover to Lord Dufferin in two envelopes) that I have sent you are all meant for small girls from 9 to 10 to 14. . . . I suppose these little books cannot be of much use in India in themselves but, in gladly obeying your directions, I hope they

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may possibly serve as a ground plan for writing Indian textbooks for your ‘‘European Girls’ Schools in Bengal’’ and also for your native girls and women’s manuals. . . . By next mail I shall be ready to send a few books used in collegiate girls’ schools and for training college students, and also for children here, and some books mentioned by Professor Gladstone26 as in use in the London School Board schools. I am also in correspondence with the principal of Whitelands Normal Training College for female teachers, and with Mr Twining27 of the council of ‘‘Parkes’ Museum,’’ a famous authority for sanitary textbooks. I am told that the textbooks in the female normal colleges and the London middle-class-girl schools ‘‘deser ve special attention.’’ I am afraid that my letters are piecemeal and tiresomely like patchwork with patches of queer shapes. But I hope in this way in some degree to meet your wishes. We ought all to be your devoted servants to do what we can. The difficulty is that the favourite book of one year is soon displaced by another. And besides everybody having been absorbed in the elections, this is now the time when every school is in holiday. Let me return for a moment to the native object for which you first kindly wrote to me. The last time I troubled you with a (piecemeal) letter, I sent a sanitary primer, the Way to Health, by Mr Murdoch, published at Madras for native schools, which we thought much better (for India) than anything we had done in England. I now beg to send two little tracts, also for native children, ‘‘The Uses of Pure Water’’ and also ‘‘What Is the Use of Your Nose?’’ which we think, too, much better for India than anything we could do, alluding as they do to Indian habits, not known in England, to the Indian prejudice against manure, unknown in England, etc., e.g., see pp 5-9 in ‘‘What Is the Use of Your Nose?’’ It will be objected perhaps that there are references to Christianity. The Way to Health has, however, I am told, been authorized in government primary schools. Hindus disapprove of no reference to religious morality (not dogma), do not they? No doubt you wish me to send you anything to war against the almost universal belief outside the great towns in astrology and the existence of demons, which interfere with agriculture and almost every action of

26 John Hall Gladstone (1827-1902), physical chemist, brother of a prominent educationist. 27 Thomas Twining III (1806-95). Parkes’ Museum was established as the Museum of Domestic and Sanitary Economy at Twickenham.

754 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Hindu life. In your great designs for doing them good, this will come in. Sir Madhava Rao28 has, I believe, laboured hard against astrology. There is a little tract, ‘‘Astronomy and Astrology,’’ also published by the Christian Vernacular Society at Madras, which I hope to send. But you may perhaps be ordering books from the society. They are good. 13 August 1886 Privat e. May I now be permitted to send you, in obedience to your request, as used in girls’ high schools here, Lankester’s Practical Physiology, MacKendrick’s Animal Physiology, Huxley’s Elementar y Physiology.29 Huxley’s book is more advanced than the other two, but devotes less attention to the ‘‘health’’ question. ‘‘Lankester’s book deals more fully with the ‘health’ question. MacKendrick’s book is a good elementary one with excellent diagrams.’’ These are the books which it was thought would be useful as a basis for the ‘‘European Girls’ Schools in Bengal.’’ May your noble efforts for them be entirely successful. The fourth book, Tegetmeier’s Domestic Economy,30 I find is more universally used than any other, especially for girls in training colleges, on domestic economy, one of your subjects. It is needless to say that much, very much, is different in India from what it is in England. I should add that my lady authority says: ‘‘The subject is one which does not require books to any considerable extent.’’ I conclude she means that these subjects are taught more by classes and lectures from the teachers than by books. The Dr Mann, to whom I was referred as a high authority in these matters (Society of Arts), and who was written to on my behalf, died about ten days ago. I am writing from my bed, and I trust you will excuse what must, I fear, seem a somewhat unbusinesslike proceeding. I hope to have by next mail some of the information I have asked for. But this is holiday time in the schools. Now, as ever, wishing you the highest success, pray believe me, dear Lady Dufferin ever your excellency’s faithful and devoted servant Florence Nightingale

28 T. Madhava Rao (1828-91), Indian statesman. 29 Respectively Edwin Ray Lankester, Practical Physiology, Being a School Manual of Health, 5th ed 1872; John Gray MacKendrick, Animal Physiology, 1875; Thomas Henr y Huxley, Lessons in Elementary Physiology, 1866; and many later editions. 30 William Bernhard Tegetmeier, A Manual of Domestic Economy, with Hints on Domestic Medicine and Surger y.

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These books, you will observe, are directed exclusively for your European Girls’ Schools. Good speed to them. By next mail I hope to send you a ‘‘Science of Home Life’’ three years’ courses, which I conclude is more of a primer to be used as a basis for primary schools. 20 August 1886 Private. Might I be allowed to say, without impertinence, how delighted we were with your beautiful letter, so wise and so inspiring, to Miss Smith, who was started at Alwar, under your auspices, as a lady practitioner. May the best success attend your efforts! I have no answer and no books to send you by this mail and I am afraid I am very troublesome in sending suggestions for your sanitary campaign. But one thing you have probably already done and that is: [a] distinct proposal that Dr Hewlett for Bombay, Dr Bellew for the Punjab, Dr Ghose for Bengal each be requested to prepare for your committee such a tract on domestic cleanliness as shall meet the necessities of the case in these diverse governments in popular language and above all as short as possible. There are in India already a few (but few, alas!) educated native doctors, who have shown that the prevention of disease is a separate matter from its treatment. And some of the very best sanitar y reports have proceeded from these men. They and others are finding their way to the light. Among native doctors, Dr Ghose, who, I believe, is an assistant sanitary commissioner in Lower Bengal, would be a very likely man to write a good tract on cleanliness, written from the native point of view, which is important. I am afraid of being importunate and I am sure that my piecemeal suggestions (unavoidably piecemeal) must be troublesome. But we shall be so glad if, as we believe, your excellency has carried out this small measure for minute tracts already. And wishing your sanitary campaign, as ever, the noblest success. . . . 16 September 1886 Privat e. By this mail allow me to send you out of the ‘‘series’’ by Rev Faunthorpe, principal of Whitelands Female Normal College, Domestic Economy and Household Science.31 This is all that advanced girls would want and the ‘‘household science’’ form of it for teachers. (The two are really the same book, except with additions to the latter.) He, Mr Faunthorpe, recommended besides three ‘‘series’’ of domestic economy

31 John Pincher Faunthorpe (1839-1924), author of Household Science: Readings in Necessary Knowledge for Girls and Young Women.

756 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India books: Blackie’s, Collins’s, Nelson’s series. I see that I have already sent you ‘‘Collins’ ’’ and ‘‘Nelson’s.’’ Perhaps the following proposition might meet your approval (it is made by Mr Faunthorpe himself, who is one of our greatest authorities on teaching of girls and of normal school mistresses for girls: that, as it is thought that English books might be made with some adaptation to suit India, someone should be employed in India to strike out with the pen such chapters (whole chapters) in ‘‘Household Science’’ as do not apply; then such chapters should be written over again and made to apply; that Mr Stanford who published these could publish a special edition of it for India. The pages are stereotyped; that this is being done for Australia by a former pupil of Mr Faunthorpe’s and since head of the training college for female teachers at Sydney. Mr Faunthorpe thinks that through his governesses, etc., what is wanted might perhaps be done here. You will probably hardly think so. Dr Mann’s ‘‘Lessons in Sanitary Science’’ (Dr Mann was taken ill the very day we wrote to him and died in two days) were done originally for Mr Faunthorpe, but he thought the book too difficult and prepared one himself. Dr Mann’s books I have sent you. Mr Faunthorpe has taken considerable trouble to get for me independent testimony from independent teachers with the result I have mentioned, viz., all use Faunthorpe’s for teaching ‘‘domestic economy and sanitary science’’ and either Blackie’s, Collins’s or Nelson’s—the last two I have sent you. Of the inquiries I have made among the most experienced men as to the best books on the subject and most used in girls’ schools both as textbooks and by teachers, the answer of one has yet to come in. He is comparing. All are enthusiastically anxious to help. I hope to send you by next mail what I gather from this last authority and also the books recommended. The great difficulty, as I explained, is that different schools use different books and often change them. The great difference, as I need not explain, is that in England publishers are always bringing out books, and excellent books, which find a ready sale, and (bidding against each other) improve every year, whereas in India there is no such possibility and government has to do ever ything. And stereotyping is unfortunately often the result, is it not? It will scarcely be conceded to Mr Faunthorpe that Australia is a parallel case to India since English men and women can settle in Australia and bring up children and can not in India. Let me again ask pardon for my piecemeal way of doing things. But even had it not been necessary from the circumstances, it appeared

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better than doing what I did last winter, viz., sending the whole of the information collected and consultation taken in one vast letter, which ran little chance of being read, in answer to your kind appeal. And confusion has, I fear, since been made between the answers to the two appeals made to us—that for native girls and women, and that for European girls’ schools. We trust that the European girls’ school teaching will not be suffered to supersede government work in sanitary matters or sound teaching in native schools, which government alone can do. At present, ‘‘sanitar y regulations’’ are sometimes looked upon ‘‘as a kind of oppression, of which the worst Hindu or Muhammadan despot was never guilty.’’ ‘‘Which of them ever found fault with our drains?’’ But who has the primary schools in his hands has also the power of teaching the laws of health in his hands. It would be seen with immense gratitude if Lady Dufferin would sometimes visit a military hospital. It would set the example to every officer’s wife and English lady in the empire. We hear with admiration and hope of the meeting over which you will preside this month on the great ‘‘Female Medical Aid’’ question. May it prosper as it deserves. May ‘‘good speed’’ follow all you do for India, may what you allow us to do be not quite in vain for you is the warmest wish of your excellency’s faithful servant Florence Nightingale 23 September 1886 Privat e. May I send you now the last sets of textbooks on domestic economy and textbooks on sanitary subjects, which will, I believe, complete the ‘‘order’’ I have received from you and, I earnestly hope, contribute as you desire to your carrying out the magnificent scheme of progress you have conceived, first for the European girls’ schools in India and next for the girls and women of India itself, both in and out of school. I have consulted (1) the men who had most knowledge of sanitary things in India and England, (2) the men who had most practical experience of girls’ schools, both high schools and elementary, and of girls’ teachers, and (3) the men who had devoted a great part of their lives to bringing forward the then-new subjects (although the oldest subjects in the world, as old as mankind) of domestic economy and sanitary practice, new too, as this last of them expresses it to me, in introducing ‘‘more method’’ (which has been wanting) in order to impress practical knowledge in a practical way, rendering it clear, permanent and ever ready for useful application. (That is what will be the great difficulty in

758 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India introducing sanitary knowledge in native schools. They, native scholars, will go through any number of examinations triumphantly, but to apply their knowledge, that is the ‘‘r ub,’’ is it not? with natives—‘‘natives’’ of England and Europe too but natives of India more especially.) I shall await your further commands with the greatest interest and pleasure. I try to say what I cannot say how intensely I wish you the success you deserve. I fear I must trouble you with another letter, for I am compelled to break off short here, having a big sanitary job to complete today for a lady friend of mine, just starting for her schools at Sarajevo in Bosnia, with cholera impending. 7 October 1886 Privat e. Thank you very much for your kind letter of 7 September. The textbooks on sanitar y subjects and textbooks and manuals on domestic economy, which I have found by various inquiry among sanitarians, school authorities, presidents of normal schools and training colleges for mistresses, to be most considered, have now all been despatched to you and will, I hope, prove useful. May I trust that my poor service, such as it is, in giving time to inquiry and sending books may be accepted as a contribution to your noble scheme and that you will not again speak of payment. I shall be grateful. Your plan for keeping up an esprit de corps [sense of community] and most especially a connection with yourself among the young women doctors your fund will educate is, I am sure, most essential. I will inquire what are considered the most useful medical books for lady doctors who are to attend women, and I hope you will allow me to send some, when this is ascertained? Mrs Scharlieb, of Madras—a first-rate woman in every respect, whom I honour myself by calling my friend and who I trust will be enabled to continue (by a proper salary) in the post of medical chief to her ‘‘Caste and Gosha Women’s Hospital’’ at Madras, an invaluable hospital—she might be able to give good advice. Do you know Dr Dhanakoti Raju’s Easy Lessons on the Laws of Health, published at Madras? (Elements of Hygiene). It is the reverse of ‘‘easy’’ or ‘‘elementar y’’; it has the great and common demerit of being too English, a compilation from English books and not easy English books. And though it gives some valuable information about India’s food grains, it otherwise almost ignores the poor. Still it is a valuable book and you desire to know whatever has been done in India on your present subject. Since I began this letter, I have received this minute from Madras a little book which for your purpose has been strongly recommended to

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me, Lessons in Domestic Economy for Our Girls, Intended for the Use of AngloIndian and Eurasian Schools, by E.A. Keely, ‘‘lady principal of Doveton Girls’ School,’’32 published at Madras. It looks just the thing; but there is no time to read it before the mail goes. I trust you will allow me to continue the poor service which I have been so pleased to render to a cause so great and such a benefit for the people of India. You will indeed have conferred on the women and girls of India an immense good if you leave them such a legacy when unhappily for India you and Lord Dufferin have to come home. You kindly ask after my health. I have been for more than twentyfive years a prisoner from illness and overworked. I fear it will be impossible for me to do what I should wish in collecting for your fund during the Queen’s Jubilee. May it increase as it deserves! I am ashamed to be writing of myself and as much to be enclosing, as a sort of ‘‘medical certificate’’ to excuse me before you, a note from my brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, who is I think known to Lord Dufferin. May all good attend that fund and its lady! 12 November 1886 Privat e. May I trust that you had, while at Bombay, Mr Hewlett, the sanitar y commissioner of Bombay presidency, to wait on you and that you accomplished your object, in obtaining the help he is so well qualified to give, of sanitar y teaching, especially for the native women and girls, of manuals and textbooks on sanitary subjects for them? I have now the pleasure of beginning, according to your desire, to send you medical books on midwifery and the diseases of women and children for your (to be trained) women doctors, especially native women doctors. The books I send today are Galabin’s Manual of Midwifer y; Croom’s Minor Gynecological Operations; Swayne’s Obstetric Aphorisms (recommended by high authorities whom I have consulted of course); Barnes’s Midwifer y for Midwives;33 (Pr ussian) Midwifer y for Midwives, Burton’s.34 May they prove useful to your noble object!

32 Doveton Girls’ School, named after Captain Doveton, opened in 1855. 33 Alfred Lewis Galabin, A Manual of Midwifery, illustrated edition 1886; John Halliday Croom, Minor Gynecological Operations and Appliances for the Use of Students, 1879; Joseph Griffiths Swayne, Obstetric Aphorisms: For the Use of Students Commencing Midwifery Practice, many editions from 1856; Robert Sydenham Fancourt Barnes, A Manual of Midwifery for Midwives, 9 editions to 1902. 34 Probably Carl Conrad Theodor Litzmann’s Lehrbuch der Geburtshülfe für die preussischen Hebammen, 1881, with prints by J.E. Burton.

760 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Galabin’s book is elaborate and enough to frighten anyone, ‘‘but still it contains quite sufficient information regarding natural labour.’’ And I am told that it ought to be sent. We need not, I am sure, give the caution, much needed even in England, that the necessary manipulative qualifications in book-tau g h t doctors, male and female, are often wanting and that in remote places doctors without the manual dexterity, who are suddenly called upon to act in exigencies, may bring about bad results. Croom’s little book has something of the characteristics of Galabin, but is, I am told, always acceptable. Obstetric Aphorisms are most valuable. For anyone, whether male or female, beginning midwifer y practice, it is said to have no equal in English. Is there not always some danger of books treating childbirth, not as a process of nature, but as a terrible surgical disease and accumulating every kind of operation that could possibly be invented? Yes, say even the doctors. Does it often come in the way of men doctors (who generally are the recommenders of books) to treat native women, or indeed even to see them? To this last question doctors have generally answered No. As for sanitation, so for midwifery and native women’s and children’s diseases, so different in India from what they are in England, and fever so predominating: will not manuals have to be written in India for India? The mortality among native women in childbirth is very high. We do not know how high. But we know how high that of European women in India is. The sanitary or rather insanitary conditions under which native women undergo childbirth are deplorable. Only sanitary commissioners, like Mr Hewlett, and lady doctors in India can tell us much about these. The poor women in and before childbirth have also many other drawbacks: superstitions incredible in themselves and their midwives, etc. I hope to send by next mail some books telling us the conditions which should produce health (and not disease) in pregnancy and childbirth that could be adapted for India, though this will be difficult. And I hope also to send the simplest and most useful medical books on midwifery and diseases of women and children, bearing in mind, if we can, that it is for India, and chiefly query for native (to be trained) women doctors, but also for European women doctors. May that hold which you so generously try to keep over them, and which is so essential, be never loosened but increase always! N.B. I have no doubt that you know Dr Moore’s Family Medicine for India.35 It is very full, indeed, there is much that is not ‘‘family’’

35 William James Moore, A Manual of Family Medicine for India, 1874.

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medicine at all. It is a valuable book. It contains in various sections much of the information, obstetric, sanitary and medical. If you could kindly give me the address of the person in London charged with sending you out things by the weekly Brindisi mail, I would send these books to be forwarded to you, with your leave. Pray believe me, dear Lady Dufferin, always awaiting with pleasure your commands Florence Nightingale Source: From a draft letter to Angelique Lucille Pringle,36 University of Edinburgh, Pringle Letters 104, copy Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/ NC5/86/194-96/53 (ellipses in text)

7 November 1886 I have been rather bothered for the last twelve months by inquiring for and despatching sanitary and domestic economy books to India, to be boiled down by some sort of process into textbooks for native girls and women, and for European girls’ schools—as an adjunct to Lady Dufferin’s Fund. Believing as I do that the conditions of England and India are so different that each country should have its own books, I did it in a cold perspiration. I am now engaged to do the same thing in medical books for the doctresses—to send out the best books on midwifery and diseases of women and children; I have already collected several recommended to me by medical authority. But they are so elaborate, they—especially the midwifery books—treat childbirth not as a process of nature but as a terrible surgical disease. And there is a description of every kind of operation that can possibly be invented. Could you . . . ask the authorities of the lying-in hospital, or the physician accoucheur of your infirmar y, for the names of the simplest and most useful books on these matters, telling them it is for India, for native and other lady doctors, and for whose Fund. . . . I should be so grateful. But they in India ought, as for sanitation, so for midwifery and women’s and children’s diseases to write manuals for India. The mortality among native women and among European women in India is far higher than with us. The sanitary conditions (of the natives) in childbirth are fear ful. And they have many other drawbacks. . . .

36 Angelique Lucille Pringle (1846-1921), superintendent of the Royal Infirmar y, Edinburgh, and later of the Nightingale School at St Thomas’ Hospital.

762 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India If there were any book dwelling upon the conditions which should produce health in pregnancy and childbirth, that would be a godsend for me. . . . ‘‘They (the books) will be chiefly for (trained) native women doctors.’’ Source: From a letter to Lady Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/3

6 September 1887 Thank you so very, ver y much for sending me the little nursing book, Pachai Ammal, for native homes, by Mr Krishna Machariar, of Madras. If it is valuable, it is so very valuable that I am trying to get someone to read it in Tamil for me. Because it not only comprises sick-nursing and sanitary knowledge for native homes, which is what we want, but appears to be a story intended to show how widows can lead useful and honourable lives by being trained in hospital as sick-nurses. And how I echo the universal feeling of the inestimable work you have done in southern India, raising our poor sisters (and fellow subjects) there in ever y way, bodies and souls. Your work will live. Thank God for it! Perhaps you have thought of recommending this little book, if it is good, to Lady Dufferin. None but a native can write for native homes. And all the books written by natives that I have seen (and could read) were mere imitations of English sanitary books. If Lady Dufferin would have a book like this written for each presidency and each province by a competent native and revised by an Anglo-Indian and translated into the vernaculars, would not this be the best way of gently striking at native superstitions? You know so much more than I do—or than almost anyone. May you continue your great work! I do trust that your health is improving as we all, your respectful friends, desire and long for. . . . I cannot thank you enough for sending me those exquisite water lilies, which lit up my room with your kindness after I had the pleasure, the great pleasure, of seeing you. . . . And with kind regards to Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff. Source: From notes from an interview with Mary Scharlieb, Add Mss 52427 ff 119-20

29 November 1887 English lady doctor does not know the languages. In presidency towns all but the old fogies will have men doctors; Muhammadans of course will have only women, but then they won’t take English medicine, only Greek! In the country native midwives? . . .

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Books for Lady Dufferin. Lady doctor for each large town or group of towns, natives or Eurasians are being trained to order. . . . Ought to train the dais [midwives], not examine them. No. of abnormal midwifery cases, inert uter us, bad hemorrhage, one in ten. Miss Pechey: not more than in England. Time for midwife’s training: Miss Pechey, three months; one year, Dr Branfoot, Madras. Then what does she do with abnormal cases? Any statistics of abnormal cases at English lying-in hospitals? in India? Source: From two letters or drafts to Mary Scharlieb, Add Mss 45808 ff5-6 and 41-42

1 December 1887 I hope you were not the worse for so kindly coming to me. 1. Herewith comes Lady Grant-Duff’s book, the Sick Nurse in Tamil, which you were so good as to say you would take to a gentleman at Oxford tomorrow, the Rev Dr Pope37 I think, who would be able to read it and give us some idea whether it was to be recommended as a sanitar y book, with the object of mentioning it to Lady Dufferin. 2. I am so stupid I cannot find my memorandum of the name of that Hindu lady [Ganguly] who will graduate at Calcutta next spring as a qualified medical woman and whom her cousin, a friend of mine, Mrs Manmohun Ghose, of Calcutta, asked me to mention to Lady Dufferin. But I shall find the memorandum and then by your kind leave ask you. 3. But I want to ask you one question immediately: Miss Pechey was so sure that a qualified lady doctor (I am referring now to Ahmedabad) would not and ought not to go out except under government, that she said all the ladies now educated at the female School of Medicine here refused to take any but government engagements in India. Is this the case? You enumerated a number of qualified English lady doctors in India (when you were so good as to come on Tuesday). Have those, all, government appointments? or have they unofficial appointments? with contracts? Perhaps you could be so very good as to answer me this question, in order to enable me to write to my Ahmedabad municipality tomorrow.

37 George Uglow Pope (1820-1908), professor of Tamil and Telegu, Balliol College chaplain.

764 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 20 Februar y 1888 Do you remember asking me the name of this lady, who is the cousin of two friends of mine, Mr and Mrs Manmohun Ghose, who have successfully resisted infant marriage, etc., of Calcutta? I wrote to them to ask her name, which I now transcribe on the other side. Do you know or could you tell me anything about this lady, Mrs Ganguly, or give me any advice? Mrs Manmohun Ghose, who has all an Englishwoman’s cultivation and absence of prejudice with a Hindu’s affectionateness, asked me to recommend Mrs Ganguly, if she is successful, to Lady Dufferin, for any post about the female wards in Calcutta. Mrs Ganguly is, I believe, a young woman of high caste and cultivation and it would be a great encouragement to Hindu ladies to embrace medicine if she were appointed. The Hindu young lady’s name is Mrs Kadambini Ganguly still studying in the Medical College at Calcutta; [she] has already passed what is called the first licentiate of medicine and surger y examinations and is to go up for the final examination in March next. (This young lady, Mrs Ganguly, married! after she had made up her mind to become a doctor! and has had one, if not two children since. But she was only absent thirteen days for her lying-in!! and did not miss, I believe, a single lecture!!) Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff182-83

19 July 1888 Private. There is an excellent ‘‘Resolution Bombay Government, 29 March 1886,’’ which desired that the sanitary commissioner, Mr Hewlett’s, ‘‘highly valuable memorandum for the information and guidance of village patels (headmen) and the explanation of its provisions at high schools and colleges (I do not know whether it has ever been so ‘‘explained’’) may ‘‘contribute to enlighten the public on subjects of vital importance, and stimulate cooperative and private initiative. Insanitary conditions of houses, etc.’’ This is part of the sanitary education we want. Another part is elementar y sanitar y education for women and girls and boys—and short paragraphs introduced in elementary schoolbooks. ‘‘Give me the schoolbooks of a country and I will let anyone else make its laws.’’ I venture to enclose a little book (Sanitar y Reform) by one Murdoch of Madras (this is more for native men and women, not children) not a doctor, but one who has been his whole useful life in India. This little book is one. And there is a small sanitary primer of his (Way to Health) which Lady Dufferin has introduced into schools as being simpler than that of the late sanitary commissioner with the Government of India, Dr Cuningham.

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Inspection alas! there must be—constant and independent. One excellent district officer told a friend of mine that bathing and washing clothes in tanks for drinking water was strictly forbidden and never took place. The two gentlemen then went and visited the nearest village tank, and found each side of the square tank thickly set with bathers and washers!!! Source: From notes on visit of Lady Lansdowne38 on 28 October, Add Mss 45778 ff188-90

31 October 1888 Lady Lansdowne: to be president of Calcutta Health Society. All the natives would become enthusiastic to visit a military hospital in Upper India. Lady nurses at Rawalpindi and Muri. Lady Dufferin’s Fund to teach the native women and girls without books sanitary things by lecturers: travelling native lecturers; these ‘‘must previously have been educated by lectures and elementary sanitar y books’’ and inducements offered them to study the subject. (Manmohum Ghose simple political lectures.) Most native girls are in missionar y schools: primer for these. . . . Sanitar y primer in all elementar y schools; above all short sentences in primary reading books because then they must read them. . . . If the women and ladies of the country knew anything about hygiene; gentlemen do but will not oppose their ladies. Spread lectures and elementary books, stories written not in England but in India. A.L.O.E., Miss Tucker. Lady Dufferin. Murdoch, C.V.E. secretar y. 2. Ignorance of dais [midwives]. Miss Hewlett Amritsar. Lady Dufferin. Lancet. Miss Hewlett39 now compiling a manual for midwives using Playfair and other books I sent in Urdu with illustrations, most important to train native lady doctors and midwives. Lady Dufferin now gives the midwives a year’s education; before native women did not care for them. Age the qualification for medical attendance, women of high caste. Lady Dufferin compiling on the work of the Nat. Association for the last three years, giving dais’ atrocities. To open female hospital at

38 Née Maud Evelyn Hamilton (1850-1932), Lady Lansdowne, vicereine. 39 S.S. Hewlett, while not medically trained, was one of the first women to provide medical relief in India; in 1877 she took charge of the Amritsar Dais’ School Church, training midwives for the England Zenana Missionary Society (Balfour and Young, The Work of Medical Women in India 18).

766 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Lahore, Agra, and begin a lying-in ward at Agra, Calcutta, done at Nagpur. Lying-in women in closest and dampest corner, large fire, crowd, no cleanliness. Parsis impure at certain periods. Child burnt to death. Hot iron to women undelivered. What the women suffer in childbirth. A cheap simple book on diseases of women and children, and midwifery to be compiled at Calcutta. . . . Eurasian nurse trained by Clewer40 sisters at Lucknow, at a small nursing school, twelve beds, two native Christian pupils. Clewer sisters at Calcutta. . . . Miss Pechey, Bombay, will tell about native women. Source: From a typed copy of a letter to John Murdoch, Add Mss 45809 f90

4 Januar y 1889 A thousand thanks for your last paper on ‘‘Indian Life: The Women of India.’’ I am sure I shall find it most instructive. But first let me wish you a blessed New Year to you and your work, and may that work, which has been so fruitful for India, continue to enlighten her, her men and her women in the first principles of morality, education and hygiene. By the way, have you seen the January number of The Nineteenth Centur y in which there is an article, including a letter from a Brahmin schoolgirl? This is a revolution, but if we can get the Brahmins with us in most things, we shall be successful with the people of India. I shall hope to see you in England this year. You have been hard at work, I am sure, wherever you have been, and I trust God has preser ved your health. Source: From a draft letter to Lady Dufferin, Add Mss 45809 ff113-14

27 Februar y 1889 It was so kind of you to call the other day. . . . I have never thanked you, but I do from my heart, for so kindly sending me your beautiful and most effective Three Years’ Work.41 It has indeed been a ‘‘Three Years’ Work’’ for India such as few or none can show as the beginning and root—all the more striking and effective for being a beginning and a root—of a fundamental reform for all the hundred millions of women, which will grow and spread till every one of the millions in time to come

40 Anglican sisterhood of St John Clewer, founded in 1849 in England. 41 The Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, A Record of Three Years’ Work of the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India.

The Condition of Women in India / 767

will find her life changed and blessed by it. It is the difference between a growing living forest and dead brick and mortar. And the simplicity with which this wonderful record is written makes it tenfold more effective. May God bless it, and He does bless it, and millions of millions of His creatures will bless it—the men as well as the women and children of India in times to come. And may you be blessed in the great and wonderful good you have been able to do. I trust that Lady Lansdowne knows and carries out your intentions. Source: From a letter to Parthenope Ver ney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9012/143

2 March 1889 I have seen Lady Dufferin for a long afternoon and heard from Lord Dufferin. She is a noble woman who has begun an immense work—at the beginning and not at the end—who is perfect mistress of her subject. It is a rest to speak with such a one, who is entirely simple, wise and devoted, without excitement. And the indirect issues of her work are as important as is the work itself. She has really begun a new era for the women of India. But I will try and write you a long account. She looks terribly ill and old, but her manner and being has all the freshness and calm of mature youth. I do like her so much better than him. He writes as he generally does with empressée [solicitous] courtesy and almost with affection, with nothing in it but a character of Lord Lansdowne, which is good. He did write me, however, a weighty letter before he left India. Lady Dufferin says he has been very anxious. I repent in dust and ashes42 for any word I may ever have said not quite sympathetic about her work, for I have never seen anyone with more of the grace of master y and thoroughness. She is a most remarkable woman, with the simplest, quietest manner you can conceive, no about-ing or about-ing. Source: From two draft letters to Lady Dufferin, same date Add Mss 45809 ff 120-21 and 122-27

28 April 1889 You do me the honour for the second time of asking me to join the general committee of the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India. I trust you know how deeply I am

42 Job 42:6.

768 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India interested in your great and noble work, how anxious I am, as far as I may be able, and you may kindly call upon me, to do the least little thing you wish to help in forwarding that work. And yet, and yet I must beg you to excuse me from joining the general committee. My little work for you I can do as well without joining it. The work of the association I am entirely unable from illness and business to perform. I could not attend its meetings. I am unable to see more than one person at a time, and only by appointment, and cannot leave my room. I have been obliged to make it a rule not to give my poor name when I cannot give my work, and to decline even in name to have any official connection with any association. An exception would, I am told, involve me in difficulties with others. Pardon this long explanation about self. It is only to show how sorry I am to decline. How much I hope that you will kindly employ me otherwise. I must confess to having received the printed letter you did me the honour of sending me before. But it was so painful to me to decline; I was almost in hopes you would forget it. I am in dust and ashes at not having answered. I feel it so impertinent to ask for the great privilege of your making another appointment to tell me some things I would fain ask, when it is I who ought to be at your feet, as I am at heart, and you who have so much to do of noble work. Perhaps there might be one whom you could send. 28 April 1889 How good you are to me, sending me that most excellent 4th annual report with a portrait at the beginning of one whom it is impertinent to praise . . . and which will commend the report to all readers, and with that beautiful ‘‘Song of the Women’’—so true, so pure, so deeply felt, so delicately worded—which explains and adorns the work and is adorned and explained by the work, but not more true and pure than your own words about the immense importance of what the ‘‘moral tone’’ and ‘‘gentle manner’’ of the native women students should be and how to be secured. This inspires the ‘‘Song of the Women.’’ (I could not read it without tears—indeed it is true: ‘‘Lady! Lo, they know and love!’’43 They do know what you have done for them and they do love.) Might I ask you to ask someone to tell me, if this report with the portrait and verse is not sold in England, where it is sold in Calcutta,

43 Last line of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘‘Song of the Women’’ for the Lady Dufferin’s Fund for the Medical Aid to the Women of India.

The Condition of Women in India / 769

that I may send for twenty copies, as I think it will do more than anything else to explain and give interest to the work in India? . . . There are besides questions which people here naturally often ask and which one would like to be able to answer with authority, such as, do not the young native women, even if engaged after training to ser ve the government as hospital assistants or otherwise, marry? and how far does this put a stop to continuing her employment of the woman thus married? So also in the employment of trained native medical women by native states and by municipalities: are they already married? do not they marry? or will it lead to the splendid result of young widows being employed and raised up in this way? Such and similar questions arise which it would be very desirable to be able to answer upon high an authority as your own. . . . The Hindus and Muhammadans, having no idea before of trained professional native ladies, indeed no idea of any but married baby girls, women, see here unmarried young native women engaged in medical work under government and by ourselves, and instructed by native man-doctors who know their language, yet hospital assistants. And hitherto has been the foundress’s wisdom and care taking precautions that there has been no scandal, no misfortune, disaster. This in itself is a great gain. (But as people here naturally ask: are not these women already married? or do they not always marry and so the government lose their services much sooner than their appointment ends?) . . . Then the great lessons native princes and gentlemen have received, that they are responsible for the health and well-being of their women subjects and the ladies of their families, instead of what has been so universally the case, the gentlemen, even when better instructed themselves, yielding as they say themselves to their ladies’ superstitions. Now informed by and participating in the work of the foundress, are not the native nobles and municipalities not only building female dispensaries and wards but taking the means to officer them by women, by sending native women to be trained in the female medical colleges, instead of expecting the foundress to supply them with any number of ready-made women? Then India may perhaps now lead the way, instead of following England; midwifery as a branch formerly despised is now coming to be thought indispensable as part of a medical woman’s training and a year’s training in midwifery is now thought the least that can be required in India. Would it were so in England! All this is the result of the first lady in the land having made herself thorough mistress of her subject.

770 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India People also ask: will it be possible by and bye to teach native women at home practical or household indoor sanitary things, including the management of infants in which [they are] perfectly ignorant? It would be bliss compared with the frightful superstitions even of the best educated. In England the lying-in hospitals, where so-called midwives are trained (?) in three months!!! fail to train the midwives in their outdoor practice to teach the mothers how to manage their babies. N.B. Dr Murdoch, whom you kindly saw at Calcutta, told me that he would be in England this spring, but I have not seen or heard of him. Perhaps India under Lady Dufferin’s direction may come to be ahead of England. May her great work spread all over that vast empire. And may its growth be worthy of its beginning and of her the mistress of the subject and of hearts! Source: From two letters to Lady Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/13 and 14, draft/copy Add Mss 45811 ff 107-09

4 August 1891 I should have liked to have acknowledged your kindness and above all to have seen you. But my doctor tells me that if I have any common sense left, I must leave London at once. I would I could have heard how your Madras ‘‘Victoria’’ Hospital for Women is going on. 5 July 1892 Pune Native Girls’ High School. I hope that you have not quite forgotten me or your kindness to me. Will that kindness forgive me if I ask you to be so very good as to read yourself the two printed papers I venture to enclose: one a memorial to the secretar y of state for India, for which, if you approve it, we dare to hope for your signature and Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff’s; the other, a statement of the case. There is no need to trouble you with a long letter from me since, though I believe you have been more fortunate in Madras than they have been in Bombay presidency, you will know this case in an instant, that is, the educational wants of the women of India: the ‘‘Indian Ladies’ Association,’’ the ‘‘Maharastra’’ Female Education Society for the Deccan, the successful efforts of the chiefs and their native ladies of rank to raise money, and perhaps the High School at Pune, which had the good fortune to secure a mistress in Miss Hurford, whose genius for native girls, unfailing good sense and devotion have done a wonder ful work and given her a wonderful influence over the girls and their parents. Little toddlers cling round her skirts. And girls in

The Condition of Women in India / 771

their teens who would be mothers but for Miss Hurford remain with her at their own request and their parents’. She does much to make the British raj popular. She has gone through her troubles, like others, and successfully. But now the greatest trouble of all has come. The Bombay gover nment had adopted this pioneer school, made it a government institution, paying the salaries—the society doing a great deal for the government too. The Bombay government now wishes to make the school only a state-aided school. Will not this to the Indian mind appear as if the school had somehow forfeited the government’s unqualified approval? and will it not seriously damage if not destroy a school for which native gentlemen have done so much? To show its impression on the oriental mind, Prince Damrong, brother of the king of Siam, and minister of public instruction at Bangkok, when visiting Miss Hurford’s school this year, among other institutions in India, said to us that it was the most ‘‘practical’’ school he had ever seen. May it not truly be said that neither sanitar y reform nor any other social reform will make much progress till the women, the mothers and ‘‘mothers-in-law’’ of India are thus educated? for the women whom we scarcely ever see govern the men. But you know more about it than us all. It has been determined to memorialize the secretar y of state for India, as you see. May we hope that you and Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff will give the memorial the great weight of your names? Editor: The draft of the letter above ends slightly differently: We are anxious to obtain upon the memorial the signatures of persons of weight and influence, and if the executive approve perhaps the name of the society might be given as the leading signatory of the memorial. Whenever I have again occasion to urge this matter, I shall immediately communicate with her about it.44 Source: From a draft letter to Lady Dufferin, Add Mss 45811 ff111-13

3 July 1892 Will your kindness forgive me if I ask you to be so very good as to read yourself the two printed papers I venture to enclose, one a memorial for which we dare to hope for your all-powerful signature, the other a statement of the case.

44 Draft, Add Mss 45811 f109.

772 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India You, who have penetrated as no one else has done into the wants of the women of India, probably know the Indian Ladies’ Association for higher female education in India [meeting in Pune] the [old] Maharashtra [capital] in Bombay presidency, stimulated by the successful efforts of the chiefs and native ladies of rank to raise money, and perhaps [you know] the high school at Pune, who had the good fortune to secure a mistress in Miss Hurford, whose genius for native girls and good sense and devotion has done a wonderful work and given her a wonder ful influence over the girls and their parents. . . . She does much to make the British raj popular, does she not? The Bombay government had adopted this pioneer school and made it a government institution, paying the salaries. But the society did a great deal for them in return. The Bombay government now wishes to make the school only a state-aided school. Will not this to the Indian ear sound as if the school had somehow forfeited the government’s unqualified approval? and will it not seriously damage if not destroy a school for which native gentlemen have done so much? . . . The immense underground layer of native women, scarcely ever reached by the British, or only by you, nevertheless govern the men. The more reason for educating the women. It has been determined to memorialize the secretar y of state for India. I feel that I am addressing you who know so much more about it than any of us. May it not truly be said that neither sanitary reform nor any other social reform will make much progress till the future mothers and ‘‘mothers-in-law’’ of India are thus educated? We may be erring against etiquette however in asking your signature. But if it be otherwise may we venture to hope that, should the cause of Indian female education embodying Miss Hurford’s Pune high school meet with your approval, you would give the memorial the weight of your generous and instructed name. Source: From a letter to Dr C.W. MacRur y, National Library of Scotland Ms 741

10 October [1893?] I send a bit of a letter of mine for your criticism. Perhaps we may add something about female missioners of health some day. Miss Hurford is, I think, the name of the lady who has a native girls’ school at Pune. What do you think of her? Might she know of some girls who would be fit? I had such pleasure in hearing of Bombay presidency from you, and of your care of its people.

The Condition of Women in India / 773 Source: From a letter to the duke of Westminster,45 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

16 December 1896 We are trying to introduce in India native women health missioners to bring health among the native rural mothers, by showing them what to do as friends. And the Government of India furthers it. Source: From a letter to William Rathbone, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC5/9/97/1

17 January 1897 Private. I did not receive your kind letter, about the ‘‘Zenana Bible and Medical Mission’’ (Famine Appeal), dated 13 Januar y, till the last post last night 16 Januar y. Lord Kinnaird must have circulated his appeal before Lord G. Hamilton yielded and sanctioned the Lord Mayor’s appeal. There can be no doubt that the Lord Mayor’s Fund is the best channel. Besides, there is a serious objection to the Zenana Mission.46 Source: Notes, Add Mss 47761 ff173-75

23 March 1897 Mrs Scharlieb. Plague Bombay. Women’s hospital. Are lady nurses less than men secundum artem [according to the rules of the art]? are they more tender? (get hold of a word) ladies, not a fact you don’t take in lying-in cases? Miss Macdonald: house, one lying-in a year in one room real remedy against death rate.47 K.C.H. one midwife delivered all three rooms, cases normal and abnormal; what is the proportion of abnormal to normal? Operations, abdominal section. Ovariotomy. Dr Haffkine,48

45 Hugh Lupos Grosvenor (1825-99), duke of Westminster, trustee of the Nightingale Fund. 46 The objection seems to have to do with the danger of interfering with religion and local customs; the mission was of Baptist foundation. 47 Nightingale is here making the case for safety in small numbers of deliveries; the closing of the midwifery ward and training program at King’s College Hospital, after too high a death rate from puerperal fever, is related in Women (8:141-329). 48 Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine (Vladimir Aronovich Khavkin) (1860-1930), Russian surgeon, developed a vaccine for cholera; he famously performed the first human test on himself in Calcutta; developed a plague vaccine in 1897 in Bombay. A letter from Henry Acland to Nightingale two years earlier reported that Haffkine, whom he described as having worked on the prevention of cholera in India the last three years, wanted to meet her (letter of Acland 25 Februar y [?] 1895, Bodleian Library Ms Acland d70). There is no evidence that such a meeting took place.

774 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the inoculator for plague and diphtheria, same man as the surgeon major general who receives nurses at Bombay, the present Bloomsbury Sq. nurses; ‘‘glorified housemaids’’ made babies’ foods, all unwholesome, all have starch in them which spoils the digestion; bottles with long tubes inadmissible, can’t be cleaned. Mrs Scharlieb, m.d., b.s., will send me her scheme for maternity nursing and Miss Harris from her hospital will give instruction for the fortnight, not for older children. There is a house for her and her students. What would be the scheme for training maternity nurses now for Q.V. district nurses, teaching mothers to feed, clothe and wash their babies? National importance, do you teach it? We are only on the threshold of training.

Child Marriage: The Rukhmabai Case Editor: Nightingale was a minor actor in the unhappy case of a young woman who had been married as a child, and was, at the time of Nightingale’s involvement, at the stage where she was to be forced to consummate the marriage. No full, substantive, letter on the subject has survived, but there are remarks in her correspondence which show some involvement by Nightingale behind the scenes. The case entailed a legal anomaly, in that Indian matrimonial law could be enforced through the British courts. However, Indian matrimonial law included imprisonment for an offence not so punishable under British law: refusal to consummate the marriage. The young woman was Rukhmabai, who had been married in 1876, at age eleven, to a boy of nineteen. She was a good student (she later qualified as a doctor), while he was not. As Rukhmabai explained it: Day by day my love for education and social reform increased and I continued to pursue my studies as much as I could, but in this countr y it is very hard for women to study at home. . . . I began seriously to consider the former and the present condition of our Hindu women, and wished to do something, if in my power, to ameliorate our present sufferings.

At the age of nineteen, in 1884, Rukhmabai filed suit at the Bombay High Court to have her marriage annulled. In 1885 a ‘‘humane decision’’ was given in her favour, without any further support being offered her. ‘‘The decision, if it had been supported, would have altered the fate of millions and millions of daughters of India, and the longed-for freedom would have been easily secured.’’ However her

The Condition of Women in India / 775

husband, Dadujee Bkikajee, appealed, and in 1886 the decision was reversed and the case sent back for retrial. As Rukhmabai lamented: Man can marry any number of wives at a time or whenever he chooses, . . . while a woman is wedded once for all, cannot remarry even after the death of her first husband. . . . He may ill treat her, beat her, drive her away . . . , keep her without food. . . . Is it not inhuman that our Hindu men should have every liberty while women are tied on every hand forever.49

This remonstrance further invoked the name of Behramji Malabari, whose mission had already ‘‘stirred up a strong feeling of hostility’’ (see p 778 below) in India in the fight to abolish child marriage. In 1887 Rukhmabai appealed against the order of the court to enforce the marriage. She was liable to six months imprisonment in a civil jail for disobedience, and a fresh cause could be taken by her husband if she continued to disobey. In the meantime Rukhmabai’s husband, in 1887, issued a pamphlet with his version, treating the matter as a property issue. By June 1887 the Bombay government sought an amendment of the law on the execution of decrees for conjugal rights, by exempting from imprisonment the person against whom the decree was made. The supreme government forwarded the letter to the other jurisdictions for their opinion, suggesting that non-compliance with a decree should be grounds for dissolving the marriage, upon application of either party, provided compensation be given to the party divorced.50 In 1888 the Times reported a compromise between Rukhmabai and her husband in their case: the husband, in consideration of Rs. 2000 for his costs, was willing not to execute the decree for the restitution of conjugal rights. He was satisfied with having established the principle that a Hindu was entitled by law to enforce a decree for such restitution.51 In July 1888 a ‘‘Rukhmabai Defence Committee’’ resolved to devote its energies to the removal of the anomaly involved in punishing disobedience to a decree under Hindu matrimonial law by the penalty of imprisonment.52 In 1889 Dadujee Bkikajee had married a second wife

49 50 51 52

Times 9 April 1887:81. Times 17 June 1887:5. Times 9 July 1888:5. Times 30 July 1888:5.

776 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India and Rukhmabai herself went to England, where she became well connected with British mps and their wives. Benjamin Jowett, the master at Balliol College, was peripherally involved, a useful conduit to the then-viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, a former Balliol student. British academics and missionary societies took up her cause.53 Rukhmabai’s medical studies in London were supported by the Lady Dufferin Fund; she qualified in 1894 and practised in India.54 With only indirect sources, it is not clear exactly what Nightingale did. Frederick Calvert, a qc and Harry Verney’s brother, took cases for the Privy Council. Nightingale prepared a memorandum for him, which is no longer available; a letter to Harry Verney simply asked: Could you ask Mr Calvert, who has been so very kind as to undertake to speak to Dr Deane about the Hindu lady’s case, if he had a few lines in pencil, you told me, upon it, whether the poor little memo I sent him last night is what he wanted. Or, if of his great kindness he wants more (or less), I would write to London today for it.55

Nightingale, it seems, had to send to Dadabhai Naoroji for Rukhmabai’s papers, and as a note with the above item states: ‘‘I am writing the memo for Mr Calvert—the case which wants to go before the Privy Council.’’ Another letter Nightingale wrote Harry Verney shows that Lady Wedderburn was involved in finding Rukhmabai legal counsel.56 Correspondence with Benjamin Jowett shows that he pursued the matter with Lord Lansdowne in 1891. Lansdowne agreed with ‘‘our letter,’’ said Jowett, ‘‘in every respect.’’ But the contemplated change in the legal age of marriage was only from ten to twelve, and Lansdowne did not think much practical result would follow. The Indian National Congress was divided on the child marriage question. Nightingale’s only publication on the general subject of child marriage occurs in her introduction to a biography of Behramji Malabari (see p 778 below).

53 Times 29 April 1889:12. 54 Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, ‘‘ ‘Merely Birds of Passage’: Lady Hariot Dufferin’s Travel Writings and Medical Work in India, 1884-1888,’’ Women’s History Review 15,3 (July 2006):453. Roberts also reports that Queen Victoria intervened in the case to secure her release from the marriage contract. 55 Letter 9 May 1886, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9011/19. 56 Letter 19 May 1886, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9011/22.

The Condition of Women in India / 777 Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff250-51

Claydon House Winslow, Bucks 29 October 1890 Private and confidential. 2. To deal in some way with the widow question and to get rid of the ecclesiastical law, the infant marriage question too. To deal with these, of course, from the legal rather than the social point of view, because of the vast unknown force of some hundred millions of Hindu women against any change (I know both Mr Malabari and Mr Hume, the two opposite extremes). Your practical counsel, please. What is the Government of India to do? what the most we should ask for? There is such a vast underground stratum of Hindu women whom we never reach, yet in whose hands the practical problem really lies. As many a native gentleman has said: ‘‘It is so much less easy to resist my mother-in-law than to resist the Government of India.’’ The only way to work upon this underground seat of power (as it is now) is, I suppose, by cultivated, irreproachable Hindu ladies. But we must work by the above-ground seat of power, the viceroy, too, who is, I believe, favourable, in this also. The question is: what to ask for, besides ‘‘getting rid of the ecclesiastical law’’? I ask the greatest authority in England, when I venture to ask you in these matters. Source: From a letter to Benjamin Jowett, Add Mss 45785 f149

8 Januar y 1891 Would you be so very good as to return my two packets of papers on Elective Principle in Indian Legislative Councils and on Infant Marriages which you kindly took for your letter to Lord Lansdowne. . . . I hope something may come both of your letter to Lord Lansdowne and of the statistical teaching, that is, of social physics and their practical application in university education.

‘‘Introduction’’ to Behramji H. Malabari, 1892 Editor: Nightingale was asked in 1892 to write a preface to a biography of Behramji M. Malabari, an Indian writer and leading opponent of child marriage and enforced widowhood. He, a Parsi, shared the European abhorrence of child marriage, against the majority Hindu opinion. Custom forbade a widow of any age to remarry (even if the marriage was not consummated). She was forced out of her parental

778 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India home and made to join a community of widows for the rest of her life. The practical Nightingale was not only sympathetic to the victims of this punitive treatment, but had an alternative: honourable and useful employment for widows as nurses (see p 762 above). Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Dayaram Gidumal, Behramji M. Malabari: A Biographical Sketch (London: Fisher & Unwin 1892):v-viii

The most interesting portions of this book are those which give us a peep into an Indian home—that of Mr Malabari and his family, revealing the life of the young reformer, his aspirations, the weakness and the strength of his character, the influence of women on his youthful training, his devotion to their cause in afterlife. We see how much he owed to his mother, a remarkable woman of strong will, masterful mind and irresistible energy, yet a simple, homely housewife with the tenderest heart. She said: ‘‘All the boys in the street are my own sons,’’ when, for her own son, thought to be dying, a specific [medicine] was pressed upon her which would have injured another boy. The mother’s influence in India is so great that in truth it moulds the character of the nation. Of this influence Mr Malabari is an instance in point. His mother transmitted to him, by inheritance and example, many of her key characteristic qualities: amongst them a keen susceptibility and the power of patient endurance. The sympathy existing between mother and son determined the choice of his work in life and devoted him to the service of his countrywomen. The mission which he led against infant marriage has, no doubt, stirred up a strong feeling of hostility in some quarters. But on reading this book it will be seen that much of that hostility has arisen from a misunderstanding of his objects and methods, and that it is only a temporar y feeling, which will subside when the excitement has calmed down: the evils he has attacked will be acknowledged to be those which most endanger the physical and moral well-being of the Indian race. It will be seen that if he has offended by the vehemence of his advocacy, that vehemence has been caused by a just indignation and by an intense sympathy with the Indian people, especially with the weakest and most suffering classes. His work as a reformer of Indian social life cannot fail to set Englishmen, and especially Englishwomen, thinking of their duty towards their Indian brethren and sisters. We Englishwomen understand as little the lives and circumstances, the ideas and feelings, of these hundred millions of women in India as if they lived on another planet. They are not reached by us, not even by

The Condition of Women in India / 779

those of us who have lived in powerful position in India. Yet the women of India possess influence the most unbounded. In their own households, be it in hut or palace, even though never seen, they hold the most important moral strongholds of any women on earth. Did not a well-known Indian gentleman declare that it was easier to defy the secretar y of state than to defy one’s own mother-in-law? (see p 777 above). Supported by ancient custom, Indian women are absolute within their sphere. How may we hope to reach this great influence and utilize it for the cause of social progress? The answer seems to be that the women of India can only be reached by educated ladies of their own country— ladies of pure life and enlightened enthusiasm in doing good. They have ready access to their poorer sisters—the y understand their circumstances and feelings. It is to them, therefore, that we must appeal to convince their countrywomen, by example and precept, of the evils of the present marriage system, and to suggest the remedy. They can prevail, we cannot. But what we can do is earnestly to support and strengthen the educated Indian ladies who have already entered on the paths of social progress. To them we Englishwomen must look in the first instance for instruction, and with them lies the power effectually to carry out this, perhaps the greatest reform the world has yet seen. Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68887 f43

4-5 Februar y 1892 Private. You will remember the Parsi Mr Behramji Malabari, the editor of the Indian Spectator, as the lifelong champion against child marriages and the oppression of child widows—by no means always judicious but untiring. I wrote a preface at his earnest request at Claydon, which was published as an Introduction to his ‘‘life and work’’ (by Mr Dayaram [Gidumal], a Hindu). He is a terrible bore but certainly a prophet.

Later Efforts on Nursing in India Editor: In the previous volume, Health in India, Nightingale’s efforts, at Sir John Lawrence’s request, to introduce female nursing in militar y hospitals in India came to a dismal end, due to the administrative mishandling of the whole question. There is ver y little documentation on Nightingale’s presumably peripheral involvement in later efforts to start nursing, with Dr and Mrs Hunter in Bombay and with the governor of Madras.

780 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Records show that Nightingale met the governor and his wife, Lord and Lady Napier and Ettrick, when in London. Nightingale had sent Lord Napier a copy of her ‘‘Una’’ article on nursing in 1868, which he read driving on the shore near Madras, and sent on to his wife.57 A note by Nightingale to Dr Sutherland expresses admiration for her work: Lady Napier (of Madras) has effected the most wonderful reform in the charities of Madras, the worst managed in the world—has paid off the debts of all but one—all were in debt. . . . She is the most plucky and efficient woman. But she too is come to England to collect money (she says only two people ever gave her anything) and work for her penitents to do.58

In 1879 Lord Napier sent Nightingale a copy of the handbook for nurses just printed under the orders of Dr Edward Balfour. The same letter reports that ‘‘the projected establishment for the education of nurses has broken down by the denial of funds by the Government of India,’’ but nurses were being trained in the general hospital.59 Efforts were being made at roughly the same time by Dr W. Guyer Hunter and his wife to establish nursing in Bombay. The connection was made through Mary Carpenter, who asked Nightingale to meet with Dr Hunter, then in London, and provided a letter of introduction for him. They evidently did meet, but there is simply no documentation of any ongoing involvement.60 Dr or Mrs Hunter wrote again from Bombay explaining Mrs Hunter’s plan to start training independently of the government.61 The subject of nursing comes up, in passing, with a later governor of Madras and his wife, the GrantDuffs, in the 1880s. A letter to Douglas Galton in 1882 contains a reference to a proposal by Sir Robert Loyd Lindsay, head of the National Aid Society, that it should send trained nurses to India. Nightingale replied,

57 Letter 3 September 1868, in Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:170. 58 Note [end May 1869], Add Mss 45753 f246. Cheque records show Nightingale gave £30 for her Madras charities: Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC18/21/42. 59 Copy of dedication in Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:171; Napier letter 1 September 1871, Woodward Biomedical Library B.8. 60 Letters by Mary Carpenter to Nightingale 5 Februar y and 8 June 1868 Add Mss 45789 ff127 and 134; from Dr Hunter to Carpenter 4 Februar y 1868 f129, and a letter of introduction by Carpenter 4 Februar y f131. 61 Letter 19 December 1868, Add Mss 45789 f147.

The Condition of Women in India / 781

through Galton, that she would be ‘‘most happy if I can be of any use to see him,’’ but it seems that nothing came of this proposal. Visitors kept Nightingale abreast of developments in India and she encouraged new ventures in nursing. For instance, in October 1885, Sir Frederick Sleigh Roberts paid her a visit before leaving for India to take up his post as commander-in-chief of the British Army in India. On 6 August 1887 he wrote to her from Simla to say that the Government of India had sanctioned the employment of female nurses in militar y hospitals; a beginning was to be made in Umballa and Rawalpindi, and eighteen nurses with lady superintendents were to be sent out from England at once. The selection of nurses was entrusted to Surgeon General Arthur Payne, who had several interviews with Nightingale in the following month.62 In the late 1890s Nightingale gave support and advice to several St Thomas’ trained nurses going out to India to nurse. In 1895 she met with a Miss Mills, then about to leave. Nightingale asked the matron, Louisa Gordon, to order an instrument case to be taken by Nurse Mills, but ‘‘not too elaborate, for fear of offending the doctors out there’’ (see p 789 below). Another meeting was held before Mills left (see p 789 below). Two years later, in 1897, Mills’s lack of preparation was recalled when Nightingale met with Alice Maud Ruddock (c1869-?), who was departing for India (see p 789 below). Ruddock was the first British nurse to work in the plague in Bombay and the second to join the Indian Nursing Service. In the same year, Georgina Franklin (c1865-?) left for Cutch, ‘‘an entirely native state,’’ as Nightingale later reported to Gordon.63 Nightingale was more optimistic about Franklin’s prospects than she was about some nurses who had left without adequate preparation (see p 794 below). On arrival Franklin began a correspondence with Nightingale, parts of which are included below. As usual, getting the right sort of woman to nurse in India was a problem. Few women wanted to go and it was suspected that some of those who did were husband-seeking and would soon quit. Those who had missionary motives were typically unqualified for the practical work. Yet nursing did proceed, if slowly, with qualified nurses gradually entering Indian hospitals. By 1897 there were even, said Nightingale, ‘‘excellent native nurses in hospitals’’ (see p 794 below). The follow-

62 Letter, Add Mss 45807 f263, and Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:369-70. 63 Letter 7 July 1897, Wellcome Ms 5476/102.

782 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ing letters relate Nightingale’s work with nurses toward the end of her career. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45765 f108

12 May 1882 In answer to your note saying that Sir R. Loyd Lindsay would wish to see me about a proposal that the National Aid Society should send trained female nurses to India, I shall be most happy, if I can be of any use, to see him. Source: Notes from interviews with medical doctors, Add Mss 45827 ff15-25

[c1882] Nurses should not go to India unless sent out thoroughly trained and enough to nurse in at the very least two hospitals. What would ‘‘handicap’’ their employment in India? 1. The language—could not speak it for the first year; 2. Climate. All officers have two months’ leave in hills annually, four or six months’ leave in hills every third or fourth year. Women can’t have less than this. Then women can’t go to a hotel in India. You must send them to a hill depot. That would necessitate, say, sending out nine nurses— three at a hill depot, six in plain—the latter to go up three at a time to the depot, interchangeably with the three there. 3. Chaos in hospitals. They cannot learn the organization—I cannot learn it myself. There is none. General Biddulph says: There is no one responsible. Women can only be sent out in India to superintend—but all the well-paid ranks superintend. They cannot do the bedside cares about the patient which none but the casteless will do without being looked down upon. These are done by a ward coolie at 4 rupees a month—a casteless man. It amounts to this: that nowhere is the woman so much wanted as in India to nurse and that nowhere would it be more impossible for her to do anything but superintend, which is not wanted. 4. How far could native men Hindus and especially Muhammadans (in the Native Army Hospital Corps) be supervised and trained by Englishwomen? A very difficult question. They certainly would not brook seeing a woman do what only the casteless may do. The mehtersweeper-casteless is the nurse. And the other ranks give orders. (N.B. As far as the new Native Army Hospital Corps has gone yet, it has only enlisted a good many of the actual ward coolies-mehters. A

The Condition of Women in India / 783

good many more, accustomed to their liberty, to desert whenever they liked, averse to restraint, have refused to enlist but are still employed. It is credibly reported that the European hospital orderlies are to be withdrawn from all the hospitals. In that case how any organization at all can be attempted—or how women can be introduced at all must be quite problematical at present.) Muhammadans = cooks = bheesties (water carriers): how would these brook women? (N.B. Hospital cooking atrocious.) Chumar, the lowest caste (not casteless), lowest of the conquering grade = lance corporals. All the highly paid servants are in dispensar y not in wards. Apothecaries, etc., Eurasians superintend. Nurses: poulticing, blistering, etc., done by compounders and dressers (trained Eurasians), not by the coolie-nurse. This is the work of the trained female nurse. But this is done already. (All the well-paid ranks, apothecaries, apprentices, compounders, dressers, etc., sit in the dispensar y making envelopes, etc. (except when poulticing) giving orders to the native hospital servants-ward coolies. One very zealous medical officer has insisted upon some of these being employed as ward-superintending nurses.) Cooking in Indian hospitals atrocious. Yet the Hindu has a genius for cooking (under a cart in a storm of wind he will turn you out the most excellent dinner). Lucknow is a good centre where a central school might be established. It is indeed at present the only place where trained female nurses could begin. A good quarter must be built for them. Wherever they are, sisters must have a bungalow in hospital compound—with probably covered way to hospital—only it must not be made a part of the hospital. Meerut, Umballa, might follow as stations for female nurses. And possibly Mian Mir, which has always fever—but no death rate from fever. Then there must be nursing at a hill depot as an appendage. Nynee Täl: always seventy or eighty men in hospital—must not be too many as it is to be for a rest for the sisters. Mussoorie, Landour, Kanee Khet a new hill depot. Absolutely impossible that English trained nurses could have been useful or taken at all in the Afghan War. They must have had their tent, their means of carriage, etc. They would have been impossible impediments. Medical officers themselves did not survive the march back from Kabul to Peshawar. How could women have done it?

784 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India It is only where, say, the immediate base is but 14 or 15 miles from the fighting as, e.g., Newcastle in the Transvaal War, that women can be possible as war nurses. Nurses for India. If nurses (women—trained) were sent out to India you would force the hands of the authorities, to define nurses’ work, and other people’s work and that would be the grandest thing you could do. Source: From a letter to Frances Wylde,64 Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/87/45

20 September 1887 Does it ever come within your possible work to send sisters to nurse in the hospitals of India? I remember many years ago asking your dear Mother [Mary Jones]. But she negatived it (to Sir B. Frere, also dead now). Clewer sent a few years ago nursing sisters under Sister Lucy to nurse and train in the two civil hospitals of Calcutta, and in the small lying-in hospital (an offshoot) to nurse and train native midwives. And these Clewer sisters have done capitally and have had all possible means and authority given them by the medical officers. Now for the first time in India nursing sisters, either from the London general hospitals or from nursing sisterhoods, are to be introduced into militar y hospitals. They are to begin in Umballa, a North of India station, and at Rawalpindi—a superintendent and six sisters in the first, and a superintendent and twelve sisters in the latter. Would it come in the least within your call to undertake either of these? If you would entertain the idea at all, shall I send you what particulars I have? Or shall I put you in communication with the surgeon general [Dr Payne] empowered by the Government of India to act for them in this matter, now in London and who came to me about it—a ver y sensible man, I thought. Pray that the thing may turn out well (the influence of good women and skilled nurses over soldier patients is unbounded). For if it succeeds, it will certainly be extended to all the great military centres of India. And if it fails it will be a death blow.

64 Sister Frances Wylde (d. 1909), sister of St Mary’s Convent (Anglican) at Kensington Square; succeeded Mary Jones as superior.

The Condition of Women in India / 785 Source: From a letter to Amy E. Hawthorn,65 Add Mss 45776 f237

30 September 1887 I have heard all about the proposed Indian Army nurses from the man, now in London, empowered by the Government of India to settle about them. But nothing is settled yet. I will tell you what we have discussed. Source: From a letter to Annie Stocks,66 Wellcome Ms 5481/1

11 October 1887 I have been making some more inquiries in order to answer your question more fully. The person to whom you ought to make a written application, if you are thinking of the Indian (Army) nursing sisters and to join the proposed staff, is Surgeon General Payne. No preliminaries are settled. At the same time, none will be taken who have not been at least two years in nursing service after their year of probation is completed. I believe yours will not be till April next. If you ask me candidly to say whether I should recommend you to persevere in trying to join any future staff that may be sent out, I should not. I have always been sorry that I could not have the pleasure of making your acquaintance before you left us. Source: Draft/copy of a letter to Sir F. Roberts, Add Mss 45807 ff275-76

[1887] Homes for sick nurses. We are advised, as a matter of policy this is an unfavourable time for making any great appeal. People are exhausted by the Jubilee Year and that the nursing had better be established so as to show the public what is the benefit (proposed) to the hospitals before any general appeal is made. Should we have homes for sick nurses before there are nurses to fall sick? And would it be possible that the convalescent depots for soldiers at Muri and Dugshai might be used as convalescent homes for the nursing sisters? What to say about Dr Payne’s mission? Dr Payne, who is evidently a most able man, has laboured most zealously, as you well know he would, about the scheme for lady nurses you desired, so generously,

65 Amy E. Hawthorn, wife of Colonel Robert Hawthorn, was to be a nurse in the Boer War. 66 Annie Stocks, nurse at Cottage Hospital, St Helen’s, Lancashire.

786 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India under the orders of the S. of S. for India. But I am afraid it must still be some time before they can be on their way from England. As you say, ever ything will depend on your getting the right stamp of nurse. And Dr Payne is most carefully at work. May I beg my kind regards to Lady Roberts as she has been so good as to send hers to me. [It is a] presumptuous thing for me to write openly to the commander-in-chief but great men always wish to hear from all the truth. Editor: In 1888 Nightingale met with the first woman to go out to India as superintendent of nursing at a military hospital, Catherine Grace Loch (1854-1904).67 Loch wrote periodically to Nightingale about the India work, but there are no sur viving letters by Nightingale to her, only comments to other nurses and to Henry Bonham Carter. To Angelique Lucille Pringle Nightingale expressed praise for ‘‘Miss Loch of St Bartholomew’s, from whom I have the most vigorous letters from the Military Hospital at Rawalpindi, notwithstanding difficulties truly appalling to one who had never seen anything but a well-ordered hospital like St B.’s. . . . [She] talks calmly of failing and returning in a year!! ‘But screw your courage to the sticking-point and you’ll not fail.’ ’’68 Nightingale told Henry Bonham Carter she thought Loch and her sisters’ work had been ‘‘admirable.’’69 The two women met again in 1894 when Loch was back in London.70 Source: From a copy of a letter to John Murdoch, Add Mss 45809 ff238-39

[after October 1889] 5. I venture to send you Edward Clifford’s Father Damien,71 though it would not do at all for natives, but perhaps something might be written upon leprosy for them and I hope you will kindly tell me the name of the sisterhood which has offered to send out sisters to nurse the lepers in India. Would you tell me? has the proposed act been car-

67 Letter to Henry Bonham Carter 9 Februar y 1888, Add Mss 47721 f53, about a meeting the next day. See A.P. Bradshaw, ed., Catherine Grace Loch—A Memoir. 68 Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7. Letter 19 May 1888, Edinburgh University, Pringle letters 127. Four long letters by Loch to Nightingale, 1888-89, are in Add Mss 45808-09. 69 Letter 10 December 1888, Add Mss 47721 ff150-51. 70 Letter of Loch 1 Februar y 1894, Add Mss 45812 f95. 71 Edward Clifford, Father Damien: A Journe y from Cashmere to His Home in Hawaii, 1889.

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ried for taking care of and providing for ‘‘vagrant lepers’’ by sending them to hospital? (Years ago, Dr Vandyke Carter72 who is, I believe, the greatest authority on leprosy and who is, I think, still in Bombay wrote to me on the subject. It is one which interests me very deeply. If I had not my business cut out for me here, I have often thought I would go out and nurse the lepers, but it is nonsense talking about that when I can hardly move from my bed. Pray God that something may be done for this great and crying evil.) Source: From a letter to the dean of Ripon, Add Mss 47724 ff154-57

Claydon House Winslow, Bucks 18 October 1892 Miss Jessie Boyd Carpenter, St Thomas’. As it was your kindness which communicated with me in regard to the admission of Miss Carpenter73 for a year’s training at St Thomas’ Hospital previous to her going out to India under the Church Missionary Society, may I venture to apply to this your kindness to guide us as to what she will have to do with the sick as missionary? with women? children? or men? It is very remarkable, the British pluck in so sweet and gentle a person, which leads her to go out. And no doubt she requires the ‘‘armour’’74 of knowledge. The Church Missionary Society must know (with other people they have sent out) what their knowledge must/should be. And their information would be most important, e.g., (1) as to what her duties are? Would they vary whether she were employed in town or country? (2) Is she likely to have classes of children in a school? sanitary care of children? (3) care of the eyes? (4) How far she would be at all likely to meet with midwifery cases? obstetric? (5) What medical nursing she would require to know? (6) what surgical nursing, e.g., small cuts and wounds, sores occasioned by uncleanliness? (7) Is she for women and children only? Next and really most important (8) is she expected to have sanitar y knowledge? We know that there is cholera and yet more

72 Henry Vandyke Carter (1831-97), epidemiologist, expert on leprosy, diseases of the foot and leper asylums. 73 Jessie Boyd Carpenter, nurse, daughter of the bishop of Ripon. Nightingale sent her a letter on her wedding day in 1901. 74 A possible allusion to Rom 13:12.

788 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India fever arising from the most preventible circumstances. She cannot prevent bad drainage, bad water supply, of course, but there are things she could prevent and could learn what they are and learn how to manage her own life. (9) What is her plan? (10) What is she to try and learn in her one year? (11) Will she have time to acquire Sanitary knowledge after her year? . . . N.B. There is no occasion to impress the extreme danger of a little midwifer y knowledge when even lady doctors fully educated have been at a loss about these things in India, with no doctor within perhaps fifty miles and probably the woman would not see him if he were there. And it is deeply to be regretted that monthly nursing of mother and infant (feeding, washing, etc.) at home is imperfectly taught even at lying-in hospitals in London. Uncleanliness is the great demon that has to be fought in India. . . . One is filled with reverence for these few British lady doctors in India (in dispensary practice) who with their own hands and souls wash and cleanse the wretched little miseries in order to show the Eurasian assistant and native nurse the most indispensable work for these poor little bodies, devoting to it their whole time. I have written at too great length already. Pardon me in favour of the importance of the subject. Source: From a letter to Annie Stocks, Wellcome Ms 5481/3

8 March 1895 You know how interested I am in you and your working work. If you are going to spend a few days in London, a few days hence, before you go to America, I should be very glad to see you, if we could manage an appointment some afternoon. I do not feel as if it would answer any useful purpose for me to write a letter on that great subject, the present tendencies of nurse training, which would seem rather to confuse what makes a nurse with what makes a doctor or an ‘‘inspector’’ of sanitary things. Source: From four letters to Louisa M. Gordon,75 Wellcome Ms 5476/59-61 and 97

6 November 1895 I am sor ry that Miss Mills is going to leave St Thomas’. I should like to see her before she goes but am quite fixed up this week.

75 Louisa McKay Gordon (1845-1902), then matron of St Thomas’ Hospital.

The Condition of Women in India / 789

20 November 1895 2. Miss Mills. Could you kindly tell me who[m] she saw at the India Office? I forgot to ask her. She told me how kind you have been to her. I think she would like a little instrument case to take with her. Would it be asking you too much to order one for me, scissors, forceps, etc., not too elaborate, for fear of offending the doctors out there, and to have her and my name put inside, thus: Christian name Mills from Florence Nightingale 1895. 3. I think I understood that Nurse Frances? Cameron was on leave in London from India. I should like very much to see her, if not troubling you too much, by appointment. 30 November 1895 Many thanks for your kindness in ordering for me a little instrument case for Miss Mills. Please let it be sent here with the account. I want very much to see Miss Mills again before she leaves England and have written to tell her so. And you too some day before she goes, if possible to you. I have got a book of Indian hygiene for her. But it is far too difficult for any but a medical officer of health. Could you kindly suggest anything which would help her in the hospital? They must work in India more even than in England strictly under the medical officers. 15 March 1897 May I ask if Nurse Ruddock is coming to me on Wednesday at 5? and if she goes out to serve as a sister, or under a sister? Anything that you would kindly tell me in answer to my last note I should be thankful for. Am I troubling you too much? Miss Mills was so completely a blank sheet of paper regarding India when I saw her and tried to give her some information, and when she wrote to me (which she did), she seemed little more ‘‘organized,’’ that I am anxious to be of some little use to Nurse Ruddock if I could. For I suppose she does not know more than Miss Mills did. Source: From a draft letter to William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45813 ff210-12

26 June 1896 Calcutta Government Hospital. 1. The first ‘‘remedy’’ is cleanliness of floors, ceilings, sinks. The first thing is to have impervious polished floors, which will clean. There can be no health where the floors are receptacles of dirt and where no removal of dirt is possible.

790 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India If the floor is a receptacle of dirt, the poor patients’ toes will be a receptacle of ants. 2. Sisters, physicians cannot be expected to be head housemaids. But looking after cleanliness of wards and patients and native attendants and ser vants is one of the main duties of ‘‘sisters’’ and should not the ‘‘sisters’’ be the trainers of the native attendants (or servants) native or other, in this and other important particulars, such as food? No increase of the nursing staff would be of any use without some organization of this kind and some training of the native attendants. 3. Food: Surely the doctors are to order the food—this to be supplied in the hospital (whether paid for or not by the patients)—a steward to manage it—and sisters to maintain good cooking and cleanliness. If the food is bad and repulsive the hospital is not a place to recover. 4. The str ucture of the hospital is probably defective. Instant removal of excreta is indispensable. Bathroom and closets to be quite separate and quite separate, especially the closets, from any wards. But there may be wanted a thorough reconstr uction of the building. 5. Proper accommodation and proper food for the sisters, who must be in charge of the nursing, are of course indispensable. 6. Disinfectants and ‘‘antiseptics’’ are only blinds—but ‘‘aseptik’’—that is, perfect cleanliness—is the cure. Aseptik: sterilization of all surgical instr uments and especially syringes, absolute purity of all water used in hospital cleanliness and freshness of poultices and all appliances— other wise a poultice may serve more than one—are now considered quite as much a part of the treatment as giving medicines and taking temperatures and quite as much a part of the sisters’ duties. (Not ‘‘ordering’’ ‘‘coffins’’ but all these things are the sisters’ duties.) This is the ABC. 7. Who reports the state of the patients to the doctors? Without a ‘‘hierarchy,’’ an organization with the duties of each grade/step laid down, there can be none of the discipline necessary for obeying the doctors’ orders in cleanliness, and sincerity and harm, instead of good, must result to the patients. 8. If private servants are allowed to some patients, these servants must have food provided. 9. Probably a ward master or man head of the native attendants and all male servants is necessary, besides the steward, who could hardly undertake these duties. The ward master must be trained in ward duties.

The Condition of Women in India / 791 Source: Draft inscription, Add Mss 45814 f126

18 March 1897 Offered to Alice Maud Ruddock on her going to India with Florence Nightingale’s prayers and best wishes that she may ‘‘r un the race’’ ‘‘that is set before her’’ ‘‘with patience.’’76 Source: From two letters to Henry Bonham Carter, Add Mss 47728 ff64-65 and 66-68

19 March 1897 Nurse Franklin. I enclose Miss Gordon’s answer, just received. She does not answer my particular question: is Nurse [Georgina] Franklin going to be a plague nurse? But I presume she is because it tallies with what I was told. ‘‘Franklin goes’’ out for a year’s ser vice (at the Bombay plague) and may stay on for the stational sisters’ service (five years), ‘‘India Army Service (with the soldiers) if she behaves well.’’ Probably Miss Gordon has written to you. Plague. What are they to do about the language? I cannot conceive anything more irritating to a plague case than to have a nurse ignorant of their habits, their language, their religion, everything. But I could have wished to have taken advantage of the second lot going in the way I mentioned to you. I saw Nurse Ruddock and liked her much, much better than the other. But she was absolutely ignorant of what she was going to. (I have just despatched a parcel to her to Clapham by hand. She goes tomorrow early.) For a wonder, I cannot quite agree with you in the matron not caring to know what they go to, because they are out of their time. Matron and Miss Mills are exceedingly attached to each other. [Remark by HBC:] I did not intend to convey any such meaning. I believe I wrote ‘‘that it was difficult to control their movements after their time was up.’’ 23 March 1897 Private. Nurse Franklin. The deepest, quietest, most striking person I have seen from our present staff and so pretty; she understands training better than all our sisters but one; she has trained, as night staff nurse in Edward [Ward] and day staff nurse in Arthur [Ward], numbers of probationers, present sisters included. She is not enthusiastic

76 Heb 12:1.

792 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India except in the good old original sense: God in us. She is firmly and cautiously determined to go to the plague. She has seen Dr Hooper77 of the I.O. He was very ‘‘keen’’ and very ‘‘kind,’’ but so hurried with business that he could only give them less than half an hour (her and two others who are going too on Friday). She has also seen Mr Robinson, the ‘‘resident clerk,’’ but he only ‘‘resides’’ one week in three. ‘‘Good supervision, one thing at a time,’’ says Lord Mayo. (And this is the great India Office which governs England in India and India in England.) She has however learnt there are two sheds erected for patients, one male, one female (they would not go to hospital). There are many Hindus and Muhammadans, both male and female, excellent nurses, but I could not learn whether there are to be native orderlies and native female nurses under the English nurses. I have written down a good deal she told me but of course [it] concerns England. You can’t think how I miss Miss Crossland,78 though she could only tell of them as of the handle of a saucepan. But she would never have called a remarkably developed woman of much over thirty ‘‘a bright, lively girl.’’ How I deprecate the fashionable word ‘‘bright’’! Franklin joined St Thomas’ for the sake of joining the army nursing service at home. But she was overage. I think she might have been a second Sister Snodgrass.79 I see Mrs Scharlieb today. Editor: After Nightingale’s death Franklin published (anonymously) the eight letters Nightingale had sent her 1897-98 (we use four of them here—those with substance—but from the original sources). The article begins with an interesting account by Franklin of her twohour visit to Nightingale 23 March 1897: My bell was appropriately answered by a tall, military-looking man, the commissionaire, and, being duly passed on, I arrived at the bedroom of the ‘‘Lady of the Lamp.’’ Reclining upon a large bed, arrayed in a black silk jacket trimmed with lace, with the lace scarf over her head with which pictures have familiarized us, was that greatest of

77 W.R. Hooper, brigadier surgeon, succeeded Sir Joseph Fayrer on the Army Sanitar y Commission. 78 Mary S. Crossland (1837-1914), friend, nurse, home sister to the Nightingale Home at St Thomas’ Hospital 1875-95. 79 E.M.M. Snodgrass (c1854-97), nurse at the fever wards, Royal Military Infirmar y in Dublin. She died 10 January 1897 in Cairo.

The Condition of Women in India / 793

all altruists, Florence Nightingale. To see her was to fall in love with her, for she had the sweetest face, with beautiful pink, velvety cheeks. Her welcome was more what might have been expected from a co-worker than a follower, and her manner suggested that of a would-be learner rather than that of a great teacher, such was her humility. Tea was brought in, from which she excused herself, saying she preferred barley water—which she sipped to keep me company—and with the thoughtful suggestion that, as a worker, I might prefer an egg in addition to the dainties provided, conversation began. She took a small notebook from the shelf behind her bed and at inter vals wrote in it. She seemed very anxious as to the arrangements made for the volunteer nurses’ comfort, etc., in India, and was astonished when I could give her no information upon that point. I merely remarked that, in emergency work, one’s own comfort could not be one’s primar y consideration. Several times I rose to go, but was always detained by a remark or a question. Some of the questions were not easy to answer, such as ‘‘Well, dear, you have been at St Thomas’ for four years; what can you suggest in the way of reform?’’ . . . She asked for the name of my favourite author and a list of his works, which were duly entered in the notebook never long absent from her hands, and then she remarked that she would like to give me a medical or surgical book which would help me in my work. Several she suggested I already possessed, so finally a dictionary of surgery was decided upon.

The account continues that Nightingale sent her away with a bouquet of flowers and a packet with her fare in it. The duly-agreed-upon Heath’s Dictionary arrived the next day to the hospital, delivered by the commissionaire.80 Source: From a typed copy of a letter to Georgina Franklin, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC5/3/46, and Add Mss 45814 f133

24 March 1897 Farewell and Godspeed! . . . A ver y devout Buddhist, a young prince who received part of his education at Oxford, said to me: ‘‘What a much wiser and greater man St Paul was than Buddha. St Paul said:

80 Lamorna’’ [Georgina Franklin], ‘‘Some Personal Reflections of Miss ‘‘Florence Nightingale,’’ Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal (3 September 1910): 347-49.

794 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Be ye husbands of one wife.81 Buddha said: if you have one wife, you may have fifty.’’ But Buddha was a real hero. With regard to what you will find at Bombay, is not your surgeon major general the great inoculator, Dr Haffkine? I live in hopes that the English nurses will have native men nurses under them for the men patients, and native women under them for the women. There are excellent native nurses in hospitals. Source: From a letter to Louisa M. Gordon, Wellcome Ms 5476/99

24 March 1897 I augur success for Nurse Franklin; she is very much to be liked. But I tremble at the prospect of surgeon major general at Bombay who is, I believe, the great Dr Haffkine, inoculator of plague and diphtheria. Do they inoculate for diphtheria at St Thomas’? Nurse Franklin told me how kind you had been to her. Would you like me to see Sister Arthur (Mrs Swan)? I could see her at present any afternoon this week. Source: From a letter to Georgina Franklin, Columbia University, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing C240

14 May 1897 You cannot tell how glad I was to hear from you, nor how thankful to you for writing so soon. I shall be anxious to hear when you have begun your duties in the plague camp. Pray present my kindest regards to your two companions. How well I know all those duties will be performed. I am glad to know of the assistants under you. I believe ayahs82 are often very nice people and teachable. May God be with you and He will be with you. Christ endured that intense heat at the Sea of Galilee, which they say is the hottest place in the world. We pray for you every morning to Our Father, yours as well as ours, ours as well as yours. Then we are all one family in His blessed hands. We have several Indians of mark in England, sent for over here to give their evidence before the ‘‘Indian Expenditure Royal Commission.’’ The one from Bombay I have seen already. And I am to see the one from Pune very soon. I have no home news you would care to hear. We have had a good deal of illness at St Thomas’, but thank God all have recovered or are

81 1 Tim 3:12. 82 Ayahs were female domestic servants or nursemaids.

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recovering. I sent a telegram with the main contents of your letter to Miss Gordon immediately for herself and Sister Arthur, but very likely S. Arthur had heard from you. We have still this dreadful war between Greece and Turkey going on, but we shall keep out of a European war. Source: From two letters to Louisa M. Gordon, Wellcome Ms 5476/100/1 and Add Mss 47737 f235

18 May 1897 Very many thanks for your letter and your news of Nurse Ruddock, on her journey, seeing Miss Loch and the nurses at Peshawar. 9 July 1897 Nurse Franklin told me she had written to you. You know she was at Pune nursing a plague camp when I first heard from her. You know she was ordered away to Cutch, which is entirely a native state, with two St Bartholomew’s nurses and twenty-two ayahs and sepoys under them, to take charge of a private plague hospital, set on foot by ‘‘private individuals’’ who had seen something of English nursing in India and who bear all the expenses. Plague had quite ceased at Pune and is ceasing in Cutch. They have only thirty-one plague patients and they are undertaking malarial patients and then follow all the inoculation (!) stories, and the searching in the blood (?) of a malarial patient for the ‘‘malarial bacillus’’!!! I hope they won’t spoil our Nurse Franklin for us. Source: From a letter to Elizabeth Oke Buckland Gordon, Japanese Nursing Association, copy British Library rp 5333

27 August 1897 I feel guilty in not having kept you ‘‘au fait’’ [informed] of the progress of the Calcutta European General Hospital, you to whom we are indebted for the first notice of its state. But if you knew the press of work under which I live, never a moment to myself, your kindness would forgive. I will not tell you the steps by which the consummation was reached. Suffice it to say that the place was thoroughly overhauled; the viceroy [Lord Elgin] visited it himself. Its complete reconstr uction was determined upon. The new plans and report were for warded to me with a request for ‘‘suggestions.’’ I consulted with our best sanitary authority here. And by last mail I forwarded our ‘‘suggestions’’ to the authorities in India. I need hardly say all this information is for yourself alone.

796 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From typed copies of two letters to Georgina Franklin, Add Mss 45815 f64 and Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/98/161

26 April 1898 I hear that you are returned from India. I should be so glad to see you. Could you come and see me at 5 tomorrow (Wednesday)? Or if that is impossible to you, I could perhaps make some other appointment in the afternoon. How long do you stay? 10 June 1898 I am afraid it is small comfort to you that I think Chesterfield 83 a poor stupid place—India seems to me the great divinely-appointed sphere (though many look on it as sheer banishment) of the present day. But I do pray that you may find the appointment that suits you.

83 Chesterfield was a small manufacturing town in the midlands.

Social and Political Evolution

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uch has already emerged to show Nightingale’s support of self-government in India, especially at the local level. Here as the subject becomes the main focus we provide further background both on political developments and on the broader evolution of Indian society and culture. After the crown in 1858 assumed the sovereignty of India in the wake of the 1857 Mutiny, Britons and Indians became fellow subjects. Yet few Britons then regarded Indians as their equals. Real knowledge of Indians too often was not even sought, an attitude that went back to the times of the East India Company. As early as 1853, Nightingale noted that ‘‘Lord Cornwallis acted in India either as if it was a tabula rasa or as if the Hindus had no old feelings, traditions and customs to inter fere with his new plans.’’1 Conversely she doubted that much good had accrued to India through British occupation and was inclined to agree with Burke that ‘‘if we were to leave India, our possession of it would leave no more traces of civilization than if it had been in the possession of the hyena and the tiger.’’2 However, things were expected to change after the Mutiny. The Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 solemnly declared the equality of the races. In principle access to the civil service was open to all qualified persons regardless of race. Indian nationals were gradually admitted to posts previously reser ved for Europeans, but actual progress was meagre and slow. British officials often disingenuously found subterfuges to avoid or delay implementation of the law. Hence only minor changes were made to the governance of India. From 1861 ‘‘the viceroy’s council and also the councils at Bombay and Madras were

1 Note 14 Februar y 1853, Add Mss 43402 f98. 2 Letter to Parthenope Nightingale 26 September 1863, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9000/133. See also a letter to Sir Harry Verney 19 September 1863, in Health in India (9:458).

/ 797

798 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India increased by the addition, for legislative purposes only, of non-official European and Indian members. These tiny advances in the practice of representative government were intended to provide safety valves for the expression of public opinion, which had been so badly misjudged before the rebellion.’’3 British officials, however, were too often concerned with upholding the control of the raj and determined to do their utmost to maintain their own prestige. Indians admitted to higher positions were often met with hostility and racist condescension. Many Britons doubted that Indians ever would be able to be masters at home, still less to exercise authority over Europeans in any field of activity. This would require a much greater understanding and appreciation of India’s culture, history and traditions. Nevertheless mentalities were evolving. A watershed in the history of the raj and in the political evolution of India was reached with the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon (formerly Lord de Grey), 1880-84. His liberal policies favoured a greater participation of Indian nationals, especially in local government. Later, in hindsight, Nightingale stated that he took ‘‘the actual administration in the rural districts from the hands of the low-paid, corrupt, extortionate, petty native officials, who alone represent the British raj in Indian eyes, and put it into the hands of the respectable villagers—villages having been self-governing republics with a headman as mayor from time immemorial’’ (see p 889 below). He encouraged local governments to do more to train Indians for self-rule. His policies encountered at best lukewarm support and often strong opposition on the part of the British in India, but their reception by Indians was enthusiastic. Nightingale was a strong and outspoken supporter of Lord Ripon’s reforms and what she described to Ripon himself as his ‘‘wise and steadfast and brave and honest policy’’ (see p 802 below). Lord Ripon resigned in December 1884 to allow a Liberal (Lord Dufferin) to be his successor—the Liberal government was about to be defeated in London. He left India as one of the most popular viceroys that country was to see, although most of the British there were pleased to see his departure. His ‘‘failures bore within them the seeds of eventual success. He had sought to impart real content to abstract doctrines and remote sentiments. The effect was not lost on the imagination of the class which was to be the custodian of national forces in

3 Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire 195.

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India. . . . The four years of his Indian viceroyalty form one of the successful failures of history.’’4 Nightingale considered Ripon’s policy of supporting self-government so important that she devoted considerable efforts to getting it supported (and, later, vindicated). To promote it she wrote not only to Queen Victoria but to Gladstone and many others. And, of course, she expressed her sentiments to Ripon himself. She published ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’ in 1883 as a public defence of his policies. She often declared her agreement with Ripon’s reforms and judged them effective, writing to a family member: ‘‘About Indian affairs, we don’t apologize. We think it the grandest triumph of the time: for the first time in our rule 250 millions of people are satisfied with our rule, quite contented. We might disband the army—Russia’s invasion is an impossibility now.’’5 After Lord Ripon’s return to England, Nightingale continued to seek counsel in his expertise and experience. As the Indian National Congress was seeing the light of the day, she applauded its advance and keenly offered her support. She was among those who contemplated with approval a time when rule in India would pass from the hands of the British to those of Indian nationals, with the hope of an eventual total devolution of power. This was not to happen until 1948.

The Ilbert Bill The gradual steps toward self-r ule came to a crossroads in the controversy over the status of Indians in the judiciary stipulated in the Ilbert Bill. If fully implemented as it was initially presented, the Ilbert Bill would have empowered all Indian district magistrates (in the countryside and not only in the presidency capitals, as was already the case) and sessions judges to exercise jurisdiction over all subjects, including European British subjects living in India. The bill, in effect, removed the race disqualification for judges in the rural hinterland (mofussil), putting an end to the prejudice that an Indian was incapable of fairly trying British persons. The measure was daring but it had some basis in previous legislation. Above all it raised questions about the nature of British rule in India. Backed by the local governments and almost unanimously supported by the India

4 Gopal, The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon 224-25. 5 Letter to Maude Verney 11 December 1883, Wayne State University, folder 23.

800 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Council, the bill was introduced in Calcutta by C.P. Ilbert on 2 Febr uar y 1883.6 Consternation in the British community greeted the proposal. White women residing in India feared the sensuality, chauvinism and contempt of the Indian male. Those who already resented the admission of Indians into the civil service rose up in opposition, organizing and agitating in India and at home through the voice of the Times. Against such an outburst Nightingale wrote to Queen Victoria to remind her of her glorious words of 1858 admitting Indian nationals to share in their own government.7 It was only in December 1883 that a compromise was reached. The amended bill would give a European British subject the right to claim a jur y trial, holding to the clause that no distinction was made between European and Indian judges. Added to this compromise in January 1884 was the condition that half the jurors must be Europeans or Americans. The solution applied to all Indian places where a court operated. These compromises considerably watered down the initial bill, giving the British community a triumph, while the Indians’ impartiality and competence had been unfairly questioned. In retrospect Ripon described the bill as a ‘‘stalking horse for local self-government. That was the real offence; [the] Ilbert Bill, as I expected, was forgotten.’’8 The controversy over the Ilbert Bill encouraged Indians to fight their own battles. They were encouraged by Ripon’s attitude and policies to act. Significantly the First National Conference took place in December 1883, precisely at the same time as the compromises. The Indian National Congress, which would take India to independence, was born in 1885. In retrospect Nightingale expressed her admiration and could make the telling remark that ‘‘Lord Ripon . . . was a great viceroy, a greater one than Lord Lawrence who saved the Punjab, who saved India’’ (see p 842 below).

6 Sir Courtney Peregrine Ilbert (1841-1924), law member of the viceroy’s council 1882-86, who also handled the Bengal Tenancy Act. On the controversy around the Ilbert Bill see Sarvepalli Gopal, The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon 113-66, especially 133; Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj 200-34; Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 179-87. 7 In Society and Politics (5:425-26). 8 From a meeting with Lord Ripon Add Mss 45778 f170.

Social and Political Evolution / 801 Source: From a draft letter to an unknown recipient, Add Mss 45807 ff83-88

25 June 1883 I look forward to reading the paper on ‘‘Our Rule in India,’’ which you tell me will ‘‘grieve’’ me to ‘‘agree’’ with, in your outcoming number, not to mourn as those without hope. The condition of usefulness for all papers/articles on India now is, as I am sure you will agree, that while fully and forcibly stating the defects and grievances they should recognize as fully that the new state of things, viz., that we are now on the way to remedy them, that we have at last a Government of India which has steadfastly and honestly set its face, not to make a new departure but to carry out the instructions of successive secretaries of state and successive Parliaments and the spirit of the Queen’s Proclamation. The present outcry against the so-called Ilbert Bill is due not to itself but to Lord Ripon’s policy; no one believes that the capital will be driven out of the country. No one believes that the lives and property of Englishmen and the honour of Englishwomen is at stake in so car rying out those instructions, e.g., in the encouragement of local industries by obtaining and buying in India all that can be bought in India, in maintaining undisturbed the regular course of promised promotion for native officials, instead of allowing what must to some extent be called young European adventurers to be put in over their head, in taking away illicit patronage from high courts and such like. All these things and others have arrayed against his policy a rush/ storm wave of European enmity which has found, above all in the local self-government and decentralization, schemes on which the whole future of India depends [and] which seem to be totally misunderstood at home. The rush against the Ilbert Bill is, like that of the poor Sunderland children, as blind, as ignorant, as headlong after the toys and prizes, curious similarity, and one well nigh fears as fatal. Is not the business of all true friends of India, of which I am sure you are one of the best, now to explain Lord Ripon’s policy and to bring raj pressure of a better public opinion to bear upon government so that the Cabinet here may support him who is so honestly and on the whole wisely car rying out their instructions? If they do not support him, if he resigns and comes home, the impression made upon the natives by our thus yielding to clamour will be disastrous; it will be more fraught with danger than anything since the Mutiny, for them [the Indians] to say as they will say and say justly that the man [who] has thus carried out our promises to them should be forced to resign. . . . It is not as if government could stand still while the real administration in India is, as you know, carried on not by us but by ill-paid cor-

802 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India rupt petty native officials. While nine tenths of the babus whom we have educated, and educated so highly, are without other employment than to become Arabic against us—a daily growing danger placing ourselves behind the Muhammadan conquerors in civilization and art of government. Lord Ripon’s policy has simply been to transfer village and local administration, the management of their own affairs, from the corrupt peons, who have it under us to administer India, to the villagers and other local folk who have always administered it from time immemorial, and secondly to open paths to these discontented babus. Source: From a draft letter/note, Add Mss 45778 ff86-87

29 June 1883 Write to Mr Ilbert and Lord Ripon urging upon them the fatal consequences of resigning, of yielding to clamour. Ease it off. Explain it as much as you can but don’t yield any essential point. Call him the saviour of India. Praise his measures (as he’s begun he must leave off), not resigning or yielding, nothing, is impertinent, done with tact. Impression not only of enthusiasm but of rest and safety produced by Ripon measures. European element bunkum, a pretext. What effect upon the natives the resignation would have of a viceroy who has so honourably and wisely carried out the promises of crown, Cabinet and Commons to them. Echoes of Lord Ripon’s own mind in this country, he who initiated these measures must carry out and establish them if they are to be brought into working order—if they are to be safe. The blunder was at home in appointing an active G.G., carrying out Queen’s Proclamation and instructions of successive S. of S.s and Parliaments. So much hangs upon the Bengal Tenancy Bill, upon really carrying out principles of Permanent Settlement so violated. So much upon bringing capital at reasonable rates of interest into hands of indebted agriculturists in Bombay. Life or death hangs upon these things. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff197-202

29 June 1883 Private. I trust that you will not think me impertinent in venturing to write to you to give you joy, not indeed (alone) in my own poor name or even in that of 200 millions of our fellow subjects in India, but also in that of the best men here for the wise and steadfast and brave and honest policy which has set its face not to make a new departure but

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to carry out the spirit of the Queen’s Proclamation and the instructions to which successive secretaries of state and successive Parliaments have pledged themselves. Do not think we are all gone mad—though I confess that I have never yet seen, in my long and busy life, such an instance of mania as seems to have seized London against the so-called ‘‘Ilbert Bill.’’ But there was a remnant of good men left. And London is now resuming her sanity and will soon again appear ‘‘clothed and in her right mind.’’9 I would like, again not speaking in my own name but in that of good men and true, to recapitulate the impression, not only of enthusiasm but of rest and safety, produced by your industries, which it would be impertinent in me to praise, e.g., in the encouragement of local industries by obtaining and buying in India all that can be bought in India; in maintaining undisturbed the regular course of (promised) promotion for native officials instead of allowing what must to some extent be called young European adventurers to be put in over their heads; above all, in the local self-government and decentralization schemes on which the whole future of India turns and which are sadly misunderstood at home. We do not see that something must be done, that these schemes are to transfer from the low-paid corrupt native sub-officials, who do administer India, to the village and local folk who have from time immemorial administered the management of their own affairs. . . . But some of these things have of course arrayed against a policy which has before been always pretended to be ours, but which is now pursued in real sober earnestness, a storm wave of European enmity, which has found a rock to surge round in the so-called Ilbert Bill. The arguments and meetings against this here have been weak and antiquated in the extreme—most delightfully so. They have ignored all that has been done since the Mutiny, since the times of the ‘‘Competition Wallah’’ in education, in municipal and other self-government, in railroads and means of communication, and especially what has been done by your own government and policy. They ignore all acknowledgment of the fact that we cannot educate the babus so highly and then leave things just as they were: that would be placing ourselves behind the Muhammadan conquerors in civilization and art of government.

9 A paraphrase of Mark 5:15.

804 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India I crave your pardon for writing thus. I am only quoting from the best men here to show that there are echoes of your own mind in the old country. And the echoes of your own mind in the old country urge of course that there should be no yielding, no appearance even of yielding to clamour, no resigning or withdrawing. ‘‘Ease it off,’’ they say, that is, the Ilbert Bill. ‘‘As the Government of India has begun, it must not leave off.’’ And as regards the policy in general, ‘‘Explain it as much as possible, but do not yield any essential point.’’ They urge the fatal consequences of yielding to clamour; they urge the effect upon the natives which would be produced by anything like the idea that the viceroy, who has so honourably and wisely carried out the promises of crown, Cabinet and Commons to them, had been compelled to withdraw. God forbid! Source: From a typed copy of a letter to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45807 f95

15 August 1883 Very many thanks for your notes. And like a grateful cormorant I expect the rest with hope. What do you hear from India? And which way do you think the storm is going? Pray tell Sir James Caird, with my kindest regards, that I have had the opportunity of carrying out what I consulted him and yourself about. Both from home and India I think on the whole we may say the private communications are satisfactor y. But India says: we want all the help you can give us from home (in the way of support). Pray bear this in mind, as indeed you do. Source: From a letter to C.P. Ilbert, Bodleian Library Ms Eng.Lett.e. 137 ff32-36

16 October 1884 I have no right to take up one moment of your time, ‘‘precious beyond rubies.’’10 And I can only express to you what all England— save those unfortunate people and newspapers who have succeeded in the ‘‘gran rifiuto,’’11 viz., the refusal, the fatal refusal, to keep party politics out of India’s government, which began, I think, with Lord Lytton, but never before (of my knowledge)—is saying: the great regrets at Lord Ripon’s departure a day before his term, the convic-

10 An allusion to Prov 3:15. 11 From Dante, Inferno iii.60.

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tion that, when these party storms are forgotten, as they soon will be, then Lord Ripon’s government, in which your name is associated with his, will be judged as that which has given progress, rest and confidence to the masses of India, as that whose every act has appeared to those who have been carefully watching it as having been for the good of all India, as that which has exhibited liberal principles on the largest scale in the world. Our regrets are as large as India, but thank God you remain. How gladly would we hear that the Bengal Tenancy Bill is weathering its storms and will not be delayed by the change of viceroys, how gladly, that the land program contemplated in Oudh is carried out and also the scheme of land settlement in Bombay—a very different proposed ‘‘Permanent Settlement’’ from that of 1793 in Bengal. And the land banks? We are ver y keenly interested in all the civil service candidate question—raising the limit of age, extending the time at the university, etc. (‘‘Send India not boys but men’’), also in statutory civilians being improved. But I dread to take up your time. I heard with great regret from the master of Balliol that Mrs Ilbert had been suffering from her knee and might have to come home for a time—I trust the knee is recovering. Even to enumerate the things for which we have to thank Lord Ripon and you, and to devoutly hope that Lord Dufferin will carry them out, would take up too much time: the local government acts— most important of all, essential even if not beneficial, beneficial even if not essential—how are they forwarded? the encouragement of native arts and industries by making government India’s large customer, as far as possible; the preventing native promotion from being intercepted; education—elementary education—and all the thousand and one things which in India almost seem to dwarf in importance England’s largest measure, and pre-eminently all the agrarian reforms— not to mention ‘‘delimitation commissioners’’ and judicial reorganizations; and what touches me much more nearly: municipalities. We devoutly trust that Lord Dufferin will be able to resist blame and praise alike—the flattery of the bureaucracy and the press, when they hail him as India’s saviour from his predecessor, the abuse of the bureaucracy and the press when he with true courage pursues your and Lord Ripon’s reforms. But how will he deal with the mass of administrative detail which ought to devolve on a viceroy? He will have enough scope for his

806 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India diplomatic skill with his own officials, if not with foreign affairs. May success in its highest sense be yours. . . . How much there is of the ‘‘gran rifiuto’’ in England’s conduct to India, in her ‘‘refusal’’ to care and interest herself for, even to acquire knowledge of the people!

Indian Society and Culture in Transition Editor: As time went on, the social changes made in India, especially in the spheres of social activism and self-help, increasingly gained favour in London. It seemed that England’s mission was working. Social developments in India and their perception in England are revealed in the following letters. Continued progress in fighting those social ills was expected; that progress was to receive considerable help from an influx of better-trained Indian civil servants and from all those who were gradually receiving larger responsibilities in Indian society. Some ‘‘dubious’’ traditional Indian customs, because of their link with religious beliefs, proved to be difficult to eradicate by British and Indian social reformers. Legislation on those practices during the nineteenth centur y was rather ineffective. Suttee (or sati), the widow’s immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre, was meant to expiate the sins of both husband and wife, and to ensure the couple’s reunion beyond the grave; restrictions were placed on the practice in 1813 and it was outlawed in 1829. Female infanticide, motivated by the opinion that daughters constituted an economic burden, was banned by the Female Infanticide Act of 1870. Child marriage, aimed at preser ving religious and social kindred succession, and to reducing the dangers to a growing girl’s virginity, was prone to abuse. The Age of Consent Bill of 1891 raised the age of consent for marriage. Thuggee, or robber y often coupled with ritual murder, was outlawed in 1813. Those prohibitions were extremely difficult to put into practice. Traditional justifications of those practices, often allied with religious beliefs, worked against the legislation’s effect. For her part Nightingale’s work was mostly directed at improving the health and livelihood of the poorest classes of Indians, the peasants, so that issues of caste and religion only peripherally affected her in her efforts to improve public health.12 There was no official inclination on the part of the British government, which was largely interested in economic issues, to question customs of diet, home manners or ways of dressing, while Indians were

12 For further material on such issues see ‘‘Letters and Notes on Eastern Religions,’’ in Mysticism and Eastern Religions (4:483-508).

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often critical of British preferences in matters of meat. In general, the British were cautious about infringing upon traditional practices, because of their own declared intention not to interfere with Indian religious matters. The caste system was such a monumental institution, so anchored in history and mores, that the British had no idea either how to influence it or how to attenuate its built-in injustices without questioning its whole religious and mythological basis. It must be recalled that, initially, missionaries were not allowed to operate in India and to open schools; they were allowed to do so only from 1813. Memories of the 1857-58 Mutiny, which was partially triggered by a supposed insult to religious sensibilities (sepoys being told to use ammunition tainted with pig fat), rendered the British still more vigilant in avoiding religious or social conflict with the Indians. All the same, voices rose against what Europeans perceived to be social evils. Nightingale called on the press at home better to inform the public on the social problems encountered in India: ‘‘Let the Times tell us all’’ that is happening in India ‘‘from inquiry on the spot, tell it as the Times only can.’’13 It would enlighten the public and create in the government greater readiness to help. Of course changes also occurred gradually within Indian society itself, mainly having to do with political responsibility. Ryots got together and battled for their own causes and better-educated Indians increasingly gained positions of power. It is easy to speculate and debate about the quality of Nightingale’s knowledge of India’s cultural traditions; she lived in a time when the histor y and culture of India were just being gradually made known to scholars. Thanks to Julius Mohl, Nightingale developed some interest in comparative religion, but she never had more than a rudimentar y understanding of the differences between Hindus and Muslims. For example, in her writings we never encounter the significant fact that ‘‘in the east of Bengal . . . almost all zemindars were Hindus, whereas [their] tenants were Muslims.’’14 Her understanding of the caste system was quite basic; she had scant knowledge of Indian history pre-empire and no clear understanding of the tribal and nomadic peoples as such. The letters and notes here all report material on a range of religious and cultural matters, from the 1870s on. They are followed by materials on measures for self-government.

13 In Society and Politics (5:323). 14 David Ludden, An Agrarian History of South Asia 216.

808 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9006/30

14 March 1873 I read young Bartle Frere with the greatest interest. The colouring he mentions I have seen and I always feel like a galley slave dreaming of heaven when I read letters which carry one into the East. I wish Lady Frere would be so good as to show us some more. I have got a letter from a Hindu who is coming to England as an ‘‘articled clerk’’ asking me ‘‘to be his mother’’!! Source: From a note to John Sutherland, Add Mss 45757 f272

[after 24 January 1875] There were many blunders as to matters of fact, such as the ryots not taking the water, etc., in Lord Salisbur y’s Manchester speech [of 24 January 1875]. But the great blunder of all was a worse blunder than one of fact: a fundamentally wrong feeling. Forever they prate of our ‘‘awakening’’ the Hindu from his ‘‘ancient and secular torpor,’’ of the Bengali’s want of enterprise, want of elasticity, of India’s ‘‘torpid state.’’ This seems to be the very reverse of the real state of the case. Source: From a draft/note to an unnamed recipient, Add Mss 45827 ff129-30

2 Febr uary 1878 Beef: Maharaja of Kashmir told me he could not accept the prince of Wales because of the beef. Maha-Dhuleess Sing, who is a Christian, can’t think of killing cows without a shudder. Beef is the real reason of the social differences (increasing every year) between natives and us; natives will never mix with us socially while we kill cows; they open the Bible and show us St Paul about causing our brother to offend— meat15—and think our Christianity consists in eating beef. It is the main bar to natives being socially on terms with us, to their becoming Christians. If you talk to a Muhammadan about Christianity he will listen—Muhammadans about one half of Punjab population—if to a Hindu he walks away; he says, I can’t bear it, I must then kill cows. It is made a political question, a red rag. You are thought a rebel if you do not maintain the beef question; if English would give up eating beef out of courtesy the natives would believe us, would be friends with us and many would become Christians.

15 An allusion to 1 Cor 8:13.

Social and Political Evolution / 809 Source: From notes, Add Mss 45827 ff138-40

5 April 1878 Native press, conducted by young adventurers. Editors bribed to a vast extent by natives not to show them up. But even European officials will ask these editors to dinner. Wild of Daily News to liken Indian press to that of a civilized country. You would not object to my smoking a cigar but to me smoking it in a gunpowder magazine? You would say] these people are wholly ignorant (but majority of native press good). As for courts of law, why that is the way to multiply the circulation of pernicious matter tenfold, just as prosecuting Mrs Besant16 has made her to be read. No danger from Muhammadans: poor people never heard of sultan of Turkey. To interest the Sunni in the Shia (Persia) would be like tr ying to interest a Baptist in Cardinal Manning.17 But great danger from Russia; she is all-powerful in Afghanistan; could she and England but proclaim common cause, an alliance, in civilizing Central Asia? If there is war she will proclaim an emperor of Delhi and the Muhammadans will rally round him. Enhancement of rent papers: is the ryot to have 10 percent or 75 percent of increment? Government will do nothing now. These papers are before the Legislative Council of India and were to be made basis of a law. But it was not to be hard and fast, it was to vary according to circumstances. Now the ryots league together and go into courts of law; they are too many for zemindars. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9007/138

6 April 1878 I had an out-and-out Russian here yesterday. He is ashamed of Russia about Rumania; he says Lord Derby was quite right in his condition, that without it, had we met in congress, Russia would quite have overreached us. He says if there is a war Russia will proclaim an emperor of Delhi and rally the Muhammadans; he says ‘‘it is absurd to suppose that you can interest the Muhammadans of India and Persia in the Turkish sultan as you could interest a Baptist in Cardinal Manning.

16 Annie Besant (1847-1933), theosophist, educator and politician, tried for ‘‘obscene libel’’ for publishing a pamphlet on birth control. 17 Henry Edward Manning (1808-92), cardinal archbishop of Westminster.

810 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Who is the new under secretar y for India, vice Lord George Hamilton?18 Remember me most kindly to Lady Hope and Sir Arthur Cotton. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

30 May 1878 Your labour will not be in vain. It is rather because I think too much of it than too little that I have not written. I think so much of the great future that you will see even yet to your work and labour of love for India. You will live not to break but to enlighten our enemies’ heads. But England is not interested: now you must have England at your back to drive secretaries of state and governors general and India councils forwards. And you must interest England in the light and not in the darkness. Who can do this but you? Pray have a school of prophets: in these days of course prophets are young reviewers and article writers. Pray light their fires about India. Certainly Cobden19 did light a fire in the world which has never been put out.20 Is it possible that any subject could be more heart-stirring—a subject which in your hands might stir all England—than the whole question of the land tenures of India: the modes of living or dying of these incomprehensible peoples; never doing what we expect but incomprehensible only because we do not take the trouble to comprehend; with virtues of thrift and endurance and heroism and industry far beyond any we Westerns can boast of, and yet the poorest of peoples with powers of progress. I will back some agricultural populations of India against some agricultural populations of England any day for capacity of learning improved methods. And yet the most indebted and enslaved of peoples. Just as you think yourself altogether disappointed, you will find that you have roused all England to do the right for India and India to do

18 Lord George Francis Hamilton (1845-1927), a Conservative, under secretar y for India, later secretar y of state for India; replaced by Edward Stanhope as under secretar y in 1878. 19 Richard Cobden organized the Anti-Corn Law League, which agitated successfully for free trade. Nightingale, who was elected to the Cobden Club in 1886, praised him for firing imaginations and hoped the same could be done for India. See John Morley, Life of Richard Cobden. 20 An allusion to Luke 12:49.

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the right for herself. Though not in the least of a prophet, India’s day is coming I think: Please God we only have peace. An old friend of mine who knew more about the East and its religions than any man, Mr Mohl (he is dead), believed that Muhammadanism was decaying and dying out, notwithstanding its 200 millions: he said it is only alive at its extremities, see the Wahabis; at its heart it is almost extinct.21 That is the way religions die out, he said. India’s star may be rising now. But you must make it rise—India is more hopeful in its poverty than some great towns of England with their high wages. Source: From a letter to Behramji M. Malabari, Add Mss 45805 ff123-24

[end of 1878] Here the Times and the Daily News send out special correspondents to Cypr us and the living state of the island is placed as in a speaking picture before us. Let the newspapers of India do the same for the interior of India and for the masses of people in her large towns, and let them place its speaking picture before us and before themselves. What untold good might not result from this? Popularize narratives tr ue to fact of Indian lives and cases among the men and women of India. . . . If [you know] an instance of heroism or devotion or long-suffering, whether inspired by love of country or of family, or of goodness, whether in man, woman or child, give it us. (Plenty such there must have been during the famine.) If you know a true narrative of the sufferings of an indebted cultivator of the Deccan or of the oppression of a moneylender, give it us. Not figures or generalities but individual narratives strike the English public. If you know an instance of good citizenship, of a man’s chivalr y or a woman’s Indian muse in English garb, ‘‘free’’ devotion or a child’s unselfish care of another child, if you know instances of these things exercised regardless of caste (you have given out), give them us. Give us biographies too. Give us instances of the generous liberality in doing good for which the Parsi is so distinguished. Give us also instances of the contrary, of countr y villages where a little organization, e.g., a loan bank at low interest, a little thought and kindness on

21 This of course would be reversed in the late twentieth century with the massive growth of Islam; the ‘‘extreme Wahabis’’ have also increased in number and influence, notably in Saudi Arabia.

812 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the part of the zemindar, or the monied and non-landed man, or the native official, might do such immense good, might almost regenerate his district, and it is not done. Give us instances known to yourself (narratives and imaginations) where the native official, by taking bribes of, or hindering justice to, his own poorer countrymen, hastens their ruin or prevents their rising. And give us instances of the contrar y, of the true chivalry. Show us the native gentlemen who are chivalrous. Show us how the native gentlemen can be chivalrous. And give us instances of the low, mean, degrading woman’s life, and of the matron, ‘‘spirit free,’’ sacrificing in her daily devotion to the good of all around her. Let a prophet arise to teach his own countrymen and— to teach us. May God bless your labours. May the Eternal Father bless India, bless England and bring us together as one family, doing each other good! May the fire of His love, the sunshine [?] of His countenance22 inspire us all! Source: From notes probably from a meeting with T. Gillham Hewlett, Add Mss 45782 ff39-44

10 Februar y 1879 The Hindus are either high caste or vegetarians, middle caste or flesh eaters, low caste or carrion eaters (no Hindu will eat beef). The government makes us divide them into (1) Hindus, (2) Muhammadans, (3) Christians, (4) all others. . . . I want them to let us divide the Hindus at least into high caste and low caste. The low castes are a fine race, live outside in suburbs, not allowed to come within towns. Death rate very high indeed from the horrible conditions under which they live, bad water, etc. Now this ought to be shown: let us have the death rate of the low castes separately and then amend their conditions. They have a perfect thirst for knowledge. These low castes supported a European boy of sixteen who was lost in return for his teaching them English. Outside suburb inhabited by low caste must not enter the village. Fine intelligent fellows but drink, very high rate of mortality; should be separate in registers. I asked Government of Bombay what could be done for them. Educate them, they said. And so we did, but not in schools; Christian converts all drink, most unsatisfactory, converted to get into government employment. Knew one, a grand old man, who was satisfactory and had good influence over natives; he was a devout low caste, went on pilgrim-

22 An allusion to Rev 1:16.

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age to Himalayas. And a Parsi boy who became a clergyman, fell in with Padre Wilson, became a sincere Christian, influenced others. It is the young gentlemen of the secretariat who do those reports. They confuse outcaste with low cast, don’t know the difference. Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9007/207

Good Friday [11 April] 1879 General Vaughan’s letter. I am afraid if I were to say what I think of this letter I should not be very civil. Lord Lytton has sold his soul to Lord Beaconsfield23 and the Times has sold its soul (if ever it had one) to Lord Lytton. But the cool complacency of the selling—so he will be so good as to show my letter to ‘‘Bishop Church.’’ Sir J. Stephen said, in the anti-slavery days:24 The press, the Parliament and the bishops were against us,’’ but we roused the people, in the name of justice, for all that. So I say about India, the press is against us, the bishops don’t care, the Parliament cares very much not to hear anything about us, but India is steadily forcing her way to the front, as Mr Gladstone would say, for all that. I send (but please return at once) one of the many letters from India I receive now by every mail. This is from a major with the Kandahar troops. The irony of fate: it was put into my hands with General Vaughan’s. Source: Notes probably from a meeting with Sir Richard Temple, Add Mss 45805 ff181-84

25 April 1879 As to the famines, there is nothing in the world that ever excited the admiration (of those few who know) so much as the complete success which attended your almost miraculous efforts to lose not one life in the Bengal Bihar famine of 1874. It was magnificent. It was the greatest battle the world has ever seen. And it was won. We looked with eagerness and terror for like results in 1877. Bombay was a great success—Madras—what can we say? It would be wrong to call it an Isandula on a gigantic scale, but it was, I suppose, a deadly and disastrous defeat, even though so much was done. I shall read with avidity the memo (to come) ‘‘explaining the difference between the two cases, Bengal in 1874, Bombay in 1877.’’ But

23 Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), Lord Beaconsfield, Conservative prime minister. 24 Presumably Mr James Stephen (1758-1832), a leading abolitionist, father of Sir James Stephen and grandfather of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

814 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India what I am now venturing to tell you, not to judge the success of 1874—God and the world can alone do that—but to say there were not ten people perhaps here, of whom I was one, outside the official world who read the Blue Books and reports of these great events. It was impossible to popularize them—there was not the wherewithal in the reports. I have sometimes thought, for English periodical reading world which never, au grand jamais [at no time] reads reports I would devote myself to popularizing reports so that public, which stands at back of Parliament, which stands at back of Cabinets should read and know something about India. Twenty-two years in W.O. and I.O. fact stares one in face that these reports never reach the people who influence the world, never influence public opinion, has led me to think of writing in periodicals which ever ybody does read. But the reports must contain the wherewithal to do this. India’s day is coming to force and better than this should be done by people in earnest and with a conscience than by demagogues. Most terrible details have reached us of death and destruction by famine, especially in Madras and Mysore, but very little indeed of what such men as yourself and Dr Hewlett and others have done. A minute giving the names only says nothing to English people even if read, which it is not. We hear of the deaths and failures (V.C. for famine heroes) we don’t hear of the acts of bravery—feats of arms— of devotion of those who have been saved and of those who have saved them. We don’t hear facts and individual histories. . . . We are thirsting to know of our Indian famine heroes, our Indian famine V.C.s and defences. And officialdom will not let us. . . . The Indian government at home declines to produce papers because they are the property of the government in India and often, it says, I believe justly, that the papers are not sent to it, while the government in India decline papers because they are the property of the government at home, and because they are under strict orders from the government at home not to do so . . . It is perhaps scarcely becoming of me to treat of such high things. But I know that you will forgive me for the sake of my interest in India. The House of Commons does not care. It can scarcely be got together to listen to an India question. The people which elects (governs) the House of Commons does not care. They would care but they do not know enough; they would make the House of Commons care and the House of Commons would make the Cabinet care, which now cares the least of all for India questions.

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The thing is to interest the people of England. There is no subject they are more sensitive upon when once roused than any ‘‘putting’’ upon (unfairness) to a poorer and subject people. But we cannot interest the people of England unless the government will give us true facts and details. The government often inveighs, and justly, against the partial accounts of newspaper correspondents. But they do not give us facts in the place of these. 2 May 1879 Acknowledged Sir R. Temple’s. Manuscript memo: points of difference between famine of 1874 and 1877-78. Asked for further famine figures. You speak of the dark tints in which Englishmen paint the present and the prospects of India. It is because Englishmen have so high an opinion both of the great ideal in store for India under English rule, and of the will and the power of the English high officials in India to accomplish this high ideal, that the ‘‘painting’’ is so dark. I pray you, not only bear with it but also turn it to the uses of India. And if I may be allowed to say so, it is also because no documents that the mass of English readers will read are ever allowed to reach the mass of English common readers. No one reads Blue Books out of public offices and House of Commons, [no one reads] the India Blue Books. It is because there is an enormous reading public in England outside, both unfed, that you see these one-sided ‘‘paintings,’’ these incorrect appreciations, just as in Russia—because there is an educated public wholly unrepresented that you see the present awful state of things. . . . In India, there being no English reading public beyond the official public and India being unrepresented . . . even Englishmen have no idea of the vast importance of interesting the people of England on the right side by authentic information, by, as you say, giving them ‘‘the truth and the whole truth’’ and of course in a form in which they will read it. Source: From notes/draft letter, Add Mss 45805 f273

[c1879?] Mr Nasarvanji Ratnagar’s [?] too-short sketch of ‘‘Indian Village’’ also interesting. But how much more so it would be to an English public if he would give us a detailed account of some individual village that he has known and its individual inhabitants, giving their names and name of the place. English people know literally nothing, not even those few who have travelled in India, of the agricultural village life, the life outside the large towns. And yet India is a land of villages. This

816 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India is what is wanted to interest the people of England, for him to give us some particular ‘‘village’’ by name and what the ‘‘sixty families’’ do and who the individuals are by name and what they care about and a histor y of a daily life and of the headman’s daily life; the particular headman by name and his particular wife by name; and what the barber, the particular barber, does and says and thinks and cares for. And facts to illustrate their particular ‘‘village laws.’’ It is quite true that villages are ‘‘mere dots’’ even to the Englishman travelling by rail in India. Let them cease to be ‘‘mere dots’’ to us in England through Mr N.R.’s pen. Then let him tell us in what parts of India the village community still exists, in which parts it has been destroyed. Source: From a letter to Sir Louis Mallet, Balliol College, Mallet Papers

13 Februar y 1882 Private. Bengal Rent Law. You say that the ‘‘British public’’ gives us ‘‘no response.’’ But that is not entirely the British public’s fault. If I were a high Indian official returning home, I should devote myself entirely by speeches, lectures, articles in magazines (since that is the fashion), by every way that is open to a manly man, to popularize the great subject of British administration in India and bring it home to us English in England: ‘‘stump’’ it, in short. (When the ex-prime minister of England ‘‘stumps’’ it about the country, there can be nothing below the dignity of an ex-viceroy or ex-governor or lieutenant governor in doing so.) We do not care for the people of India because between them and us is a great gulf 25 fixed—nay, two gulfs—the official gulf there and the official gulf here. And scarcely an effort is made to bridge it over. If there is an ex-viceroy who can write a novel like Dickens, let him write it on the people of India. I too was ‘‘mad’’ at the way ‘‘Mr Caird’s mission’’ fell to the ground, and the ‘‘Famine Commission’’ report altogether. But as to the latter not a soul in England knew anything about it. They should have had an article (not a leading article) in the Times about it every day for a week. Some great ex-Indian officials should have written articles in magazines. An abstract (an interesting popular one) should have been published with appropriate photographs of famine miseries—at

25 An allusion to Luke 16:26.

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a low price. All this should have been done and nothing have been left undone, if it were to ‘‘tell.’’ Mr Caird’s previous articles in The Nineteenth Century were no good. He should have written a good stirring article after the ‘‘Famine’’ Report was out. All the great administrative and other reports about the Hindu remain as much a dead letter to the English in England as if they were written in ‘‘Hindu’’ or in Sanskrit. Why does the government do all it can to stifle any interest of the English about India? One would have thought they would have liked public opinion to back them, e.g., why did they contradict the truth about the famine deaths? Natives and Anglo-Indians are alike alive to this, now, viz., that they must have public opinion in England to help them. But Anglo-Indian ex-officials do little or nothing to bring it about. And Hindu pamphlets are too controversial to be of any use. England is the only country where a great ex-prime minister could ‘‘stump’’ it, where an ex-viceroy could ‘‘stump’’ it. But a general election is worthwhile. And 250 millions of Indian lives are not worthwhile. Source: From two letters to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9009/116 and 117

24 November 1882 Yes, I am very anxious to learn something from the ‘‘Indian contingent.’’ But a mere complimentar y visit with an interpreter would be no good, and an enormous fatigue to me. If somebody could ask them some confidential questions - -? 27 November 1882 I suppose I must receive the Indian officers. But I don’t see how any good can come of it. I wonder how many there will be. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 f196

14 April 1882 Private. I must not for shame trouble you with a long letter, but any information that you would kindly desire to be given to me about these pressing subjects, which I doubt not have been put in train and about your successes in their working, to the great benefit of millions, will be received with the deepest interest by me. We hailed with joy your institution of a commission for inquiring into primary education so much wanted.

818 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

‘‘Our Indian Stewardship,’’ 1883 Editor: ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’ was prompted by an attack in the pages of The Nineteenth Century by an mp, Seymour Keay, on the British administration of India.26 Keay’s critique, entitled ‘‘The Spoilation of India,’’ was an indictment of the entire British administration of India, and claimed, in Nightingale’s words, to have adduced ‘‘evidence to prove that the institutions we have set up are unsuited to the people of India and that their great cost is with difficulty provided by means of excessive taxation’’ (see p 820 below). Nightingale’s response was written in collaboration with Sir William Wedderburn, and the latter presumably contributed so much to it that Nightingale joked: ‘‘The article is an excellent one, if only it had been signed by you and not by me.’’27 Another letter, sending her draft and asking for his comments on it, stated: The more you are so kind as to correct and alter, the better pleased I shall be. Please do not let me be impertinent to the India Office, nor to the departments. It is so very unbecoming of me to be governessing the government. I feel inclined to sign myself ‘‘Cat’s Paw.’’28

Nightingale’s rejoinder contains a historic examination of the British presence, going back to the days of the East India Company, when periodic criticism of British administration was voiced. Lord Clive’s administration (1740-55) had been criticized at home for exploiting Indian divisions, installing puppets and looting the country, but the attack on Warren Hastings, governor general of Bengal (1772-85) was venomous in its indictment. The political thinker and mp Edmund Burke took the lead in the charge against Hastings; relying on debatable sources, he saw Hastings and the East India Company as ruling India in a scandalous way, seeking ‘‘profits and places in India for themselves and their friends,’’29 being interested only in acquiring a covetable fortune with which to return home, blind to the sufferings of Indians, allowing British visitors to India for the shooting, and so on. In a long process (1787-94) Hastings was impeached in London,

26 J. Seymour Keay, ‘‘The Spoilation of India,’’ The Nineteenth Century 14 (1883):1-22. Keay published a second part to this article in The Nineteenth Centur y 15 (1884):559-82. 27 Letter to W. Wedderburn 1 August 1883, Add Mss 45807 f93. 28 In S.K. Ratcliffe, Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Reform Movement 121. 29 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj 18.

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tried but acquitted. The proceedings revealed that Hastings’s greatest ‘‘mistake’’ had been to be particularly attuned to Indian culture, but nevertheless closer control was to be exercised over the Anglo-Indians’ greed for wealth and lust for power. In the end the episode revealed a desire ‘‘to erect barriers against arbitrary rule,’’ betraying the growth of colonial guilt and of the growing need to ‘‘r ule India in the interests of the Indian people’’ (19). Nightingale’s examination of the charges shows that the Company really did what it could to amend itself, but also, more importantly, that no mechanism had existed to undertake a serious audit of the new management since the crown’s takeover of Indian administration in 1858. Her article offers a quiet assessment of the previous twentyfive years of British rule but is clear that a formal inquiry is necessar y. In dealing with contemporary concerns (1881-83) Nightingale was actively promoting Lord Ripon’s reform policies. Some phrases and themes echo her letter to the queen on the Ilbert Bill, then under debate. ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’ also stressed the need to admit Indian nationals generally to government of the country, as the tide of the day certainly favoured self-government. Among the questions raised about the inadequacies of British administration of India, and after reviewing who should lead the inquiry she deemed necessary, Nightingale declared that only a royal commission would suffice (see p 828 below). Only such a commission would provide the rationale and real incentive for decentralization and local self-government and support the socially progressive ideas behind the Ilbert Bill. In doing so Nightingale’s article constituted a renewed endorsement and defence of Lord Ripon’s policies: she truly thought the answers to Keay’s attack were to be found in these policies. Source: Florence Nightingale, ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship,’’ The Nineteenth Centur y 14,18 (August 1883):329-38

As a humble unit of the great English public, I have read with feelings of dismay the terrible indictment brought by Mr Seymour Keay, in the last number of this journal, against our Indian administration. Hearing such things we must all ask ourselves to what extent are the charges set forth in ‘‘The Spoilation of India’’ well founded? The allegations are specific and involve charges of national breach of trust on a great scale. How are such charges to be either proved or disproved? England is herself ultimately responsible for the work of her servants in India. What means does she possess of taking an account of this

820 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Indian stewardship, so that her servants in the Far East may be either acquitted or condemned? In the parable, the householder planted a vineyard and hedged it round about, and let it out to husbandmen and went into a far country.30 But a day of reckoning came at last. Wherever there is a trust, due account should be rendered. If the present charges are false, they should, after proper inquiry, be declared so, in justice to the Indian administration. If they contain even a portion of truth, still more necessar y is it that justice should be done in fulfillment of a great national duty. Mr Seymour Keay does not blame individuals or even classes. He blames the system. And the essence of his argument is that the defects of our rule in India are simply what, under such circumstances, must be expected from the ordinar y and admitted weaknesses of human nature. Individuals will always be found who follow the golden rule of unselfishness. But ordinar y men naturally prefer their own interests to those of others. And he points out that a government of officials, not responsible to the people of India, and practically unsupervised even by their own countrymen at home, would naturally and almost unconsciously establish a system favourable to their own patronage and power, ‘‘a system providing too much for the interests of the governors themselves and too little for the welfare of the governed.’’ A presumption of this sort seems not unreasonable. It is in accordance with our experience of bureaucratic rule in France and other European countries. And the evil is naturally intensified where the officials are foreigners and aliens in race and language. Relentlessly following up this clue, the writer examines one after another the great departments of Indian administration: the army expenditure, the land revenue, the civil courts, the police, salt, opium and spirituous liquors; and as regards each he adduces evidence to prove that the institutions we have set up are unsuited to the people of India and that their great cost is with difficulty provided by means of excessive taxation. Summing up his case he maintains that ‘‘after making full allowance for the not inconsiderable benefits conferred on India by its connection with this country, the balance is still woefully against our Indian government; that it is still an alien bureaucracy living chiefly for itself, with little or no sympathy with the people; that, while sadly unsuitable to the wants of the people, it is ruinously expensive; that its ruinous

30 Matt 21:33-43.

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expense is now only defrayed by a resort to the most merciless expedients, and that the result is poverty, ruin and starvation to the people.’’ So miserably poor are these our Indian fellow subjects after all these years of our rule, that forty millions, or one fifth of the whole population, go through life on insufficient food, while it is officially admitted that upwards of six millions of men, women and children have died from actual starvation during the last seven years. Such is the accusation and such are the facts brought forward in evidence. And the appeal is made to the people of this country on behalf of two hundred millions of their law-abiding and inoffensive fellow subjects, who are unrepresented and unable to help themselves or even to make their voice heard. Now let us try to approach this great question in a businesslike way. An independent Englishman of undoubted personal acquaintance with India has brought these charges. As public accuser he has done his part. What is now our duty as members of the English public? What can we do in order that this appeal may be heard by a competent tribunal and decided in accordance with justice and those broad principles of public morality which have been accepted by the English people and set forth in the memorable words of the Queen’s Proclamation in 1858? In former days the whole administration of India was subjected by Parliament at prescribed intervals to an impartial, intelligent and searching inquiry. On each occasion before the East India Company’s charter was renewed, there was a reckoning and stock was taken, so that once at least in twenty years the British nation looked into Indian affairs and scanned narrowly the conduct of their agents in the East, a terror to evildoers and a praise to them who did well. Then every grievance was sifted before the House of Commons. The veil of secrecy was removed and a Burke and a Fox31 arose to judgment. A wholesome jealousy also existed of the powers and privileges of the Company and this sentiment operated in favour of the Indian races. If periodical inquiries of this scope and solemnity were held at the present day, we might well be content to await the decision of such a tribunal upon the charges now brought forward. For when we look into history we find that the renewals of the charter were the epochs when abuses were checked, when great reforms were initiated and the

31 Charles James Fox (1749-1806), British political leader and orator.

822 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India most valuable principles asserted for the governance of our great Eastern empire. In this way the commercial monopoly was removed, India was opened to the private enterprise of Englishmen, while for natives were secured the rights of citizens and a claim to a fair share in the administration of their own country. Further, by means of these debates, a salutary feeling of responsibility with regard to India was maintained among English public men, who kept a watchful eye upon the doings of their countrymen in the East, recognizing the fact that the Company could not be trusted to carry out in practice the mandates of the English people. Accordingly, when complaints were made, strong men were found ready to insist that justice should be done and the offender was brought to public trial, even though his ser vices were as illustrious as those of Lord Clive and though he was as highly placed as Warren Hastings. Now, unfortunately, since the old Company has disappeared and the crown has taken its place, this periodical stocktaking, this day of reckoning and of judgment, has been lost to India. As there is no charter to be renewed, there is no Parliamentar y inquir y and the Indian administration drifts on from year to year without independent scrutiny or control. Thus it happens that, since 1858, when the crown took over charge, a quarter of a century has elapsed without any independent audit of this great Indian trust, this estate of 576 millions of acres and 200 millions of souls. The actual management remains in the same hands as before. And the practical effect of the change is simply to relieve the Indian officials of their responsibility to Parliament and to make perpetual the temporary lease of power which they before enjoyed. Moreover, the change from the Company to the crown, though in many respects a mere change of name, has had a mischievous effect in lulling the wholesome jealousy and watchfulness of our public men in England, so that people are apt to indulge in a careless optimism, trusting that all is well and that our great official hierarchy is administering India with singleness of heart for the good of the people, unswayed by personal interests or by the prejudices of class and race. If a formal Parliamentary inquir y, such as was considered essential at each renewal of the charter, is not now practicable, what is the substitute in the existing order of things? What are the resources at the disposal of the English nation for testing the results of the Indian administration during the last quarter of a century and for controlling its future action? I will try to indicate what these resources are, as they

Social and Political Evolution / 823

appear to one of the outside public deeply interested in the welfare of India. I will also submit some suggestions in the hope that the question of an independent check and control may be taken up by those specially qualified to advise. But before doing so I would repeat that the demand for inquiry is made in no unfriendly spirit to the great Indian civil service—a service of noble traditions—a service which Lord William Bentinck pronounced to be superior to that of any country in the world. On the contrary, it would appear that an independent audit is required in justice to the Indian administration itself, as well as in the interest of the peoples of India and the people of England. The agents of our great Indian estate are probably the best agents, the most honest, enlightened and laborious that the world has ever seen. But that is no reason why the English nation should keep its eyes closed and neglect a manifest duty as master and trustee. Even if the management were a simple affair and invariably successful, still an account should be taken, for otherwise the good name of the administration is open to attack not only from genuine complaint but also from railing accusation. Much more, however, is it necessar y, when the estate is so vast and the interests so complex that absolute success is impossible for poor human efforts. If after all our labour the bulk of the Indian population remains so perilously near the verge of subsistence that deaths by starvation can be counted by millions, we must with sorrow confess that we are but unprofitable servants,32 and the best worker in the Indian vineyard will not ask for himself a judgment more favourable than that which was inscribed on the tomb of Sir Henry Lawrence, ‘‘He tried to do his duty.’’33 What machinery, then, is there for making an impartial, intelligent and searching inquiry in order that the crown, with the Parliament representing its people, might know, by itself making the inquiry, how has been carried out the spirit of the Queen’s Proclamation of twentyfive years ago, proclaiming with regard to our relation to the native races, governed by the crown without Parliament and without people, that there are to be no race distinctions; that, where there is fitness, the employment of natives and Europeans is to be alike; that race is not to be a qualification or a disqualification; that, in the words of the

32 An allusion to Luke 17:10. 33 Sir Henr y Montgomer y Lawrence (1806-57), chief commissioner in Oudh, killed while holding Lucknow against the mutineers, brother of Sir John Lawrence.

824 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India queen herself, ‘‘our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability and integrity duly to discharge.’’ (The broad policy was laid down by Parliament, so long ago as 1833, that no native shall, by reason of his religion, place of birth or colour, be disabled from holding any office’’), and her majesty’s gracious Proclamation in 1858 announced her will that, as far as may be, ‘‘our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability and integrity duly to discharge. Since that period several of my predecessors in office, and especially Lord Halifax, Sir Stafford Northcote, the duke of Argyll and Lord Salisbur y, have pressed upon the attention of the Government of India that the policy of Parliament, enforced as it was by the Royal Proclamation, was not to remain a dead letter, and two acts of Parliament were passed to give further effect to it. Lord Cranbrook’s Despatch to Lord Lytton’s Government 7 November 1878)

Such an inquiry is now imperatively called for. What are the present resources in England from which a tribunal may be constituted to make inquir y and exact an account of the Indian stewardship? What is it to be? By whom is it to be made? by Parliament? Parliament will not make it; it counts itself out. It is clear that some standing machinery is necessar y: this is proved by the impossibility of getting members of the House of Commons to give careful consideration to any Indian question. India has no members to represent it. (We are tempted to quote Pitt’s splendid peroration of 101 years ago34 and to paraphrase it, but this would lead us too far.) Members are responsible to their own constituents and are too busy and preoccupied. Indian questions are difficult and distasteful, and without technical knowledge an independent member can hardly speak effectively. Hence even for the Indian budget, once a year, forty just men35 can hardly be brought together to keep a House. Might it be possible (I speak as a fool36) for independent members who take interest in India to organize themselves into a voluntary committee, so as to sift complaints, rejecting those undeserving of support and co-operating to bring forward effectively in the House any real

34 Perhaps William Pitt’s speech in support of measures aimed at reducing the chances of ministers being bribed. 35 An allusion to Gen 18:29. The House of Commons had a quorum of forty. 36 An allusion to 2 Cor 11:23.

Social and Political Evolution / 825

grievance? By select committees of the House of Commons? These have done good service in throwing light upon Indian affairs, especially Mr Fawcett’s finance committee, but that committee never made a report or produced any direct results. Parliamentary committees have some want of purpose, some want of definiteness. They are an inquir y, somewhat desultory and nothing more—there is no execution of judgment. If the voluntary committee referred to were to bring questions before a select committee, the select committee might make a preliminar y inquir y and prepare issues for trial by a more specially constituted tribunal. By the Secretar y-of-State-for-India-in-Council? This is the statutory machiner y through which it is at present sought to enforce Parliamentar y control over the administration of India. So far as the will of Parliament makes itself felt through this machinery, the influence is for the most part good. The machinery is defective, (1) because the appointment of the secretar y of state depends upon the exigencies of party, so that usually he is not chosen for special knowledge of India and seldom remains long in the office, and (2) because his council (by which the current work of the India Office is performed) is filled almost exclusively by representatives of the Indian official classes. It is chiefly an assembly of the retired officials whose admirable work in India may be called the world’s wonder. But, speaking generally, public opinion scarcely sanctions our considering a tribunal quite unprejudiced which sits upon the administration of which they were themselves a distinguished part. And may one not go even further and ask if the Council scarcely represents more than the dominant party or views among Indian officials, for naturally those who coincide with that party or adopt those views are likely to attain such high position in India as will give them the chance of selection for the Council in England? We have seen such great men, and men of such different cast of greatness, sitting on the Indian Council that this question might well be answered in the negative, were it not that every year our position in India is changing. We have ourselves worked great changes, unexpected to ourselves. The undercurrent of feeling or opinion among the natives scarcely finds its way to England—not even the great bulk of the facts which the comparatively unknown English officials might tell us. But however this may be, when the successful official dies he goes to Westminster. When there, he can hardly be regarded as an unprejudiced and disinterested judge to sit in appeal on the measures which

826 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India he himself initiated, and on the men whom he himself placed in authority. It is almost impossible for the secretar y of state, unacquainted with technical details, to hold his own against their Indian ‘‘experience’’ and knowledge of official technicalities. The India Office cannot rightly, in accordance with English ideas, sit upon itself. These truly great Indian proconsuls and Indian officials who now sit in England, under whom the present system has grown up, who are responsible for the present official routine, the status quo, are hardly constituted by English polity, it is said, to sit in judgment upon their own work, excellent as it is. (The more excellent the work the less they must desire it.) They are said to give a sort of piecemeal judgment, as it were, from day to day, upon the system they have created or grown up in. Yet is this not the only audit? Does a company appoint its manager, however great and well deserved the confidence reposed in him, to audit his own accounts? Yet the largest company’s affairs are a mere toy compared with these over which the Government of India presides. These are the affairs of 200 millions of people—a fifth of the human race. And there is no representation, and scarcely can there be at present, nor yet hardly any public opinion or publicity. Far less, to use a yet more homely simile, would an English proprietor ask his coachman or his gardener what stable or garden retrenchments should be made. Yet there seems no ultimate court of appeal to decide this stupendous question of retrenchments, concerning not hundreds or thousands, but millions of pounds sterling a year. Ought such an independent account-taking to be? Will it unsettle the natives? Will it wound the esprit de corps, the high principle, the disinterested conscience, of the civil service? Will it embarrass the Government of India? To the first question it may be answered that Lord Ripon’s measures have, instead of unsettling the natives, given them for the first time a feeling of rest and peace. Instead of their being like toads under the unwilling harrows of various departments, they begin to realize that England means them to have some local self-government. With regard to the just esprit de corps of the civil services: it is the privilege of the civil services, as it is of the Government of India, to have a trial. Compare, for instance, charges brought against a military officer. He calls for a court-martial. It is his privilege that he should be tried, so that the world shall know whether he has been acting fairly, honestly, intelligently, according to his instructions.

Social and Political Evolution / 827

With regard to the ruler who is carrying out for the first time the spirit of the Queen’s Proclamation, the instructions of successive secretaries of state, the acts and resolutions of successive Parliaments, so honestly and bravely, such an inquiry would be welcomed as tending to help, as it may most effectually, and not to embarrass him. As all who understand how actual parties really stand will see, the onslaught of Mr Seymour Keay’s paper, above briefly noticed, is no attack upon the present viceroy, but an attack upon a system which the present viceroy is steadily but tentatively resisting, in pursuance of the decisions of crown, Cabinet and Commons at home—no complaint against Lord Ripon’s government, but against the evils which he is so manfully struggling to subdue. To prove that this is the case, in a subsequent paper will be noticed some of the leading measures of Lord Ripon’s policy. Practically the great controversy is between this policy and those who oppose it. As to the question between the Cabinet which gave the instructions and the viceroy who carried them out, English public opinion will not be inclined to ask for reports and opinions from local officials. This is constituting them the judges. The viceroy is the Cabinet’s agent. If any man has a quarrel with his policy, the quarrel is with the Cabinet. The policy is theirs. If, as now, numerous complaints are lodged against this policy, English public opinion would insist on a court of appeal, if it existed, hearing the other side. This other side is rarely or never heard in England on Indian affairs as it is on all others. Is the inquiry then to be by the English people? The public can give a mandate and insist with no uncertain voice that a trial should be held before a competent tribunal. But how are the British public (of whom the present writer is one), with neither technical nor official knowledge, to ask for an account to be taken and judgment to be given, it cannot even say by whom? It cannot say how judge and jury are to be appointed. But the British public fulfills an important function by sitting in court, as audience, watching that justice be done, according to the principles approved by the British people and declared in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858—not indeed saying how it is to be done. They cannot try the issues, but they can suggest—indeed, it might almost be said they can demand—that the issues shall be tried. We are in the attitude of the inquiring public, not in that of disposing of the question. No one can find fault with us for desiring to be led. The author of the ‘‘Spoilation of India’’ has pointed out many serious evils and these he attributes, not to any individual, but to the sys-

828 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tem. These allegations ought to be inquired into and decided upon by some competent tribunal. The indictment is brought. What is to be the tribunal? Not the India Council—the British public represented by the government. Let us, the British people—not partisans, but impartial listeners—acquit ourselves of our responsibility to the people of India. Let us consult together how best to perform our duties. It is evident that from want of knowledge and organization we cannot ourselves carry out the trial. What is wanted is that account should be taken and judgment given from time to time by a more specially constituted tribunal, whether by royal commission or otherwise, presided over by men with a conviction of their responsibility, determined to learn the facts, forming their policy while inquiring into the condition of things. We have seen the president of a Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army after the Crimean War, Sidney Herbert, making such an inquiry into facts, not opinions, then, when afterwards secretar y of state for war, embodying its decision in an effective policy and administration. This seems to be the most hopeful method for trying great issues of Indian policy. What is a royal commission? It is the crown. The crown has assumed the direct government of India and it seems fit and proper that the crown should take account from time to time, in order to see that the servants of the queen are fully carrying out the orders laid down for their guidance. The members of such a commission would be public men of the highest standing and reputation, such as would be suited to hold the office of viceroy or governor of a presidency or finance minister of India—such men as, e.g., it might be Lord Dufferin or Mr Goschen—such men as sit in the judicial committee of the Privy Council. The natives of India ask for no new concessions. They simply claim the fulfillment of the pledges and assurances already given. But the public in England are perhaps not aware of the very important steps which Lord Ripon has already taken to deal with these and other evils of the same class which have not been mentioned. How does Lord Ripon’s policy seek to deal with the grievances complained of ? The chief grounds of complaint, as stated above, are (a) the unsuitability of our institutions and (b) the great cost met by excessive taxation. Lord Ripon has struck at the very root of both these evils by his measures of decentralization and local self-government, and by the steps he has taken for the employment of natives.

Social and Political Evolution / 829

Under the local self-government scheme, much of the work now done by highly paid foreigners and by low-paid corrupt native underlings will for the future be done for little or nothing by the villagers themselves, while by the due employment of natives in official positions great economy in salaries will be effected, and the administration, it is said, will be gradually brought into conformity with the needs and wishes of the various races. The measure known as Mr Ilbert’s bill is an integral, by no means the most important, part of this policy; offices of responsibility cannot be conferred upon natives unless they are at the same time granted the powers required to perform the duties of those offices. In considering Lord Ripon’s scheme of local self-government these two points must specially be kept in mind, (1) that the measure is a necessity forced upon the administration by financial and political considerations of the most pressing kind, and (2) that village and municipal self-government is no novelty in India, but a wholesome return to the ancient and natural order of things. The fact is, the strain upon our centralized official machinery has been greater than it can bear and it threatens to break down altogether. To quote the words of an important state paper: The task of administration is yearly becoming more onerous as the countr y progresses in civilization and material prosperity. The annual reports of every government tell of an ever-increasing burden laid upon the shoulders of the local officers. The cry is ever ywhere for increased establishments. The universal complaint in all departments is that of overwork. Under these circumstances it becomes imperatively necessary to look around for some means of relief, and the Governor-General-in-Council has no hesitation in stating his conviction that the only reasonable plan open to the government is to induce the people themselves to undertake, as far as may be, the management of their own affairs.

This dilemma has long been admitted. It was long ago seen that on the one hand the limit of taxation had been reached, while on the other hand additional funds were urgently required to remedy defects in our administration, and to provide roads, irrigation, schools, etc. On the one hand we incurred odium by employing a horde of ill-paid native subordinates, who spread over the country like an army of locusts. On the other hand, if we sought to pay them better and thus secure a better class of public servants, we incurred fresh odium while wringing the necessary funds from the overdriven ryot. All this was plain

830 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India enough. And both Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo took important steps to relieve the official strain by measures of decentralization and municipal extension, which have answered admirably, Lord Lawrence pointing out as early as 1864 that the people of India ‘‘are per fectly capable of administering their own local affairs.’’ But it was reser ved for Lord Ripon to deal effectually with the ever-more-pressing danger, both political and financial, and to do so in a way eminently satisfactor y to the conservative instincts of the Hindu race. By his cautious yet comprehensive scheme of local self-government he has gone to the root of the whole matter, restoring life to the ancient village and municipal institutions, under which, with due guidance, the real needs of the people can be supplied, cheaply and without oppression, by and through the people themselves. No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that anything novel or newfangled is being introduced. The object is not to import a foreign exotic but to revive and strengthen a plant of home growth, stunted by ill usage and weakened but firmly rooted in ancient custom and in the habits of the people. Philosophers and historians have always dwelt lovingly on the Indian village community as the natural political unit and as the best type of rural life, self-contained, industrious, peace-loving, conservative in the best sense of the word. Upon this basis we must build. And we may hope some day to see the village communities throughout India not only restored to their ancient independence and prosperity, but further developed in their aspirations and public usefulness, furnishing a firm foundation upon which a great and a prosperous empire may safely rest. I shall hope in a subsequent paper briefly to notice the direction in which, during the three years of his past government, Lord Ripon has been taking practical steps towards carrying out the best principles of our administration which have often been laid down. The viceroy is supposed to be a romantic statesman. But the policy he has pursued has been, as already said, in accordance with the instructions of successive secretaries of state, with the acts and policy of successive Parliaments, and with the proclamation of the queen on assuming the Government of India.

Social and Political Evolution / 831 Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68883 f157

1 November 1885 I have been seeing the Indian delegates sent over to urge the claims of India on the candidates [in the elections in England]. You are put down as one to be depended upon. I send you the report of a meeting of the Bombay Association. . . . Lalmohun Ghose’s brother, Manmohun Ghose is here. He is fifty-two times the man his brother is. I have seen him. I wish he were the candidate. Source: From a letter/draft/copy to Manmohun Ghose, Add Mss 45807 ff181-82

10 November 1885 You were kind enough when I had the pleasure of seeing you to give me hopes that Mrs Ghose would do me the favour of coming to see me someday. Might I hope that she would fix some afternoon this week that would be convenient to her at 5:00 or at 6:00 o’clock to give me the great pleasure of making her acquaintance? I would reser ve today or any day for her, provided, except Wednesday, you would kindly let me know at once. And though I know how busy you are, some afternoon, I hope you will fix, as you kindly promised, to see me before you leave England. Perhaps when I see Mrs Ghose she will tell me when. Pray believe me ever yours faithfully Florence Nightingale Mr Hume and other gentlemen have encouraged me to see Mr Chandavarkar37 and Mr Mudaliar,38 if they would do me the honour. May I hope for it some day? An answer, please, now, only whether I may see Mrs Ghose this afternoon or some other afternoon this week, except Wednesday (tomorrow), when I am engaged. F.N.

37 Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar (1855-1923), lawyer and social reformer, editor of Indre Prakash, visited England with other Indian delegates in 1885 to lobby British mps and publicize the forthcoming meeting of the Indian National Union. 38 Salem Ramaswami Mudaliar (1852-92), lawyer and politician, delegate from Madras, later a member of the Indian National Congress.

832 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Sir William Wedderburn, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur A 151, typed copy Add Mss 45807 ff189-92, and two typed copies of letters, Add Mss 45807 ff193 and 195-96

27 November 1885 Many thanks for your reports of the Bombay Association meetings, for your kind letter, and for the (private) Pune ‘‘Land Bank’’ paper. Success to the right. But—our prospects are bad. You will have seen long and long before this reaches you how the borough elections have gone. And you will know long and long before you read this what we do not yet know whether the county elections have in any way retrieved our fortunes, which we yet hope. We have lost, as to Indians, ‘‘all along the line,’’ excepting dear old Mr Bright, who is India. But he will not work alone. Mr Stagg is gone, and and and - -. About Mr Lalmohun Ghose’s defeat, it is deeply to be regretted as being that of the first educated Hindu we have had as a candidate. But not otherwise. It was well known, I believe to Mr Bright himself, that, as soon as he was safely elected, he would play the game of the zemindars. When I saw him, he appeared ignorant, with claptrap phrases, and nothing sound about him. He knew nothing, though he pretended to know, of what had been done in Bombay, and could have been convicted of ignorance, even by me. But I carefully kept his secret. There is a man here, Manmohun, his brother, worth fifty Lalmohuns. And his wife, whom I have also seen, might vie with a well-educated English lady. Thanks for your introduction to Mr Chandavarkar, whom I had a long talk with. I believe their meetings have been very successful throughout the country in attracting attention. We rather regretted that they had fallen so entirely into the hands of Mr Digby,39 who has lost his election and is no great loss to our cause and who used them merely as his electioneering agents.

39 William Digby (1849-1904), editor, The Madras Times and India, 1890-92, author, ‘Prosperous’ British India. In 1901 he published a thorough, two-volume, account of the famine, The Famine Campaign in Southern India 1876-78, complete with lists of grain exported, mortality rates and a detailed list of contributors to famine relief.

Social and Political Evolution / 833

Mr Hume,40 who brought me a letter from Mr Ilbert, was so good as to give me a good deal of his time. This ‘‘National Liberal’’ Union, if it keeps straight, seems altogether the matter of greatest interest that has happened in India, if it makes progress, perhaps for a century. We are watching the birth of a new nationality in the oldest civilization in the world. How critical will be its first meeting at Pune. I bid it Godspeed with all my heart. I could wish (but you know my opinion is worth nothing in this kind of political policy) that it might not make personal attacks—that it might not, e.g., ask for the recall of Mr Grant-Duff. This will have no other effect than that of strengthening his position. His time will soon be ‘‘out.’’ And it would be so much more dignified and telling if the new ‘‘National Liberal’’ Union, especially in its first session, would lay down principles, and not try to throw down men. Also, might I say that the enormous harm which the Times has done us by its telegrams, has been done by publishing them on Monday, because it was enabled to have those long telegrams by the Sunday wire, and during the Parliamentary session people will only read those long telegrams on India on Monday, because there is no House of Commons report on that day. I could wish that the Daily News might publish your telegrams on Monday TOO. (But again on a matter of tactics my opinion is worth nothing.) Lord Randolph,41 the ‘‘Boy with the Drum,’’ is doing untold harm— literally untold—because the India Office is a ‘‘secret society,’’ by attacking Lord Ripon and Sir Evelyn Baring at the I.O. Council. (This is strictly between you and me.) I am afraid we have lost all chance of having Lord Ripon at the I.O. at least at present. It would have been a difficult matter to manage at the best. Now it looks as if it were impossible. That would have been the best way to heal all our woes. But I trust in God and the right, though I may not live to see it. Perhaps before you receive this, there may be better news. God grant there may! Mr Pedder lost his brother-in-law, killed in ‘‘suppressing that fanatical outbreak at Broach.’’ He is in great trouble—his wife can

40 Allan Octavian Hume was in London ‘‘to organize publicity for the forthcoming first session’’ of the Indian National Union, in December 1885, and ‘‘to gather Liberal support for it’’ (Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 203-04). 41 Randolph Spencer Churchill (1849-95), secretar y of state for India 1885-86.

834 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India scarcely bear the shock. Lord Reay, I hope, is indeed fulfilling our expectations. God bless you and your work. ever yours faithfully F. Nightingale It is a pity that Sir H. Maine and the I.O. persist in refusing to raise the limit of age (among Indian C[ivil] S[ervice] candidates), on the ground that they have granted the ‘‘optional’’ third year. About one in six, not more, has availed himself of the provision (at Oxford in the last two years.) But I will send you the figures. I think, in recommending ‘‘Captain Verney’’ as a ‘‘candidate to be supported,’’ his younger brother, Mr Frederick Verney, was intended. Both are good. But it is the younger, who has written for India. Source: From an incomplete letter/draft to an unknown recipient, Add Mss 45807 ff217-18

[ca. 31 January-3 Februar y 1886] The state of the case is this: the people in India, the educated people, whom we ourselves have educated and who are beginning to educate the masses in constitutional methods, are only restrained from demonstrating strongly on the subject (that is, of ‘‘having Lord Ripon as the next Liberal secretar y of state’’) from fear of embarrassing Mr Gladstone and perhaps defeating their own object. Is there any way in which this strong feeling in India can be effectually brought to bear in the proper quarter? That is our question. If Lord Kimberley has the India Office, we are almost, if not quite, as much defeated as if Lord Randolph were there. For Lord Kimberley, though he does not know it himself, is hardly more than a tool in the hands of the India Council. We are restrained, like the India people, from agitating for Lord Ripon, and for the same reasons. Otherwise we could get any number of letters and articles into the Liberal papers. Would you advise us to do so? I would that England knew the considered convictions of the people of authority and education in India, and their self-restraint and sense of responsibility. ‘‘New India’’ has accepted our constitutional principles as her own. And thinking men in England will understand that those natives who formed the ‘‘Congress’’ at Bombay are heart and soul with us in all our best aspirations for India. The principles of these men would do honour to the best educated men in England.

Social and Political Evolution / 835 Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68883 ff182-83

10 Februar y 1886 The inquiry into Indian government [asked for by Nightingale’s ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’] is a very serious matter. Unless it is a royal commission and unless Lord Ripon is chairman, it can but be a failure. If it is a committee of [the] House of Commons, there are but four men in the House who know anything recent about India, and they are all sold to retrogression. Sir G. Campbell is no use, if only that he has been twelve years out of India: Lord Ripon, Sir E. Baring, to represent finance, Ilbert, to represent law, Sir W. Wedderburn to represent the judicial, Sir L. Mallet to represent everything, India Office (land tenure, etc.). These would be the progressists. If there is a strong element of the strong members of the India Council on it we shall be ruined—of course there must be one or two; Strachey is too powerful. Then there must be Mr Bright [to represent the] House of Commons, and a strong businessman, who knows all about exports and imports, crops, silver, wheat, etc. Sir James Caird might do, but he has his head too full of famines. There should be one or two distinguished natives, men like Sir Salar Jung, if we had them. Mr [Mahadev Govind] Ranade might do. But these men won’t come to England. A good military man of high rank—how well Sir Neville Chamberlain would do it! There must be a man to represent diplomacy and foreign affairs? Agriculture (Buck) (not less than three of the number must go over to India to take evidence on the spot from distinguished natives). There should be a good educational man: Wordsworth of Bombay? But if Lord Ripon is not chairman, especially if, as is probable, such strong men as Strachey and Maine are on it, to represent the retrogradists, the royal commission will be a great deal worse then useless. The worst of India is, as you know, there are none but officials who have experience—no public element, as in England. How very good of you to tell me various things I was so anxious to know and also to take trouble about the India proceedings in council. I will subscribe for this quarter, please, to Street for the Gazette of India, provided it takes in the speeches, including Lord Dufferin’s, on the last finance, budget and income tax debate.

836 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From notes about, probably from a meeting with Lord Ripon, Add Mss 45778 ff104-15

30 July 1886 I was told by an Anglo-Indian official I can trust that for every rupee that comes into the Treasur y, 3 rupees go into the native officials’ pockets. If it is true, it is bad enough. This is not worthwhile for £750,000. Yet the rich man should be taxed, but it is so difficult. . . . We have nothing to fall back upon but the salt tax. And must that be raised again? The land tax? It ought not to be raised now, though as time and improvements go on, there is no doubt that the land will pay more. If there is a famine, there will be a terrible financial crash. Bengal. Oudh. Yes, the North West Provinces are about to have a legislative council of their own—nominated of course. And this is a great step (hitherto they have only been a portion of the viceroy’s council), a step to representation. Had I had the privilege of beginning representative institutions, I would have given the great municipalities (you can’t give the countr y representation yet) the right to send a representative to the legislative councils: Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Agra, etc. But then the subjects which come before the councils must be limited—you can’t have the native princes’ subjects discussed there. It would give room for boundless corruption and intrigue. Representation must be introduced very gradually. . . . The commission to inquire into the Civil Service, with the express object of including a much greater number of natives in it. Lord Dufferin has not yet named it. Everything will depend on its members. There ought to be non-official, independent members. Sir W. Wedderburn would do, but then he is against a covenanted Civil Service altogether. He or Sir Aitchison would do. But both are occupied. Our Indian friends are against it. They are wrong. Lord Dufferin has the nomination; it will be of people out there. India Office will pass his nominations. Lord Dufferin is not obstructive—he has allowed every one of my reforms to go on—but he has not forwarded them; he is a diplomat, not an administrator. His hands have been full of Russia and Burma. And he has done the diplomatic work by preference. There are waves; the thing is to come in upon the wave. You would have done nothing for the Army Medical and Sanitary Ser vice if it had not been for the crash in the Crimea. Now, the wave is against interest in India. Every effort would be wasted now. No interest in Parliament. This Parliament not good for the native Indians to sit in. Let us wait till spring, see what Randolph’s commission comes to. Next

Social and Political Evolution / 837

spring the wave may be in our favour. If there comes another Russian scare, all eyes will be directed on India. Then will be the time. Parliamentar y commission. Yes, against the opinion of our Indian friends, I think a Parliamentary commission to inquire into the Government of India—better than a royal commission. A R.C. would go out and might in the presidency towns get some good native evidence. But in the country they would only get the most unmitigated bureaucratic evidence. Then you could not have a R.C. inquiring into the viceroy’s act and powers—criticizing the viceroy—that would be unseating the viceroy. Lord Randolph’s commission of both houses—if he has only official members, no independent members, I will not serve. If he has only Sir R. Temple and the like, I will not serve. We wanted thirty-two, with independent members; he wanted a packed committee of purely official members. Lord Randolph—so absolutely reckless. Lord Randolph’s despatches to Lord Dufferin on finance matters absolutely reckless, but Lord D. just set them aside. Lord Hartington showed me last year—no, he did not show me, he could not find the letter, but he told me Lord Randolph wrote asking him to be chairman of the committee of both houses, but he declined—he thought it would be without independent members. . . . Oudh: Lord Dufferin’s bill has been dropped, but there is no session in India; it may be resumed—it had received the India Office assent, but whether for the opposition out there—I don’t know—he dropped it. There was only himself for it. It was a thousand pities my Oudh Bill was negatived by the India Office. The talukdars then would have accepted it as a boon. It did not take away from them nearly as much as the Bengal Act and they would have accepted it gladly. Now, not. Bengal Act is, I believe, going on well, because we hear nothing of it. Bombay: I look upon Bombay as the most ahead of all parts of India—of both Europeans and natives, they have such good men. National League? Yes, both Lord Dufferin and Lord Kimberley know that that must be counted with—they know that the ball has been set rolling and cannot stop. Native industries, buying things in India: I don’t suppose Lord Dufferin would stop it, but he has not been urging it forward. What a pity Mr Gladstone is not twenty years younger. I urged India upon him last June twelvemonth. He said, ‘‘You are right. But I am too old. I cannot

838 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India master the subject.’’ (For the thing is that the natives don’t believe in Lord Dufferin’s sympathy with and earnest desire to do them justice. They did in Lord Ripon’s.) Local government going on very well. Mr Gladstone would wish that two or three members of the commission of both houses to inquire into the Government of India should go to India. But it is the natives’ own fault if they will not send good evidence to England. The Brahmins of high caste may come over the seas now without being outcasted. But then they won’t go out to dinner (their food must be killed and cooked in a particular way). And they know what an impediment that is to their usefulness in London. Source: From unsigned notes, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9012/25

[c1888] These notes of Bismarck’s conversation of 29 November 1887 42 most interesting, perhaps not the less so because much is said in order to be repeated, knowing as he does that ‘‘Her r’’ Richmond sees statesmen in England in intimacy. Many thanks for letting me see them. . . . p 3 India: Bismarck is much too clever a man not to know that we cannot give, e.g., to the ‘‘babus’’ an excellent English education (thirtyfour years since Sir C. Wood’s education despatch), that we cannot, e.g., cover India with railroads, facilitate all means of communication, etc., and then say we will take up such and such measures or not as we please and when we please; we might just as well say we will turn back the rising tide in the Atlantic. Every one of the measures that has caused such outcries has come to the Government of India in the course of business and could not be turned back. Besides, India is no longer a ‘‘geographical expression.’’ She is becoming a nationality (see, e.g., the three national congresses). We have done this, unwittingly. He will be the wise viceroy who will give to the reasonable aspiration of the educated Hindus a wise satisfaction, in reasonable time, before it is too late. N.B. There is a little slip of the tongue about ‘‘Muhammadans and Buddhists.’’ He must have meant Hindus. There are 188 millions Hindus to 30 millions Muhammadans and 7 millions only of Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis all together. p 3 India is too literar y, too civilized (with its own civilization) in one sense. The reading public of India is not ‘‘uneducated or unformed.’’ The Brahmin is too literar y.

42 See Sidney Whitman, ed., Conversations with Prince Bismarck.

Social and Political Evolution / 839 Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff226-27, copy Add Mss 45778 ff150-53

13 November 1888 No. 2. Private and confidential. Lord Lansdowne kindly came to see me in July. He was most favourably disposed to these objects we have at heart, but specially well disposed to village native agencies, to panchayats and the like, to local self-government, etc., which I attributed to his having had the advantage of seeing and hearing you. He has now been to see me again and has sent two others to see me (he leaves England on Thursday next). It is upon what I have learnt from them and others during the last for tnight—and all of it is strictly private—that I now wish, if I may, to trouble you. Already the Government of Bombay is in revolt against the ‘‘Sanitar y Resolution of the Government of India 27 July 1888.’’ That is, I do not know how far the governor is pledged to this. And it has not committed itself to a word on paper, so far as I know. But it condemns the proposed executive boards as ‘‘cumbrous and expensive.’’ And it condemns at once the ‘‘resolution of the Government of India’’ for proposing too much and too little. Source: From a letter to Robert Rawlinson, Boston University 1/9/118

6 December 1888 Private. About Ahmedabad, you probably know: Mr Runchorelal Chotalall, the native president of the municipality, a most wise and enterprising man, had worked for and obtained plans of water supply and sewerage which would have made Ahmedabad a model for western India. He had raised a loan locally, which was already taken up. But they have no trained sanitary engineer. And it is now to be done/ car ried out by a government ex-engineer who, it is said, will make a hopeless failure of it, perhaps by some mistake sewer air may be introduced into the buildings, and so the first attempt at sewering an Indian mofussil city prove a fatal attempt. There is so much to be done. And one knows not how to do it. Don’t you go, pray, and leave it all. Source: From a draft letter to Lord Lansdowne, Add Mss 45778 ff213-16

[c1888-89] It is the Anglo-Indian who is standing still, the native who is making progress. It is this progress, inevitable, developed by our own wise measures, which Lord Ripon has sought to guide aright—aright

840 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India both for India and for England. Had he not given to the natives local self-government, they would have taken it. The question is not, who is to administer the country, for the bulk of the village administrations in this, the land of villages, must be done by the natives, whoever governs. The question is, shall it be done by the low-paid corrupt petty native official who pays himself out of it or by the decent villagers, in a country where from time immemorial they have administered themselves? This is the problem Lord Ripon has solved. And his successor will not allow it to become a sham. Source: From two letters to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9013/6 and 12

16 January 1890 Lord Napier of Magdala is dead. I heard of his deathbed—to the last particular. It was for him that they asked me for a consulting doctor, and would not let me mention the illness. No one will be more missed. A fortnight before, he was attending his friend Yule’s deathbed and comforting his daughter. He was such a friend. 13 Februar y 1890 I do not know Lady Napier in the least, I am sorry to say. I should think her a good and generous woman—not remarkable. I am afraid the sons (like John Lawrence’s sons) are nothing remarkable. How often this happens! The elder sons are of course not hers. I send you a note of Miss Yule’s—too sacred I thought to show anyone—which will throw some light on Lord Napier and her. Please return it to me. He was a friend and second father to Miss Yule. She was worthy to understand him. She lost both him and her own father in a fortnight. I would not mention her of course in any letter which you write to Lady Napier. It does no harm to think people capable of understanding more than they can, and may especially do good to represent the example of Lord Napier to his sons. So I would send your letter to Lady Napier. And God bless you and them. Source: Notes, Add Mss 45810 f205

[ca. 12 May 1891] Mr S. Digby: (a) Letter from H.H. Thakore Sahib of Gondal, says he does not like to subscribe to a London fund for all countries, dated Edinburgh,

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important reigning prince from Kathiawar—plenty of money. Studied medicine in this country (difficult to answer—must ask Sir W.W.) (b) Letter from Hon Iaverital, etc., Yajnik, member of Bombay Legislative Council, expresses great interest as member of municipal corporation in its daily questions, advises to invite experts to read papers on drainage, water supply, etc., of large cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, etc., Ollivant, municipal commissioner for nine years returns home this May. (c) Bombay University will nominate delegates; how many? (d) Calcutta Trades’ Assocn. nominates Knight, Brookes in London as delegates, Caithness, Bengal Chamber of Commerce nominates as delegates. . . . Editor: The historian Sir William Wilson Hunter (1840-1900), a member of the Indian civil service, visited Nightingale while she was at Claydon House as a guest of the Verneys. Notes from that meeting, which reminisce over his long years of work on India follow, then two letters Nightingale wrote to Hunter on behalf of Frederick Verney. Nightingale much liked his book, The Old Missionary, and frequently gave out copies of it. Hunter dedicated his Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study in Indian Administration (vii) to Nightingale, with this explanation: Dear Miss Florence Nightingale, Some time ago you asked me to write a book which would show the practical working of British administration in an Indian presidency. You pointed out that while the yearly ‘‘Statement of the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India’’ supplies Parliament with the materials for judging of the results of our rule in India, there is no work readily available to the public which exhibits the local methods by which those results are attained.’’ (v) . . . Now that the work is done, to whom can I more fitly dedicate it than to you, dear Miss Nightingale—to you whose life has been a long devotion to the stricken ones of earth, to you whose deep sympathy with the peoples of India, no years of suffering or of sickness are able to abate? I am, your sincere friend, W.W. Hunter.

He further explained that his research began at the request of Lord Mayo for a plan for a statistical survey of India.

842 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Notes from an interview with Sir William Wilson Hunter, Add Mss 45827 ff184 and 187-90

[17 October 1891] Sir William Hunter: Lord Ripon a viceroy of conviction. Lord Dufferin [a viceroy of] policy. Mayo conciliatory of native [princes], Ripon, [of ] people. Dufferin entered into their heritage. Without them he could have done nothing to get the native forces £350,000, English £180,000. You see, there is Russia close by. Now you have this immense force of auxiliaries with guns and armaments. . . . Lord Ripon, patient, laborious, with such a power of work and sympathy with the people. He was a great viceroy, a greater one than Lord Lawrence who saved the Punjab, who saved India, but when he came to be viceroy over a continent, he was too old and too ill, and lost his self-confidence. . . . Sir W. Hunter: There is a great feeling of hostility between Europeans and natives, but in some respects this is not to be lamented. The natives have made such extraordinar y progress. In commerce Parsis—great merchants—are taking it all from the great English firms. Bombay mills are rivalling Manchester [and] Dundee. The Anglo-Indians say, formerly my native clerk did what he was told, and did not speak, ‘‘mutinous dogs.’’ they say. Now the native pleaders are better than the English, for they receive the same education and know the people better. In the High Court the chief judge was a native when the English chief judge was absent on leave—and he knew the law better than the Englishman. Abominable rascals, say the English. Education. Till the native schools, both Hindu and Muhammadan, entirely based on religion—repeating the pages of the Qur’an without understanding one word—a little reading and a little accounting (to enable them to hold their own against the moneylenders) is added. Schoolmasters have no normal schooling. Then came Sir C. Wood’s Despatch of 1855, which gave high school or college education at the cheapest rate—creating a mass of men unfit for anything but subordinate government offices, clerkships, etc,, and consequently a mass of discontent. They might possibly become merchants or lawyers. But they could not possibly put their education into agriculture because there was nothing technical in the education. Then came we—our commission. And a great fright was caused, that we were going to close the colleges and take the money for elementar y education. We said, you ought to be glad, because now there will be room for private colleges to be set up. And we shall not close a

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single government college, unless we find it deserted. Then the question of elementary education came, and how to get money for it. We said to the native schools. Now we don’t want to disturb you in the least. But if you choose to add - - and - - to your education and to have that part of it inspected, we will give you a small grant. Nothing would induce them, they said, but when it came to the point, they were too glad of the grant. Now the Brahmins are our best assistants. Source: From a letter to Messrs Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Nutting Collection

30 October 1891 Gentlemen, I trust that you will look kindly upon me, and allow me to rush at once in medias res, without taking up your time with the apology I ought to make. I have been trying in vain to obtain a copy of Sir William Hunter’s Indian Empire 43 of 1886, not only for myself but for an enlightened Eastern prince, a minister of Public Instruction and brother of the king, who is going on his way home to India, to study our institutions, and who speaks English well. To my horror I may say, I find this Indian Empire entirely ‘‘not to be had.’’ Might I complain to your kindness that a standard work of this class should be allowed to go out of print? And is it too bold to urge you to bring out a new edition without delay? It is not so long ago that English statesmen wished to hear nothing about India: ‘‘they had no time for such an unwieldy subject.’’ It is not so long ago that people did not take India into much account, ‘‘an uncivilized place, you know, and so far off.’’ It is not so long ago that the House of Commons was counted out when the Indian budget or India came on. But now in the last five or ten years, India is changing rapidly and making astonishing progress. ‘‘I was out of India,’’ said a high Indian official, ‘‘and when I went back, I did not know her again!’’ Men of note go over to India for their holidays now. Now is the time for books: we want books—not Blue Books (though we are readers of Blue Books) but such books as Sir W. Hunter writes, and the gentlemen whom I am now venturing to address, publish—good juicy books. If I might pray you, it would be to help England to know India— with all your great power—with enthusiasm. You will have a public of

43 The Indian Empire: Its History, People and Products.

844 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India educated women, as well as of unofficial men. See how India is coming to the fore! And you will have a public of educated Hindus and Parsis who read English as well as we do. I know native gentlemen in India who get the India Office Blue Books sooner than we do. What will it be when you give them readable books about the ‘‘Indian Empire’’? Soon may you have a public of educated Indian wo m e n! Pray do not disappoint us. Let us have Sir W. Hunter’s Indian Empire in a new edition. I feel very impertinent in addressing you thus. Let your kindness pardon me and give us our book—in a month if possible. Pray believe me, gentlemen, your faithful servant Florence Nightingale Source: Nightingale letters to Sir William Wilson Hunter, in Francis Henry Skrine, Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter 414-15 and 419

22 December 1891 Although I know that Mr F. Verney has conveyed his thanks to you for your valuable introductions, yet we cannot forbear trying to express to you how grateful we are for your thoughtful kindness in giving this immense help. They have not gone to India as sightseers, but seriously to learn what is useful in our institutions. The representative men, administrative and political, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Hindus and Muhammadans, to whom you have been at such pains to introduce them, will be magnificent means to the end, in the truest meaning of the adjective. Siam is your debtor. 18 April 1892 We cannot thank you enough for your invaluable study of Indian administration. Oh, that we could have a similar description not of each of the great princes of India from your own hand! And not of India alone. How greatly would this country benefit if we secured records of her condition and progress from such a philosopher as you. Quetelet and Sir John Herschel44 have both said truly that we British plunge impulsively into legislation without any regard for the past. They said that we should always place on record what we expect to accomplish by our acts of Parliament, so that every new measure should not be an experiment, but an experience.

44 Experts on statistics Nightingale admired; see Society and Politics (5:113 and 228).

Social and Political Evolution / 845 Source: From two letters to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68888 f107 and 122

4 October 1895 I have read your Chester McNaughten book with the utmost admiration. That is the true missionary I have ordered more—Sir W. Wedderburn knew him very well, and was instrumental in getting him the post over the college of the young rajas whom he so nobly instructed. Thanks too for Sir W. Hunter’s Thackerays in India.45 What a condition of things (the ‘‘private trade,’’ etc.) it reveals among our officials in early British rule. 12 November 1895 I send . . . [Maude Verney] a book The Old Missionary, which I think is also beyond all price. I could not have conceived Sir W. Hunter writing such a book—so full of sympathy, insight and real tender understanding. Source: From a letter to Sir Henry Acland, Bodleian Library ff181-82

2 December 1895 As to missionaries in India, I can only furnish you with a few of the facts I know. I have no wit to pass a judgment. A Hindu who is now in London with his wife and daughter, and whom I have talked with more than once (not a Christian). Source: From a typed copy of a letter to John R. Lunn (medical superintendent at St Marylebone Infirmar y), Add Mss 45813 f150

11 December 1895 Private. I was very much pleased with your kind visit and information. But it occurred to me that I should have given some information, though of course you know it better than I. It is about the journey to Ashanti. Immunity from fever is attributed to water fit to drink day and night—spirits only as medicine—not much meat. . . . A man’s own habits, if good, are his protection. We are only beginning to learn our lesson in India.

45 W.W. Hunter, The Thackerays in India, and Some Calcutta Graves.

846 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to John Murdoch, in Henry Morris, Life of John Murdoch, LlD, The Literary Evangelist of India 219

27 June 1897 At last, at last, I see your handwriting. I had quite given you up. I am afraid I cannot ask you for an appointment this week. There are so many people leaving England now who want one. But I am delighted that you are staying a good part of July and I hope to see you more than once. Thank God you have such wonderful energy. Your little books are a great deal better than anything we have done. The viceroy is not at all indifferent to the subject of village sanitation. He has instituted a Village Sanitary Inspection Book, which you have no doubt seen. But you know this is a bad year for India to get anything done—plague, famine, war, earthquake. The viceroy cannot put anything more upon the officials who are still so heavily worked. I will tell you what I hear from Indian gentlemen themselves when I have the great pleasure of seeing you, and you will tell me a great, great deal more. Then I may be allowed to write to you as soon as I find myself at liberty.

Towards Self-Government and Independence Editor: Throughout the years of her India work, Nightingale passed from an early, unqualified view of the civilizing impact of empire to a qualified support for Indian independence. After three decades of work on behalf of India, through various channels, she realized that Britain continued to have only a limited effect on ameliorating Indian life and that the time had come to grant wider political leadership and responsibility to those better able to influence events, that is, Indian nationals themselves. Her passage was gradual, and doubtlessly not favoured by the fact that Nightingale had many friends who saw no other option than to hold onto a colonial India. But she also had friends, some quite close to her, who thought the time had come for the devolution of imperial powers; these include, most notably, Lord Ripon, William Wedderburn, and the many Indian nationals she had come to know. Due to this double stream of relationships, and to her own ambivalence as to the value of empire, Nightingale seems to have maintained a kind of mental balancing act, at times contemplating the continuation of British rule, albeit with substantial participation by Indian nationals at all levels, and full local selfgovernment, while wishing at other times for true Indian self-government. Nightingale’s strong desire that Indians be granted more responsibility in the running of their own country is manifested in her wish to

Social and Political Evolution / 847

see Lord Ripon appointed secretar y of state for India upon his return to London at the end of 1884 (see p 854 below), her (unsuccessful) proposal to have a new royal commission of inquiry into Indian government with Lord Ripon as chair (see p 835 above), her espousal of the idea that Indians ‘‘are per fectly capable of administering their own local affairs’’ (see p 830 above), the support she offered to the nascent Indian National Congress (see p 833 above) and her eagerness to ‘‘brief ’’ both viceroys Lord Dufferin and Lord Lansdowne on self-r ule. That Indian nationals were running for election to the British Parliament (see p 866 below) indicated how ready they were to rule their own country. Nightingale supported Dadabhai Naoroji in his campaign for election in Holborn 1886; he was finally elected in 1892.46 An important move on the part of the British towards the creation of the Indian National Congress can be dated to Allan Octavian Hume’s public letter to the graduates of Calcutta University in 1883: If you, the picked men, the most highly educated of the nation, cannot, scorning personal ease and selfish objects, make a resolute str uggle to secure greater freedom for yourselves and your country, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of your own affairs, then we your friends are wrong and our adversaries right: then, at present at any rate, all hopes of progress are at an end.47

Congress met for the first time in Bombay on 27 December 1885. The organization initially had the support of the viceroy, Lord Dufferin, who even entertained the delegates to the second congress (the first one to be held at Calcutta) to a garden party at Government House. Dufferin, however, soon reversed himself, issuing instructions that government employees have nothing to do with the Congress. At yearly meetings the Congress demanded the expansion and reform of the legislative councils and more rapid Indianization of the civil service. Nightingale, for her part, sought coverage for Congress activities in the progressive English press (see p 859 below). Barbara Dossey in her chapter, ‘‘The Birth of Indian Nationalism,’’ traces Nightingale’s support for self-government, national organiza-

46 See Society and Politics (5:364-67). 47 Quoted in S.K. Ratcliffe, Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Reform Movement 58.

848 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India tions and leaders in what would become later the Indian independence movement. She makes the argument for what was, in effect, an apostolic succession: Nightingale encouraged and influenced such early leaders as mp Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale48 (Naoroji was mentor to Gokhale, and Gokhale was mentor to Mohandas Gandhi). Gandhi read Nightingale’s work early in his legal career in South Africa. When he returned to India in 1914, he began writing a column in Indian Opinion, giving inspiring examples of such people as the Russian pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the American emancipator of the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, and the Italian independence leader Giuseppe Mazzini. He wrote an extremely romanticized and often inaccurate tribute to Nightingale. He described stirring examples of her sacrifices and ‘‘miraculous’’ reductions of the death rate, with a brief mention of other ‘‘good work,’’ but nothing on her involvement with India! Yet, while obviously getting the facts wrong about her apparently single-handed life-saving achievements, his conclusion shows that he had learned something significant. ‘‘No wonder that a country where such women are born is prosperous. That England rules over a wide empire is due not to the country’s militar y strength, but to the meritorious deeds of such men and women.’’49 Nightingale’s work on India in the period 1880-1900 is dominated by the figure of Lord Ripon, whose policies she found most congenial. As seen above, when dealing with political evolution toward self-r ule, Lord Ripon’s liberal reforms aimed at a wider Indian participation in local and national governments. He encouraged local governments to train more Indians in the business of administering the country and he contemplated the time when Indians could rule themselves and be responsible in all spheres of political life, including the administration of justice. Lord Ripon’s place in Nightingale’s mature India work was the personification of her socio-political wishes for India. In a sense, many of her contacts during that period were measured against the figure of Lord Ripon.

48 Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), journalist, academic and politician, founder of the Servants of India Society; Nightingale’s one letter to him, however, was on teaching hygiene in schools and universities (see p 875 below). 49 Mohandas K. Gandhi,‘‘No. 80, Florence Nightingale,’’ in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 5 (1905-06) (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministr y of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India 1994):61-62; reprinted in Barbara M. Dossey, Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionar y and Healer 415.

Social and Political Evolution / 849 Source: From a letter to M.E. Grant-Duff, British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections Mss Eur F 234/32/2

20 July 1883 I cannot possibly thank you enough for your kind and most interesting letter received in April, nor for the invaluable journal of your tour which accompanied it—the native memorials and pictures, curious and encouraging, in which you allowed me to make use of—the rest was ‘‘private.’’ I am crammed full of Indian interests and questions which I want to ask your knowledge, but will spare you this time. We trust that your wisdom and experience are able to approve of Lord Ripon’s policy. You will have seen what a wild outcry, now happily subsiding, has been raised against it among our ignorance. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff203-07

14 December 1883 Private. Bengal Rent Law. I have never answered your very kind note, though our minds and hearts are always with your great policy, if I may venture to say so, knowing what issues of life and death for 250 millions of our fellow creatures rest in your hands, and that you have much better correspondents than I. Great is the Anglo-Indian mutiny. But we do not apologize. On the contrar y. It is the grandest triumph perhaps this time has seen: 250 millions for the first time satisfied with our rule—per fectly content in hope and in confidence. We might disband our army. The governor general is in himself an army. Russia’s invasion need not be feared now. The importance of the measures to be carried out, in brave and honourable pursuance of the noble policy of so many Parliaments and successive secretaries of state, may be judged of by the din and tumult of what Mr Gladstone calls a few Europeans who wish to assume the government. ‘‘Do not make yourself unhappy about what the Times can say,’’ said a most experienced member of government to me; ‘‘if one of Lord Ripon’s men were to ‘stump’ England, he would find all that we most care for of public opinion in favour of Lord Ripon’s policy, almost all that of the upper middle class, of the artisan class’’ is right. He did not add on that occasion: Parliament. But I know that they think so of Parliament. ‘‘Public opinion’’ is safe enough. Those who succeed us will see this to have been a sort of new birth of principles as old as our constitution, when, taking into consideration the ignorance and indifference which has reigned about India, that ver y ignorance has been broken up by the light of the old principles

850 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India of justice and fair play which reign yet higher among intelligent men of whatever class in England. You have conquered for the masses in India. You have conquered for the truth in England. I reverently refrain from taking up your time, which is indeed priceless. The land question, the most tremendous pressing necessity of the moment; agricultural banks; suspension and remission of revenues; local self-government, the most important of all the principles, without which administration in India could no longer be carried on; employment of natives; encouragement of local industries; education: how much I would gladly say and ask upon these momentous reforms which you have made your own. God speed the right. Pray pardon, dear Lord Ripon, one of the most faithful of your servants Florence Nightingale You might perhaps just care to hear that at a meeting last night at Greenwich to celebrate the opening of a new Liberal Club, the only workingman who spoke mentioned your name and India, and was warmly applauded when he said that Lord Ripon’s grand title to honour would be that he had acted on the principle of the equal treatment of the English and the natives, and of trusting those natives who had proved themselves worthy of it. My nephew, Frederick Verney, who was there (he is a candidate for Greenwich), says that, ‘‘from much experience of many meetings (not only at Greenwich), he can confidently say that Lord Ripon’s policy in this matter has won for him a place in the hearts of many, many thousands in England who have helped to give Lord Ripon the day of winning the glory of unpopularity in a good cause.’’ Forgive me these quotations. They are only examples of what all that is most worth having in public opinion is thinking. Source: From a letter to James M. Cuningham, Johns Hopkins University 5

9 October 1884 Private. One cannot but wish that local self-government had been more pressed forward. It is not a question, is it? of whether local selfgovernment should be granted or not. As I heard an Anglo-Indian who had been high in office say, ‘‘If that will not do, nothing will do.’’ We cannot continue governing India without it. And the only question is how shall we direct it? One trusts that Lord Dufferin will wisely continue what Lord Ripon has begun. You appear to doubt that too much interference with popular habits may lead to mischief. Undoubtedly this is a ground for fear. But

Social and Political Evolution / 851

your remark appears chiefly to be directed against contagious practices which are in favour at present among men who have very little knowledge of sanitary work. You must govern India by means of the natives in local administration, whether you will or no. And the question is whether you will administer by the corrupt, underpaid, bribetaking petty sub-officials or by the decent villagers, is it not? As regards housecleaning, has it not already been successfully carried out, e.g., at Ganjam in Madras, where local inspectors appointed by the municipality see that the compounds are kept clean? Besides, this is a duty of the old village officers and need only be revived. No doubt this local self-government is an experiment, but considerable care has been taken to fence it round with precautions. It is launched and we wait with anxiety and eagerness for a year or two’s reports. (I could wish—but you will not thank me—that you had had the first few years’ supervision of it.) There is not much fear about the towns, we suppose, because interest and a sense of convenience will help the cause. The great problem, no doubt, lies in the village circles and with the municipal councils for districts. There is provision for inspections. Again, we must wait and see, and with the greatest interest. Source: From an excerpt of a letter to Angelique Lucille Pringle, Edinburgh University 95-96

11 October 1884 It is thirty-four years since I was at Wadi Haifa. How little I could ever have thought that there would be trained nurses now there. O faithless me that think God cannot make His firmament without pillar.50 And India—that He [God] could do so much by means of Lord Ripon—but we are ver y, ver y sorry Ripon is coming home and that He cannot do as much by Lord Dufferin. No, I have the highest reverence for ‘‘Sir Stafford Northcote’’—he was one of the very best ministers at the India Office. [ALP comment: In allusion to what I had told her of Sir S.N.’s visit to the Edinburgh Infirmar y, when he had remarked, to the best of my recollection, ‘‘I used to see Miss Nightingale—but not now.’’] [FN resumes:] The only reason why I have not the great pleasure of seeing him now is that he was at the India Office and is not now. And I can never see anyone except on business—unhappily.

50 Probably a reference to Milton’s ‘‘pillar’d firmament’’ in Paradise Lost 1, 549.

852 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From two letters to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45807 193-94 and 195-96

4 December 1885 I snatch a moment before the mail goes to tell you that, though friends have lost and foes have won, you must not think that your delegates51 have made a failure. Far from it: they have fought a good fight, they have kept the faith;52 they have made a great impression in favour of India or, what is better, in favour of looking into and learning the case of India. On the whole, though we have lost some good men, though we could ill spare the great majority we were hoping for, yet still this election must be considered a victory. It has been fought so fairly and purely on our side by some. No flattering of the people, but instructing and enlightening them, the new voters, answering their questions, not evasively and smoothly, but showing them where they deceived themselves and what alone could really raise their lot in life, could really ‘‘save’’ them, body and soul and mind. And to return: I am sure a great interest has been aroused for India; associations will be formed in different towns, besides London. I have had a second long talk with your Mr Chandavarkar since I wrote. He is full of interests, religious (theistic), social, political, and labours hard for the good of women. Mr Mudaliar of Madras is also full of plans for the improvement of his people. Altogether your delegation has been most successful. More about them another mail. But, as to the victory even in defeat, of our elections, it has been a Holy War on our side. I take my nephew, F. Verney, in S.W. Kent, as an illustration merely. The constituency was more than trebled. Nearly 9000 came to the poll. He did not ask a single man for his vote. But he held thirty-two meetings in about six weeks—instructing them in politics and social things. While on the Conservative side the ladies went about as primrose leaguers to every cottage, and were concerned in many mean and dirty things. F. Verney’s minority (he, though a new man, was only 300 behind his opponent) was composed of railway men, workmen and labouring men. And they escorted him who had not been worth a penny to them, to the station, cheering to a man, with as much enthusiasm as if he had won and promised them ‘‘three acres and a cow’’ a piece. So I say I give them joy. They have fought a good fight. They have kept the faith.

51 Delegates from India sent to England to publicize the first meeting of the Indian National Union. 52 An allusion to 2 Tim 4:7.

Social and Political Evolution / 853

Sixty polls are to be decided today, my other nephew’s, Captain Verney, among them. Fare you very well—success to India. 11 December 1885 Private. Again, a hurried line about the elections and your delegates. By this time you will have seen that the Liberal prospects are looking up. The counties have done their duty. But still, as far as regards India, we are a good deal disappointed. It is a real misfortune that the representatives of India should be Sir James Fergusson, Sir Lewis Pelly53 and Sir R. Temple, and, worst of all, an Indian Conservative— who is to an English Conservative like a mad dog to a noble retriever— a man brought in by zemindars’ money—that is, Sir Roper Lethbridge,54 which is a disgrace to us. But your delegates have made a great impression in England—pray be sure of this—and Mr Bright’s meeting at Birmingham was thoroughly successful. I was a little sorry that he went into a thing so very far ahead as the ‘‘United States of India’’ and did not dwell more on the immediate practical measures to be carried of vital importance. But still it was a noble speech. Do not let the Indian people think that your delegates have failed. It is no such thing. Mr Chandavarkar, the second time I saw him, was so full of interest. How much he has done and is doing in Bombay that we English know nothing of. I should like to have heard more of his religious theistic association and of their schools for millhands and women. You will hear that he saw Lord Ripon and that they, the delegates, had an interview with Mr Chamberlain. Likewise Mr Mudaliar, the Madras delegate, was most interesting. I wish they had published more leaflets with figures and facts. This is what political men asked me for. There ought to have been, and I hope will be, a leaflet of what Mr Mudaliar told Mr Chamberlain were the measures to which they in India attached most importance, e.g., indirect representation by members elected by town councils, etc., not by the direct vote of the people yet, representation on legislative councils, etc.

53 Sir Lewis Pelly (1825-92), Indian administrator. 54 Sir Roper Lethbridge (1840-1919), mp, author of Mischief Threatened by the Bengal Tenancy Bill, 1883.

854 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India May the Burmese War be well over. All the Liberal candidates I knew carried on their canvass with unexampled purity—those who failed and those who succeeded. God bless you and your work. . . . Do what we will, the majority of the Liberals over the Conservatives never exceeds the number of the Parnellites. The Parnellites and the Conser vatives together are always equal to the Liberals. There are two ‘‘Independent’’ members. And a cousin of mine says the government of the empire is now vested in these two independent members! Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68883 ff178-79

28 January 1886 The first meeting of the National Indian (Native) League (at Pune55 at Christmas) passed off most satisfactorily—worthy of what shall I say? we must no more say of an English Parliament. They were practical, sensible, constitutional, loyal. The one question asked me by Anglo-Indians and educated natives is: can anything be done to put Lord Ripon into the India Office? It is the one thing which would keep India satisfied in hope and loyal and progressive (their great dread was Lord Lytton. Nothing could have secured their loyalty then). I echo their question: Could anything be done? Source: From a letter to Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) ms 9011/183

16 October 1887 In 1885 you very kindly invited my friends, Mr and Mrs Manmohun Ghose of Calcutta, to Claydon. They are of the rarest type of excellent educated natives, the man and woman equally remarkable. He is a barrister, making £10,000 a year at Calcutta (a very different sort of man from his brother who stood for Greenwich, Lalmohun). . . . They are only in England till the middle of November. They could not come in to you in 1885, but they ‘‘hope to make’’ your ‘‘acquaintance’’ this time and Parthe’s. I am so oppressed with work, etc., that I am unable to see them this week but shall before they go.

55 Then called the Indian National Union, it met at Bombay.

Social and Political Evolution / 855 Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney (leaving for India), Add Mss 68885 ff 33-34

Claydon 20 July 1887 I enclose a note for Lord Dufferin as you desire—Maude will tell me where and when to address you in India. I suppose you will stay a few days in Bombay—Bombay is so much better worth knowing than Calcutta, it is the birth of a new nation, a new political system, despotism, like the lion lying down with the kid,56 shaking hands with the rising educated native nationality. You will not need an introduction to Lord Reay. I will ask Sir William Wedderburn—shall I?—for some other introductions. Ask Grant-Duff (I have seen Lady Grant-Duff too this last week; she is worth twenty-two of him) and ask Mr Henry Cunningham for introductions at Madras. Or shall I? You have, of course, got introductions from Mr Cunningham for Calcutta and Lord Dufferin. Lord Dufferin says: ‘‘A viceroy must have not female friends, but as Mrs Cunningham was Lord Lawrence’s daughter, I used to ask her for a cup of tea always, once and sometimes twice a week.’’ I will try and send you introductions ‘‘for the line from Calcutta to Bombay,’’ but am very much afraid I shall not be able. Also my friends at Madras are not now in high places. But I have native friends at all the presidency towns. Source: From a letter to Dadabhai Naoroji, Nehru Memorial Museum and Librar y, New Delhi

28 July 1888 Private. How can I thank you for your great kindness in sending me ten copies of the report, so interesting, of your (and our, may I not say?) Third National Congress. May its affairs and recommendations prosper, urged as they are in so moderate and wise a spirit! approved even by lawyers here. And for the volume of your own valuable essays, speeches and writings. Accept my earnest thanks, which would have been offered before but for an unusual pressure of illness and work. I tr ust you think that progress has been made. ‘‘Good speed’’ is the constant prayer of your and India’s ever faithful servant Florence Nightingale

56 A paraphrase of Isa 11:6.

856 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: Typed memorandum, Add Mss 45836 ff223-24

[1888-89] The viceroy of India is the representative of the queen and people of England. He is not a figure of a bureaucracy. It is obviously impossible for him to get up the details of a number of measures necessarily new to him but of which the civil servants, who have been there in India for ten or twenty years, are thoroughly conversant, from top to bottom. The only thing that a viceroy can possibly do to master these subjects is to hear both sides. Let him learn who are the liberal ones of the high officials about him and then, through these, let him keep in touch with the native leaders. Let him hear what the native leaders have to say and let him have communication through these [them] with the leaders of the National Congress along [among] others. The native leaders have always something to say of importance to the viceroy to know upon every measure which the high officials, however experienced, cannot possibly see the drift of without native information. The Anglo-Indian officials despise the viceroys, however much they may flatter him, who is entirely in their hands, while they reverence him, however much they may cry down the natives, if they find that he impartially seeks information from both sides, liberal and nonliberal, Anglo-Indian officials, European non-officials and native leaders, and is no puppet in the hands of any. It is stated, and I believe truly, that a very few of the Muhammadans are really enemies of the National Congress. These are they who still believe in the return of the ascendancy of their own rule and who are the ones who are really hostile to the English rule, while the National Congress, and those who are supporting it, are really supporters and strongholds of the English rule and who wish to make it stronger and more popular by their resolutions and information. The Muhammadans are, it is said, one fifth or one sixth of the whole population of India, about 200 millions, but from this one fifth or one sixth you must take away quite two thirds, who are the Muhammadans of hostile Bengal and who are not of the conquering Muhammadan race, but are akin to the Hindus and who do not in the least share the fanatical and domineering prepossessions of the Muhammadans of whom we have been speaking, who are generally of the Wahabi faction and belonging to the frontier or to Patua.

Social and Political Evolution / 857 Source: From undated notes/draft, Add Mss 45810 ff131-36

[after 1888] May we not say now that the day is passed when we need use ‘‘calkylations’’ of how few or how many educated natives there are in India? A viceroy by no means of the alarmingly radical type, Lord Dufferin, has urged upon the home government—it is understood in the strongest terms—a measure of reform in the Indian councils, introducing certainly (a modification of) the elective principle into the provincial council and certainly a modicum of political power. It is understood that the present viceroy holds similar views. Viceroys are now far beyond the India Office Council. Of course an act of Parliament is necessary for any change in the Indian councils. Had this not been the case it would probably have been made already. . . . It is impossible to describe the (unconscious) subserviency of nominated Indian members. If the Government of India wish for responsible native advisors, they must have a (modified) principle of election for them. (Bengali native member will give an unqualified and absolutely ignorant assertion about the North West Provinces.) Viceroy—how far beyond the I.O. Council. It must be remembered that even an unanimous veto cannot turn out the G.G.’s official advisors, as in England. Immense importance of proposed addition (desirable to be urged by viceroy) to Lord Dufferin’s recommendations, which already grant political power to native elected members of provincial councils, that these should elect members to governor general’s council. Great importance of viceroy not allowing officials to withdraw moderate men from Indian National Congress to meet at Calcutta about Christmas. ‘‘To introduce more natives into the municipal government of India. . . . ’’ What is mainly wanted is that the government should make it clearly understood that their officers best merit approval when they can get and teach the people to do the work themselves. Officials are naturally apt to be a little jealous of popular authorities and inclined to regard popular failure as a gratifying proof of official superiority. The government should make it clear to them that a popular failure is their failure and a popular success their success, though in each case (looking to the all-pervading power of officialism in India) the result is owing to the measure of ability, industr y and tact of the local official (Ahmedabad Runchorelal [Chotalall]). The most important thing is to get the best natives into authority, that is, those who are most independent and most respected by the native

858 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India community. Are high English officials often antagonistic to these men? And do they sometimes prefer those who understand the arts of flatter y? PS: He is the great viceroy who just seizes the moment to give the first instalment of a representative element, neither waiting till the educated native people snatch it, nor forestalling their understanding it, desiring it, wanting it, but in a graceful fatherly manner giving it as merited boon. He is the foolish one who ignores the movement set on foot by Sir C. Wood’s educational minute thirty-five years ago. He is the dangerous one who resists it. He is the wise one who guides it. We so often see in high official life in India what we see in even the best parental life of England, viz., that the parents honestly ignore that their sons and daughters are growing or grown up, they are horrified if a son wants to marry and take an assured income, etc. Still more so if a daughter wants to live a life of her own. What happens? The sons and daughters break loose from excellent parents, owing to the parents not having the wit and insight to help and guide them by their own experience. 2. As regards provincial, etc., councils a representation element should be introduced into their composition as recommended by Lord Dufferin’s government. . . . And the provincial elected members should be given power to elect members to the governor general’s Council in limited numbers. This would be the smallest but an important concession, though perhaps not enough to satisfy. Approach the G.G. from Lord Dufferin’s recommendations, not from the Indian National Congress side. At the same time, is there anything more important then that the head of the government should maintain an attitude of sympathy or at least benevolent neutrality towards the Indian National Congress which is so soon to meet at Calcutta? By foolishly boycotting the movement prohibiting native officials joining and using all their influence to withdraw those who are most moderate and friendly to themselves, the officials are doing their best to force the leadership into the hands of the less moderate and less responsible. Of course an act of Parliament is necessary for introducing the representative element into the councils. . . . (Stick to Lord Duf ferin’s proposals plus the concession of the provincial elected members electing to G.-G.’s Council). Mr Bradlaugh’s paper:57

57 Charles Bradlaugh (1833-91), free thinker, president of the London Secular society 1858-90, supporter of liberal causes, colleague with Annie Besant in the Indian National Congress.

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Indian councils question two main conditions: (1) recognition of elective principle as regards additional members, (2) substantial increase in their number in no way bigoted as to exact method by which elective principle should be applied, provided it is real and not a sham and that a reasonable number of intelligent people have a voice in the elections. Within these limits leave questions of methods to authorities. Congress has put forward various schemes only as suggestion, as showing how, in opinion of Indians themselves, [the] object desired can best be attained in practice. Congress bound to supply to government best suggestions; they have been put into legislative form, because like Mr L. Courtney men say that there is no use in a general principle unless put into a bill. Bill as now amended would give satisfaction to Indian people, ought not to alarm anyone. Source: From a typed letter with corrections to James T. Knowles (editor of The Nineteenth Century), Add Mss 45809 f89

1 Januar y 1889 It seems long ago since you kindly took so great an interest in India, but I feel certain that that interest has not ceased, especially now when India is at a sort of crisis of her fate. Are you interested in the Indian National Congress, which has just had its fourth annual sitting at Allahabad? A friend of mine, Sir William Wedderburn, who has now completed his service in India and was chief secretar y to the Government of Bombay—I need hardly add he is on the liberal side—would ask whether you would kindly admit a short article [in The Nineteenth Century] on the Indian National Congress with which, I may add, he has been thoroughly conversant from its beginning—no man more so. It is a great movement and you see the viceroy and lieutenant governors have been giving their public utterances upon it, which, although often hostile, place it upon quite a different platform and are its best advertisers, for they show to the world that they have now to reckon with it. It is said commercially that with a good article of commerce, any amount of advertising pays, whereas with an inferior article it is no use advertising.

860 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68886 f93

24 Februar y 1890 Sir W. Wedderburn will have ‘‘much pleasure’’ in calling upon you at Ashburn Place. As regards your question, the full report of the Indian National Congress has not yet been received from India, but the first No. of India which I will send you contains a summary which gives Sir W. Wedderburn’s speech in full and also all the resolutions passed. A copy of this No. of India is being sent to each mp. Source: From a note probably for Sir Harry Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9013/84

September 1890 To Dr Badhurji. But far be from me, far would it have been from Lord W. Bentinck, had he been alive now, not to see that sixty years have brought about the necessity of a very different government for India. and in the measure in which England acknowledges and acts upon this, not reluctantly but with sympathy, will it be well for England and for India. I was moved by all that was said between yourself and Mr Dadabhai Naoroji and myself. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff249, 251-52

Claydon House Winslow, Bucks 29 October 1890 Private and confidential. May I hope that your kindness will pardon the presumption of once more appealing for your counsel in Indian matters, in which you have been and are such a power? To make a long story short, I have an opportunity of now bringing before the first authority in India [Lord Lansdowne] a subject of first importance to which he was supposed to be and is favourable (though in a cautious manner, so as not to excite the natives, nor arouse the alarm of the civil service by any/ his way of doing things), namely, 1. To introduce more natives into the municipal government of India, especially into the provincial councils. Who could give such counsel as you? What should be asked for? What could be given, enough to do good? yet not enough to frighten Anglo-Indians into opposition? What is the least that would be useful, the most that we could get? . . . 3. Are there any other things that might properly be pressed at this time, such as village government by natives in their own immemorial way, adapted, e.g., to sanitation of villages (we got but a lop-sided

Social and Political Evolution / 861

Bombay Village Sanitation Act), or in the matters to be decided by the village panchayat? If you are so ver y good as to answer this letter, might I ask your kindness to let it be within a few days? I am asking great things of your great goodness. Lord Lansdowne has no doubt the priceless benefit of your advice and your thought and why you think and why you advise this or that. It is the more important that we should be on the same lines as yourself. Neither your name will be quoted, nor my poor name. (I am consulted what is to be said to the viceroy.) Source: From three letters to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff30-31, 32-33 and 37

1 May 1891 August Congress [Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography]. A letter addressed to Sir W. Wedderburn from the Congress came here by the first (morning’s) post. I sent it on to him at once by hand (28 Argyll St.). I hope it contains all that we want to enlist him, including the list of members of the Indian sub-committee, as it now stands. This list has not yet reached me from Mr W. Digby, as you were so good as to desire. Could you hasten it, if you are leaving town till Monday? and kindly send me any other information regarding the Indian part of the organization? and Sir W. Wedderburn? 6 July 1891 1. Mr Malabari writes me word that Mr Manmohun Ghose, though not in England, has joined your Indian committee. He does great good by lecturing and sending native lecturers about to lecture in Bengali to the poor country population in Bengal (to people who believe that the taxes they pay go straight into the queen’s pocket!) upon the simplest political subjects. Mr M. also says that ‘‘perhaps the most distinguished of our young medical men in India’’ is coming over as a delegate—the Bombay government paying his passage. He does not give his name but of course you and Mr Digby know all about it. I am not supposing that I am giving you news. I hope you have more news to give me. 2. I have had a letter from the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha—not a mere letter of courtesy but giving me bad news, viz., that the Bombay Village Sanitary Act is a ‘‘dead letter,’’ because there are no funds for it, that the government ‘‘are not prepared’’ to apportion to it any part of the local funds, though these were ‘‘to make any sensible allotment out of provincial revenue’’ for roads and sanitation, that the people

862 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India are too poor to be farther taxed or to give voluntary subscriptions, that therefore the act is and will remain perfectly useless. They ask if this state of things could be brought before the congress ‘‘to invite the attention of the Indian authorities to it.’’ I have written to Sir W. Wedderburn, who is their delegate. Poona Sar vajanik Sabha says that it is going to send ‘‘one or two papers on sanitation of Indian cities by Indian experts.’’ 22 July 1891 Congress. Ver y many thanks for all your communications. I am very glad Dr Bahadhurgi [Badhurji?] is coming. Even now, we have, I believe, only three native delegates. I see St Thomas’ Hospital is not included in the list of buildings to see. . . . I hope the foreigners will take as a model Bartholomew’s, which does not know if it has any drains or, if it has, where they are. The ‘‘London,’’ dirty and detestable in its wards, and other old hospitals which are included on the list: St Thomas’ is far from perfect, but it is better than these. And of course I think its nursing, though not per fect, is better. But I like the esprit de corps which makes each hospital say its own nursing is the best. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, in Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:378

1 August 1891 Sir Harry Verney renews his invitations to Claydon to the native Indian delegates [at the International Congress of Hygiene], ‘‘three or four at a time.’’ I have seen Mr Bhownaggree,58 who seems to be acting for the other native gentlemen, not yet come, and asked him to manage this, as is most suitable to these gentlemen. I may hope to see them one by one, if I am able to be there. I have also seen (of delegates) Sir William Moore and Dr Payne and Sir W. Wedderburn. Mr Digby [acting as honorary secretar y to the Indian section of the conference] seems to be doing a great work. Do you remember that it is thirty years tomorrow since Sidney Herbert died?

58 M.M. Bhownaggree (1851-1933), barrister, mp 1895 and 1900, supported by the Conservatives as a Parliamentary candidate.

Social and Political Evolution / 863 Source: From four letters to Frederick Verney, Add Mss 68887 ff40-42, 46-47, 50-51 and 52-53

4/5 Februar y 1892 Private. The great split about whether the natives do or will ever care for local self-government is flanked by another, more prosaic but even more important, which has only struck anyone of late years and then ver y few. It is this: some few have perceived that, as it is quite impossible for the sub-administration of India to be done by Europeans, and as we could neither pay them nor high-class natives to do it without impossible taxation, who really administers India? Who really represents the British raj to the popular Indian mind, the raiyat mind, the working-day mind, which perhaps may see the European district officer once in their lives—possibly never? Is it not the low-paid, corrupt, bribe-taking petty native official, who supplements his low pay out of the people’s bones? I believe the ideal in the soul of the great man who shall be nameless (for fear of setting up the hue and cry: Great is Diana of the Ephesians59) was to substitute for the said low-paid corrupt petty official the decent villager (habituated to village self-government when we were painted savages). However these are the things which do touch the native mind, whether local self-government does or not. And what a beneficent revolution this would be! the greatest of all! But we have destroyed the village community as much as we could. And then we must remember the difference in different parts of India. . . . I am delighted you met Sir Roper Lethbridge. You are to tell me all about Bengal Tenancy Act and Bombay Village [Sanitation Act]. 12 Februar y 1892 I am sorry you could not take more than a week at pushing [?] Bombay. But it was very necessar y to see oriental Hyderabad. It is continually said—and I am afraid with too much truth—that the people on the Hyderabad side of the Deccan are much better off than on the English side of the Deccan. I hope you will have been able at least to touch this question, and whether the English Deccan ryots do not try to abscond to the native nizam’s Deccan. I am afraid your principles—our municipal and village principles— are getting corrupted by the siren of well-bred Tor yism. I see there is coming out a fresh report on Deccan raiyat indebtedness, that is, on the way the Relief Act works. I shall expect to hear from you a complete account not only of the Bombay Village Sanitation Act, but also of the

59 Acts 19:28.

864 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Deccan Indebtedness Relief Act. If not, I shall be obliged to cut your acquaintance when you come home. I wonder whether any remains exist in Hyderabad or other native state of the old moneylending system, where the moneylender was the benefactor, not the oppressor (whom we have to legislate against) of the raiyat. Was it not in old native times that the moneylender was appointed to a village? If, when the native authorities went round, his raiyats were found to be fat, he was appointed to ten cities (hence the parable); if his raiyats were lean and poor, he was struck down without mercy. What a good plan! But we come in without ‘‘stamps’’ and our contracts and our law courts and the poor raiyats are choused [cheated] and perplexed on every side.60 19 Februar y 1892 Europeans doubt, you say, whether the village communities ever were the efficient self-governing bodies supposed. But you say that, in Baroda and other neighbouring native states, village communities, which have never lost their self-governing powers, are far better governed than many in British India. This tells much historically. We who have much evidence at our disposal, which also exists in the I.O., are so convinced of the truth that to restore the village unit rather than the creation of large local boards is the key to the situation, that we are trying to get them back their village cesses. But of this when you come back. We are painfully aware that our letters are always six weeks after date. When you receive this, you will be at Calcutta, and I trust you will get much out of Mr Manmohun Ghose and much about the working of the Bengal Tenancy Act. 4 March 1892 Very many thanks for your letter from Mount Abu of 5 Februar y. It is most important. And I was delighted with our old friend (whose religion, to which he is devotedly attached, must I think be a good one, for it brings forth fruits), Mr Runchorelal Chotalall, and his success in Ahmedabad. Alas! your valuable account of Baroda village self-government or non-self-government, throws rather a gloom over our ideas of possibilities in future. But I admire so much what your friend Major Macpher-

60 A paraphrase of 2 Cor 4:8.

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son says. We are petitioning Lord Cross (by desire) that the cesses paid by villages should be charged in the first place with the minimum of sanitation required by the village that pays. I have got the figures of the amount of village cesses paid and the amount of expenditure in the village on cleansing, water supply, etc. The proportion is very like Falstaff’s of ‘‘sack’’ to ‘‘bread.’’61 Sir W. Wedderburn read me a letter from Miss Hurford of Pune. She was quite delighted and comforted by your visit and Prince Damrong’s, whose appreciation supports her soul, which is more than the Government of Bombay’s does. Miss Hurford’s work at Pune in female education gives us more weight with the natives and makes us more popular than all the departments put together. We are trying whether the India Office could not be addressed in her favour, obtaining the interest of the heads of the ladies’ colleges at Cambridge and Oxford, also of some great educational society, with the names of great ladies, such as the duchess of Connaught, upon it. Editor: Dadabhai Naoroji wrote Nightingale in March 1892, returning a memorandum, signed, to her, and assuring her that ‘‘any facts and figures put forward by you will be all right,’’ although acknowledging that he had not attended to ‘‘Indian matters lately.’’ He sent her a pamphlet to be given to the electors of Finsbury and the public, but which would not be needed (if his candidature were to be unopposed). In fact it was unopposed, as Nightingale’s letter to him a few months later notes with pleasure. The pamphlet would ‘‘give you some idea, though not fully of the troubles and worry, I may say persecution, I have gone through for more than three years.’’ He asked for ‘‘any help’’ she could give. He also sent her a copy of the resolution passed by congress.62

61 Prince Hal comments on Falstaff’s unbalanced diet: ‘‘O monstrous! But one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!’’ (Shakespeare, Henr y IV, Part 1, Act 2, scene 4). 62 Copy of a dictated letter 15 March 1892, National Archives of India N-1C2250 II 109 and Add Mss 45811 f35.

866 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Dadabhai Naoroji, National Archives of India, New Delhi, Naoroji Papers N-107

24 June 1892 I am entirely a prisoner to my rooms from illness and overwhelmed with work. It is therefore impossible to me to do as you wish.63 I rejoice beyond measure that you are now the only Liberal candidate for Central Finsbury. With all my heart and soul I wish you success. Now subjects seriously affecting the welfare of great India—subjects too so near my heart—will receive increased attention, being urged by a man like yourself, and we eagerly need such members in the House of Commons. yours most hopefully Florence Nightingale For myself I dislike publicity. F.N. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff145-47

15 August 1895 Government of India Papers. We have been arranging our Indian work a little, as far as we could. And now I want to ask your advice. 1. You will remember the voluminous sanitary papers from the Indian government on questions suggested by me, which the I.O. forwarded to me. You will perhaps remember that we asked the secretar y of state (Mr Fowler) whether he would wish us to ask a mp to move for them or whether he would wish to do so himself, our object being to have a magazine article while the papers were fresh. He answered that the papers should be printed in the forthcoming (‘‘at the end of the summer’’) I.O. sanitary (annual) Blue Book. N.B. The (printed) papers were accompanied by a very kind ms foolscap to me by Sir Horace Walpole. Previously to Mr Fowler’s answer, which was autograph, I had, as you will remember, asked Sir Thomas Crawford to write the article and he declined, as poor man! he had just lost his wife. But as I after wards understood (from you, I think), he recommended Dr Cornish to you for the purpose. ‘‘I am now apprised’’ (I wish I could get into the habit of official phrasing) that Dr Cornish would be a ‘‘persona grata’’ in India, much more than Sir T. Crawford (whose name is unknown in India), for his manly conduct in the famine in Madras, of

63 Nightingale had written a letter of support for him in 1886, but did not in the 1892 election, when he was in fact elected.

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which I am the greatest admirer; he and I had a long correspondence at the time. But otherwise Sir T. Crawford is twice the man that Dr Cornish is. And I thought we had some reason to be dissatisfied with him Dr C. at the I.O., and he with us. Now I await your advice. It is insisted that the article should come out at the same time nearly as possible as the annual Blue Book, that it is all fresh matter and that anyone should be very glad to have it and should know that it is all fresh matter and valuable. Now I await your kind advice. 2. Dr Dhurandhar Baroda. Were you ever so good as to ascertain from Sir G. Birdwood what he did about those sanitary slides for Dr D.’s Lectures? He, Sir G.B., was so good as to write to me, enclosing a letter from the Southampton man pointed out by Dr D., as you know. But I have never heard anything more. It is more than ever necessary now for us to favour the native states, is it not? Source: From a draft letter to Manmohun Ghose, Add Mss 45813 ff199-200

19 May 1896 I am sure you will not believe that I have forgotten our interesting conversations nor the question of your appearing on India in The Nineteenth Century. Ever ybody has been so absorbed in war and rumours of war that I do not think that after all time has been lost. I have been on the watch. It is true that editors are not greedy for Indian subjects but you have made a specialty of ‘‘failures of justice’’ arising from the combination of judicial and executive powers in one person, and we think that if, in illustrating the evils of the system, you were to give one or two interesting cases in your telling way from your own experience, this would form an article which an editor might be glad to accept. I would therefore suggest that if you would be glad to send such an article I might then try it with Mr Knowles [editor of The Nineteenth Centur y]. The topic is one which has already been brought to the front, as you will have seen, about hospitals. I do not want to plague you. But we/I receive a distressing account of the evils and abuses of the Government General Hospital at Calcutta. If you could kindly give a hint as to how such a thing could be brought to light and remedied (not through the press but through stirring up official attention in London and in Calcutta) we should be [breaks off]

868 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a typed copy of a letter to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45813 ff227-28

13 August 1896 You have no business to be low-spirited about the future. There is Providence still. It is forty years this month since I came back from the Crimea. See how poor I have been helped, though I have lost all my friends, among ministers. You know quite well that you are the only mp who knows anything really about India now. You should hold on. And courage in the evil hour His heavenly aids impart.64

You should fly up like the eagle.65 When I am low-spirited I read about the duke of Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo or in the Peninsular War. And I see how he held on through every obstacle and, forsaken by our government, ‘‘Alone he did it!’’ And what was the end? He saved Europe. So it will be with you. You will save India. . . . You have divine unconquerable courage. Source: Note, Add Mss 45827 f184

Our scheme going on very well. Irrigation. Yes, going on. Famine, (Madras) Chingleput Cuddapah, had only - - wells. Government has advanced the money and 90,000 wells have already been built. Whether they will go on when water from heaven comes dropping on them is another thing. Source: From draft letter and a letter to Sir William Wedderburn, Add Mss 45814 ff38-41 and 42-45

[c1896] Would my letter could help you to construct your article for India. You will know better than I how to touch upon Mr Malabari, but indeed better than I, of course, on all the ‘‘points’’ and where the chief interest lies. Much information might be got about the habits of the population and of the different populations. But I seem asking for a book. But don’t be down upon them. We are not so very high above them. I could give you some flagrant instance upon almost every one of

64 From ‘‘Have You Not Known, Have You Not Heard,’’ a hymn by Isaac Watts, 1707. 65 An allusion to Jer 49:22.

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these ‘‘points’’ on what happens in England. But how much may be done for these poor people. (And how little or nothing is done for the rural population of England by the medical officer of health). I always think of Dr Hewlett, how when he came into power in different sanitary capacities as sanitary commissioner of Bombay the people sacrificed with flowers and fruit at the shrines of the goddess of smallpox and the goddess of whatever they call it, cholera. . . . He knew what he wanted to do and did it by his vigour and sympathy. But none sympathized with or praised him in either government, India or England. (Tantaene irae animis cælestibus? excuse my quotation.)66 But if we could see anything of that enthusiasm in medical officers of health here! You will also understand better than I how the people have suffered from losing the castes, the Mhars and the Mangs, who scavenged and swept and touched the things which the higher people would lose caste by touching. But I remember the agricultural teacher, an Englishman, of the Agricultural College of Saidapet?, near Madras, telling me that the Brahmin pupils, otherwise good, would not touch the manure of the animals, wanted for manuring the ground. But all that changed and they were glad enough to manure. They are much more persuadable than we are. It’s we who are rude in banging against their prejudices, often with some degree of truth in them which we don’t apprehend lay hold of their truth. Vaccination I don’t much care about; the greatest authorities in England believe that the diminution of smallpox has resulted more from sanitation than from vaccination. (But I don’t dare say anything about it.) But if vaccination is overtr usted, isolation is undertr usted. Smallpox is one of the few diseases which is inevitably contagious. If you have a case of smallpox, isolate it. But we are told that this in India is impossible— the people would not suffer the patient to be moved. 9 December 1896 Many thanks for your note. I venture to send you Mr Malabari’s to me, written before he could have received my request for a resolution at the congress, and to ask, has he sent you his ‘‘draft circular’’? (he has not sent it me). I also trouble you with a letter from Dr Murdoch (not a doctor of medicine)—I don’t know whether you know him—of Madras. He is an agent of the Christian Literature Society in India. But he is a great

66 Virgil, The Aeneid I, 11: Can a divine being be so persevering in anger?

870 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India deal more than that. He used to come to England nearly every year. And I used always to see him (he has not been lately). I never knew a man of his age take up the sanitary problem so quickly and so well. His little books for natives are far superior to anything our AngloIndian medical officers have done. And I suppose no man has lived on such intimate terms with so many of the native races, not at all confined to Madras. I beg to send you a copy of his proof circulated for suggestions. You know so much better than I do how to deal with these things. The only thing (except vaccination which I could not dare to touch) in which I can venture to differ with Dr Murdoch is that I think he attaches too much result to teaching hygiene and sanitation in books in schools. The schoolmaster must be himself the sanitary officer and rule. But anyhow, what Dr Murdoch proposes is important. It is really beautiful to see a man of seventy-eight working with the same zeal and hopefulness as if he had seventy years before him. Could you kindly tell me ‘‘any retired Indian medical officer’’ here to whom I might send any of his copies of ‘‘proof for suggestions’’ (see his last paragraph). 2. Do you think the famine prospects are getting better or worse? And why do they discourage here a Lord Mayor’s Fund? 3. I sent according to your behest India with a short note to Mr Babington Smith, private secretar y. 4. I am glad you have abandoned your nefarious project about the form of India. But oh how I wish you could give us a better print, or an ‘‘édition de luxe.’’ ‘‘Don’t you see we are all’’ blind? 5. Do you know that poor fellow, Dr [Charles A.] Gordon, who sent us a little paper ms about the Calcutta Government Hospital, is dead? I had a pathetic letter from his mother, saying that his one wish was to know that the hospital was to be reformed. I immediately wrote. But perhaps he knows now. 6. Sir G. Birdwood wrote to me about Baroda but giving no information. He is very cross with the Barodists. Do they deserve it? This is too long a letter already. With kindest regards to Lady Wedderburn, yours sincerely F. Nightingale 7. I should be so pleased to tell Dr Murdoch that you favour his scheme. 8. Should I send a copy of India to Dr Bahadhurji of Bombay?

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Editor: These next two letters, to her cousin, Rosalind Nash, were presumably also for Vaughan Nash, her journalist husband, who went to India 1899-1900 to report on famine for the Manchester Guardian. The articles, with pictures, were subsequently published in a book, The Great Famine and Its Causes. (Two of the pictures are reproduced in Health in India.) Vaughan Nash did not cite Nightingale in his analysis of the causes of famine and the inadequate response to it, but his views very much reflect hers. Source: From two letters to Rosalind Nash, Woodward Biomedical Library A.82 and 84

7 Januar y 1897 I am so sorry not to be able to see you tomorrow. We are immersed in business. But I am afraid also that your questions could not be answered by a Yes or a No. And I should like to make further inquiries. The harm done in some former famines which has made the death rate higher seems to have been that, tempted by the relief funds raised for them, they have left their villages. But, on the other hand, I don’t know how this can be prevented if there are relief works as now. I am told the government organization is very good and carried out in earnest. 2. Of course I need not tell you that the success in sending out a commissioner to inquire depends entirely on who the commissioner is. People think they can gain a knowledge of India in six months which they could not do in six years. And at this moment I do not remember a single successful instance. (Lord G. Hamilton has been terribly misinformed. But he likes to do a good thing in private as I am a personal witness.) 3. Yes, indeed, it would be a great thing if larger reforms could be hung on the evidence of a competent Famine Mission. But it takes twenty-five years to understand one province. I should like to inquire more about all these things and, if you will allow me, I will let you know, and perhaps you could come next week. I am so sorry to put you off. My compliments to the princelet and Mr Christopher [the two Nash sons] and their dear father. In haste. ever your loving Aunt F. I think competent people believe there will be much misery before next harvest. The ryot is worse off than he was.

872 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 17 January 1897 Private. Thank you very much for your kind letter, which was a relief to my mind. I had not time to add how pitiable it is that we are so zealously trying to do the ryots good and are so proud of our law, peace and protection, so little understand the ryots. Our boasted civil courts even do the ryot harm by inter fering between him and the moneylender. Rice won’t bur y. But the ryot used to have immense stores of millet under ground, which tided him over a bad harvest. Now this all drifts away to the best market in the moneylender’s hands, which grab it by virtue of the civil courts’ finding. I rejoice in the prospect of a select committee to discuss the Indian budget and to show how heavily our big army weighs upon the native. But Lord Ripon’s policy was worth 30,000 men to us (as one by no means a partisan of Lord Ripon once said to me). No enemy could ever get in if the great agricultural population were contented. You may decrease the army if you increase Lord Ripon’s policy. The people tr usted him, because they knew that his policy, e.g., substituting for the corrupt grinding ill-paid petty official the respectable villager, was carried on not because he was afraid of them but because he sympathized with them. They knew that he had not been able to do all he wished. They have a wonderful scent for a real friend. We are always stigmatizing their ignorance, but we do nothing to enlighten it. Mr Manmohun Ghose told me himself (he was a Bengali) that in Bengal the average native implicitly believed that all the taxes went straight into the queen’s apron pocket. He went about explaining and lecturing to them himself on the elements of British government. When his business made this impossible, he paid men to go about and lecture (in the vernacular) on the same subject. The loss of him is quite irreparable. He knew both the English and the natives and was quite impartial (I believe you knew him. I knew both him and his delightful wife. He was not his brother, Mr Lalmohun Ghose, who learnt his speeches by heart and declaimed them to you while burning his fingers in your coffee pot). My moral is if the select committee, when appointed, would go also into these kinds of things, difficult as it will be! (I don’t like India. It is so rude.) It is said that the chasm separating English and natives is widening instead of disappearing. I feel I am writing so disjointedly. Do tell the princelet [her son] to educate me.

Social and Political Evolution / 873 Source: From a letter to William Rathbone, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC5/9/97/1

17 January 1897 Private. About the urgency of the famine there are not now, I suppose, two opinions. It is a symptom of the increasing and excessive poverty of the ryot that he cannot stave over one bad harvest without, alas! probably hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation. It is pitiable that we who are so zealously trying to do the ryots good and are so proud of our law, peace and protection, cannot understand the ryot. Our boasted civil courts even do him harm by inter fering between him and the moneylender (you probably understand all this better than anyone). Rice won’t bur y, but the ryot used to have immense stores of millet underground which tided him over a bad harvest. Now all this drifts away to the best market in the moneylender’s hands, which grab it by virtue of the civil courts’ finding. We hope to get a select committee this session to discuss the Indian budget, to show how heavily our great army weighs upon the native. That is all very well but Lord Ripon’s policy was worth 30,000 men to us. No enemy could ever get in if the great agricultural population were contented. We have to consider this and also the civil courts and the famine as only a symptom, the disease being the ryots’ poverty. Source: From a letter to Douglas Galton, Add Mss 45767 ff189-92

22 April 1897 I haven’t heard from you for a long while. And there is much to be done. 1. Have you heard anything more about that terrible ‘‘Health of Army in India’’ business? 2. I have had a great packet from India, viceroy’s private secretar y (Lord G. Hamilton did send on my letter to him about Calcutta European Hospital to Lord Elgin). It has been quite determined to rebuild the Calcutta European Hospital as soon as they have money. And Lord Elgin has visited it himself. And the plans have been made and for warded in a thin Blue Book to me, with a request that we would criticize and suggest. And further than this (you remember the circular of the Government of India to the provincial government on the subject of a sanitary village inspection book. This is alluded to and the government fully means to carry it out, but they are so pressed now. I want you to see these papers.) Private. I did see the Hindu (he is a Parsi) who was sent for to give evidence before the Indian Expenditure Commission. He is one of

874 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India the Bombay Corporation, was very communicative and evidently had all the circumstances of the Bombay plague and of his compatriots’ life in general at his fingers’ ends. But his information does not tally exactly with that English officer’s I showed you, that you wanted to put in the Times. My Bombay native says that lectures, examinations and all that kind of thing is no use for making his people sanitary; nothing would do that but two native gentlemen to each street going about among the people and showing them on the spot what to do and the frightful consequences of what they have done. I should like to tell you something of what he told me. And he was not at all anxious to please. The native Jerry-builders are his abhorrence. But he says the pullers-down under English orders are as bad. I have had loads, trucks full, of excellent papers from a particular friend of mine, Dr Murdoch of Madras. He has written the best sanitar y schoolbooks I know, much better than what we have written for India. Now he wants to make it a compulsory subject for matriculation examination for colleges. I consulted my Bombay native, told him it was for Madras. But he shook his head and said those things were no use for natives, that natives discard their books for their homes and that it is what they learn at home that determines their lives. However I know that whatever Dr Murdoch undertakes he will carry through. Source: From a letter to Margaret Verney, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9015/102

24 September 1897 Please tell Edmund67 we have been very busy about India. The way the English officials have worked in the famine districts has been magnificent. An Indian who was here a day or two ago, and whom I have known whenever he came to England, who was by no means enthusiastic about Englishmen, said that he did not believe any one of the English famine officials would ever recover his health. They worked to exhaustion and one at least has met with a hero’s death. The reason why Indians won’t appreciate Englishmen is that Englishmen won’t talk, they will only work. ‘‘If they would but call us ‘brothers’ and accept our sympathy,’’ says the Indian.

67 Her husband, Edmund Hope Verney (1838-1910), son of Sir Harry Verney.

Social and Political Evolution / 875 Source: From a letter to Rosalind Nash, Woodward Biomedical Library A.83

11 January 1897 I have ‘‘consulted’’ on your three questions, but probably you know all I have to say already: (1) Lord G. Hamilton has now given way and the Mansion House Fund will now be started, as you see. (2) It would be an excellent thing if the Daily Chronicle would send out a ‘‘commissioner with camera and weighing machine’’ (this is what I am told) ‘‘to report on the famine.’’ The question has been discussed, has it not? with Mr Massingham and he is not unfavourable to the idea. As of course you know, if true, the man he has in his eye is Mr Morgan Browne, the former secretar y to India and to the society at the Palace Chambers, who has quite ‘‘a genius for figures and accuracy’’ and would make an excellent and fearless commissioner (the man who wrote the articles in the Daily Chronicle). He has been a good deal in India. (3) (I rather mistook your second question, for I thought you wanted a man to go into the poverty of the peasantry and its causes and the action upon it of the civil courts, etc.) Your third question is most important, for the famine is only the symptom and what we want to get at is the cause of the disease. The disease is the excessive poverty of the people (and no reser ve of food) which makes them die in hundreds of thousands from the failure of one harvest. We thought Mr Caine’s68 speech at the Congress most injudicious. But the cause of the poverty undoubtedly is that the expenditure of India is beyond her means. This is what should be argued and put before Parliament—not a congress. The officials, instead of getting light and knowledge from the people, angrily resent all attempts to show the truth to themselves. The first step towards a remedy is to get the House of Commons to realize and fulfill its responsibilities in this matter, and one of the ways of getting it to do this would be, would it not? by appointing each year a select committee to examine and report on the ‘‘Indian budget.’’ I am afraid you think me a ‘‘broken reed,’’69 but you will know I wish you all success and joy. Editor: Another letter to Rosalind Nash on India appears in Society and Politics (5:324-25).

68 William Sprosten Caine (1842-1903), Liberal, then radical mp. 69 An allusion to Matt 12:20.

876 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Source: From a letter to Gopal Krishna Gokhale, National Archives of India 382-1

15 June 1897 I hope you received a note from me, asking you to make an appointment to come and see me some afternoon at 5:30 p.m., as Sir William Wedderburn also led me to hope. He also led me to hope that you would give me your valuable information in answer to some questions of mine, as: could Hygiene be taught by schoolbooks in elementary schools—could it be made a compulsory subject, even in the matriculation examination of universities? I was sorry to hear of the Plague Camp at Pune—one of our nurses is there and I hope and believe doing good work, with others. Pray excuse pencil, and believe me yours faithfully Florence Nightingale Professor Gokhale, M.A. Source: Notes from an interview with the Aga Khan,70 Add Mss 45827 ff192-96

5 July 1898 Prince Aga Khan: A ver y touching man but you never could teach him sanitation. It is all religion and spirituality and morality. He closely inquired after our religiousness, our dissent, whether we were improving on, whether we believed in God, who was to him the only or at least the most important being, our morality. To him sanitation is unreal and superstitious, and religion and spirituality is the only real thing. (He is only twenty-three. I should have guessed him at thirtythree.) He said once, doubtfully, ‘‘do you think that sanitation can make much difference in life?’’ He said we could not teach God or religion in our schools, that must be taught at home. The religiousness there was as great as ever. We could not teach Christianity, that would make a mutiny. He did not think much of McNaghten’s book.71 He spoke of the emotional nature of India’s natives, the want of emotion in England, and in the English in India. He says panchayats are utterly at an end and could not be restored, that all hope of small republics,

70 The Aga Khan (1875-1958), hereditar y imam, spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. 71 Chester MacNaghten (MacNaughten), author of For ty Years of the Rajkumar College, 6 vols., and of Common Thoughts on Serious Subjects: Being Addresses to the Elder Kumars of the Rajkumar College, Kathiawar. The reference here is probably to the latter work.

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governing themselves, is equally at an end. Centralization there was and centralization would increase. (He could not remember about panchayats or the life little republics.) I never understood before how really impossible it is for an Eastern to care for material causes. Sanitation is the superstition. Religion is the reality. I told him as well as I could the differences (during my life) between the country life and the huddling into a small London house, the rush into London, the family life in the country, where the upper servants lived and died in the house, and brought up the under-ser vants. Do you think you are improving? he said. I could not say we were. I told him the story of the Hindu who said to me: Muhammadans know their religion, Hindus know theirs, but Christians don’t know theirs. He is the most interesting man and I never thought he was a prince. I should have thought he was a philosopher of thirty-five. Or rather like a man in a book. . . . Ask him how much the people can do and are doing for themselves, and how much only government can do and how much it is doing. Whether, while your highness is in England, we might refer to you in cases where we are in doubt. Source: From a draft letter to an unknown recipient, Add Mss 45815 ff118-21

[1899] I had had an opportunity of seeing Dr Murdoch on the occasion of his visit to England and had a good deal of conversation with him on sanitar y matters, of which he has great experience. He has also shown me the pamphlets and leaflets which I have read with great interest and they appear to me to be excellent from a practical point of view and distinctly superior to any other sanitary handbooks for India that I have seen. . . . I have selected a few specimens which I venture to send herewith, as it appears to be that it would be very beneficial if such teaching could be introduced in our educational course. I have numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4 and will only add a few words with regard to each of them. . . . I have asked the Christian Literature Society also the name of some sanitar y book adapted for India, as Dr Murdoch published something of the kind, much better than the grand sanitar y books for India written by us. It occurred to me that, if we could get up correspondences of this sort with natives, they might make an opening for the practical spread of sanitary knowledge among native Indian village women, in which we do not seem to be advancing.

878 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Is Madanapalli a town or a district or a village?72 Mrs Burder73 was educated in Madras. My object in troubling you is to ask for any hints or information. But do not trouble to answer, unless your time leaves you some kind of leisure. Source: From a letter to Lord Ripon, Add Mss 43546 ff253-54

29 August 1902 Were it not for the extreme kindness you have shown me, I should be ashamed to ask a favour—as I have been requested to do—of you, namely, to ask you whether you would invite the crown prince of Siam to Studley Royal74 between now and 10 September? The crown prince has been nine years in England, of which he has passed at Sandhurst one, two in our Army, 11⁄2 at Christ Church. . . . The crown prince leaves Europe for Siam very shortly. Editor: The letter has a note on it 31 August 1902: ‘‘real pleasure to receive letter, so sorry can’t receive prince of Siam.’’

72 Madanapalli is a town in central India with a cultural centre founded by Annie Besant. 73 Susannah Burder, wife of the headmaster of a Christian boys’ school. 74 The family estate, near Ripon, Yorkshire.

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long with her continued dedication to the cause of nursing, India remained the central occupation of Nightingale’s later years. She wrote to Rosalind Nash in 1888: ‘‘I think of your future career with more interest than almost anything else, except India and the nurses.’’1 Her official biographer, E.T. Cook, described how ‘‘the passion of her later life was the redress of Indian sufferings and grievances, and during the years 1874-79 and for many years afterwards, she did an enormous amount of work to that end.’’2 She planned to write a substantial work on India, but unfortunately ‘‘the book which she designed as a permanent contribution to the Indian question was never completed in her lifetime’’ (2:275). It is interesting to note here how much Nightingale’s early Crimean War contacts played a role in the India work. Lord Napier and Ettrick, governor of Madras, had met Nightingale the day of her arrival at Scutari—he was then a diplomat at the Constantinople Embassy. He later recounted to her that he remembered Scutari and was ‘‘one of the few original faithful left.’’ Cook observed that Napier indeed carried a nursing measure through (in Madras) when John Lawrence was ‘‘unfaithful’’ (2:170). Letters from Napier reporting progress on nursing and public health issues generally are warm and full. One recounts reading the beautiful account of ‘Una’ . . . driving along the melancholy shore,’’ signing himself ‘‘ever your faithful, grateful and devoted servant, Napier.’’3 Nightingale later sent him a copy of her Introductory Notes on Lyingin Institutions, with a dedication: To His Excellency the Lord Napier, Madras, this little book, though on a most unsavoury subject, yet one which, entering into His Excellency’s plans for the good of those under his enlightened rule,

1 See Society and Politics (5:197). 2 Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:273. 3 Letter 3 September [1868], Add Mss 45779 f222.

/ 879

880 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India is not foreign to his thoughts—is offered by Florence Nightingale. London 10 October 1871.4

Nightingale kept in touch with people after they left their posts in India or otherwise retired. Letters, greetings, useful information and books continued to go back and forth. For example, in 1887 she had occasion to thank Sir George Campbell for his remembrance of her, for ‘‘your admirable little book for the Cobden Club,’’ British Empire, which she read ‘‘with the utmost interest’’ and had given away ‘‘to edify others.’’ As well as thanking him for his kind present she said that she regretted missing ‘‘Mr Mackenzie when he was in England, as he is the person who could, I suppose, tell me more than anyone else of the working of the Bengal Tenancy Act.’’5 At various points of her career Nightingale sketched retrospectives of her work that show her awareness of having been somehow guided from on high and of having been blessed with outstanding companions on her path. She confessed to having sometimes felt quite ‘‘stranded,’’ especially ‘‘when Sidney Herbert, the war minister, with whom I had worked five years in the War Office, died; when Sir John Lawrence, the Indian viceroy, left India; and many other times when the future fell across my life like a great black wall.’’6 The three (undated) documents that appear next summarize how Nightingale evaluated her own work, including what good England had done in India and what it had failed to do. The first, from the early 1880s, is a draft article, then entitled ‘‘The Ryots of Bengal, Their Condition and Prospects.’’ It contains retrospective passages in which Nightingale tried critically to assess British past actions in India and her place in them. Quotations from experts are interspersed with her own comments. The second document, although written in the third person, is hers (certainly in her hand), presumably an overview provided for some now-unknown purpose. The third is a charming, ver y personal document, reflecting on her work from earliest days, with succinct observations on the various viceroys with whom she dealt.

4 Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:171. 5 Letter 11 June 1887, British Library, Asia, African and Pacific Collection Mss Eur E 349/12. 6 Letter to Angelique Lucille Pringle 30 September 1876, Edinburgh University, Pringle Letters 39.

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective / 881 Source: From a rough hand-written draft article and a typed copy of a draft article, Add Mss 45835 ff10-20 and 91-124

[1880s] It is the usage to preface and indeed to begin and end any account of India with statements of the cultivator’s material misery. And indeed this can hardly be exaggerated. The misery, the starvation of the body, is so great that the misery, the starvation of the mind, passes for nothing. The mind does not exist, that mind which in acuteness and subtlety of intellect passes all the world. Is there not then a side of the question more pitiable even than the starved and dying body? We read in ancient history of their gentleness, their ableness, their sincerity, their honesty: no man told a lie, no man went to law, how good as soldiers, how noble and true as citizens, the genius of friendship in them. Where are they now? Now they have the faults of a conquered race without the virtues of their conquerors. They have still the acuteness and subtlety of the intellect (all metaphysics, we are told, have come from India). They have the unbounded speculation in things not tangible to sense; they have the astuteness we have not. What have they now? They have the historic antecedents stretching back beyond histor y, beyond their ancient cities, beyond the relics of decayed dynasties. Their vast plains, mountain ranges, their splendid rivers, their old canals, every variety of climate, and they might have every variety of production, their careful village, the thrifty and economical habits of their people and bursting as it were with vitality and industry as Wilson7 said, no decaying race. They have not complication, except inland, where it is fast and furious. No advertising: they have the instinct of cooperation, limited, unmovable, custom; no economic science; their exquisite handicraft skill, ‘‘taste.’’ What have we? We have the immense practical power and bringing the unbounded power of administration, administrative science, economic science. We wield the enormous power of applying first principles to actual condition, often making mistakes, often applying our political economy to unsuitable conditions. But still we [are] applying science to the purposes of the earth, agricultural science, technical science, sanitary science. We have the railroads, the collectives and mines, the law, the tested power of facts, the accuracy of science, man-

7 Horace Hayman Wilson (1786-1860), Sanskritist, or John Wilson (1804-75), missionar y and Orientalist.

882 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ufactures, industries, trade and commerce, public works. We have the instinct of progress; we have no thrift. We compete, advertise, go ahead. We have no taste, little feeling of beauty. It is all the useful. We have the honesty of a dominant race and uprightness of conquerors of an imperial people. We say we want to admit the natives of India to power in their own countr y. How do we do it? We want to govern India for the Indians. We must administer India through the Indians, whether we will or no. How do we set about it? What have we done to give of ours to India, to apply of theirs, to cause theirs to fructify? Literature, of which the higher castes have too much already, we give them. Agricultural science, of which they have none, we give them nothing. We plaster Locke and Shakespeare on a Brahmin and he remains a Brahmin still. We educate them for government places: one in ten gets a government place. Where are then the nine? Editing native papers, becoming home rulers, writing seditious stuff, reading Bradlaugh. It is hard to say what they do. But what is not hard to say is that they are not putting their education into the land, into trades, industries and commerce, into the peculiar wants of India. In England land is the respected employment. In India it is the despised. India [wants] water and coal and we can give her both. Do we? India is the land of water, if stored and utilized. Agricultural science, the knowledge of how best to apply man’s skill to nature’s bountifulness, of which they have none, we give them not. Of technical science, this among the best handicraftsmen in the world, they have none. And we give them none, while we, perhaps not discourage their elaborate and exquisite handiworks, but supplant them with our cheap wares. Of sanitary science we have made a noble beginning in the chief towns, especially Calcutta and Bombay, which used to be links of abominations. But India is a land of villages. And in the villages we have not so much as made a beginning. India without the Indians it has been too much, or India and the Anglo-Indians. Take the best books which the last few years are beginning so plentifully to produce. . . . Where are our efforts to give them agricultural chemistry, artificial manures? better seeds? better breeds? Nearly every countr y in Europe but our own has its active, enterprising agricultural department or system of agricultural education. The United States have theirs. France has her twenty-two agricultural colleges, her model farms; France, Germany and Italy their educational agricultural institutions. It may be that we shall be told that France does these things because with them the

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government does everything, and that with us the government does nothing. And we do everything for ourselves. And this is the best way. But then we are in this case that India is almost the only country which cannot make a step in advance without us. We are the government. The landlord is the state over great provinces of India. Whatever India can do for herself she does do, in her amazing industry for villages. Whatever we can do for her we do not do in our amazing power for giving agricultural education. In England ‘‘l’état, c’est moi’’ [I myself am the state8]: we are our own landlords, our own agricultural societies. In India the state is the landlord and must be the improving landlord, must be its own agricultural society and shop and provide its own improved agricultural implements and water and artificial manures. Where are our cotton mills? True, we have given them cotton mills, but these are obliged to import the long stapled cotton. Whereas import duties could be set at defiance by home Indian production of long stapled cotton, but for growing this the farming must be improved. There is no reason why India should not produce as good cotton as any country, if their farming were improved. We have given them our railroads and not a native or a native’s child turns round to see the trains pass, one a day, while in England every labourer and evil dirty little boy will run to see each of the many trains. Have we given her of ours while not taking from her of hers? Have we given her her mineral treasures, her coal? It is said that we tried, but with so little of our usual administrative power, that a native put in coal to please us and took it out to please us. Have we given her our trades, our industries? our technical science? Have we given her her own water? And what engine can we have for civilizing India like the Anglo-Indian engine? Providentially, we have what they have not; they have what we have not; if we will only feel a hearty affection for her now, our child, formerly our mother, whom we have to improve, to train and civilize, to let grow; and let her feel a hearty affection for us as knowing more than us in many things but as reading growth. And let us not use the unfitting word civilizing, for India is herself an ancient civilization. Rather it is to give her her own means, for the Indians have not to be civilized. They are born civilized. They are human, they have a literature, they are open to truth, childlike, eager

8 Statement attributed to Louis XIV.

884 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to hear; they have the outcome of imagination, they have inquired into the meaning of life; they can teach us many things. But their agriculture, how imperfect! their chemistry, nil ! their technical science, nil ! their sanitation science, nil ! their administrative science, how small! How much can we teach them! Providentially, England has the inestimable advantage, a position unique in history, as has been pointed out, of having won India by commercial settlements, not by war. She has conquered India, without becoming a militar y power. (Rome’s conquests ruined her, and Germany’s militar y successes, where have they landed her? The country which has suffered from Germany’s victor y is not France.) Providentially, England has the inestimable advantage of being away from India, so that England and India do not cramp and jostle each other. India does not weaken us, nor we her, as conquered countries almost always weaken or corrupt their conquerors. Do we weaken India? How has England used this inestimable advantage? Does she understand India? Does she train Indians in what India needs? her great wants in practical science? Let us see. Have we given to her our agricultural sciences, to her, the most industrious nation in this world, the labourer on seven days in the week from morn till eve, not ‘‘dewy eve’’?9 What engine, again, can we have for civilizing India to compare with the Anglo-Indian engine? Tell us not that the days of heroes are past. This is the heroic age, this is the times of heroes. Though the Ramayana10 is fine, though Rama is certainly a hero and a hero at his cost, yet what is Rama to Sir John Lawrence? John Lawrence as heroic, more holy, as devout, as miraculous so to say, without the grotesque legend. A holy hero. What a power! And others: their name is Legion.11 What are the legendary heroes of Greece and Rome, compared with the modern Anglo-Indian heroes? This is the heroic age, these are the days of heroes. And England’s practical power in applying the forces of nature and science far surpasses the legendary exploits of any fabulous demigod. What do we make of these powers? Do we apply them for India’s benefit? And the smallest unknown career of administration in India gives opportunity to be a hero. It is they, the unknown administrators, who have built up the empire. ‘‘The ever yday work of administration is that

9 (Among others) from John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.742. 10 A Sanskrit epic poem of ancient India, regarded by Hindus as a sacred text. 11 An allusion to Mark 5:9.

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whereby the real foundations of our power are maintained and strengthened and the well-being of the country is secure.’’ There is the material for the hero in the Anglo-Indian. There is the opportunity for the patient here ever y day. ‘‘The hour and the man.’’12 Let us use it now in the arts of peace, which we have, in teaching India, not perhaps the arts which they can teach us, but the sciences of peace: agricultural science, technical sciences, sanitary science. We do not improve the natives of India ‘‘off the face of the earth,’’13 as alas! our civilization, wittingly or unwittingly, does the native tribes in North America and Australia. But how do we improve them in all the arts and sciences of our civilization? . . . Power had, however, been ver y carefully reser ved, in the regulations by which the Permanent Settlement was carried out, for the Government of India to interfere for the preser vation of the ancient rights of the cultivators. In virtue of that power, attempts were made from time to time to protect the ryots from the effects of unlimited competition, but the difficulty of discovering their actual right was further complicated by the artificial system grafted upon the old customs, and the principal result of the acts passed for their benefit has been to make the relations between landlord and tenant more and more bewildering. The Bengal Rent Act now under consideration is an attempt to revert in some degree to the original land tenure of the country x x. . . . The zemindars are in possession of rights conferred upon them by ourselves, but which were not ours to confer. x x The time has now come. The new Bengal Rent Law Bill is launched, which was so urgent from the growing discontent of the country that we did not care for it. This is no paradox. The interests involved are so enormous that we preferred to turn our heads away, saying we could not understand them. The land question, before which all other questions are as nothing, dwarfs all other problems to be solved by importance. For years the difficulties have been growing; for years every month has added to the difficulty, the confusion; the urgency of solving them has been growing. Now the difficulties can be no long staved off. Now at last an act can no longer be delayed both lest they become insupportable and lest the cultivators should take the matter altogether in their own hands.

12 Harriet Martineau entitled her 1840 biography of Toussaint L’Ouverture The Hour and the Man. 13 An allusion to 1 Kings 13:34.

886 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Now is the hour. And the leader of public opinion, the Times, has taken it up. The English in England have said too long: what is the use of taking up this abstract question? The English in India reply: it has come to the front. Editor: The next document, written in the third person, is found in Cook’s biography of Nightingale. It is not complete. Cook says in a footnote that it ‘‘is in part typewritten (with a few pencilled notes in Miss Nightingale’s hand) and in part in the handwriting of a lady who at this time rendered her some secretarial assistance.’’ Source: From an incomplete retrospect of her work for India, in E.T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:381-82

[1889] Miss Nightingale saw in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 a text and a living principle to fulfill. Every Englishman and Englishwoman interested in India were bound in duty and in honour to do their utmost to help British subjects to understand the principle and to practise the life. To this she has adhered through illness and overwork for thirty-one years. First attracted to India by the vital necessity of health for 200 or 250 millions, imperilled by sanitary ignorance, apathy or neglect, she believed it to be a fact that since the world began, criminals have not destroyed more life and property than do epidemic diseases (the result of well-known insanitar y conditions) every year in India. The protection of life and property from preventible epidemics ranks next to protection from criminals, as a responsibility of government, if indeed it is not even higher in importance. The first thing was to awaken the government. This was done by the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India, which was the origin of practical action for the vast native population. But the difficulties were enormous. You must have the people on your side. And the people, alas, did not care. You cannot give health to the people against their wills, as you can lock up people against their wills. Impressed by these facts, Miss Nightingale saw the necessity of sanitary missionaries among the people; of sanitary manuals and primers in the schools (‘‘Give me the schools of a country and I care not who makes its laws’’), of sanitary publications of all kinds, for man, woman and child. The sanitary commissioner, in one instance at least [Dr Hewlett], has been a sanitary missionar y, crying out, ‘‘Bestir yourselves, gentlemen, don’t you see we are all dying?’’ The people must be awakened, not to call on the goddess of epidemics, but to call upon the sirkar to do its part, and also to bestir

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themselves to do theirs in the matter of cleanliness and pure water. Miss Nightingale found in local government the only remedy; in local government combined with education. [Cook: The paper touches also upon Miss Nightingale’s interest in irrigation, land tenure, usury, agriculture, and in all these matters connects state action with selfhelp.] To the native gentlemen it is that Miss Nightingale appeals. She appeals to them also on the sanitary point. And first of all it is for them to influence their ladies. Let them lead in their own families in domestic sanitation. Then, doubtless, the lady will lead in general sanitation in India as she does in England. . . . Miss Nightingale has deeply sympathized with the honourable efforts of the National Congress which has now held three sessions, in which its temperate support of political reforms has been no less remarkable for wisdom than for loyalty. But her whole life has been given deliberately, not for political, but for social and administrative progress. Editor: The third document might reflect the structure Nightingale would have given to her planned book on the Indian question, following a chronological order determined by the successive viceroys. Source: Unsigned notes, Add Mss 45836 ff226-33

[1898-99] What constitutes my responsibility in India? 1857 Mutiny. Viceroys: 1. Lord Canning. India passed under the Crown [1858]. Nothing sanitar y was done then 1859-60. Lady Canning was the first who did nurses (I had had the advantage of knowing her as the active one of committee when I—August 1853-October 1854—had the Hospital for Poor Gentlewomen in Harley St.). 2. Lord Elgin [1862-63] died on the Himalayan pass in 1863. Lord Stanley succeeded to our second (Indian) royal commission when Sidney Herbert took office in 1859 as secretar y of state for war and died in 1861. He, Lord Stanley, was secretar y of state for India in 1857 [1858] that introduced me to him [Sidney Herbert] and I got the second royal commission from him personally 1859-63 (four years). Dr Sutherland and I were abstracting the three sanitary reports from each of the stations in India, called for by S. Herbert. This induced Lord Stanley to think me an authority. 1863 he, Lord Stanley, came to me on Lord Elgin’s sudden prostration to consult whether he should

888 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India name Sir John Lawrence as his successor (Sir C. Wood was then S. of S. for India). Sir J. Lawrence was examined on S. Herbert’s second royal commission (S. Herbert made me privately examine all the men I knew in the Crimean War to find out what they knew, to be examined in his first royal commission; he did it also, but less on his second royal commission). S. Herbert always said: we don’t want to ‘‘catch out’’ these men, we want to find what they know. And I did it (at 30 Old Burlington St., which was sometimes called the Little W.O.). Hence I had a great knowledge of Sir J. Lawrence. I gave Lord Stanley all the information I could, showed how he had saved India to us in Mutiny. Sir J. Lawrence was, I believe, the first instance of an Indian serviceman taking high office from England. He was to go out in ten days’ time, taking temporar y office if Lord E. was better, permanent if Lord E. was dead. Lord Elgin was dead when Sir J. Lawrence arrived. Lord Stanley said: would I see Sir John Lawrence? He, Lord S. would send him. And Lord Stanley actually came like a footman to the door after wards to ask if I had seen him. I had. 3. Sir John Lawrence 1863 to January 1869. Dr Sutherland and I constr ucted the whole of the sanitary administration arrangements for all India, adopted by Sir John Lawrence. These arrangements were ultimately altered (with our consent) by [a] subsequent viceroy (I think Lord Dufferin) to give them executive power. But it did not answer. They could not get any money. I don’t know how they are doing now. Sanitar y commissioners seem doing the work. Sir Bartle Frere came on the tapis [became a fixture], I think, during Sir J. Lawrence’s viceroyalty. He became senior member or head of the India Council. He always helped me with all his might. Sir J. Lawrence’s first private secretar y (a doctor) was a goose. 4. Lord Mayo Januar y 1869 to Februar y 1872. Sir B. Frere it was, I think, who introduced me to him, and I saw him more than once before he started, and he corresponded with me all the time of his (too brief) viceroyalty. Lord Mayo was principally guided by Sir B. Frere and me in sanitation and agriculture. I say nothing of his splendid services in foreign policy, in his feudatory states and native chiefs’ policy, in which doubtless Sir B. Frere helped him. I think he was the most open man, except Sidney Herbert, I ever knew. I think Lord Stanley said of him: he did these things not from calculation but from the nature of his mind. Lord Mayo said himself: his Irish experience with a ‘‘subject

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race’’ was so useful to him in India. He said he was certainly the only viceroy who ever sold his own cattle in market. Lord Mayo was murdered by a Muhammadan convict in the Andaman Islands in Februar y 1872. It was a tremendous blow to us. But it is said the native chiefs were entirely heart-stricken. My father died January 1874. 5. Lord Nor thbrook [1872-76]. Wrote to me. Here follows a certain gap owing to my having been ordered off in the height of the session to Norwood or to Lea Hurst to take care of my dear mother. More of this under Lord Salisbur y’s head. 6. Lord Lytton [1876-80]. No communication at all though he had employed me when colonial secretar y [1858-59]. I was very glad not to be employed by him. 7. Lord Ripon [1880-84]. [His] very decided policy inaugurated quite a new policy era in India. It was to take the actual administration in the rural districts from the hands of the low-paid, corrupt, extortionate, petty native officials who alone represent the British raj in Indian eyes and put it into the hands of the respectable villagers—villages having been self-governing republics with a headman as mayor from time immemorial. His policy was also—the India government being the largest customer in the world—to take everything that can be got in India as good or better, as cheap or cheaper, not from England but from India. A circular was sent to all district officers to report upon what was made in their district. And the discoveries were astonishing. . . . I cannot remember when I was first referred to about land tenures, especially in Bengal. But the thing is to remember the Blue Books, bills, acts there have been. I wrote a paper which was read by Sir Bartle Frere before an Indian association14 which gives information about these (I still have printed copies of this paper) and the whole gist of them. The Indian Tenancy Act does not seem to have been very successful. I was able to give information to Lord Ripon about what was doing at home, to see Lord Dufferin about it before he went out and to communicate with Lord Ripon. Lord Ripon also helped us much about sanitation.

14 ‘‘The Dumb Shall Speak and the Deaf Shall Hear; or, the Ryot, the Zemindar and the Government,’’ 1883. In fact it was read by Frederick Verney with Sir Bartle Frere in the chair (see p 549 above).

890 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India [8.] Lord Dufferin [1884-88]. Endeavoured without much success to put sanitary committees on an official footing; Lady Dufferin, female doctors. [9.] Lord Lansdowne [1888-94]. Did much for us in every way. [10.] Lord Elgin [1894-98]. Started a village sanitary record book to help the scheme of health which will be most useful. Missioners. Unfortunately ever ything has been stopped by famine (with which the Government of India is nobly coping but all not like the government men they might have had from every district) and by plague. What are the causes by which the raiyats fall so quickly during the first dry season? One is the civil courts interfering between raiyats and moneylenders [illeg] blackening the queen’s stature. Great charity of the people to one another, even the moneylenders. Sir W. Wedderburn: eight or ten good people to be found in every large village.

Epilogue: Nightingale’s Achievements on India Editor: At the end of two volumes reporting forty years of Nightingale’s work on India it seems reasonable to offer some conclusions as to its overall scope and effect. Jharna Gourlay’s highly positive assessment of her work pitted the progressive Nightingale against the timid administrators and health officers.15 Here, instead, I prefer to examine Nightingale’s achievements in the light of the objectives she set for herself. Her work, of course, was always done with collaborators, so what contributions can be said to have been distinctly Nightingale’s will be a matter of judgment. In some respects she was clearly the leader and initiator of action, bringing others along with her. In other situations she played a supportive role, encouraging the work of the most progressive forces. Withal, she was a critic of the reactionar y and complacent status quo. Nightingale’s most original work on India was embodied in the 1859 launching of the Royal Commission on the State of the Army in India, her ‘‘second royal commission.’’ She already had had thorough experience of a royal commission through that on the Crimean War, 1857-58. Work on the Indian royal commission indeed began while the first commission was still in progress, which turned out to be an ever-useful source for research techniques, personnel and strategy.

15 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 254-74.

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Through the second royal commission ‘‘the reform of army health in India acquired a political importance and urgency it had never previously enjoyed.’’16 The shock of the Mutiny in 1857 had been a large factor prompting the establishment of the commission, but, as Arnold remarked, even before that [the Mutiny], high mortality among British troops in India had caused growing concern. In the wake of sanitary reform in Britain and following vigorous lobbying by Florence Nightingale, a royal commission was appointed in 1859 to inquire into the sanitary state of the army in India. The appointment of the commission was an important precedent, the first of several similar bodies appointed over the next eighty years to investigate and report on such matters as plague research, irrigation, industrial development and agriculture. The demise of the Company exposed India to direct British scientific scrutiny and gave metropolitan experts . . . a greater influence over Indian policy.17

As reported in Health in India, Nightingale was key in the work of the Royal Commission on the State of the Army in India from the drafting of the terms of reference to the selection of members and the place and mode of data collection. She herself devised the questionnaire, with Dr Sutherland’s assistance, for the collection of data in India, having first won the point that new data had to be collected. These queries enabled a detailed stocktaking of the conditions of stations, barracks and soldiers. The returns were substantial, thanks to the pressure she put on officials in India to do a thorough job, like Sir Charles Trevelyan, for example. Data were sifted in London, analyzed and synthesized. In England the commission took evidence from health experts and old India hands now returned from India: Martin, Lawrence, Yule, and many others. All those findings were worked through to produce a comprehensive set of recommendations. Nightingale worked mainly with Drs Sutherland and Farr at that stage, and stayed in close communication with Sidney Herbert and Lord Stanley. She politely referred to ‘‘your commission’’ when writing the chair (whether Herbert or Stanley), but we might take that to have been a tactical deference, at least in the case of the latter. Certainly no one knew the material as well as

16 Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 67. 17 Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India 84-85.

892 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India she, or had as bold a vision as to how it might be used to achieve health reforms in the field. The wide dissemination of the report was, again, at Nightingale’s instigation. This entailed specific measures, in the end quite successful, to attract press coverage, which was stage one in convincing the political elite and public at large of the need to act. To this end she wrote two major papers to make the great mass of material practically available to a wide readership. All that work, of course, was done behind the scenes, without any official status. The report was criticized in London and in India. According to David Arnold, until recently ‘‘historians have tended to ignore the views of writers like Ewart and to accept uncritically the uniformly gloomy view presented by’’ the report, whose text and tone were on the whole Nightingale’s doing. ‘‘Credit for improvements in the army’s’’ health after 1860 has gone to the royal commission and not to the medical establishment in India, seen, by contrast, as obstructive, obscurantist and woefully out-of-touch.’’18 It is true that the report seemed to ignore the work done in India by health officers since the 1830s. Nightingale’s writings show her rallying forces to improve health conditions in India, but reveal little about what other groups were doing in the same area, and what had been done before. We find sparse reference, for instance, to the work of the Indian Medical Service which, after all, was the main agent for progress in health. It was mostly made up of British Army doctors and it could have been useful to develop contacts with the service. She had relations with some individuals of the service (F.J. Mouat, D.D. Cunningham among them) but little, if at all, with the organization itself. The reason for that might be found in her firm belief that, in matters of sanitation, medical doctors were not competent. The frustrations expressed by A.H. Leith gave a voice to what in India health administrators perceived as unjust lack of recognition. However, Nightingale herself knew and recognized the work done by Joseph Ewart and J.R. Martin, whom she quoted, and that it was essential to engage expert sanitar y commissioners, health officers and engineers to have the work done. Furthermore, the report of the royal commission gave both ‘‘the opportunity and the confidence to press their professional claims on a previously indifferent administration’’ and to urge action in ‘‘sanitar y reform and preventive medicine’’ (72).

18 Arnold, Colonizing the Body 71.

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Nightingale did not wait for the final judgments of the commission to move ahead, as best she could, on its recommendations. While the royal commission was still in process, Nightingale was pressing for annual sanitar y reports with vital statistics. These were produced regularly, although the registration of births and deaths encountered serious logistic difficulties. Nightingale also began work on implementation of the commission’s recommendations even while efforts on the report’s dissemination and defence were still under way. In 1864 home and presidency sanitar y commissions were born, institutions then and later considered crucial to the introduction of sanitary measures and to the progress of public health in India. That Nightingale knew the viceroy of the time, John Lawrence, so well certainly facilitated the implementation process, while on the home front she was able to assemble competent collaborators and press them to deliver. The sanitary commissions were replaced in 1866 by smaller provincial sanitary commissions, although they were still merely advisory. Nightingale pleaded for more executive power to be granted to sanitary agencies, and this was, on paper at least, achieved in 1888 with the creation of presidencies’ sanitary boards, each consisting of a sanitary commissioner and a sanitary engineer. Nevertheless, in spite of such achievements, she never saw an effective health system implanted in India. The appointment of the presidencies’ sanitar y commissions ‘‘in theory,’’ noted Arnold, ‘‘marked a vital stage in the emergence of state responsibility for public health in India.’’19 Improvements in civil sanitation, however, were slowed down by a ‘‘de facto racial segregation’’ between British and Indian communities.20 The imperial administration was slow to extend the benefits of sanitation (clean water and drainage) beyond the European population to the local population. Progress was first made in Calcutta and Bombay. In 1876 and the following years, in most big cities, ‘‘large areas where the natives lived were still not connected to the main drainage system and the supply of filtered water needed enlargement and extension’’ (262). The movement was slower in villages, and still slower in rural tracts. Sanitar y conditions and public health being Nightingale’s initial concern, can it be said that the Indian situation was changed and improved as a result of her involvement? She had great hopes at the beginning of her India work. In 1860 she enthusiastically thought that

19 Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India 85. 20 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 261.

894 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India ‘‘in a few years the whole face of the country will be changed.’’21 Mortality among soldiers declined drastically in the 1860s. In 1868 already, however, she confessed ‘‘that the work in India might have progressed more rapidly.’’22 Her impatience grew with the years, and, to be sure, she was disappointed with the slow pace of progress in sanitation. However, she undoubtedly gave a boost to the issue of public health in India and if there is today a system of public health in the country much is due to Nightingale. Her insight that the state of sanitation and health was rooted in social and political structures that had to be debated and improved contained the promise of future progress. Her personal circumstances did not allow Nightingale to go to India and directly work at sanitary and health advances. Being an invalid largely confined to her room, her major role after the second royal commission had to be one of research and advocacy, but that role was played with talent and dedication. Her social position at home helped her to use and develop contacts in the upper echelons of public life at the centre of empire. Nightingale was, at the heart of it, a great communicator, effective in direct person-to-person encounter and persuasive on paper. Promoter and lobbyist at home, she was a constant spur in the side of politicians and administrators. In India she established working relationships with a series of people active in sanitary, health, social and political areas. After starting her work with a group exclusively made up of British collaborators in England and India, she eventually became acquainted with influential Indian nationals and had correspondents, both British and Indian, in most regions of the country. Altogether, the network of communication she developed cannot fail to impress. It can be assumed that, had Nightingale been able to go to India as she so eagerly yet unrealistically wished, she would have developed more direct contacts with those groups, associations and organizations that were doing their best to introduce a system of public health. Had she been on the spot, we can well imagine her seeking wide co-operation with local groups and organizations, but this thought remains speculative. Her actual impact on the Indian situation was arguably considerable, but it remained mainly indirect. Because of her influence on the viceroys and governors who sought counsel with her, no less than Ben-

21 In Health in India (9:657). 22 Note August 1868, Add Mss 45844 f13.

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective / 895

jamin Jowett rightly described her as ‘‘the governess of the governors.’’23 Was her influence registered by Indians? Doubtless it was to some extent, given that she increasingly entered into contact with Indian nationals and discussed these issues with them. But, above all, her actions left a lasting mark at home and on British officials confronted with India issues; there her expertise on India was well recognized and she was regularly consulted by most administrators departing for the colony. Concerning Nightingale’s influence on health conditions in India, David Arnold writes: Nightingale’s practical impact upon sanitary policy and medical ideas in India was [perhaps] not as great as her admirers have liked to believe. But in linking health and sanitation with civilization, with the wider purpose and moral legitimacy of British rule in India, she was giving voice to sentiments that were shared by many medical and sanitary officers in India.24

Some, those Arnold called her ‘‘admirers,’’ tended to assess her work more positively and to attribute to her the invention of the wheel—in sanitation. However, Nightingale had a more down-to-earth view of her own contributions. She herself often expressed her frustration at the slow pace of progress of sanitary measures in India, was disappointed that her suggestions were not always received, and was modest when results were achieved. It is difficult to assess Nightingale’s actual impact on famine prevention and relief in India. As shown in Health in India, she did not initiate this work, and had not actually anticipated famine as an issue at all. Other people had been at work on such matters as irrigation for famine prevention long before she entered the stage, but she became extremely sensitized to the scourge of famine. She relentlessly spurred ministers, administrators and health officers to action, and tried hard to bring them beyond lip service to actual measures for relief and prevention. As usual, she sought deeper answers and began the process of eradicating the famine by preventive measures. Nightingale actively promoted further irrigation works both for purposes of increased food production and as means for transporting food to distressed areas. In her zeal for irrigation she perhaps underestimated the place of railways, although she was aware of their role:

23 Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:169. 24 Arnold, Colonizing the Body 98.

896 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India however, clearly she privileged irrigation in the fight against famine. That was generally a sound approach, especially when it was coupled with her commitment to alleviate the plight of the ryots at the hands of the zemindars. The latter created a second form of famine, the ‘‘money famine’’ that often followed upon grain famine. Nightingale’s work on famine prevention consisted mainly of supporting progressive measures proposed by other people. The great public works on canals had begun in the time of the East India Company, long before her time. She worked assiduously for the extension and development of the canal system, notably with the engineer Sir Arthur Cotton. In times of famine public works were key means of assuring basic income to poor and starving cultivators. Nightingale’s analysis of famine prevention, using broader social, economic and legal factors, was similar to that of William Wedderburn, with whom she worked for many years. However, dealing with the realities of famine revealed the faults of imperial government. The great famine of 1898-1900 shows that the lessons learned, or not learned, from official investigations into famines as far back as the one in Orissa in 1866, were still being ignored. The Conservative government at the end of the nineteenth century chose to pursue war in South Africa at the cost of relief measures in India. The same laissezfaire mentality that had prevented vigorous intervention in Orissa was repeated at the end of the century. By the turn of the century, age had made Nightingale no longer an active campaigner—there are only occasional, sad utterances to the Boer War and not many more to the 1896-1900 famine (and associated plague). But she did brief, and influence, some of the next generation of campaigners against famine. She notably educated her cousin’s husband, Vaughan Nash, who published a major book on that famine and was a founder of the Indian Famine Union. It would take independence and democracy before famine ceased to be the recurrent lot of the rural population. Nightingale also played a supportive role in encouraging scientific agriculture and education as a means of improving food production. She saw the opportunity for technological improvements to make a difference, as increased food production would improve people’s meagre diet, provide larger incomes and essential reser ves for the expected times of drought or flooding, which otherwise caused famine. Nightingale’s part in combatting infectious diseases and epidemics was again one of the promotion of the best preventive strategies, not

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective / 897

their invention. She did not initiate the fight against epidemics but associated herself with able experts in the field. She consistently opposed quarantine as useless and did not believe in ‘‘infection’’; instead she promoted cleanliness and sanitation first in army stations and then among their surrounding populations. She insisted on the good effects of proper ventilation in hospitals and barracks, which is why she recommended to open the windows (and close the doors). Obviously the measures that eliminated dirt and noxious effluvia at the same time killed the germs that propagate disease. Nightingale’s wellknown antipathy to germ theor y (she eventually accepted it) did not diminish her effectiveness in promoting practical preventive strategies. It is, perhaps, ironical that the field for which Nightingale is most famous, nursing, is the one in which she had the least success in India. With all the expertise she had accumulated during the Crimean War and back at home, she was the right person to write ‘‘Suggestions’’ for developing nursing in India stations when John Lawrence requested them. But the same John Lawrence, her great friend and hero, let her down in that venture, and was unable to effect application of her proposals. Lawrence’s staff wanted, contrary to Nightingale’s constant policy, to apply her proposals to too large a number of hospitals at once, making the project impossible to realize. The requisite number of trained nurses was certainly not available, and the whole proposal was too expensive and administratively unwieldy. This was a serious lost opportunity. The introduction of trained nursing started only much later, and came in at a slower pace than it might have. She, again, when the time came, contributed her own expertise and some nurses from the Nightingale School. Female nurses in military hospitals were introduced by Lord Dufferin, after native hospital attendants and nurses had been trained for general hospitals under Lord Ripon. However, Nightingale’s involvement at this stage was not close. On establishing medical care for Indian women, Nightingale’s role was once again supportive, rather than being primary. The early work had been done by missionaries, American and British, and later by trained women doctors themselves. Nightingale was active in promoting the work of the first British woman doctor in India, Mary Scharlieb, in Madras, facilitating it with introductions to the governor, M.E. Grant-Duff, and his wife. Gourlay credits Nightingale with providing considerable encouragement in bringing ‘‘the medical care of women by women’’ into India,25 Madras being the entrance port. Nightingale 25 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 256.

898 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India played a supportive role again in the work of the Lady Dufferin Fund, which was instrumental both in establishing hospitals for women throughout India and getting women into medical training. In this way, it can be said that Nightingale had an important part in ‘‘introducing Indian women to modern medical education and training’’ (257). Nightingale also served Lady Dufferin in the development of educational materials for health promotion and disease prevention at the village level. Nightingale called on her network of public health experts and educators to find suitable materials and relayed them to India. Social Change in India provides witness to how Nightingale’s concerns gradually shifted from the condition of the British Army in India, with that of the local Indian population being secondary, to the plight of the people themselves. This was, needless to say, an important shift in her India work. Once she discovered the misery of the ordinar y people beyond military stations, it for her became the great issue to be addressed. This shift in priority is consistent with her childhood ‘‘call to service’’ to ser ve the sick poor, to save lives. Here was a problem immensely larger than that of the army, British and sepoy. It affected over 200 million human beings who were desperately in need of health care, education and a better material existence. Some historians, David Arnold among them,26 think that it was a good strategy on the part of Nightingale and others to link progress in sanitation to the advance in civilization. ‘‘Sanitation is civilization,’’ she often said. Empires often claim to introduce civilization and civility, an ancient way of justifying themselves. Nevertheless the ideology, in this case, helped produce some good fruits: it offered motivation and incentive to workers in the task of planting a system of public health in India. By then, however, Nightingale had moved a long way from her early acceptance of empire. To her, India itself was an old civilization and did not need civilizing. She often pointed out how much earlier India had achieved something than the British, ‘‘when we were painted savages,’’ as she put it (see p 863 above). Nightingale’s turn towards the lot of the Indian people themselves is most evident in her work to provide and improve village and town sanitation. The annual sanitary reports, for which she repeatedly

26 Arnold, Colonizing the Body 98.

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective / 899

urged, reinforced her conviction that efforts to improve health in the villages were fundamental for any improvements in Indian life. She was full of ideas as to what to do, who should do it and how. Ancient village organizations should be revived and more responsibility given to local authorities. Care should be taken for water quality, subsoil and refuse in the thousands of villages making up India. The revival of traditional village organizations had merit, Nightingale and such others as William Wedderburn thought, but there were drawbacks. Some traditions were wrong for sanitation and others brutal, especially those restricting the role of women. While the village council system gave villagers personal responsibility for and motivation to carry out health measures, Nightingale felt that by denigrating women they were leaving out the most-needed actors for practical reform. Women, instead of being agents of change, were mere possessions of men, and often a reactionar y force themselves. Further, local councils too often lacked the political will, not to speak of the means, to implement costly sanitation reforms. Be that as it may, the debate around the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill was a great occasion, seized by Nightingale, for making strides on sanitation at large. It soon became evident that basic education in sanitar y measures and hygiene was essential if actual progress were to be made, and that women had to be brought out of their passive roles to assist it. Nightingale kept repeating that ‘‘India is a country of villages,’’ hence improving the sanitary condition of villages elevated the whole countr y. Again she did not initiate the work of village sanitation, but her forceful commitment promoted it and encouraged further developments. However, even the normally positive Gourlay came to a negative conclusion on transformation at the village level. In spite of these efforts, villages ‘‘remained in the same abyss of ignorance, poverty and squalor as before.’’27 A second important shift took place in Nightingale’s focus of work on India as she came to understand that sanitary measures alone would never achieve public health. Profound changes were needed in the social and political fabric itself, and in fact much of the work needed was to undo the harm caused by the British imposition of the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Poverty and famine were not only due

27 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 265.

900 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India to the vagaries of nature but the result of policies brought in by the British. To some extent the tragic consequences were the unforeseen results of legislation based on inadequate understanding of traditional Indian property institutions, but the British government was distant, slow to act and wanted to ensure that upheavals would be dealt with firmly. The result was that policies that favoured princes and landlords over the peasants were enforced for the sake of political stability. Nightingale came to focus on social change through a deeper understanding of the plight of the ryots. Ryots, or peasants, were forced into poverty and debt by zemindars and local petty officials, their helpless situation exploited by both groups. To improve the condition of the ryots the powers of the zemindars had to be curtailed, petty officials replaced by respectable, honest, local village authorities. To do this, land tenure and rent reform became urgent issues. Nightingale invested much energy into promoting these social reform measures, especially the local self-government initiatives advocated by the Liberal viceroys Lords Ripon, Dufferin and Lansdowne. Nightingale’s efforts in this regard were successful to the extent that the public was confronted with injustices that could not be condoned and Indians were practically shown the way to social improvement, such as legal changes where necessar y and feasible and the levying of penalties for abuses. Ultimately, these steps to local self-government led to the demand for full independence. The fight for social advancement in India, in Nightingale’s mind, required education of the ryots on their rights and the zemindars on their duties. Education, as understood by Nightingale and her team, meant not only development of a school system for children but a keener sense of people’s roles as citizens at all ages. There had also to be major efforts to provide practical sanitary information at the local level and training in agricultural methods and the use of better technology. In all these respects we see Nightingale promoting rural development generally and what would come to be called ‘‘lifelong learning.’’ John Lawrence was Nightingale’s first hero. Her second was Lord Ripon, who in time overtook Lawrence in her estimation. Ripon embodied a generous vision of imperial policy. He stood at the spot where an irreversible movement was taking shape, the movement toward selfrule, and he encouraged it. Nightingale herself abandoned her early acceptance of the notion of empire-as-agent-of-civilization and topdown benefactor. She not only became fiercely critical of British poli-

Nightingale’s Last Work on India and a Retrospective / 901

cies but came to see that Indian nationals had to take responsibility for their present and future, and had better chances of success. Ripon’s policies encouraged that vision—they were both well ahead of most of the accepted thinking in London at the time. In the final analysis, what did Nightingale achieve with her India work? In one respect, in England, she was able to spread precious information among politicians, civil servants and the public. Conditions in India were little known and public interest in India was, first of all, commercial. She helped to develop an interest among them in the Indian population and its well-being. She worked toward making the motto ‘‘to govern India for the sake of Indians’’ more of a reality and less of a self-serving piece of lip service. In India, on the other hand, Nightingale promoted, encouraged and helped ‘‘liberal’’ forces concerned about improvement of society and political emancipation. One has only to look at the Indian nationals and Indian organizations with which she worked to understand what forces she sought to liberate. In both India and Britain Nightingale developed networks of likeminded collaborators who were able to pursue the good of India and not only covet its goods. She was not only in personal contact with most viceroys, governors and secretaries of state for India, but to the end of her career her interest in India ‘‘never abated.’’ She kept in touch with events and was regularly sent Indian sanitary papers by the India and War Offices. There is but little evidence for thinking that after 1870 her ‘‘influence on the army and India was declining,’’ as has been suggested,28 particularly when one looks at the Ripon period. Gourlay’s study of Nightingale’s work on India shows a Nightingale often ‘‘depressed about her Indian work and its lack of overt success. . . . But she had a sense of destiny about her Indian work and was totally dedicated to it.’’ She saw her work as a service to God in answer to a call, but was aware that her work suffered under her own limitations. She had to remind herself that her work was her channel to God and to renew her trust that things would turn out well. She also had to be reminded that ‘‘if her achievements were not immediately apparent it was because of the colonial mechanism through which she worked and on which her success depended.’’29 She complained that

28 Monica E. Baly and H.C.G. Matthew, ‘‘Nightingale, Florence (1820-1910),’’ in Oxford Dictionar y of National Biography 40:909. 29 Gourlay, Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj 271.

902 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India her work was hampered by the indifference of the colonial establishment all throughout her career. Certainly one should not ignore her personal limitations, most obviously her poor health and the fact that she never went to India, but also her limited knowledge of Indian conditions. She did not have a deep grasp of the caste system, knew little of tribal and nomadic people, and attached little importance to distinctions between Hindus and Muslims. Her knowledge of Indian histor y and intellectual traditions was rudimentar y, and to the end she wished Indians would become Christians. She herself deplored the general public’s poor knowledge of India and wished that the Times would have a ‘‘special correspondent’’ in India better to inform its British audience: that included herself. In the end Nightingale’s achievement was not restricted to the sphere of health. From an initial start raising concerns about the health conditions of soldiers and women in India, she progressed to drawing public and official attention to the miserable conditions of the ryots and the poor. Her impact, then, was one ‘‘to give a voice to the people who lived in the villages, the peasants, the ryots, who constituted almost 80 percent of the population’’ (267). She aided developments in Indian society that were not restricted to sanitary improvements, but concerned social and political areas that conditioned the well-being of Indian populations. This latter aspect of her contribution was well grasped and was vindicated in the twentieth century. Nightingale’s years of work resulted in much less reform than she had hoped. Improvements in civil sanitary conditions were depressingly slow, due to lack of commitment on the part of many administrators and resistance to change on the part of people. It was due also to the nervous fear of offending religious and traditional conceptions and to avoid the kind of provocations that had brought about the Mutiny. It remains, however, that she contributed greatly to the building of a public health system that did not exist at the beginning of her career, and only began to see the light of the day during her own life. She awakened energies that, once revealed, were only too happy to be deployed.

Appendix A: Biographical Sketches

Lord Ripon (1827-1909)

G

eorge Frederick Samuel Robinson1 came from a noble political family. He was born at 10 Downing St., when his father was briefly prime minister. His grandfather had been governor of Madras. Lord Ripon was a Liberal member of Parliament 1852-59 under the courtesy title of Viscount Goderich. He inherited the titles of 2nd Earl of Ripon from his father and 3rd Earl de Grey from an uncle in 1859, to become marquess of Ripon in 1871. He held Cabinet posts of under secretar y for war (1859-61), under secretar y for India (1861), secretar y for war (1863-66), secretar y for India (1866) and lord president of the Council (1868-73). In his younger days he was influenced by the Christian socialism of F.D. Maurice. Later he can be seen as a more moderate Liberal. Throughout he was a man of conviction. He was Sidney Herbert’s choice to succeed him at the War Office when he died and Nightingale won her campaign to get him appointed there in 1863, although not until after a poor intervening appointment, in her view. His work on War Office reforms, with Nightingale’s machinations to get him the appointment, are treated in a later volume. Ripon converted to Roman Catholicism in 1874. He was already ‘‘out of office’’ by this time, having resigned over a minor difference with Gladstone, both recognizing that the Liberal government was nearing its end. Ripon clearly did not want his religious conversion to end his political career. He wrote his political colleagues frankly about his views and received full acceptance by all but Gladstone, the most important. Ripon remonstrated by letter with Gladstone, who finally

1 On Lord Ripon see Sarvepalli Gopal, The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, and Lucien Wolf, Life of the First Marquess of Ripon.

/ 903

904 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India agreed that his Roman Catholicism need not be a barrier to further public service (it was more acceptable to have been born Roman Catholic than to convert). Ripon, however, stayed away from political issues for the next six years, confining his speeches in the House of Lords to educational and church matters. When Gladstone and his Liberals won election again in 1880, Ripon wanted a Cabinet post. He was offered the viceroyalty of India, although only after one other person had turned it down. Ripon himself prevaricated on account of his wife’s health. Nightingale was elated by his appointment as viceroy in 1880. He promptly ended the Anglo-Afghan hostilities and entered into a peace treaty with the new emir. Then he could set his reform program in motion. A cousin, R.S. Ellis, was an India expert and Nightingale collaborator, in other words, a trusted source with excellent practical experience of the country. As well Ripon had become much involved in India issues in the years preceding his appointment. Three main issues marked his viceroyalty: the institution of measures for self-government, especially at the local level; the establishment of a rent commission, which eventually resulted in the Bengal Tenancy Act; and increased acceptance of Indian nationals in the judiciary, through the Ilbert Bill. These are all major subjects of this volume. Further Ripon reduced the salt tax and repealed the detested Vernacular Press Act of 1878. He was a strong promoter of the co-operative movement. He did much to reform primar y and secondary education. He was the first viceroy to encourage the training of Indians for self-r ule. His youthful Christian socialism can be seen as the source here, providing both the intellectual rationale for self-government and the conviction to work for it against determined opposition. An article he published in 1852, ‘‘Duty of the Age,’’ includes a justification of self-government. Nightingale published ‘‘Our Indian Stewardship’’ as a defence of Lord Ripon’s policies and liberal values. She even came to rank him above her earlier hero, John Lawrence. Ripon in fact had been able to carry out more concrete reforms than Lawrence, for all his years of ser vice in India and his status of ‘‘saviour of the Punjab.’’ Ripon’s leaving office early was one last service he did India, enabling the appointment of another Liberal viceroy, Lord Dufferin, and thus ensuring support for reform measures. Back in England Ripon was involved in the battle for home rule in Ireland and in South African politics. He continued to advise Nightin-

Appendix A: Biographical Sketches / 905

gale on issues and assist her with contacts. He held several Cabinet posts in Gladstone’s third and fourth governments, but not secretar y of state for India, which India reformers, including Nightingale herself, would have liked. It has been said that, when Ripon left India at the end of 1884, no other governor general before or after him was more dear to the Indians as he was, and conversely no other governor general was possibly so detested by the Anglo-Indians as he was.

(Dame) Mary Scharlieb (1845-1930) Née Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, Dr Scharlieb married a member of the Indian civil service in 1865 and a year later left for Madras, where the couple set up their home. They had two sons. Through assisting her husband in his legal practice, she discovered the suffering Hindu and Muslim women experienced in childbirth, prevented by their religion and social position from seeking medical attention from male European doctors. She decided to obtain medical training, studying midwifer y first at the Madras Lying-in Hospital, then medicine at the Madras Medical College (1874-77), where she received reluctant instruction from Surgeon Branfoot. Back in England in 1877, she studied at the London School of Medicine for Women, which was affiliated with the Royal Free Hospital, the only hospital then to permit women to practise. She obtained her M.B. degree, with the gold medal for obstetrics. She then sought to do specialist work in obstetrics in England but was refused. As Dr Elizabeth Blackwell wrote Nightingale: Dr Scharlieb (who I hope will do a great work in India), after graduating with distinguished honour in the university went vainly round to all the leading obstetricians of London to seek the means of gaining special skill in operative midwifery. All declined help, and told her emphatically that they wished to keep all operative midwifer y to themselves. She is therefore gone to Vienna. She told me that there were no opportunities for the attainment of practical midwifer y by women in England, to be compared to the opportunities enjoyed and exercised by the matron of her own Madras hospital, and what she had gained there herself had enabled her to pass so brilliant an examination at the London University!2

2 Letter 16 Februar y 1883, Add Mss 45807 f37.

906 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Nightingale evidently met Scharlieb in 1879—their correspondence and meetings continued to 1897.3 Nightingale not only relied on her for information about India, and assisted her career there, she recommended Scharlieb to her sister as a gynecologist. Nightingale and Scharlieb were connected as well through two senior men doctors who acted as sponsors for her, Sir Henry Acland and Sir James Paget. To Acland Nightingale described having ‘‘seen your protégée, Mrs Scharlieb. What an admirable woman! Instead of thinking how little will do to make a lady doctor in India, she thinks that the best only will do, the most thorough medical education and training. That is the way and the truth and the life.’’4 Scharlieb indeed became a pioneer of Indian female medical education. In 1883, after Scharlieb’s inter view with Queen Victoria (see p 719 above) she returned to Madras. There she founded a hospital for Indian women, the Royal Victoria Hospital for Caste and Gosha Women. She also carried on a large private practice with both Indian and European patients. She taught at the Madras Medical College. Scharlieb returned to London in 1887, ‘‘broken in health,’’ as Nightingale reported to her brother-in-law.5 She did further work in medicine, becoming the first woman to qualify for the M.D. degree, in 1888. She became a specialist in diseases of women and gynecology. Scharlieb’s numerous publications influenced opinion on women’s health topics. As one of the best representatives of the first generation of medical women, she was invited to carry out several public duties: commissioner for lunacy, magistrate, commissioner on venereal diseases, commissioner for free clinics, etc. Much in demand as a speaker, she worked at promoting Christian principles through the example of a good life and felt the duty to advance the cause of women. She was appointed gynecologist to the Royal Free Hospital in 1902. She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1928. Scharlieb published her own Reminiscences in 1924, which include a tribute to Nightingale, quoted above (see p 722 above). She also wrote an excellent biographical sketch of Nightingale.6

3 There are letters both ways in Wellcome Ms 9008-09, 9011-13; Add Mss 45808, 47761. 4 Letter 9 May 1879, Florence Nightingale Museum (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/79/3. 5 Letter to Harry Verney 7 March 1887, Wellcome (Claydon copy) Ms 9011/102. Further on her return is reported in Life and Family (1:381). 6 ‘‘Florence Nightingale,’’ in Christian Social Reformers of the Nineteenth Century.

Appendix A: Biographical Sketches / 907

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) Son of a poor Parsi priest, Dadabhai Naoroji7 was educated at Elphinstone College in Bombay, and became the first Indian professor there, holding a chair in mathematics. He was then appointed professor of Gujarati at University College, London. He argued for half a century for the rights of Indians as British subjects and fought to open the Indian civil service to Indians. A critic of British policies of ‘‘draining’’ Indian riches to enhance British economy, he was not inclined to agree with the proclaimed imperial claim of ‘‘governing India for India’s good.’’ Indian resources, he thought, should be used for internal Indian investments. His connection with Nightingale was important for the concrete knowledge on Indian conditions he supplied to her. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the British Parliament in 1886, when Nightingale wrote a letter of support for him, reproduced in Society and Politics (5:364-65). He won in 1892, to become the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons. He served from 1892 to 1895. Nightingale assisted him with political contacts on his election, for example in arranging for him to meet the senior whip of the Liberal caucus, a letter reproduced in Society and Politics (5:365). He worked with Sir William Wedderburn to establish, in 1893, the Indian Parliamentary Committee. Naoroji did a great deal of public speaking in England to win support for India. His analysis of the causes of India’s poverty won him little support at the time with the mainstream public, more with the social democratic left. In 1901 he published Pover ty and Un-British Rule in India, a devastating condemnation of British exploitation of Indian resources in Western-style ‘‘development.’’

7 On Naoroji see Munni Rawal, Dadabhai Naoroji: A Prophet of Indian Nationalism 1855-1900, and Rustom Pestonji Masani, Dadabhai Naoroji: The Grand Old Man of India.

908 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Sir William Wedderbur n (1838-1918) William Wedderburn8 was born in Edinburgh to a family of long tradition and considerable wealth. Upon completing the Indian civil service examination he left for India in 1860 and began his duties as an assistant collector in Bombay presidency. In 1874 he entered the magistracy and in 1882 became district and sessions judge of Pune. At the time of his early retirement, in 1887, frustrated by bureaucratic inertia, he was chief secretar y to the government of Bombay. During his service in India, Wedderburn’s attention was focused on famine, the poverty of the Indian peasantry, agricultural indebtedness and the revival of the ancient village system. He proposed a model of co-operative agricultural banks to provide credit to ryots at decent interest rates. His concern with all these problems brought him in touch with the Indian National Congress; after his retirement, he threw himself heart and soul into it. He presided over the fourth meeting of the National Congress in Bombay in 1889, and befriended both Ranade and Naoroji. Interest in all those problems brought him close to Nightingale, with whom profound congeniality existed. They were friends, corresponded and often saw each other to advance their cause. Wedderburn published ‘‘Florence Nightingale on India’’ in The Contemporary Review in 1914 to give publicity to her views, so close to his own. In 1893 Wedderburn entered Parliament as a Liberal member and sought to voice India’s grievances within the House. With Dadabhai Naoroji, he formed the Indian Parliamentary Committee, a group of India sympathizers, which he chaired from 1893 to 1900. He edited the journal India. In 1895 he represented India on the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure. He then joined the activities of the Indian Famine Union, set up in June 1901, to investigate famines and propose measures to combat them. In 1904 he went to India to attend the twentieth session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, which was presided over by Sir Henry Cotton. He was invited again in 1910 to preside over the twenty-fifth session. He was a friend of Allan O. Hume, co-founder and general secretar y of the congress. He remained chair of the British committee of the congress from 1890 to his death.

8 See S.K. Ratcliffe, Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Reform Movement, and Virendra Pal Rakesh, Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Freedom Movement.

Appendix A: Biographical Sketches / 909

As a Liberal, William Wedderburn believed in the principle of selfgovernment, echoing the policies of Lord Ripon, whom he steadily supported. Along with the founders of the Indian National Congress, he believed in the future of India in partnership with the British Commonwealth and welcomed the formal proclamation made by the British government in 1917 that the goal of British policy in India was the progressive establishment of self-rule. The 1918 Montagu-Chelmsford Report, aiming at introducing partial responsible government in the provinces of British India, was regarded by him as the crowning of his own work. Some members of the old order condemned him as a disloyal officer for his continual tirades against the bureaucracy, his incessant pleading for the Indian peasant and his stand on constitutional reforms for India. History, however, vindicated him. Nightingale left him £250 in her will ‘‘for certain purposes,’’ and asked that he be consulted on the publication of her India material.9 The legacy was initially put into a Florence Nightingale Village Sanitation Fund. The money was later used to provide a scholarship for an Indian girl student, to include sanitary science in her training (126).

9 See Life and Family (1:854).

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time British Government The political labels are merely indicative of a tendency, parties being still in a state of flux. Par ty Prime Minister 1855 Feb. 1858 Feb. 1859 June 1865 Oct. 1866 June 1868 Feb. 1868 Dec. 1874 Feb. 1880 Apr. 1885 June 1886 Feb. 1886 Aug. 1892 Aug. 1894 Mar. 1895 June

Whig/Tor y Tory (Conser vative) Whig/Tor y Whig (Liberal) Tory (Conser vative) Conser vative Liberal Conser vative Liberal Conser vative Liberal Conser vative Liberal Liberal Unionist (Conservative)

Viscount Palmerston Earl of Derby [14th] Viscount Palmerston Earl Russell Earl of Derby Benjamin Disraeli William Ewart Gladstone Benjamin Disraeli W.E. Gladstone Marquess of Salisbury W.E. Gladstone Marquess of Salisbury W.E. Gladstone Earl of Rosebery Marquess of Salisbury

Gover nors General and Viceroys Governors General of Bengal, controlling Bombay and Madras 1773–85 Warren Hastings 1786–93 Earl Charles Cornwallis 1793–98 Sir John Shore 1798–1805 Earl of Mornington (Lord Wellesley) 1805 Earl Charles Cornwallis 1805–07 Sir G. H. Barlow 1807–13 Baron Minto (1st Earl of Minto) 1813–23 Earl of Moira 1819–27 M. Elphinstone in Bombay Chs. T. Metcalfe at Delhi Th. Munro in Madras 1823–28 Baron William Amherst 1828–34 Lord William Bentinck

910 /

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time / 911 Governors General of India and Viceroys 1834–35 Lord William Bentinck 1835–36 Sir Charles T. Metcalfe (Acting) 1836–42 Baron Auckland 1842–44 Baron Ellenborough 1844–48 Sir H. Hardinge 1848–56 Earl of Dalhousie 1856–62 Viscount Canning 1862–63 8th Earl of Elgin 1864–69 Sir John Lawrence 1869–72 Earl of Mayo 1872–76 Baron Northbrook 1876–80 Baron Lytton 1880–84 Marquess of Ripon 1884–88 Earl of Dufferin 1888–94 Marquess of Lansdowne 1894–98 9th Earl of Elgin 1899–1905 Baron Curzon of Kedleston

Secretar y of State for Foreign Affairs 1853 1858 1859 1865 1866 1868 1870 1874 1878 1880 1885 1886 1886 1887 1892 1894 1895 1900

Feb. Feb. June Nov. July Dec. July Feb. Apr. Apr. June Feb. Aug. Jan. Aug. Mar. June Nov.

Earl of Clarendon Earl of Malmesbury Lord John Russell (Earl Russell) Earl of Clarendon Lord Stanley (15th Earl of Derby) Earl of Clarendon Earl Granville Lord Stanley (15th Earl of Derby) Marquess of Salisbury Earl Granville Marquess of Salisbury Lord Roseber y (Earl of Midlothian) Sir Stafford Northcote (Earl of Iddesleigh) Marquess of Salisbury Lord Roseber y (Earl of Midlothian) Earl of Kimberley Marquess of Salisbury Marquess of Lansdowne

Secretar y of State for the Colonies (since 1768) 1854 June 1855 Feb. Mar. 1855 July Nov. 1858 Feb. June 1859 June 1864 Apr. 1866 July

Sir George Grey Sidney Herbert (2 weeks) Lord John Russell Sir William Molesworth Henr y Labouchere (Lord Taunton) Lord Stanley (15th Earl of Derby) transferred to India Office Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton (Lord Lytton) Duke of Newcastle Edward Cardwell Lord of Carnarvon

912 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 1867 1868 1870 1874 1878 1880 1882 1885 1886

Mar. Nov. July Feb. Feb. Apr. Dec. June Feb. Aug. 1887 Jan. 1892 Aug. 1895 June

Duke of Buckingham and Chandos Lord Granville Earl of Kimberley Earl of Carnar von Sir Michael Hicks Beach, later earl of St Aldwyn Earl of Kimberley 15th Earl of Derby F.A. Stanley (16th Earl of Derby) Earl Granville Edward Stanhope Lord Knutsford Marquess of Ripon Joseph Chamberlain

Secretar y of State for War

Secretar y of State for India

1852 Duke of Newcastle Sidney Herbert (secretar y-atwar) 1855 Lord Panmure 1858 Gen. Jonathan Peel 1859 Sidney Herbert 1861 Sir George Cornewall Lewis 1863 Lord de Grey and Ripon 1866 Marquess of Hartington Gen. Jonathan Peel

1858 Lord Stanley (15th Earl of Derby) 1859 Sir Chas. Wood (Viscount Halifax)

1867 Sir John Somerset Pakington 1868 Edward Cardwell (Viscount Cardwell) 1874 Gathorne-Hardy (Earl of Cranbrook) 1878 F.A. Stanley (16th Earl of Derby) 1880 Hugh Culling Eardley Childers 1882 Marquess of Hartington 1885 William Henry Smith 1886 Edward Stanhope Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

1895 Marquess of Lansdowne

1866 Lord de Grey and Ripon Viscount Cranborne (Marquess of Salisbur y) 1867 Sir Stafford Henr y Northcote (Earl of Iddesleigh) 1868 Geo. Douglas Campbell (Duke of Argyll) 1874 Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil (Marquess of Salisbury) 1878 Viscount Cranbrook 1880 Spencer Compton Cavendish (Marquess of Hartington) 1882 John Wodehouse (Earl of Kimberley) 1885 Lord Randolph Churchill 1886 John Wodehouse (Earl of Kimberley) Viscount R. Assheton Cross 1892 John Wodehouse (Earl of Kimberly) 1894 Henr y Hartley Fowler (Viscount Wolverhampton) 1895 Lord George Francis Hamilton

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time / 913

Per manent Under Secretaries of State for India 1858–1909 1858 1860 1874 1883 1909

Sir George Russell Clerk Herman Merivale Sir Louis Mallet Arthur Godley Sir Richmond Ritchie

Parliamentar y Under Secretaries of State for India 1858–1901 1858 1858 1859 1861 (six months) 1861 1864 (seven months) 1864 1866 (five months) 1866 1867 1868 1874 1878 1880 (four months) 1880 1883 1885 1886 (two months) 1886 (three months) 1886 1892 1893 1895 1896 1901

Henr y Danby Seymour Henr y James Baillie Thomas George Baring (Lord Northbrook) Earl de Grey and Ripon (Marquess of Ripon) Thomas George Baring (Lord Northbrook) Lord Wodehouse (Earl of Kimberley) Lord Dufferin and Claneboye James Stansfeld Sir James Fergusson Lord Clinton Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff Lord George F. Hamilton Edward Stanhope Marquess of Lansdowne Viscount Enfield (Earl of Stratford) John K. Cross Lord Harris Sir U. Kay-Shuttleworth (Bart. Shuttleworth) Edward Stafford Howard Sir John E. Gorst Hon. G.N. Curzon (Marquess Curzon) G.W.E. Russell Lord Reay Earl of Onslow Earl of Hardwicke

Members of the Council of India 1858–1905 Council was made of fifteen appointed members with India experience: eight nominated by the Crown, seven elected by the Court of Directors or later by Council; members of Parliament were not eligible. Formed into committees to conduct business. *indicates formerly director of the East India Company Charles Mills* John Shepherd* James Wier Hogg* Elliot Macnaghten* Ross Donnelly Mangles* William J. Eastwick* Henr y Thoby Prinsep*

1858–63 1858–59 1858–72 1858–71 1858–74 1858–68 1858–74

Sir Frederick Currie* Sir John P. Willoughby Sir Robert J.H. Vivian* Sir Henry C. Rawlinson* Sir Henry C. Montgomer y Sir John L.M. Lawrence

1858–75 1858–66 1858–74 1858–59 1868–95 1858–76 1858–63

914 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Sir Proby T. Cautley William U Arbuthnot Col. Henry M. Durand Sir Thomas E. Perry Col. William E. Baker Sir George R. Clerk Sir H. Bartle Frere Sir Robert Montgomer y Sir Frederick J. Halliday James F. Stephen Sir Henry J.S. Maine Sir Louis Mallet Sir G. Campbell A. Cassels Maj. Genl. E.B. Johnson Maj. Genl. Richard Strachey E. Drummond Sir B.H. Ellis Col. Henry Yule Maj. Genl. A.T. Wilde Maj. Genl. G.J. Wolseley Sir W. Muir Robert S. Ellis R.A. Dalyell Col. Sir W.L. Mereweather Lt. Gen. Sir H.W. Norman

1858–68 1858–74 1859–61 1859–81 1861–76 1863–76 1866–77 1868–87 1868–86 1869–72 1871–88 1872–74 1874–75 1874–84 1874–77 1875–78 1879–89 1875–85 1875–85 1875–89 1876–78 1876–78 1876–85 1877 1877–87 1877–80 1878–83

Maj. Genl. C.J. Foster B.W. Cur rie

1878–88 1880–88 1890–95 Sir Ashley Eden 1882–87 Maj. Genl. Sir P.S. Lumsden 1883–93 J.R. Bullen-Smith 1884–87 Sir R.H. Davies 1885–95 Sir John Strachey 1885–95 Gen. Sir D.M. Stewart 1885–1900 Col. Sir O.T. Burne 1887–96 R. Hardie 1887–97 Sir A.J. Arbuthnot 1887–97 Sir J.B. Peile 1887–1902 Sir A.C. Lyall 1888–1903 Sir C.A. Turner 1888–98 Lt. Gen. Sir A. Alison 1889–98 Sir Charles H.T. Crosthwaite 1895–1905 Sir Steuart C. Bayley 1895–1905 F.C. Le Marchant 1896–1906 Gen. Sir J.J.H. Gordon 1897–1906 Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick 1897–1907 Sir John Edge 1898–1908 Sir J.L. Mackay 1897–1911 Sir P.P. Hutchins 1898–1908 Sir James Westland 1899–1903 Lt. Gen. A.R. Babcock 1901–07

Ar my Sanitar y Commission/Committee (A.S.C.) 1865–90 (former Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission 1858–65) Sir Richard Airey (1858–65) Sir Hope Grant Sir Proby Cautley Sir James Ranald Martin Sir Robert Rawlinson Dr. John Sutherland (1858–88) Sir Douglas Galton (1858–89)

quartermaster-general, president president from India Office from India Office sanitarian and civil engineer army surgeon and sanitarian (paid member) assistant under secretar y of state for war, royal engineer

Secretary: J.J. Frederick Commission reorganized in 1890: Sir D. Galton H. Yule Dr J. Marston (paid member) J. Fayrer J.M. Cuningham W.R. Hooper Secretary: J.J. Frederick

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time / 915

India Office Sanitary Committee

Sanitar y Commissioners of the Government of India

Nov. 1867

Sir Bartle Frere 1870–77 J.P. Walker William Arbuthnot 1875–84 J.M. Cuningham Sir Proby T. Cautley 1885–90 B. Simpson Sir Thomas E. Perry 1890–95 W.R. Rice William J. Eastwick 1895–97 J.Cleghorn Sir H. Anderson, secretar y 1898–1901 R. Harvey Nov. 1868 Sir Bartle Frere William Arbuthnot Maj. Gen. Sir Henry C. Rawlinson Sir Thomas E. Perry Maj. Gen. William E. Baker Nov. 1869 Sir Bartle Frere Sir Henry C. Rawlinson Henr y T. Prinsep William Arbuthnot William E. Baker Nov. 1870 Sir Bartle Frere William Arbuthnot Henr y T. Prinsep Sir Frederick Currie Sir Henry C. Rawlinson Nov. 1871 Sir Bartle Frere William Arbuthnot Henr y T. Prinsep Sir Frederick Currie Sir Henry C. Rawlinson Nov. 1872 William E. Baker William Arbuthnot Henr y T. Prinsep Sir Frederic Currie Sir Henry C. Rawlinson Nov. 1873 William E. Baker Henr y T. Prinsep Sir Frederick Currie William Arbuthnot Sir Bartle Frere Sir Henry C. Rawlinson End of 1874 the Committee was discontinued as a separate committee

Bengal Sanitary Commission 1864–c1888 (5 members, 1866 reduced to 2: one commissioner and one secretar y) John Strachey James Pattison Walker, secretar y G.B. Malleson J.M. Cuningham David Smith, etc. (see below)

916 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Madras Sanitary Commission 1864–c1888 (5, then 2 members) Robert S. Ellis Henr y Tulloch J.L. Ranking W.R. Cornish, etc. (see below)

H.B. Montgomery, W.H. Chipperfield, secretaries

Bombay Sanitary Commission 1864–c1888 (5, then 2 members) A.H. Leith T. Gillham Hewlett J. Lumsdaine C.W. MacRur y, etc. (see below)

T.B. Beatty, G. Asher, secretaries

1888 Central Executive Sanitary Boards in Presidencies (with municipal councils and local boards) Lieutenant Governors of Bengal

Sanitar y Commissioners of Bengal

1854 1859 1862 1867 1871 1874 1877 1879 1879 1882 1887 1890 1895 1898–1902

1864–66 1866–69 1869–84 1868–70 1871–74 1874–78 1880 1881 1882 1888 1888 1888 1897

Frederick J. Halliday John P. Grant Cecil Beadon William Grey George Campbell Sir Richard Temple Ashley Eden Sir Steuart Bayley Ashley Eden A. Rivers Thompson Sir Steuart Bayley Sir Charles Alfred Elliott Sir Alexander Mackenzie Sir John Woodburn

J. Strachey G.B. Malleson J.M. Cuningham D.B. Smith C.J. Jackson J.M. Coates R. Lidderdale Dr Lethbridge F.W.A. DeFabeck K.P. Gupta D.D. Cunningham W.H. Gregg H.J. Dyson

Governors of Bombay

Sanitar y Commissioners of Bombay

1853 1860 1862 1867 1872 1877 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900–03

1864 1871 1875 1878 1883 1888 1892 1898 1899

John Elphinstone Sir George Russell Clerk Sir Henry Bartle Frere William R.S.V Fitzgerald Sir Philip E. Wodehouse Sir Richard Temple James Ferguson Baron Reay Baron Harris Baron Sandhurst Baron Northcote

A.H. Leith J. Lumsdaine T.G. Hewlett J. Lumsdaine T.G. Hewlett C.W. MacRur y J.W. Clarkson A.W.F. Street J.W. Clarkson

Appendix B: British Officials in Nightingale’s Time / 917 Governors of Madras

Sanitar y Commissioners of Madras

1854 1859 1860

1864–67 1866 1867–69

Robert S. Ellis H. Tulloch J.L. Ranking

1869–74 1875 1877 1880 1883 1883 1885 1886 1886 1893

W.R. Cornish H. King W.R. Cornish M.C. Furnell G. Bidie M.C. Furnell G. Bidie W. Farqhuar J.A. Laing W.G. King

Lord F.R. Harris Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan William Ambrose Morehead [Acting] 1861 Sir William Thomas Denison 1866 Lord Napier of Merchistoun 1872 Lord Hobart 1875 Duke of Buckingham and Chandos 1880 W.P. Adam 1881 M.E. Grant-Duff 1886 Robert Bourke 1891 Baron Wenlock 1896–1900 Sir Arthur Elibank Havelock

Lieutenant Governors of the N.-W. Provinces

Sanitar y Commissioners of N.-W. Provinces and Oudh

1853 1858

1868 1870

C. Plank G.S. Sutherland

1877 1886 1890 1895 1900 1901 1902

C. Planck J. Richardson G. Hutcheson S.J. Thomson G.M.J. Giles J. Chaytor-White S.J. Thomson

1859 1863 1868 1874 1876 1882 1887 1892 1895

J.R. Colvin Viscount Charles John Canning [temporar y] G.F. Edmonstone E. Drummond Sir William Muir Sir John Strachey Sir G.E.-W. Couper Sir A.C. Lyall Sir Auckland Colvin Sir C.H.T. Crosthwaite Sir A.P. MacDonnell

Chief Commissioners of the Punjab (from Jan. 1859 Lieutenant Governors) 1853 1859 1865 1870 1871 1877 1882 1887 1892 1897

Sir John Lawrence Sir Robert Montgomer y D.F. Macleod Sir H. M. Durand Sir R.H. Davies Sir Robert E. Egerton Sir C.U. Aitchison Sir J.B. Lyall Sir W.M. Young Sir D. Fitzpatrick

Sanitar y Commissioners of Punjab 1868 1876 1887 1888 1889 1894 1898

A.C.C. DeRenzy H.W. Bellew A. Stephen W.A.C. Roe A. Stephen W.A.C. Rice C.J. Bamber

918 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

Chief Commissioners of Oudh 1856 1857 1858 1859 1861 1862 1866 1867 1871 1876 1877

Sir James Outram Sir Henry Lawrence [d 4 July] Sir James Outram Robert Montgomer y Charles J. Wingfield George U. Yule [officiating] Charles Wingfield John Strachey R.H. Davies Sir G.E.-W. Couper J.F.D. Inglis (Oudh added to N.-W. Provinces)

Chief Commissioners of Central Provinces 1861 1864 1867 1867 1868 1870 1872 1883 1884 1885 1887 1891 1893 1895 1898 1899

Sanitar y Commissioners of Oudh (see N.-W. Provinces)

Edward King Elliot Sir Richard Temple Sir John Henry Mor ris G. Campbell Sir John Henry Mor ris R.J. Keatinge Sir John Henry Mor ris William Bence Jones Sir Charles H.T. Crosthwaite Dennis Fitzpatrick Alexander Mackenzie Sir Anthony Patrick MacDonnell Sir John Woodburn Charles James Lyall Sir Denzil Charles J. Ibbetson Sir Andrew H.L. Fraser

Sanitar y Commissioners of Central Provinces 1869 1872 1873 1877 1878 1880 1882 1883 1883 1889 1889 1890 1893 1893 1895 1896 1899

S.C. Townsend J. Brake S.C. Townsend J. Brake J.F. Barter J.A.C. Hutchinson B. Simpson W. Watson G.H. Loch G.C. Chesnage J. Richardson J.G. Pilcher W.B. Center G.C. Ross J.H. Newman G. Hutcheson A. Scott-Reid

Appendix C: Spelling of Indian Place Names The following list gives the spelling of place names used in these volumes. Partly it is modernized, partly it reproduces Nightingale’s usage. Aden Agra Ahmedabad Ahmadnagar Ajmer Ajodhya Alipore Allahabad Amritsar Anicut Anundopore Arcot Assam Asseerghur Attock Azah Backergunge Balasore Banakercherla Bangalore Bankura Baree Doab Baroda Barrackpore Belgaum Bellar y Berar Berhampur Bezwada Bhawalpore Bhaugulpur Bhinga Bhola Bihar Bijapur Birbhum Brahmaputra

Budgepore Buldanu Bundelkund Burdwan Burhamputra Chakrata Chingleput Chinsura Chitagaon Chota Chunar Cochin Coimbatore Colaba Coleroon Commilla Congeeveram Cooch Coornoor Coor y Cooum Coromandel Cuddalore Cuddapah Cutch Cuttack Damareh Damodar Darbhanga Darjeeling Deccan Deesa Delhi Dhar wad Dinapore Dugshai Dukhinkool

Dum Dum Durhunga Elur u Feringhee Dibha Firozpur Gandak Ganjam Gaya Ghazipur Goalundo Godavari Gujarat Guntur Gya Hardwar Hazar ybaugh Hetampur Howrah Hugli Hyderabad Indapur Indore Jaipur Jamna Canals Jaulnah Jellalabad Jhansi Jubbulpore Jugadore Jullundur Jumna Kakinada Kaladgi Kamalpur Kamptee Kanee Khet Kanpur

/ 919

920 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Karachi Karde Kashmir Kathiawar Kaveri Khana Nuddee Khandeish Kunbi Khandesh Kher warrah Kirkee Kistna or Krishna Kolhapur Kooloot Kuchenkole Kulladghee Kurnool Labuan Lahore Lakh Landour Larikpur Lucknow Ludhiana Madanapalli Madanapalli Madurai Mahabaleshwar Mahanuddy Malabar Maliara Malligaum Mangalore Manickgunge Maratha Mar war Masulipatam Meer ut Mercara Mhow Mian Mir Midnapur Mirzapur Monghyr Moradabad Morar Moulmein Mozuffernuggar Multhan Muri

Murshidabad Mussoorie Muttur Muzaffarpur Mymensingh Mysore Nagpur Nasirabad Nassick Neemuch Neera Neilgher ry Nellore Nowsherah Nuddea Nundanbatty Nundial Nusserabad Nynee Täl Ootacamund Orissa Palampur Paniput Parner Patna Penner Perambore Peshawar Poonamallee Pratakota Proddatur Pubna Punjab Puthian Puttur Puttiala Quillon Radhanagar Rajahmundr y Rajasthan Rajeote Rajkot Rajmahal Rajputana Rajshahye Ramandroog Raneegunge Raneekhet Raniganj Rawalpindi

Rohilcund Roorkee Sabathu Saharanpur Saidapet Salem Sallara Saraspur Sar un Satlej Satara Sealcote Secunderabad Shahabad Sind Sindhia Sirhind Sironcha Solapur Son Sonthal Srivaikuntam Sunderbuns Sunnawur Surat Swat Taluka Sirur Tambrapani Tanjore Telugu Terai Tinnevelly Tipperah Tirhut Tonghoo Travancore Trichinopoly Trimulgherry Triplecane Tumbuddra Umballa Vellore Veper y Visapur Wanowrie Wurdah Wuzeerabad Wynaad

Glossary abwab adalat amils amlah anna awt ayah Ayur veda babu bajri bania (banja) banyan begah begum bheel bheestie bigha Brahmin budgerow bunniah bustee canongo Chumar crinjal crore cutcherry dacoits dai dalit deshmukh dhal (dal) diwan doab durbar

illegal additional assessment on land law court caste of collectors ministerial officer supervising courts one sixteenth of a rupee plough domestic servant or nursemaid Hindu system of medicine Indian clerk who could write English small Indian corn or millet Hindu grain trader money changer, trader, shopkeeper small quantity lady nawab hired tribal labourer water carrier measure of land area, about 1⁄4 hectare member of the Hindu priestly order keelless cabin boat money lender temporar y village of mat huts or shanty town village accountant in the pay of landlords member of a low-caste, ‘‘untouchable’’ rice variety ten million court house armed robber gang midwife formerly ‘‘untouchable’’ district hereditar y officer lentil or split pea dish financial minister/revenue collector tract of land between two converging rivers imperial assembly of Indian princes with British viceroy

/ 921

922 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India fakir ferosh ameen ghat ghee gomastah gowandya guzur hakim handis huks ijaradar inam Jainism jamadar jheels jhilmil jowari jumma kabuliyat kachahri kayasth khalkoowa khamar kholkhasi khorkasht khudkasht kulkarni kunbis lakh lal bazaar lingayat lok lok sabha lumberdar maal adalat mahajan mahal maharaja mahout maidan maktab mamlatdar Mang Maratha meerassider

religious mendicant judicial officer or inspector steps leading to water clarified butter agent, broker partner trader or dealer from Gujarat judge; Unani physician in the Greek-Islamic tradition earthenware vessels lawful claims zemindar’s agent hereditar y rent-free landholding ancient ascetic religion Arab officer reaches of old river channel beds wooden blind Indian corn amount of rent or revenue payable contract document between zemindar and ryots (see patta) money lender’s desk literate person, scribe rudimentar y well or cesspit under the house private land of a proprietor peasant living close to a village resident ryot settled village accountant caste of cultivators 100,000 units (usually rupees) brothel caste of ‘‘bearers of lingam’’ (stylized phallus) people house of the people; lower house of India’s Parliament village headman in North India revenue court money lender, banker residence, palace great king, ruler driver of an elephant park surrounding Fort William Calcutta commons school native district magistrate member of a low caste resident of Maharashtra (western Deccan), warrior bona fide landlord

Glossary / 923 Mar wari mehter memsahib Mhar mhatoot mofussil mooktar munsif nabob nawab nazir nirikh nirkbundy nizam nullah paikasht panchayat pandit Parbhus Parsi patel pathsala patta patwari pendall peon pergunna pergunnah pie pindari pottah puja punkah purdah raiyat raiyatwari raj raja rajput ranee ryot ryotwari

inhabitant of Marwar; merchant banker from the vicinity of Rajasthan sweeper lady, mistress member of a low caste see abwab rural hinterland agent, attorney magistrate British corruption of nawab, used for Englishmen who gained sudden riches in India deputy or viceroy of the Mughal emperors; Muslim prince finance enforcer, inspector rates of assessment standard rate former ruler of Hyderabad ravine, bed of a stream non-resident ryot council of five; traditional ruling council of a Hindu village sanskrit scholar or Hindu teacher caste of writers and clerks member of the Zoroastrian community in western India village headman in western India and the Deccan school contract documents between zemindar and ryots (see kabuliyat) village accountant in the pay of government native barrack inferior officer of the court, footman customar y rate a fiscal district usually comprising many villages 4 pie = 1 anna former soldier, turned brigand and freebooter deed of lease (act of) worship portable or fixed fan female seclusion peasant with a certain control of the land use (from Arabic; see ryot) land revenue system based on individual peasant proprietors kingdom king, ruler Hindu warrior caste of north India, esp. in Rajasthan wife of a raja peasant with a certain control of the land use (from Hindi; see raiyat) system of land administration (common in western and southern India) whereby tax was directly levied on the fields of each

924 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India

sabha sahib sarbarakar sayer sepoy Shia Sikh

sirkar sowar sowkar sufi Sunni suttee (sati) takavi talakore taluk, taluka talukdar tannah tatties tehsildar thekadar thug ticcadar tonga tope Unani (Yunani) vakeel Wahabi zemindar zemindari

zenana zillah

individual landholder (ryot) by a government servant residing in the village, without a native landlord ser ving as middle man (as in the zemindari system) council, house, association master, sir or lord manager sources of revenue besides land tax Indian soldier in a European army important division of the Muslim faith, going back to Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad member of an Indian syncretic religion (Hinduism + Islam) founded in the 15th century by Gur u Nanak; mainly in the Punjab government cavalr y trooper money lender, merchant, banker Muslim mystic main division of the Muslim faith widow’s self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre money advanced to cultivators at the time of sowing refuse disposal subdivision of a district revenue collecting intermediar y (ex-warlord) in NW Provinces and Oudh, confirmed by British as landlord police jurisdiction grass screen kept wet to cool houses minor official in charge of collections contractor for a lease ritual murderer temporar y middleman farmer light two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle grove of mango, cocoa nut, or tamarind Muslim system of medicine public authorized pleader in a court of justice Muslim sect revenue collector overlord, confirmed by the British as landlord, mainly in Bengal system of land administration (mainly in Bengal) whereby confirmed landlords (zemindars) collect taxes from cultivating peasants, pay the revenue to the government and are supposed to invest part of the capital in agricultural improvements women’s quarters in an orthodox Indian household administrative district

Bibliography

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Gourlay, Jharna. Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate 2003. Grant-Duff, Lady. Speeches by Mrs Grant-Duff 1884-5-6. Madras: Higginbotham 1886. Guha, Ranajit. A Rule of Proper ty for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement. New Delhi: Orient Longman 1982. Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, H.G. The National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink 1886. Hogg, F.R. Practical Remarks. Banaras: Medical Hall Press 1877. Hume, Allan Octavian. Agricultural Reform in India: A Plea for a WellOrganized Separate Agricultural Department. London: W.H. Allen 1879. Hume, Allan Octavian. Agricultural Reform in India: A Plea for a WellOrganised Separate Agricultural Department. 1899. Hunter, William W. The Indian Empire: Its History, People and Products. London: Trübner 1882. . Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study in Indian Administration. London: Henry Frowde 1892. . The Old Missionary. London: Henry Frowde 1897. . The Thackerays in India, and Some Calcutta Graves. London: Henr y Frowde 1897. Huxley, Thomas Henry. Lessons in Elementary Physiology. London: Macmillan 1866. Keely, E.A. Lessons in Domestic Economy for Our Girls, Intended for the Use of Anglo-Indian and Eurasian Schools. Madras n.d. Kittredge, George A. A Shor t Histor y of the ‘‘Medical Women for India’’ Fund of Bombay. Bombay: Education Society’s Press 1889. Lankester, Edwin. Practical Physiology, Being a School Manual of Health. 5th ed. London: Longman, Brown 1872. Litzmann, Carl Conrad Theodor. Lehrbuch der Geburtshülfe für die preussischen Hebammen. London: J. & A. Churchill 1880. Ludden, David. Peasant History in South India. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 1885. . An Agrarian History of South Asia. Vol. IV.4 of The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999. MacKendrick, John Gray. Animal Physiology. London: Chambers Elementar y Science Manuals 1875.

928 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India MacNaughten, Chester. Common Thoughts on Serious Subjects: Being Addresses to the Elder Kumars of the Rajkumar College, Kathiawar. Bombay: Education Society 1892; London: John Murray 1896. . For ty Years of the Rajkumar College. 6 vols. London and Aylesbur y: Hazell, Watwon & Viney 1896. Malabari, Behramji M. Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood. Bombay: Voice of India 1887. Masani, Rustom Pestonji. Dadabhai Naoroji: The Grand Old Man of India. Mysore: Kavlayalaya Publishers 1968. Metcalf, Thomas. The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857-1870. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1964. . Ideologies of the Raj. Vol. III.4 of The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994. Mill, James. Histor y of British India. 5th ed. 6 vols. London: Madden 1858. Moore, William James. A Manual of Family Medicine for India. London: Churchill 1874. Morley, John. Life of Richard Cobden. 6 vols. London: Chapman & Hall 1886 [1861]. Morris, Henr y. Life of John Murdoch, LlD, The Literary Evangelist of India. London: Christian Literature Society for India 1906. Murdoch, John. Education in India: A Letter to the Marquis of Ripon. Madras: C.K.S. Press 1881. Naoroji, Dadabhai. Pover ty and Un-British Rule in India. London: Swan, Sonnenschein 1901. Nash, Vaughan. The Great Famine and Its Causes. London: Longman 1900. Pedder, W.G. ‘‘Famine and Debt in India.’’ The Nineteenth Century (September 1877):177-97. Prichard, Iltudus Thomas. The Chronicles of Budgepore; or, Sketches of Life in Upper India. 2 vols. London 1870. Quinn, Vincent, and John Prest, eds. Dear Miss Nightingale: A Selection of Benjamin Jowett’s Letters to Florence Nightingale 1860-1893. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987. Raju, Dhanakoti. The Elements of Hygiene, or, Easy Lessons on the Laws of Health. Madras: Foster Press 1875. Rakesh, Virendra Pal. Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Freedom Movement. New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers 1989. Ratcliffe, S.K. Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian Reform Movement. London: Allen & Unwin 1923.

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Index

S

pace limitations required some compromises in the index. It generally includes proper names, omitting those of acquaintances, employees and persons who appear briefly or are not readily identifiable. Items with identifying information are shown in italics. Persons known by more than one name are indexed under the name most frequently appearing in the text. Biblical references are indexed by book under ‘‘Bible.’’ Most Indian place names and Indian words in English are found in Appendix C and the Glossary above. Acland, Henry Wentworth Dyke 132, 164, 203, 739, 773, 845, 906 Afghanistan/Afghan War 3-4, 9, 62, 135, 151, 153-54, 173n, 310, 507, 521 n, 528, 541, 676, 783, 809, 904 Africa 32, 59, 247, 268n, 848, 896, 904 Aga Khan 876 agriculture/agricultural school 6, 8, 10, 81, 89, 98, 129, 151, 154, 158-63, 165, 168, 195-96, 231-32, 238, 252, 257-58, 266-67, 280, 285, 294, 303, 319, 328, 341, 347, 395, 431, 436-37, 445, 461-64, 471-72, 474, 479, 481, 490, 493-94, 497-99, 504, 515, 526, 540, 543-45, 550, 552-57, 574, 579, 583-84, 594, 600, 602, 611, 621-22, 626, 628-31, 639, 650-51, 658, 665-68, 670, 672-73, 675-79, 681-97, 699-710, 712-14, 726, 734, 736, 753, 802, 810, 815, 835, 842, 850, 869, 872-73, 881-85, 887-88, 891, 896, 900, 908 Airey, Richard 170 America/n (see also United States) 8, 225, 293, 397, 421, 435, 439, 467, 490, 585, 616, 651, 691, 788, 800, 848, 885, 897

Amherst, Lord 61 Anderson, Henry 34-35, 39-40 Anglican (see also Church of England) 784 n Anglican sisters 766n anti-contagion/ist 320n Argyll, duke of 100, 105, 108, 114-15, 119-20, 478, 540-41, 824 Army, British xi, 11, 15, 30-31, 32n, 36, 44n, 46, 52-61, 64-68, 70, 80, 84 n, 96, 102n, 154-57, 167, 174-77, 188, 200, 231-33, 252, 259, 309-10, 312 n, 317, 319-20, 338, 434, 439, 464, 701, 741, 781, 785, 792, 799, 820, 849, 872-73, 878, 891-92, 897-98, 901 Army, Indian (sepoys) 233, 321, 464, 899, Army Medical Department/Regulations 25, 31, 44n, 122, 209 Army Medical Service 173n, 836 Army Sanitar y Commission (A.S.C.) 16, 23-26, 47-49, 52-53, 70, 74-76, 78-79, 95, 99, 102-03, 122, 134, 141 n-42, 156, 170, 182, 184-85, 192, 194, 196, 198-200, 202, 205-06,

/ 931

932 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 209-16, 218, 251, 255, 297-98, 303-04, 306, 526, 700, 792n asylum 29, 102, 319 Australia 128, 491, 756, 885 Austria/Austrian 150, 170, 434, 437 bacillus (see also germs, bacteria) 320 n, 795 Bacon, Francis 93 bacteria/bacteriology 14, 320n, 362, 710 Baden, grand duchess of 124, 718 Bahadhurgi 862 Balfour, Edward 59, 780 Balfour, George 456-58, 478 Balliol College 195n, 340, 372, 697-99, 714 n, 763 n, 776, 805 Banerjee, Babu Sasipada 495, 653 Baring, Evelyn 340, 833, 835 Baring, Major 700 Baring, Thomas George (see Lord Northbrook) Baroda, Dhurandhar 867, 870 Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission 25, 28-29, 103, 214 bar racks (constr uction) 25-26, 41n, 52-53, 56-57, 62, 65, 67, 86, 100-01, 103, 108-10, 112, 117-19, 121, 125, 127, 142, 152-55, 187, 215, 250-54, 256, 298, 578, 731, 891, 897 Bayley, Stuart 590 bazaars 22, 25-26, 29, 174, 250-51, 253-54 Bazley, T. 464-65 Bell, Andrew 669 Bell, Colonel 88 Bellew, H.W. 320, 731, 735-36, 738, 741, 755 Bengal presidency 6, 9-10, 23, 38, 41-43, 50-52, 54, 58, 62, 64-66, 68, 70, 72-77, 79, 105-07, 112, 116, 121, 123, 137, 141n, 153-54n, 164-65, 171, 181, 189, 196, 208, 225-26, 229, 234, 237-38, 245, 247, 250-52, 259-60, 271, 273, 276, 294, 299-300, 303, 327, 335, 370, 374, 383, 385-87, 394, 396-97, 399, 401, 405 n, 408-09, 412, 414, 416-24,

426, 428-34, 436-40, 442, 445-46, 449-50, 461, 464, 467-70, 472-73, 479, 482-83, 485, 488-90, 493-95, 500-09, 511-14, 516-22, 524, 528, 529-36, 538-39, 541-43, 545-49, 551-54 557, 562, 565-66, 569-71, 573, 576-605, 607-19, 625, 628-29, 633-46, 648, 650, 652-54, 657, 660, 662, 665, 670-71, 691-92, 695, 698, 700, 726, 730, 734, 736, 747, 753-55, 805, 807, 813-14, 818, 836, 856, 861, 872, 880, 889 Bengal Sanitary Commission 23-24, 27-28, 33n, 43n, 51n, 54, 56, 68-69, 190, 320, 375, 381, 741 Bengal Social Science Association 5, 9, 233-36, 242-45 Bengal Tenancy Act 4, 169, 299n, 327-28, 397, 401, 500-01, 511, 513, 517, 519, 529, 530-31, 533, 536-39, 542-46, 548-49, 551-52, 555-56, 571, 576, 580-81, 590, 598-620, 713, 800 n, 802, 805, 816, 837, 849, 853 n, 863-64, 880, 885, 904 Benson, Charles 686-87, 689, 691-92, 695, 699, 702, 705 Bentinck, William (Lord) 463, 823, 860 Besant, Annie 809, 858 n, 878 n Bhaunagari, Mr 712 Bhide, Vishnu Moreshwar 362, 712 Bhownaggree, M.M. 862 Bible: Gen 8:29 824; 23:15 126; 25:30-34 496; Deut 15:1-2 490; Ruth 1:17 661; 2 Sam 12:7 435, 577; 1 Kings 13:34 885; 2 Kings 2:12 296; Job 42:6 767; Ps 103:12 495; Isa 11:6 855; 42:16 46; Jer 49:22 868; Prov 3:15 804; Matt 5:26 422; 6:25 368; 7:7 175; 9:37 544, 595; 9:38 400; 12:20 875; 12:45 170, 285; 13:12 160; 21:33-43 820; 23:14 281; 24:15 455; Mark 2:9 472; 5:9 264, 282, 547, 884; 5:15 803; Luke 2:52 371; 3:12-14 493; 10:33 275; 10:42 168, 648; 11:26 491; 12:49 810; 13:19 390; 16:26 641, 816; 17:10 823; 18:3-5 136; 18:25

Index / 933 649; 24:32 169; John 1:23 493; 1:27 100; 1:48 528; 4:34 143, 287; 3:5 683; 8:7 650; 8:19 644; 9:25 111; Acts 19:28 863; Rom 8:19 292, 644; 8:38 660; 13:12 553, 787; 1 Cor 8:13 808; 15:32 45; 2 Cor 4:8 864; 4:9 732; 11:23 360, 824; 11:27 265; 1 Tim 3:12 794; 2 Tim 4:7 852; Phil 3:14 150; Heb 11:4 286; 12:1 791; 12:2 648; 2 Pet 1:19 286; Rev 1:16 812; 21:19 282. Birdwood, George 369, 689, 867, 870 birth/birth rates 20, 567, 605, 656, 664, 719, 744, 760-62, 766, 809n, 824, 893, 905 Bismarck, Otto von 838 blood (diseases of) 64, 239, 410, 795 Blue Books 24, 47, 50, 52, 79, 84, 130-31, 133-35, 150, 191, 195-96, 200-01, 206, 307, 450, 680, 814-15, 843-44, 866-67, 873, 889 Boer War 785n, 896 Bombay presidency 13, 23-24, 32n, 34 n-36, 38, 44, 48, 50, 52-53, 62, 65, 68-70, 72, 74, 77, 79, 88-89, 91, 94, 96-102, 104, 109, 112-13, 116, 118, 131, 134, 137, 141, 144-47, 150, 153, 164, 169, 171-72, 181, 187-89, 194, 196-99, 203-04, 208-09, 211, 215-17, 219-24, 227-28, 245, 249-50, 253-54, 256, 259-60, 266-67, 270-72, 275-77, 279, 283-85, 287-90, 293, 296-98, 300, 302-03, 305-11, 313, 315-19, 322, 324, 325-26, 333-36, 338-39, 343-44, 346-50, 352-53, 355, 358, 361-62, 366-71, 378, 380, 382-84, 38, 390, 424n, 429, 467, 469n-70, 480, 482-83, 486, 488, 490-92, 505, 526-28, 531, 535, 538, 547, 574, 578, 591, 595, 597, 600, 609-12, 615, 618, 626, 630, 633-34, 642, 644, 647, 650-55, 657-58, 661-62, 664-66, 670-71, 675, 678, 681-82, 685, 689-91, 700, 702-04, 708-12, 721, 724, 731, 734, 736-37, 741, 746n, 765-66, 770-75, 779-81, 787, 791, 794, 797, 802, 805, 812-14, 832, 834-37, 839,

841-42, 847, 853-55, 859, 861, 863, 865, 870, 874, 882, 893, 907-08 Bombay Presidency Association 221, 321-22, 325, 348-49, 353, 358, 367, 381, 831-32 Bombay Sanitary Commission 23n, 36, 54-55, 68, 80, 102, 113, 142, 188, 190, 198, 201n, 203, 209, 215-17, 220, 247, 311, 531, 655, 664, 675, 735, 738, 740, 755, 759, 869 Bonaparte (see also Napoleon) 40 n Bonham Carter, Henr y vii, 721n, 787, 791 Bosnia 151, 758 botany 684, 699, 709 Bourdillon, J.D. 456-57 Bracebridge, Charles 122 Bracebridge, Selina 122, 132 Bradlaugh, Charles 858, 882 Brahmin 30, 276, 301, 324, 387, 406, 428, 571, 633, 649-52, 654, 659, 666, 668, 670-71, 674, 678, 685, 687-88, 713, 737, 766, 838, 843, 869, 882 Branfoot, Dr 763, 905 Bright, John 164, 478, 481-83, 832, 835, 853 Britain/British/Briton xi, 1-4, 6-10, 12, 14-15, 17, 20-22, 54, 56-61, 63-65, 68, 73, 77-78, 105, 116n, 121, 127, 129, 142, 152, 154-55, 160, 162, 164n, 175, 181, 188n, 199, 232-34, 245, 252, 257, 260, 268 n, 272, 289, 295n, 298, 309-10, 312 n, 321, 325-26, 330, 352, 358, 384-86, 389, 393-96, 398, 403, 405-14, 433, 442, 446, 448, 454-55, 465, 471-72, 474, 480, 491, 496, 499, 502-04, 521, 525, 529-32, 536, 541 n, 545, 548, 551, 554-55, 581, 621, 624, 647-48, 661, 669n-70, 676, 694, 697, 711, 718, 723-25n, 771-72, 774, 776, 781, 787-88, 797-800, 806-07, 816, 818-19, 821, 827-28, 831n-32 n, 841, 844-47, 863-64, 872, 880, 886, 889, 891-95, 897-902, 907-09

934 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India British Empire 3, 82, 287, 394n, 396n, 398 n, 443, 798n, 880, 906 Br yden, James L. 154, 238 Buchanan, Andrew 80 Buck, Edward 164, 691, 694, 696, 702, 835 Buckingham, duke of 127-28, 136-38, 149, 183, 305 Buckingham Canal 149 Buddha/Buddhism 47, 289, 448, 650, 654 n, 793-94, 838 Bulgaria 172, 479, 490, 629 Burder, Susannah 878 Burdon-Sanderson, John 184 Burdwan fever 260, 463, 484 bureaucracy 646, 750, 805, 820, 837, 856, 908-09 Burgoyne, John Fox 86 Burke, Edmund 797, 818, 821 Burma 73, 226, 446, 694, 836 Cabinet 20, 147, 150-51, 158, 164n, 171 n, 377 n, 502, 504, 510, 650, 701, 705, 801-02, 804, 815, 827, 903-05 Caird, James 159, 195, 280, 522-23, 631, 679, 682, 699, 804, 815-17, 835 call to service xi-xii, 898 Calvert, Frederick 776 Cambridge, duke of 44, 86 Campbell, Colin 408 Campbell, George 121, 124, 134, 401, 405-06, 408-12, 417-19, 421, 424, 429-30, 433, 437, 447, 461, 464, 467, 470, 476, 478, 482, 504, 521, 524-25, 565, 568, 588, 590, 604, 636, 640, 645, 680, 698, 835, 880 Canada 186n, 195n canal/s 1, 24, 89n, 117, 139-41, 149, 151, 196, 267-69, 337, 387, 425-27, 441, 443, 450-56, 459-61, 472, 477-79, 480, 484-85, 496-97, 546, 570, 578, 600, 881, 896 Canning, Lady 887 Canning, Lord 96, 394, 397, 407, 409, 411, 468, 470, 887 Cardwell, Edward 103, 105, 115 Carpenter, Jesse Boyd 787

Carpenter, Mar y 233, 718, 724, 780 Carter, Vandyke 787 caste 13, 24, 30, 142, 174, 177, 209, 258, 262, 266, 276-77, 291-93, 317, 354, 363, 372, 379, 381-82, 387, 393, 395, 406, 421, 423, 440, 488-89, 518, 567, 590, 605, 611, 617, 622, 633, 635, 639, 646, 650-54, 659, 663, 668-71, 673, 675, 694, 712, 719, 728-29, 737, 740, 759, 764-65, 782-83, 806-07, 811-13, 838, 869, 882, 902, 906 cause/causation xii-xiii, 26, 29, 52, 56, 64, 66, 71, 78, 80-82, 95, 97, 99, 107 n, 112-13, 135, 145, 174, 195-96, 203, 210, 214, 216, 222-23, 231, 238, 240, 242, 245, 251, 257, 260, 274, 277, 289, 293, 302-03, 309-10, 313, 320, 324, 335, 337, 344-46, 358, 360, 375, 384, 388, 392, 394-95, 403-04, 428, 463-64, 471, 488, 499, 502, 505, 522, 556, 606, 623, 629, 656, 659, 663, 665, 668, 684, 741, 744, 748, 778, 838, 871, 875, 877, 890-91, 896, 899, 907 Cautley, Proby T. 43, 53, 297 Cavour, Camillo Benso di 162 census (Indian) 275, 454, 634, 655-57 Ceylon 745, 748 Chadwick, Edwin 43, 45, 96, 120, 132, 211 n, 333, 482, 484-85 Chadwick, Osbert 211 Chamberlain, Neville Arthur 835, 853 Chandavarkar, Narayan Ganesh 831-32, 852-53 Chatfield, K.M. 171, 708 Chevers, Norman 44, 59 child/children 35-36, 64, 97, 101-02, 110, 114, 116, 125, 142, 163-64, 176, 203, 217, 240, 248, 256, 259, 266, 268, 271-73, 277, 280-83, 289, 293, 317, 360, 363, 376, 392, 407, 444, 446, 474, 480-81, 491, 494, 499, 507, 550, 575, 622, 632-35, 640, 643, 651-55, 657, 660-64, 666-67, 669-75, 709, 726, 741-42, 745-48, 753, 756, 759-61, 764, 766-67, 774, 779, 787, 801, 811, 821, 883, 886, 900

Index / 935 child marriage 6, 395, 722, 724, 774-77, 779, 806 China/Chinese 110, 112n, 129, 248, 301, 658, 696 cholera 14, 39, 59, 61, 63, 74-75, 78-80, 82, 85, 90, 93, 99, 101, 107, 111, 118-19, 129, 131, 142-43, 145, 154, 164, 175-77, 190, 203-04, 222-23, 231, 233, 235, 237-40, 242, 244-45, 247, 249-52, 255-56, 260, 271, 287-88, 293, 302-03, 313-14, 319-20, 324, 334, 368-69, 378-79, 382, 388-89, 526, 657, 665, 758, 773, 787, 869 Chotalall, Runchorelal ix, 4, 188, 199, 201, 211-12, 217, 331-34, 347, 713, 839, 857, 864 Christ/Christian/Christianity (see also Saviour) 30, 100, 222n-23, 225, 287, 289, 292, 296, 421, 434, 440, 448, 455, 627, 650, 671, 695, 729-30, 734, 737, 739, 747, 753, 766, 789, 794, 808, 812-13, 845, 876-78, 902-04, 906 church 105n, 116n, 262, 537, 652, 765, 878, 904 Church Missionary Society 787 Church of England xii-xiii, 720 Churchill, Lord Randolph 3, 833n Cirencester 689, 691 Clark, Andrew 184 Clark, William 121-23, 127, 138, 184, 257 Clarke, Andrew 136 Clarkson, Thomas 649 Claydon House 20, 189, 200-01, 841 Clerk, George Russell 126 Clewer Sisters 766, 784 Clive, Robert 295, 818, 822 Clough, Arthur Hugh (‘‘AHC’’) 228n Clough, Arthur (Jr) 228, 721, 752 Clyde, Lord. See Colin Campbell Cobden, Richard 668-69, 810 Colah, M.B. 221 colony/colonists 12, 56, 128n, 183n, 213, 330, 359, 393-94, 396n-98, 481 n, 495, 498-99, 549, 717, 819, 846, 889, 891n-93 n, 895, 898, 901-02

Conser vative (politics) 2-3, 8-9, 13, 119, 133n, 135, 143n, 152, 166n, 171 n, 186 n, 340, 507n, 541n, 707, 732 n, 810 n, 813 n, 852-54, 862n, 896 Constantinople 44, 77, 141, 879 contagion/contagious diseases 93, 101, 131-32, 188, 313, 319-20n, 851, 869 Contagious Diseases Acts 30, 167 convalescence/convalescent 57, 785 Cook, E.T. 52, 73, 121n, 328, 401n, 437 n, 630 n, 697-98, 780n-81 n, 862, 879-80n, 886-87, 895n co-operation/co-operative 2, 6, 11, 40, 42, 189, 281, 322-23, 388, 393, 430, 493-94, 497-98, 600, 621-22, 624, 626-30, 675, 677, 824, 881, 894, 904, 908 Cornish, William Robert 144, 369, 728, 866-67 Cornwallis, Lord 6, 299, 396, 401, 414-15, 417, 420, 422, 432-33, 438-39, 447, 469-70, 473, 514, 552, 563, 568, 571, 797 Cotton, Arthur 87, 89, 399, 401-02, 437, 443, 478, 483-84, 546, 626, 810, 896 Cotton, Frederick C. 89, 456-57 Cotton, Henry 908 Cranborne, Lord (Lord Salisbur y) ix, 3, 9, 34, 71-72, 124, 135, 137-38, 141, 429-30, 436-37, 441-42, 470, 473, 478-79, 732n, 808, 824, 889 Cranbrook, earl of (Gathorne-Hardy) 171, 486, 529, 824 Crawford, Arthur 79, 88, 99, 104, 142, 209, 313-14, 316, 319 Crawford, Thomas 44, 209, 227, 229, 866-67 crime/criminal 86n, 138, 278, 445, 476, 494, 544, 595, 639, 723 Crimea/Crimean War xi, 1, 10, 12, 15, 33 n, 36, 45-46, 92n, 119n, 132, 170, 325, 449, 828, 836, 868, 879, 888, 890, 897 Croft, Alfred Woodley 680, 725-26 Crofton, Walter 86

936 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Crommelin, Henry Blyth 41, 43 Cross, Richard Assheton (Lord) 186, 189-92, 201, 218, 227, 312, 344-45, 348, 366, 370-71, 373, 378, 383, 865 Crossland, Mary S. 792 Cuningham, James M. ix, 51, 103, 105-08, 111, 113-14, 199, 230, 319-20 n, 446, 714, 726, 731, 741, 744, 764, 850 Cunningham, D.D. 75, 107, 320 n, 892 Cunningham, Henry Stewart 109, 148-49, 172, 188-93, 201, 210, 342, 475, 622, 855 Cursetjee, Manockjee 677 n Da Costa, J. 598 Daily News 172, 329, 679, 809, 811, 833 Daily Telegraph 329 Dalhousie, Lord (10th earl) 62, 407 Dalhousie, Lord (11th earl) 214 Dalhousie Barracks 86, 117 Damrong, Prince 227n, 339, 365, 712, 771, 865 day rooms 29, 100, 109, 112, 117 death/death rate (see also mortality) xi-xii, 29, 32, 38, 46, 53, 56, 59-64, 66-67, 78, 80-83, 90, 97, 99, 121, 124, 132, 135, 141, 143-45, 154-56, 166 n, 168, 174-76, 178, 187, 203-04, 225-27, 230, 240, 254, 259-60, 265, 267-68, 270-71, 273-74, 277, 286, 288-89, 291, 293, 295, 301-02, 309-10, 323-24, 333-34, 336, 342, 358-61, 372, 375, 389, 399n, 401-03, 437, 442, 448, 469, 477, 489, 525, 539, 600, 619n, 632n, 642-43, 655-58, 660-61, 663-64, 676-77, 684, 712, 722-23, 744, 766, 773, 775, 783-84, 792, 802, 812, 817, 823, 848-49, 871, 873-74, 893, 908 Defoe, Daniel 273 de Grey, Lord. See Lord Ripon Denison, William Thomas 395, 464 Derby, 14th earl of 59 Derby, 15th earl of. See Lord Stanley Dickens, Charles 148n, 172-73, 679, 816

diet 53, 144, 168, 215, 276, 423, 489, 744, 806, 865n, 896 Digby, S. 840 Digby, William 832, 861-62 diphtheria 774, 794 disease/s, xii, 1, 6, 26, 29, 38, 60-61, 63-65, 71, 77, 82-83, 94-95, 97, 99, 113, 164, 196-97, 203, 222-23, 231, 239, 241-43, 245, 249, 251, 257, 260, 271, 303, 310, 344-46, 360, 369, 375, 381, 383, 388, 392, 431, 462, 488, 574, 658-59, 665, 684, 699-700, 710, 717, 741-42, 744, 748, 759-61, 766, 873, 875, 906 disease/s, infectious 30, 53, 57, 167, 188, 318, 384, 869, 866, 896-97, 906 disease/s, miasmatic 80-81, 83, 252, 387 disease/s, prevention of xi, 1, 6, 13-14, 55, 90, 99, 182, 188, 214, 216, 259, 339, 364, 377, 621, 721, 755, 898 disinfectants 90, 183, 790 dispensar y 175, 334, 783, 788 Disraeli, Benjamin 2, 143n, 166n, 813 n doctor/s (see also physician, surgeon) 16, 107, 118, 132n, 161, 178, 184n, 188, 220, 224, 227, 240, 257, 273, 329, 337, 351, 379, 717-21, 727, 730, 732, 734, 736-39, 741, 745, 749, 755, 758-65, 769-70, 774, 781-82, 788-90, 840, 859, 888, 890, 892, 897, 905-06 ‘‘doors versus windows’’ 35 drains/drainage xi, 1, 14, 24, 28, 31, 38, 44, 64, 72, 76, 78, 80-81, 88-89, 96-99, 101-02, 106-07, 110-11, 117-18, 120-21, 123, 127-28, 137-38, 141, 151, 154, 159, 163, 182-84, 188n, 196, 201, 204, 215, 222, 229, 231-32, 235, 237-39, 241, 247-55, 257, 260, 271, 288, 296, 298-99, 302, 305-06, 317, 321, 331-32, 358, 362, 371, 381, 383, 386-87, 392, 427, 430-31, 443, 449, 453, 463, 484-85, 494-95, 497-98, 526, 584, 608, 659, 664-65, 681, 700, 710, 727, 744, 749, 757, 788, 841, 862, 893, 907

Index / 937 drink/dr unkenness 29, 125, 127, 176, 293, 484-85, 494, 650, 812 drinking water 88, 125, 142, 231, 239, 241, 246, 267, 271, 287, 303, 320, 324, 331, 363, 371, 375, 378, 380, 382-83, 387, 392, 488, 657-59, 662, 765, 845 drought 5, 262, 265-66, 269-71, 403, 436, 476, 478, 487-88, 496, 554, 559, 567, 621, 658, 677, 896 Ducat, Colonel 201, 211-12, 313, 315-16, 318, 332-33 Duff, Alexander 399, 401 Dufferin Fund 718, 720, 898 Dufferin, Lady ix, 6, 340, 712, 718-21, 730-36, 738, 740, 742-44, 746-52, 754, 757, 761-67n, 770-71, 776, 890, 898 Dufferin, Lord ix, 3, 5, 9, 186-88, 192-95, 197-98, 200, 204-05, 207, 215, 217-18, 222-23, 311, 326-28, 330-31, 333-35, 337-40, 344, 500, 703, 719-21, 728, 738, 745, 748, 752, 759, 767, 798, 805, 828, 835-38, 842, 847, 850-51, 855, 857-58, 888-90, 897, 900, 904 Durand, Colonel 69-70 durbar 4, 9 Dutt, Romesh Chunder 503 dysenter y 61-63, 80, 82, 146, 237, 247, 278 East India Company 2, 4, 10, 56, 59-60, 62-63, 66, 248n, 296, 394, 405, 424n, 440, 469n, 551, 797, 818-19, 821-22, 891, 896 Eden, Ashley 482, 501, 518-20, 529-31, 533, 590, 593, 691 Edgeworth, Francis Y. 669 educate/education xi, 6-7, 13-14, 16, 39-40, 115n, 119, 142, 149-50, 154, 159-60, 169, 171-72, 189, 195n-97, 222 n, 225, 232, 239, 246, 255, 261, 276, 281, 283-84, 286-87, 292, 301, 312, 333-34, 337, 341, 357, 359, 364-65 n, 370, 372-73, 375, 379, 381-82, 386-87, 393-96, 423, 425, 435-36, 439, 443-45, 465, 467,

469 n, 471, 473, 476, 477-78, 480, 482, 484-85, 492-94, 498, 511-12, 515, 525-26, 538, 540, 544, 553, 570, 574, 576, 578, 593, 600, 602, 607, 621, 624, 633-78, 680-81, 683, 685-86, 688-89, 693-95, 696-99, 702-03, 705-06, 708, 711-13, 717-18, 720-21, 725-27, 730-32, 734-39, 742-43, 745-47, 753n, 755, 758, 763-65, 770-72, 774, 777, 779-80, 788, 793, 802-03, 805, 807, 809n, 812, 814, 817, 824, 832, 834-35, 838, 842-44, 847, 850, 854-55, 857-58, 865, 872, 877-78, 882-83, 887, 896, 898-900, 904, 906-07 effluvia 897 Egypt/ian xi, 91, 145, 160, 261, 282, 339, 475, 666, 683, 691, 696, 699, 701, 730 elections (British) 2, 160, 165-66, 183, 296, 301, 599, 620, 707, 732, 742, 744, 753, 817, 831-32, 847, 852-53, 857, 859, 866n, 904, 907 Elgin, Lady 721 Elgin, Lord (8th earl) 9, 228n, 887-88 Elgin, Lord (9th earl) 5, 228-30, 383, 386, 721, 795, 873, 890 Elliot, R.H. 273, 488 Ellis, Barrow 88 Ellis, Robert S. 34, 37, 41-43, 47, 69-70, 85-86, 89, 904 Elphinstone, John 256, 469, 633, 907 England/English xi-xiii, 10, 12, 15, 27, 31, 33, 38-39, 46, 48-49, 53, 56, 59, 61-65, 67, 69, 77, 80, 83, 85, 89, 93-94, 97-98, 100, 103, 108, 110-11, 116-17, 119, 122-23, 126, 137-38, 142, 144, 147-48, 150, 153-54, 158-62, 164-66, 171, 173, 177, 186, 189, 191, 193, 195, 198-99, 210-13, 217, 220-21, 224, 227-28, 231-32, 234, 236, 241, 243-44, 247, 250, 258, 265-66, 272, 275, 282, 286-87, 289, 291, 294-96, 301, 303-04, 308, 310-13, 322-24, 329-30, 332, 337, 339-40, 342-43, 345, 350-52, 358-60, 364, 374, 377-79, 385, 387, 390, 395-96, 404, 409, 411-14, 417,

938 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 421-22, 424-25, 427, 430, 433-35, 438-40, 443, 445-49, 451, 453, 458, 462, 464-71, 473-74, 476-77, 479, 482-84, 487-88, 490, 493-95, 497-500, 504-06, 510-11, 514, 521-22, 525, 529, 536, 540, 542, 545, 547, 550-52, 554, 565-66, 569, 575, 577, 593, 597, 601, 604, 608, 613, 619, 622-27, 629, 631, 633, 644-47, 651, 653, 656, 661-63, 665, 667-73, 676n-77, 679-83, 685-89, 691, 694, 696, 698, 701, 704-06, 709, 711-13, 719-21, 724-25, 727-28, 739-32, 735, 737-38, 741, 743-46, 749-54, 756-58, 760-66, 768-70, 776-83, 786, 789, 792, 794-95, 799, 801, 804-06, 808-12, 814-17, 819, 821-28, 831-32, 834-35, 838-40, 842-44, 846-50, 852n-54, 856-58, 860-61, 863, 869-70, 872, 874, 876-78, 880, 882-84, 886-89, 891, 894, 901, 904-05, 907 environment/al 14, 262 epidemic/epidemiology 1, 6, 12, 17, 59, 74, 79, 81, 90, 95, 100, 107, 111, 175, 182, 188, 190, 235, 238, 242, 250, 255, 288-89, 299, 318, 323-25, 359, 389, 436, 787n, 886, 896-97 European Travels 1, 122n, 193n Evatt, G.J.H. 173, 178-80, 186, 328 evil/s 29-31, 38, 42, 50, 64-65, 76, 82, 97, 120, 138, 174, 199, 218, 248, 252, 261, 283, 291, 323, 367, 369, 375-76, 419-20, 433, 435-36, 439, 445, 463, 468, 503, 551, 570, 574, 579, 585, 590, 597, 610, 615, 617, 625, 634, 644, 650, 658-60, 671, 677, 685, 700, 738, 746, 778-79, 787, 807, 820-21, 827-28, 835, 867-68, 883 Ewart, Joseph 59, 745n, 892 faith xii, 85, 173, 201, 234, 313, 359, 409, 414-15, 427, 432, 438, 458-59, 477, 483, 559, 638, 656, 851-52 famine (see also star vation) 1-2, 4-6, 9-10, 12, 17, 38, 85, 89n, 121, 135,

140-49, 151, 159n, 164, 168, 172, 195, 203, 211, 220, 227, 261, 264-78, 280, 284-86, 293, 326, 384 n, 387, 400, 403, 405n, 419, 421, 426, 433, 435-36, 439-40, 448, 453-55, 459, 461, 465, 471-74n, 479, 482-83, 487-89, 494, 496, 499, 512, 518, 535, 550, 554, 567, 576, 580-81, 590, 608, 614, 621, 633, 643-44, 652, 655, 657, 663, 670, 677, 679, 683, 694, 811, 816-17, 835-36, 846, 866, 868, 870-71, 873-75, 890, 895-96, 899, 908 famine prevention 1, 3, 5-6, 151, 182, 267, 271, 487, 507n, 621, 895-96 famine relief 9, 144, 147-48, 153, 170, 261, 265, 269, 271-73, 276, 285, 291, 482-83, 487, 489, 507n, 514, 535, 548, 578, 773, 832n, 871, 895 Farquhar, Thomas 39, 41 Far r, William 57, 59, 472, 656, 891 fatal/fatalism 33, 63, 95, 104, 145, 247-48, 277, 280, 309, 362, 390, 403, 498, 501, 518, 529, 531, 632, 693-94, 801-02, 804, 839 Fawcett, Henry 151-52, 153-54, 157, 167, 169-70, 482, 507n, 535, 825 Fayrer, Joseph 212-13, 259, 792n fever/s 14, 49-50, 61, 63, 80-83, 94-95, 110-11, 118, 125, 134, 142, 145-46, 164, 196, 229, 231, 237, 240, 243, 247, 260, 265, 276-77, 287, 289, 293, 309, 317, 324, 358-59, 362, 372, 386, 388-89, 392, 430, 432, 463, 476-77, 484, 488, 566, 657, 663, 665, 699, 711, 742, 744, 749-50, 760, 773n, 783, 788, 792, 845 Field, J.S. 513 Fife, James George 137, 145-46, 267-68, 485, 679 flood 5, 98, 262, 293, 487, 492, 644, 896 Fowler, Henr y Hartley 178, 383, 866 Fox, Charles James 821 Fox, Francis W. 630 France/French xi, 40, 42, 45n, 60, 116 n, 279, 423, 489, 494, 553, 624, 628-29, 725, 820, 882, 884

Index / 939 Franco-Pr ussian War 119, 130, 507, 510, 580 Franklin, Georgina 781, 791-96 Frederick, John Joseph 95, 201, 307 Frere, Henry Bartle ix, 34-37, 39-41, 43-44, 46-51, 86-88, 91-92, 94-95, 100, 103, 105, 108, 114-16, 122, 127-28, 134, 137, 142, 400-02, 417, 424, 429-30, 469-71, 546, 549, 568, 784, 808, 888-89 Galton, Douglas ix, 11, 29, 44, 102-03, 124, 173, 179-80, 184, 188-89, 191-92, 194, 200, 206, 210, 212, 225 n, 228-29, 297n, 303, 305-06, 308, 331, 333, 351, 357-58, 361, 366, 369, 373-74, 383, 710, 714, 780-82, 861-62, 866, 873 Galton, Francis 711 Galton, Marianne (Nicholson) 351 Gamgee, Joseph 184n Gamgee, Joseph Sampson 184 Gandhi, Mahatma 10, 848 Ganges Canal 43n-44, 453, 460 Ganguly, Kadambini 718, 736, 763-64 germ/s (see also micro-organisms, parasites, bacillus) 14, 392, 710, 897 germ theor y (see also bacillus) 14, 132 n, 362, 748n, 897 Germany/German xi-xii, 14, 75, 249, 404 n, 423, 444n, 552, 580, 683, 686, 882, 884 Ghose, Lalmohun 164, 521, 732, 831-32, 872 Ghose, Manmohun 4, 713, 730-32, 736, 764-65, 831, 854, 861, 864, 867, 872 Ghose, Mrs Manmohun 713, 731, 736, 763-64, 831, 854 Gibraltar 104 Gidumal, Dayaram 778-79 Gladstone, John Hall 753 Gladstone, William Ewart 2, 115, 121, 151-52, 154, 164n, 166-69, 327-28, 502 n, 535, 599, 620-22, 682, 704, 732 n, 799, 813, 834, 837-38, 849, 903-05 God/Father xii-xiii, 5, 32, 46, 102, 116 n, 126, 135, 145, 158-60, 166,

169, 183, 208, 217, 220, 222-23, 234, 242, 265, 285-89, 291-92, 296, 305, 317, 328, 333, 352, 372, 390, 400, 434-35, 437, 439, 454, 493, 498-99, 506, 512-13, 517, 520, 522, 622, 628-29, 642, 644, 648-50, 652, 654, 661, 676, 697, 729, 762, 766, 787, 792, 794, 811-12, 814, 833-34, 840, 846, 851, 876, 901 goddess 6, 126, 204, 222, 289, 324, 389, 869, 886 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna 848, 876 Good Words 46, 220, 262-63, 265 Goodeve, Joseph Ewart 47, 74, 79, 745 Gordon, Charles Alexander 870 Gordon, Charles George (of Khartoum) 225-26, 310 Gordon, Elizabeth Oke Buckland 230, 795 Gordon, Louisa McKay 781, 788, 791, 794-95 Goschen, George Joachim 115, 828 Gourlay, Jharna 5n, 231 n, 233 n, 311 n, 321 n, 396 n, 718 n, 720 n-21, 800 n, 833 n, 890, 893n, 897, 899, 901 government (at home) xiii, 2-3, 6, 8-9, 31, 55, 59, 67-68, 72, 77, 92, 119-21, 131, 133n, 157, 159-62, 166n, 168-69, 172, 182, 195, 197, 200, 204, 225, 228, 301, 304, 324, 327, 340, 385, 394, 396, 403, 409, 413-14, 448, 454, 541n, 550, 725, 732n, 798, 806, 815, 817-18, 828, 857, 869, 872, 896, 900, 903, 905, 909 government of India (see also selfgovernment) 3, 10, 34, 40-42, 44, 47, 50-56, 58, 62, 64-65, 67-75, 77, 79, 86-87, 89, 98, 101, 104, 106, 111, 113, 115, 120-21, 123-24, 127-28, 131, 136-45, 148, 152, 154, 156, 159-63, 165, 168-72, 189, 191-99, 201, 203-05, 207-09, 213, 215-19, 221-27, 229-30, 232-33, 236-39, 241, 243, 245-46, 249, 254-57, 260, 266, 268-70, 274-76, 279-80, 282-86, 291-93, 296-303, 306, 309, 312-19, 321, 323-25,

940 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 328-38, 342-50, 352-53, 356, 359-60, 366, 369-71, 373, 375-78, 380, 382, 384, 386, 388-89, 391, 394, 396-97, 405, 407-10, 412-26, 428-30, 432, 435-36, 438-42, 445-47, 456-59, 461-66, 472, 474, 476, 478-82, 484-87, 489-93, 495-97, 499-500, 502, 504n-05, 507-10, 514n, 516-30, 532-36, 538-45, 547-58, 560, 562-66, 568-72, 576-82, 586-87, 592, 595-97, 599-600, 603-05, 607-09, 611, 613-14, 616-17, 619-20, 624, 626, 628-37, 640, 642, 644-45, 647, 650-55, 657-59, 661, 663-68, 670-71, 673-77, 679-80, 682, 685-97, 700, 702-04, 708, 710-13, 723, 725-28, 731, 733, 735, 741-42, 744-45, 750-53, 755-57, 763-64, 769, 771-73, 775, 777, 780-81, 784-85, 789, 798-807, 808, 812, 815, 819-20, 824, 826, 828-30, 835, 837-39, 842-43, 847-49, 854, 857-61, 865-69, 871, 873, 877, 882-83, 885-87, 889-90, 896, 908-09 Grant-Duff, Lady 365, 706, 718, 727, 729, 740, 762-63, 770, 780, 855, 897 Grant-Duff, Montstuart E. ix, 183-85, 188, 305-06, 365, 686, 700-01, 703-04, 706, 718-19, 727, 762, 770-71, 780, 833, 849, 855, 897 Grant Medical College 35, 79n, 256, 292, 689n Granville, Lord 85 Greathed, William W. 112 Greece/Greek xi, 126, 141, 171, 424, 762, 795, 884 Gregg, W.H. 375-76, 381n Haffkine, Waldemar Mordecai 773, 794 Haig, Colonel 123, 426-27, 429-31, 437, 441, 463, 477, 570 Hallier, Ernst 75 Hardy, Gathorne. See Cranbrook Harley St. (Establishment for Gentlewomen) xi, 887 Hart, G.H.R. 526 Hartington, Lord 160-61, 182, 184, 518, 520, 540-42, 681-82, 837

Hastings, Warren 295n, 818-19, 822 Hawthorn, Amy E. 785 Hawthorn, Robert 785 n Haxthausen, August 444, 446 health/health care (see also public health) xi-xii, 1, 3, 6-7, 10-13, 15, 24, 27, 30-32, 44, 48, 51-53, 55, 57-58, 62-63, 65-71, 76-77, 80-81, 83, 87, 90, 98-102, 105, 107, 110, 112, 117-18, 123-26, 129, 150, 196, 202-03, 208, 211, 215-16, 231, 233-34, 236-43, 245-48, 251-55, 257, 259-60, 271, 286, 290, 292, 295, 299, 303, 312, 319-20, 322, 325-27, 337, 352, 354-55, 359-60, 362-65n, 367-69, 372, 375-77, 379n-80, 383-84, 388-92, 412, 430-31, 436, 443, 463, 476-77, 484, 489, 513, 519, 523, 527, 621, 623, 633, 642, 657, 660-64, 671, 676, 690, 701, 717, 720-21, 725-26, 728, 731, 733-34, 744-46, 751, 754, 757, 760, 762, 765-66, 769, 773, 789, 806, 814, 873-74, 886, 890-95, 898-99, 902, 904, 906 Health in India 1-2, 4, 6-7, 10-11, 14, 23-24 n, 33 n-34 n, 51 n, 53 n, 57 n, 59 n, 83 n, 132 n, 138 n, 143 n, 151, 169, 191n, 216, 218n, 225n, 245n, 399 n, 401, 403, 486, 506n, 664n, 677 n, 724, 748n, 779, 797n, 871, 891, 894n-95 health missioners 5, 23, 261-65, 270, 275, 286-88, 290-92, 322, 354, 380, 382, 388-89, 391, 401, 717, 772-73 health (Nightingale’s) xii, 15, 46, 135, 174, 234, 263-64, 341-42, 373, 506, 508, 512, 516-17, 539, 709, 759, 768, 855, 866, 886 health officer/s 10, 25-27, 34n, 48-50, 70, 72-73, 75-76, 78-79, 81, 94-95, 113, 190, 203, 209, 213, 220, 232, 247, 250, 261-65, 288-90, 296, 298, 364, 370, 401, 789, 869, 890-92, 895 Hendley, Harold 378-79 Hendley, Mrs Harold 378-79 Hendley, Thomas H. 370 Herbert, Sidney ix, 11, 15, 35, 46, 100, 103, 121-22, 155, 167-68, 170, 175,

Index / 941 177-78, 214, 297, 828, 862, 880, 887-88, 891, 903 Herbert, Sidney (son) 133 Hewlett, S.S. 765 Hewlett, Thomas Gillham ix, 11, 23, 44, 47-48, 50, 79, 84, 94-95, 102, 104, 113, 131, 141-43, 146-47, 182, 188, 190, 194, 198-206, 209n, 211-12, 216-17, 219-20, 222-24, 226, 230, 261, 265, 287n, 307-21, 333, 347, 349, 351-53, 382, 389, 730-33, 735, 738, 740-42, 749, 755, 759-60, 764, 812, 814, 869, 886 Hill, Mr (Frederick?) 191, 200-01 Hill, Rowland 669-70 hill station/s 101, 118 Hindu/Hinduism/Hindustan/i 13, 30, 78, 86, 116, 145, 164, 202n, 246, 266, 268, 278, 288-89, 292, 352, 363, 374, 380, 382, 386, 393, 405, 433-34, 449, 452, 465, 467-68, 470, 488-89, 528, 538-42, 547, 550, 554, 574, 610, 622, 643-44, 652-54, 658-61, 675, 709-10, 712, 714, 717, 721-24, 729, 732, 734, 737, 749, 753-54, 757, 763-64, 769, 774-77, 779, 782-83, 787, 792, 797, 807-08, 812, 817, 830, 832, 838, 842, 844-45, 856, 873, 877, 884n, 902, 905 histor y/historian/historical xii, 1, 9, 14, 38, 60, 74, 186, 195, 229, 231n, 238, 247, 273, 278, 289, 293-96, 299, 359, 384, 393n-94, 397n, 401, 405-07, 469n, 502-04, 587, 595, 609, 646, 649, 664, 674, 697n, 718 n, 720 n, 746, 776n, 798-99, 807, 816, 818, 821, 830, 841, 864, 881, 884, 892, 898, 902, 909 Hobart, Lord 704, 708 Hobhouse, Arthur 473 Hogg, F.R. 745 Hoggan, Frances Elizabeth 720 home rule (Ireland) 904 Hooper, W.R. 792 Hope, Lady 810 Hope, Mr 293-94, 673, 675, Hope, T. 331

Horse Guards 47, 65, 317 hospitals (construction) xi, 25-26, 29, 41 n, 52-53, 56, 77, 103, 142, 250, 256, 728, 783, 790, 873, 897 Houghton, Lord 683 House of Commons 57-58, 87, 150-52, 154-55, 162, 165, 182, 284, 286, 385, 421, 424, 445, 504, 517, 519, 539-41, 543, 680, 705, 707, 711, 814-15, 821, 824-25, 833, 835, 843, 866, 875, 907 House of Lords 85n, 326, 540-41, 904 Hume, Allan Octavian 682, 730-31, 777, 831, 833, 847, 908 Hunter, William Guyer 369, 748, 779-80 Hunter, William W. 841-45 Hur ford, Miss 227, 712, 770-72, 865 hygiene 14, 17, 24, 90, 149, 231-32, 245, 259, 296, 357-59, 362-63, 366, 368-70, 376, 378-80, 383, 633, 677, 714-15, 732, 734, 737n, 743, 745, 749, 758, 765-66, 789, 814, 848n, 861-62, 870, 876, 899 hymns 277n, 286n, 868n Iddesleigh, Lord. See Northcote Ilbert, Courtney P. 800, 802, 804, 833, 835 Ilbert Bill 4, 7, 599, 601, 620, 799-801, 803-04, 819, 829, 904 India Office 3, 11, 16, 24, 26, 28-29, 33-35, 37, 40, 42-43, 45-46, 50-51, 65, 73-74, 78, 84, 87, 92, 103, 114, 119-22, 129-30, 132-33, 135, 142n, 146, 149, 192, 194, 196, 198, 202 n-04, 206, 212-14, 222, 244, 286, 298, 307, 362, 366-67, 370, 373, 400n, 431n, 486, 492, 509, 520, 542, 547, 626, 681, 689n, 692, 700, 706, 708, 711, 789, 792, 814, 818, 825-26, 833-37, 844, 851, 854, 857, 865, 901 Indian Army 167, 170, 174, 200, 338, 785 Indian Civil Service 308n, 691, 697 n-99, 714, 806, 823, 834, 841, 905, 907-08

942 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Indian Medical Service 142, 892 Indian National Congress 4, 164n, 315 n, 327, 353, 366, 392, 521n, 682 n, 713 n, 776, 799-800, 831n, 847, 857-60, 908-09 Indian nationals 2-3, 5, 7-8, 11-12, 16-17, 21-23, 93, 95-96, 116, 147, 151, 153, 161-63, 165, 168-69, 179, 195 n, 199, 232-34, 245-47, 258-59, 309, 312, 321, 326, 340, 359, 361, 370, 377-78, 393, 395, 398, 403, 472, 548, 642, 676, 678, 696, 718, 731, 777, 794, 797-801, 806-07, 818-19, 828, 836, 846-48, 859, 876, 882-84, 894-95, 900-02, 904-05, 907 Indian Nursing Service 781 Indians (British in India, Anglo-Indians) 21, 63, 85, 130, 162, 191, 199, 232-33, 256, 259, 301, 303, 309, 332, 380, 404, 443, 531, 568, 599, 620, 714, 724, 732, 734-35, 739, 759, 762, 798, 817, 819, 836, 839, 842, 849-50, 854, 856, 860, 870, 882-85, 891, 905 infection/infectious diseases 14, 90, 896-97 inoculation 774, 794-95 intemperance 127 International Congress of Hygiene and Demography in Budapest (1894) 357-61, 366, 380 International Hygiene Congress in London (1891) 368-69, 376, 383, 861-62 Ireland/Irish xiii, 8, 10, 84-85, 87-88, 115, 151, 160, 326-27, 330, 341, 397, 405, 411-12, 421, 440, 445-46, 455, 475, 499, 517, 519-20, 531, 541, 543, 553, 598, 612-13, 648n, 683, 705, 707, 739, 751-52, 888, 904 irrigate/irrigation 1, 9, 12, 24, 43n, 87, 101, 112n, 117, 123-25, 127, 134, 136-41, 145, 159, 195-96, 262, 267-72, 276, 293, 296, 340-41, 386-87, 395-96, 401-02, 404, 425-29, 431, 433, 436-37, 441-44, 449-53, 455-60, 462, 465-66, 471-73, 475-85, 487, 490, 492, 495-99, 505, 510,

546-47, 570, 575, 584, 600, 611, 648, 677, 681-82, 691, 708, 726, 829, 868, 887, 891, 895-96 Islam/ic (see also Muslim) 811n Italy/Italian xi, 45n, 162n, 244, 629, 696, 848, 882 jails 29, 86-87, 298 Japan/Japanese 434, 448, 658, 795 Jarrold, Mr 731-32 Jeejeebhoy, Jamsetjee 676 Jew/Jewish 269 Johnson, Samuel 295n Jones, Agnes Elizabeth 46n Jones, Mary 784 n Jones, William Bence 183, 305 Joshi, Garesh Wasedeo 363, 376 Jowett, Benjamin 195n, 340, 401-02, 437 n, 547, 697, 699, 714-15, 776-77, 895 Jung, Salar 528, 625, 835 Kaiserswerth xi-xii Keay, J. Seymour 818-20, 827 Kennedy, M. 146 Khartoum 225 n, 310 Kimberley, earl of 377, 383, 834, 837 King’s College Hospital 91n, 773n Knowles, James T. 329-30, 545, 859, 867 Koch, Robert 14, 320, 710 Ladies’ Sanitary Association 360-61, 730-31, 737-38, 744, 748, 751 Lamb, Charles 248 Lancet, The 244-45 n, 765 land tenure 5-6, 11, 169, 196, 326, 328, 341, 393-94, 401, 404, 413, 424, 430, 438, 444n, 481, 497, 500, 504, 548-49, 552, 554, 582, 609, 612, 621, 626, 684, 698, 810, 835, 885, 887, 889, 900 Lansdowne, Lady 721, 765, 767 Lansdowne, Lord 5, 9, 195, 197, 199, 213, 215, 219, 221, 225, 227, 311, 339-43, 345, 351, 366, 370, 373-74, 377-78, 383, 764, 767, 776-77, 839, 847, 860-61, 890, 900

Index / 943 Lawrence, Henry 823 Lawrence, John ix, 1, 4-5, 8, 11-12, 16, 25-26, 28, 31-34, 36-41, 43, 46-47, 49, 51, 58-59, 83, 86-87, 91-92, 95, 100, 105-06, 115, 148, 156, 166-68, 172, 189, 210, 261, 286, 292, 295-96, 394, 401, 410-12, 453, 468, 471, 476, 478, 589, 597, 617, 642, 644, 666, 676, 697, 739, 779, 800, 823 n, 830, 840, 842, 855, 879-80, 884, 888, 891, 893, 897, 900, 904 Leith, A.H. 32, 79, 88, 254, 892 leper 319, 786-87 Lesage, Alain-René 228n Lethbridge, Roper 853, 863 Lewis, George Cornewall 214 Lewis, Timothy Richards 75, 107 Liberal (politics) xii-xiii, 3, 9, 85n, 115 n, 121, 151-52, 154n, 164n, 166, 169, 182n, 220n, 230n, 327, 340, 377, 541n, 704, 707, 730, 732 n, 798, 833n-34, 850, 853-54, 866, 875n, 900, 903-04, 907-09 Life and Family 1 Lindsay, Robert Loyd 119, 780, 782 Liverpool Workhouse Infirmar y 46 n Livingstone, David 132 Local Government Board 138, 189, 217, 323-24, 334 lock hospitals 30, 79 Locke, John 485, 647, 882 Long, James 233, 423-24, 429, 445-46, 546 Longfellow, Henr y Wadsworth 277 n Louis, Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt 507 Louis XIV 453, 883n Lowe, Robert 91, 115 Lumsdaine, John 102, 113 Lumsden, Peter S. 113n, 200 Lunn, John R. 845 lying-in hospital (see also midwifer y) 761, 763, 770, 784, 788, 905 Lytton, Lord 5, 8-9, 135-36, 146-48, 162, 483, 804, 813, 824, 854, 889 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 295, 393, 722 Macaulay, Zachar y 649

Machariar, Krishna 762 Mackenzie, Alexander 519, 524-25, 532, 571, 578, 880 Maclean, William Campbell 244 MacNaughten, Mr 876 MacPherson, Duncan 59 Macrae, Dr 78 MacRur y, C.W. 209, 219, 221, 228, 772 Madras presidency 13, 24, 38, 41-44, 52-55, 59n, 65, 68-70, 72, 74, 76, 78-79, 83n, 88-89, 91, 96, 98, 107, 127-29, 131, 134, 136-41, 144-45, 147 n, 149, 156, 170, 172, 181, 183-85, 196, 208, 210-11, 223, 226, 245, 252, 254, 259, 268, 271, 277, 279, 285, 293, 296, 298-301, 305-06, 349, 365n, 379-80, 383-84, 386, 424n, 429, 460-61, 464, 470-71, 474, 479-82, 484, 487-89, 494, 535, 547, 577-78, 609-12, 622, 624-25, 630, 633-35, 642, 644-45, 653-55, 665, 667-71, 674-75, 678-79, 682, 686-87, 689, 691, 693-94, 696, 698-704, 709, 712-13, 718-19, 722, 727-29, 734, 737-38, 741, 743-46, 748, 753-54, 758-59, 762-64, 770, 779-80, 797, 813-14, 831n-32 n, 836, 841, 851-53, 855, 866, 868-70, 874, 879, 897, 903, 905-06 Madras Sanitary Commission 37n, 69, 78-79, 89, 144n, 188, 675, 731 Maine, Henry S. 115, 422, 424, 571, 834-35 Malabari, Behramji M. ix, 4, 389, 390-91, 724, 775-79, 811, 861, 868-69 malaria 14, 64, 110, 117, 145, 229, 235, 238, 252, 256, 309, 362, 386, 392, 484-85, 795 Malcolm, John 424, 469 Malleson, George Bruce 43, 47 Mallet, Louis ix, 143, 328-29, 479, 522, 525, 529, 541-42, 623, 632, 682, 684, 687, 692, 728, 810, 816, 835 Malta 104, 629, 699 Manning, Elizabeth Adelaide 627-28 Manning, Henry Edward 809 Mansfield, William R. 102, 108-10, 112, 116, 118-19

944 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Markby, William 714 married quarters 25, 57 Marston, J. 185 Martin, James Ranald 53, 59, 297, 891-92 Martineau, Harriet 132, 471, 885n Mar ylebone Workhouse Infirmar y 845 Mayo, Lady 89, 91 Mayo, Lord 4, 8, 83-93, 95, 101, 104-05, 107-10, 113-15, 119, 121, 234, 236, 243-44, 463, 598, 792, 830, 841-42, 888-89 McMuir, C.W. 454 McNeill, John 92 Mecca 77 medicine/medical profession (see also doctor, surgeon) xii-xiii, 1, 6, 11, 14, 25, 30-31, 35, 38, 47-49, 52, 54, 59, 63, 68, 71, 73, 77, 93, 98, 101, 107, 119, 132n, 149, 159, 161, 175-76, 178-80, 182, 188, 210, 215, 218-20, 226-27, 229, 244, 250, 256-58, 292, 298, 309-10, 358, 391-92, 656, 702, 710, 713, 717-21, 727, 729-30, 733-37, 739-42, 744-45, 749-50, 758-69, 773, 776, 778, 782-84, 787, 789-90, 793, 813-14, 841, 845, 861, 869-70, 891n-92, 895, 897-98, 905-06 miasma/miasmatic disease 80-81, 83, 252, 375 micro-organisms 75, 362-63, 376, 389 microscope 75, 389 midwife/midwifer y 1, 720, 727, 738, 742, 759-63, 765-66, 769-70, 773, 784, 787-88, 793n, 905 militar y hospitals 84n, 175, 178, 180, 757, 765, 779, 781, 784, 786, 897 Mill, James 393 Mill, John Stuart xii, 393, 647 Mills, Miss 781, 788-89, 791 Milnes, Richard Monckton. See Lord Houghton Milton, John 166, 851n, 884n mission/missionar y/missioner 5, 10, 17, 23, 25, 105, 132n, 203, 223, 233 n, 261-65, 270, 272, 274-75,

277, 286, 288-92, 296, 322, 324, 354, 363, 380, 382, 388-89, 391, 399 n-401, 436, 448-49, 470, 489, 570, 651-52, 660, 671, 676, 698, 717-20, 726-27, 733, 735-37, 739, 742, 765, 772-73, 775-76, 778, 781, 785, 787, 806-07, 816, 841, 845, 871, 881n, 886, 890, 897 Mittra, Babu Peary Chand 235 Mohl, Julius 115n-16 n, 811 Mohl, Mary Clarke 472 Moira, Lord 446 Moore, William James 309, 369, 710, 760, 862 Morehead, Charles 79, 97 mortality (see also death/death rate) 32, 52, 54, 56-67, 78, 80-81, 94-95, 99, 111, 156, 243, 255, 259, 301, 320, 337, 472, 657, 760-61, 812, 832 n, 891, 894 Moses/Mosaic 30, 490 mother/s 133, 271, 280, 379-80, 382, 391, 489, 512, 516, 539, 664, 673, 717, 722, 726, 770-74, 777-79, 784, 788, 808, 870, 889 Mouat, F.G. 194, 892 Mudaliar, Salem Ramaswami 831, 852-53 Mughal 134, 380, 425, 433, 583, 596 Muhammadan/s (see also Muslim) 22, 145, 288-89, 291-92, 310-11, 330, 405, 422, 433, 447, 467-68, 567, 569, 590, 605, 610-11, 638, 652, 654, 658-59, 665, 671, 691, 712, 723, 734, 737, 746, 757, 762, 769, 782-83, 792, 802-03, 808-09, 811-12, 838, 842, 844, 856, 877, 889 Muir, William 122, 447 Munro, Thomas 424, 469, 471, 496-97 Murdoch, John 222-23, 337, 352, 709, 712, 737-38, 742-43, 745, 747-51, 753, 764-66, 770, 786, 846, 869-70, 874, 877 Muslim/s (see also Muhammadan, Islam) 22, 380, 393, 717, 807, 876, 902, 905 Mutiny 4, 10, 58, 60-62, 66, 117, 143, 145, 156, 170, 227, 279, 284-85,

Index / 945 292, 393-95, 406, 408-09, 411, 442, 444, 449, 467, 535, 585, 597, 797, 801, 803, 807, 887-88, 891, 902 Mysore, 145, 261, 273-75, 277, 487-88, 814 Mysticism and Eastern Religions 1, 282n, 683 n, 806 n Naick, Chengal Roy 675 Naoroji, Dadabhai ix, 4, 315, 369, 724, 776, 847-48, 855, 860, 865-66, 907-08 Napier and Ettrick, Lady 622, 780, 840 Napier and Ettrick, Lord 41, 43, 83n, 89-90, 780, 840, 879 Napier of Magdala, Lord (Robert Cornelis) 83-84, 88, 90-91, 100-04, 108-12, 114-16, 200, 434, 840 Napoleon I 45, 552 Napoleon III ( Louis-Napoléon) 40 Nash, Rosalind (Shore Smith) ix, 384, 871, 875, 879 Nash, Vaughan ix, 384, 871, 896 National Aid Society 780, 782 National Indian Association/Journal 303, 487, 627-28, 633-34 Native Army Hospital Corps 4, 24, 173-74, 179-82, 782 Netley Hospital 47, 142, 244, 711 Newton, Isaac 93, 108, 485 Nightingale, Frances 512, 516, 539, 889 Nightingale, Parthenope. See Verney Nightingale, W.E. 132, 135, 889 Nightingale Fund 154n, 507n, 683n, 773 n, 791 n Nightingale School 507n, 761n, 897 Nineteenth Century 229, 329, 403, 474, 486, 506, 545-46, 602, 623, 766, 817-19, 859, 867 Norman, Henr y 56 Northbrook, Lord (Thomas George Baring) 5, 8-9, 121-22, 124-29, 148, 340 n, 470, 630, 889 Northcote, Stafford Henr y (earl of Iddesleigh) 34-37, 40-41, 43, 47, 52, 72, 90, 298, 477, 824, 851

Notes on Hospitals 142 Notes on Nursing 664 n nurses/nursing xi, xiii, 1-2, 11, 20, 124 n, 164, 244, 262, 271, 317, 400n, 507 n, 512-13, 621, 699, 718, 720, 725, 729, 739, 851, 862, 879, 887 nurses/nursing in India 6, 13, 41, 89, 173-79, 181, 379, 721, 724, 727, 749, 762-63, 765-66, 773-74, 778-95, 876, 879, 897 O’Connell, Daniel 648, 668 old age 45, 82, 664, 670 Ollivant, Charles 308, 841 Onslow, Denzil Roberts 152-56 opium 157, 569, 820 overcrowding 289, 362-63, 376, 381, 386, 389 Oxford University 132, 164, 184, 202, 340, 372, 499, 685-86, 691, 697, 699, 706, 711, 714, 763, 793, 834, 865 Ozanne, E.C. 708 Palmerston, Lord 85, 222 panchayat 13, 203, 209, 283, 294, 296, 312, 314, 316, 319, 321, 335, 342-43, 345-46, 352, 356, 360, 363-64, 382, 389, 424, 430, 656, 839, 861, 876-77 Panmure, Lord. See Lord Dalhousie Paris xi, xiii, 29, 171, 284, 351, 629 Parkes’ Museum 753 Parliament/ar y 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 20, 37, 45, 74, 135, 147, 152n-53, 158, 164 n, 183 n, 195, 199, 212, 229, 386, 424, 429, 453, 502, 511, 517n, 525, 541n, 543, 624, 649, 675, 730, 801-03, 813, 821-25, 827, 830, 833, 836-37, 841, 844, 847, 849, 854, 857-58, 862n, 875, 903, 907-08 Parsi/s 35, 86, 221, 676n-78, 724, 732, 734, 766, 777, 779, 811, 813-14, 838, 842, 844, 873, 907 patel/s 141, 143, 269-70, 278, 280, 291-92, 302, 313-14, 316, 343, 346, 355, 365, 381, 647, 655-57, 659, 661-62, 764

946 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India Paul, St 291, 793, 808 pauper/pauperism 274, 280, 285, 423, 464, 474, 489, 622-23, 631, 683, 725 Payne, Arthur 781, 784-86, 862 peace/ful 61-62, 64-66, 175, 177, 199, 268, 282, 361, 396, 410, 412-13, 435, 444, 448, 451-52, 456, 466, 539, 543, 548, 564, 570-71, 581, 732, 811, 826, 830, 872-73, 885, 904 peasant/r y (see also ryot) 5-6, 8, 10, 22, 126, 145, 160, 165, 170-72, 231-32, 237, 261, 266, 269, 277-79, 281, 284-85, 297, 312, 326-27, 381, 388-89, 392-93, 397, 401, 403, 408, 413, 423, 431-33, 436, 444-46, 468-69, 471-72, 474, 480, 487-89, 495, 503-04, 506, 514-15, 519, 523, 535, 549, 552-53, 579, 581-82, 585, 589, 591, 596-98, 602, 608, 610-13, 615, 617, 628-29, 634, 640, 707, 717, 722, 728, 806, 875, 900, 902, 908-09 Pechey, Edith 746, 763, 766 Pedder, W.G. 142, 315-19, 474, 833 Peile, James B. 201-02, 205-08, 216, 223, 347 Pembroke, Lord (13th earl) 133 Permanent Settlement 6, 164-65, 299, 396, 401, 414-15, 417, 420-22, 433, 438-40, 471, 473, 480, 483, 494, 504-05, 508, 514n, 525, 529, 543, 545, 548-50, 552-54, 557, 562-63, 569, 577-78, 580, 582, 589, 594-96, 598, 600, 602-04, 607-10, 615, 618, 802, 805, 885, 899 Persia/n 86n, 116n, 358, 583, 809, pestilence 238, 240, 242-43, 247 Phear, Mr Justice 233 philanthropy/philanthropist 153-54, 233 n, 493, 676n physician (see also doctor, surgeon) 722, 746n, 761, 790 physiology/ical 184, 242 plague 63, 80, 82, 85, 247-48, 261, 273, 724, 773-74, 781, 791-92, 794-95, 846, 874, 876, 890-91, 896 Plato 372 Plowden, Charles C. 24, 46, 96, 129, 258

pollute/pollution 141, 231, 242, 246, 287, 290, 299, 302, 387, 392, 723 Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 164-65, 221, 311-12, 315n, 321-22, 325, 349, 353, 357-58, 361-67, 374, 476, 378, 381, 383, 712, 861-62 poor/poverty 5-6, 9, 29, 78, 81, 90, 116, 145, 160, 162, 165, 170, 172-73, 176-77, 183, 195, 198, 239, 254, 261, 269-70, 273, 276, 278, 280, 284-86, 290, 299, 301, 336, 363-64, 367, 372, 375, 377, 379, 381-82, 390, 395-96, 403, 423, 425-26, 431, 434, 436, 443-44, 448-49, 456, 463, 471-74, 479-80, 485, 488, 492, 494, 498-99, 507, 510, 512-13, 515, 518, 522, 534-35, 547, 567-68, 570, 579-80, 588, 590-91, 593, 608, 610-12, 617, 621, 623, 627-28, 630, 634-36, 639, 643, 646-48, 650, 652, 656, 658-61, 666, 668-69 n, 675, 681, 700, 711, 718, 726, 728-29, 734, 736, 740, 751, 758, 779, 806, 809-12, 815, 821, 861-62, 864, 873, 875, 887, 896, 898-900, 902, 907-08 Poor Law/Poor Law Board 92, 115n, 269, 489, 494, 652, 725 pope/papal 20, 148 Pope, George Uglow 763 pray/prayer 32, 149, 166, 169, 277, 361, 400, 513, 522, 523n, 528, 646, 654, 723, 784, 787, 791, 794,796, 855 prevention/preventive/preventible (disease) xi, 1, 3, 5-6, 13-14, 26, 28, 30, 44, 53, 55, 57, 71, 79, 90, 99, 140, 149, 151, 182, 186, 188, 214, 216, 237, 259, 271, 277, 289, 309, 323, 325, 339, 359, 363-64, 377, 379, 381, 387, 465, 487, 507n, 621, 721, 755, 773n, 788, 814, 886, 892, 895-98 Pringle, Angelique Lucille 761, 786, 851, 880n Prinsep, Edward 146-47 Prinsep, Henry Thoby 146, 475, 485 prisons (see also jails) xiii, 34n, 70-73, 86 n, 101, 233n, 252, 294, 301, 396,

Index / 947 416, 444-45, 454, 490, 534, 589, 669 n, 673, 774-75 prostitute/prostitution 1, 31, 167 Protestant xi, 844 Providence 40, 42, 472, 506, 513, 575, 868 Pr ussia/Pr ussian 119, 130, 434, 437, 507, 759 public health xi, 5, 12-14, 16-17, 24, 26-27, 35-37, 41-42, 53, 55, 69-70, 73, 77, 80, 99, 188, 231-32, 235, 243-44, 249-50, 256, 260, 292, 302, 359, 369, 371, 393, 661, 665, 676, 717, 806, 879, 893-94, 898-99, 902 Public Health Care 1, 8n, 12, 46n, 154 n, 171 n, 262, 379n, 664n puerperal fever 773n quarantine 77, 85, 90, 313, 710-11, 897 Quetelet, L.A.J. xii, 132, 844 railways 65, 117, 126, 139, 151, 157, 173, 195, 267-68, 288, 301, 340, 392, 395, 425, 435, 445, 451-52, 456, 461, 465, 497, 578, 852, 895 Raju, Dhanakoti 737, 745, 758 Rama 884 Ranade, Mahadev Govind 315, 835, 908 Ranking, J.L. 78 Rao, T. Mahhava 754 Rao, Ragoonalha 728 Rathbone, William 154, 166, 773, 873 Rawlinson, Robert ix, 11, 33, 38, 44, 96, 98, 122-23, 138, 183, 210, 305, 724, 839 reading rooms 112, 161 Reay, Lord 224, 307-09, 311, 313, 315-17, 348, 350, 703, 712, 735, 748, 834, 855 religion/religious xii-xiii, 1, 7, 30, 47, 86 n, 239, 246-47, 258, 268, 325, 363, 375-77, 382, 387, 421, 434, 489, 550, 554, 567, 605, 610, 633, 647, 649, 653-54n, 664, 667, 671, 694, 713, 717, 724, 746-47, 753, 773 n, 791, 806-07, 811, 824, 842, 852-53, 864, 876-77, 902-03, 905

Reynolds, H.J. 516, 518-20, 542-44, 592-94 Ripon, Lord (de Grey) ix, 3-5, 7-9, 11-12, 14, 33-34, 36-38, 41, 71, 91-93, 99, 102, 167, 169, 173-74, 177, 179-81, 196, 204, 213, 216, 296-97, 300, 303-04, 306, 310-12, 325-30, 333, 340-41, 346, 386, 500, 521, 597, 599-601, 620, 632, 681-82, 698, 737, 742, 747, 777, 798-802, 804-05, 817, 819, 826-30, 833-36, 838-40, 842, 846-51, 853-54, 860, 872-73, 878, 889, 894n, 897, 900-01, 903-05, 909 Ritchie, Richmond 202, 207 Roberts, Frederick Sleigh 312, 540-41 n, 781, 785 Roberts, Lady 786 Robertson, W.R. 196, 461-63, 677-78, 681-83, 686-87, 690, 696, 699-701, 705, 709-10, 713 Robinson, William C.F. 128 Roman Catholic/ism xi, 844, 903-04 Rome/Roman xi, 20, 26, 29, 141, 248, 269, 296, 340, 424, 884 Roseber y, Lord 220 Roy, P.C. 503-04n, 519-20 royal commission (after Crimea) xii, 828, 888, 890 royal commission (on India)/Report 1, 3-4, 7, 13, 17, 23, 52-54, 56-60, 63-67, 71, 95, 106, 108, 154-57, 173, 177-78, 189, 210, 236, 243, 245-46, 295, 297, 338, 886-88, 890-94 Ruddock, Alice Maud 781, 789, 791, 795 Rundall, Colonel 426, 437, 441, 450 rural health 83, 221, 287, 291, 303-04, 311, 321, 324, 360, 367, 369, 375, 379, 382-83, 388-90, 392, 717, 773 Russell, David 63 Russia/Russian 10, 169-70, 330, 419, 424-29, 434-35, 437, 444-46, 449, 468-69, 474, 482, 497, 510, 543, 553, 582, 629, 730, 773n, 799, 809, 815, 836-37, 842, 848-49 ryot/s (see also peasants) 6, 10-11, 13, 22, 125, 159, 165-66, 171, 196,

948 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 231-33, 266, 278-83, 285, 293, 295, 299 n, 394, 396-401, 406-07, 410-36, 438-39, 441-43, 447-51, 454, 457-58, 461-63, 467-68, 471-77, 479-88, 490-95, 497-505, 507-11, 513-22, 524-25, 529-34, 536-45, 548-49, 552-63, 565-99, 601-24, 626-31, 633-39, 642-43, 646, 648-50, 654-55, 663, 665-68, 671-74, 677, 679-80, 687-88, 693, 695-96, 704, 708-09, 730, 737, 807-09, 829, 863, 871-73, 880, 885, 889n, 896, 900, 902, 908 Salisbur y, Lord. See Cranborne sanitarian/s ix, 81n, 125, 127, 187, 197, 225, 309-10, 318, 322, 378, 391, 713, 758 sanitar y board/s 189, 191-92, 197, 222-23, 226, 340, 356, 370-71, 711, 893 sanitar y commission/er ix, 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, 22-24, 28, 32-34n, 37, 43n, 47-49, 51n, 53-56, 65, 67-72, 74-75, 77-79, 87, 95, 102n, 104, 107, 115, 131, 141-42, 144n, 186-88, 197-99, 201 n, 203, 205, 208, 209n-10, 215-17, 219-21, 226, 239n, 256, 261, 263, 286-87, 290-91, 295, 298, 300, 303, 309, 313-16, 319-20, 322, 331, 337-39, 344, 346, 356, 375, 381-82, 446, 655-56, 659, 731-35, 738, 740-42, 744, 755, 759-60, 764, 869, 886, 888, 892-93 sanitar y condition/s 55, 68, 78-79, 150, 155, 174, 187, 211, 231, 248, 252, 259, 310, 315, 334-35, 355, 362, 367, 369, 381, 383, 387, 760-61, 764, 814, 886, 893, 899, 902 sanitar y education 6, 107, 336-37, 364, 367, 374, 390, 527, 665, 675, 721, 726, 730-38, 741-45, 747-53, 758-59, 761-65, 874, 877, 886, 900 sanitar y engineer/ing 103, 111, 113, 138, 184, 188, 198-99, 204-05, 211, 225-26, 228n, 245, 249, 253, 255, 313, 315-16, 318, 331-33, 371, 839, 893 sanitar y measures 8, 11, 16, 36, 63, 65, 67, 72, 78-79, 95, 141, 154-55, 182,

197, 214, 219, 232, 234, 237, 245, 252, 291, 296, 303, 314, 319, 323, 359, 658, 734, 893, 895, 899 sanitar y progress 52, 62, 70, 74, 80-81, 84, 96-97n, 99, 104, 123, 130, 154-55, 157, 197-99, 207, 239, 244-45, 248, 250-51, 254, 256, 258-59, 298, 313, 315, 334-35, 353, 365-66, 369, 383, 526, 633, 734, 894, 902 sanitar y reform 4-5, 23, 36, 91n, 182, 197, 199-200, 223, 245, 295, 310-11, 337, 364, 662, 732, 734, 747, 764, 771-72, 891-92 sanitar y reports 23, 38, 42, 52, 74, 77, 129, 131-32, 201, 218, 245, 253, 259-60, 292, 309, 316-19, 323, 655, 755, 887, 893, 898 Saunders, Trelawney C. 431-32, 599 savings bank 277, 630 scarlet fever 82-83, 317 Scharlieb, Mary 712, 718-20, 722-23n, 727-29, 737, 739-40, 758, 762-63, 773-74, 792, 897, 905-06 schools xii, 2, 98, 111n, 115, 121, 160-61, 163, 171, 179, 181, 194, 196, 225, 227, 233, 242, 255, 283-84, 323, 334, 337, 363-64, 374, 376, 382, 387, 389, 393, 409, 444-46, 477, 497-98, 507, 512, 527, 568, 621, 631, 633-35, 637, 639-42, 644-45, 647, 650-55, 657, 659-60, 662-77, 679-81, 686-88, 690, 692, 694-95, 699, 702, 705-08, 712, 718, 721, 725n-27, 730, 733-34, 736-37, 739-41, 743-47, 749-59, 761, 763-66, 770-72, 783, 787, 794, 807, 810, 812, 829, 842-43, 848n, 853, 870, 874, 876, 878n, 886, 897, 900, 905 Scotland/Scot 132, 190, 228, 262, 445, 469 n, 748-49 Scott, Walter 465n, 642n Scott-Moncrieff, C.C. 453 Scutari xi, 12, 185, 879 Seal, Brajendra Kumar 513 self-government 3-4, 6-7, 12-13, 169, 190, 196, 233, 325-26, 340-42, 356, 385, 424, 446, 703, 797, 799-801,

Index / 949 803, 807, 819, 826, 828-30, 839-40, 846-47, 850-51, 863-64, 900, 904, 909 Sen, Keshub Chunder 116 Sen, Prasanna Kumar 398, 499-500, 503 n, 505 Sen, Priyaranjan K. 500 sepoy/s 102, 170, 279, 408, 433, 488-89, 535, 656,795, 807, 898 sewer/sewerage 1, 14, 24, 28, 33, 78, 81, 98, 123, 138, 141, 151, 182-84, 199, 204, 212-13, 231-32, 248, 250-51, 253-54, 257, 306, 308, 331-34, 347, 526, 657, 665, 724, 839 Shakespeare, William 116n, 275n, 485, 650n, 660, 786n, 865n, 882 Shaw, James 78-79 Shia 809, 876n Sikh/s 39, 62, 115, 676, 838 Simon, John 91 Sing, Man 406-08 Sisters of Charity 669 slave/slave trade 6, 172, 285, 397, 400, 420-22, 435, 438-40, 469, 472, 474, 479-80, 489-90, 493, 496, 535, 602, 622-23, 649, 661, 810, 813, 848 Sleeman, William Henry 410 smallpox 14, 82, 99, 145, 204, 222, 240, 248, 271, 324, 389, 869 Smith, Blanche Shore 228 n Smith, David 250, 254, 257 Smith, H. Babington 228-29, 386, 870 Smith, Robert Angus 76 Smith, Rosalind Shore. See Nash Smith, Thomas Southwood 81 Smith, William 649, Snodgrass, E.M.M. 792 social reform/er ix, xii-xiii, 1, 7, 13-14, 17, 390n, 395, 398, 653, 676, 697n, 718, 724, 771-72, 774, 806, 831n, 900 Society and Politics xii, 1, 3n, 10n, 24, 43 n, 57 n, 83 n, 115 n, 132 n, 151, 167-69, 225n, 327n, 340n, 502n, 622 n, 711, 800n, 807n, 844n, 847 n, 875, 879n, 907 soldiers 8, 10-11, 31, 57, 61, 63-64, 97, 101-02, 121, 124-25, 153, 161, 168,

173, 232, 252, 265, 279, 487, 493n, 513, 676, 741, 785, 791, 881, 891, 894, 902 Son Canals 455 South Africa 268n, 848, 896, 904 Spain 553 Spiritual Journey 1 St Marylebone Infirmar y 845 St Thomas’ Hospital 19, 91n, 308, 507 n, 761 n, 781, 787-88, 792-94, 862 Stanhope, Edward 170, 201, 203, 206, 338, 810n Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (duke of Westminster) 292, 642 Stanley, Lord (Edward Henr y), 15th earl of Derby ix, 11, 26, 28, 34n, 57, 87, 91, 132-33, 143, 154-55, 177-78, 809, 887-88, 891 star vation (see also famine) 2, 5, 86, 139, 144, 157, 170, 197, 261, 269, 271-73, 276-77, 280, 285, 358, 403, 430-31, 433, 435-36, 438-39, 448, 462, 468, 473, 478, 487-89, 525, 535, 553, 566-67, 577, 579, 609, 614-15, 643, 709, 718, 821, 823, 873, 881, 896 statistics xii, 52, 57n, 59, 64-65, 74, 80, 82, 97, 132n, 135, 146, 150, 154, 293, 301, 342, 359, 361, 387, 446, 462, 504, 547, 600, 655, 662, 711, 763, 777, 814, 841, 844n, 893 Stephen, James 813 n Stephen, Sir James 481 n, 813 n Stephen, James Fitzjames 148, 481-82, 813 Stocks, Annie 785, 788 Strachey, John ix, 27, 31, 33, 43, 47, 51, 56, 68, 86, 106, 108, 148, 157, 162, 190, 192, 195, 198, 429, 522, 835 Strachey, Richard 9, 33, 86, 108, 135, 148-49, 195, 451, 470, 835 Sudan 261, 730 Suez 91 Suggestions for Thought 1 Sunni 809 superstition 85-86, 196, 223, 629, 732, 737-38, 760, 762, 769-70, 876-77

950 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India surgeon/surgery (see also doctor, physician) ix, 39n, 59n, 70, 78, 91 n-92 n, 142, 154n, 173n, 186-87, 199, 203, 215, 219, 221, 253, 309-10, 313, 315, 319, 369-70, 378 n, 526, 680n, 735, 754n, 764, 773 n-74, 781, 784-85, 792n-94, 905 Sutherland, John ix, 11-12, 21, 23, 29, 34, 36, 39, 43, 47, 49-51, 58, 84-85, 90-92, 94-95, 100, 103, 105, 108, 114, 116, 122, 124, 137, 141, 147, 153-54, 173, 180, 182-84, 189-92, 194, 198, 200-03, 205-07, 210, 212-13, 216, 304-07, 312, 316, 328, 622, 710, 731, 743, 747-48, 780, 808, 887-88, 891 Sutherland, Sarah Elizabeth 202, 307, 317, 320, 730-31, 749, 751-52 suttee (sati) 395, 660-61, 723, 806 syphilis 167 tax/taxation/taxpayer 9-10, 22, 72-73, 104, 109, 153, 172, 189, 197, 208, 253, 269, 275, 279, 284-85, 300, 312, 317, 324, 334-36, 344, 356, 366-67, 375-76, 383, 394, 396, 414-15, 417, 422-23, 425, 428-29, 432, 438-39, 442-45, 447, 460, 470, 474, 477-78, 480, 482, 485, 487-88, 493 n, 495, 504-05, 548, 551, 559-60, 562-63, 565, 567, 570, 576, 578, 598, 603-05, 609, 626, 636, 638, 657, 818, 820, 828-29, 836, 861-63, 872, 904 Temple, Richard 50, 86, 121, 142, 144, 146, 149, 169, 171, 266-69, 273, 297, 303-04, 482, 526-27, 530, 534-35, 590, 647-48, 813, 815, 837, 853 theology xii, 395 Theology 1 Thompson, Ralph 212 Times (India) 147, 221, 679, 694, 832n Times (London) 12, 16, 30, 111, 134, 147-48, 153, 155-57, 173, 188, 197, 262, 330, 473, 482, 551-52, 625, 679, 699, 722, 775-76n, 800, 807, 811, 813, 816, 833, 849, 874, 886, 902 tobacco 163, 488

Townsend, Dr 239, 255 Toynbee, Arnold 697-98 training school 179, 181, 445, 507, 512, 712, 718, 739 Trevelyan, Charles E. 26, 59, 85-86, 722, 891 Trevelyan, Lady 722 Tulloch, Alexander M. 59-60 Tulloch, Henry 38, 44, 89, 98, 111, 138, 183, 305, 308 Turkey/Turkish 141, 474, 479-80, 490, 679, 795, 809 Twining III, Thomas 753 typhoid fever 308, 324, 362, 368-69, 663 United States (see also America) 6, 882 University College 211n, 402, 711n, 907 vaccinate/vaccination 214-16, 221, 223, 232, 301, 339, 349, 869-70 Vaughan, John L. 173, 813 ventilate/ventilation 14, 25-26, 142, 146, 204, 251, 257, 271, 278, 287, 291, 302, 363, 432, 521, 526, 657, 746, 897 Verney, Edmund Hope 707, 834, 853, 874 Verney, Frederick ix, 227, 329, 339-40, 365-66, 549, 632, 707, 712, 779, 831, 834-35, 841, 844-45, 850, 852, 854-55, 860, 863, 889n Verney, Har ry ix, 9, 16, 105, 114, 116, 119, 124, 143, 153, 155-57, 181-82, 219, 227n, 542, 697, 701, 707, 713 n, 722 n, 728, 730, 759, 776, 797 n, 808-09, 813, 817, 840-41, 854, 860, 862, 874, 906n Verney, Margaret 622, 713, 874 Verney, Maude 799n, 845 Verney, Parthenope (Nightingale) ix, 226, 701, 707, 728, 767, 841 Victoria, Queen 2, 4, 9, 44n, 166n, 188 n, 507 n, 719-20, 776n, 799-800, 906 village sanitation 180, 202n, 221, 223, 226, 231-32, 245, 296-98, 300, 304,

Index / 951 311, 313, 316, 318, 321-22, 325, 327, 335-36, 343-54, 357-60, 362, 365-71, 375, 377, 380-81, 383-84, 391, 713, 846, 861, 863, 899, 909 Wahabi/Wahabism 811, 856 Wales, prince of 128, 359, 808 Walker, James Pattison ix, 11, 23-25, 29, 32-33, 44, 46 Walker, Mrs 46 War Office 11, 16, 28-29, 37, 44-45, 53, 55-56, 60, 67, 75, 92, 102-03, 105, 133-34, 167, 174, 192, 203, 205, 213-14, 216, 814, 880, 901, 903 water, drinking 76, 88, 121, 125, 142, 231, 241, 267, 271, 287, 303, 320, 324, 331, 363, 371, 378, 380, 382-83, 387, 392, 488, 657-58, 662, 765, 845 water, polluted 80-81, 88, 98-99, 101, 229, 235, 239-42, 246, 250, 257, 277, 290, 302, 324, 362-63, 376, 386, 389, 392, 659 water quality 29, 58, 76, 80-81, 107, 117, 122, 124-26, 141, 164, 231-32, 238, 241, 246, 249, 251-52, 254, 258, 268, 271, 278, 287, 289-90, 293, 299, 324, 326, 358, 392, 430, 449, 664, 753, 790, 812, 887, 893, 899 water supply 24-26, 28, 31, 64, 72, 76-78, 80-81, 88, 97, 100, 106-07, 109-12, 117-18, 121-22, 124-25, 127, 139, 150, 154, 163-64, 183, 189, 196, 199, 201, 203-04, 212-13, 238, 245, 250-51, 253-54, 260, 267, 271, 288, 290, 296, 298-99, 302-04, 308, 314, 316, 320-22, 326, 332, 334, 336, 347, 363-64, 369, 374-76, 379-82, 387, 389, 392, 431, 449, 455, 461, 471, 486, 494, 659, 662, 699, 710, 727, 788, 814, 839, 841, 865 water testing 76-77, 81, 101, 107 water transit 138-40, 149, 268, 426-27, 455, 472, 480-81, 497, 499, 505 Waterloo, Battle of 60, 647, 868 Wedderburn, William ix, 7, 224, 227, 317, 321-22, 348, 353, 370, 373,

483, 632, 708, 712, 776, 789, 804, 818, 832, 835-36, 845-47n, 852, 855, 859-62, 865, 868, 876, 890, 896, 899, 907-09 Wellington, duke of 868 West, Raymond 202, 207, 221, 224, 311, 336, 343-44, 347-48, 350, 365, 713 Westminster, dean of. See Stanley, A.P. Westminster, duke of 773 Westminster Abbey xiii, 825 Wilber force, William 649, 668 Wilson, Horace Hayman 401, 881 Wilson, John 881 Wilson, Mr 697-98, 703-04 Wodehouse, John. See Lord Kimberley Wodehouse, Philip E. 146, 368 Women 1, 167, 202n, 472n, 718, 773n women and health education 6, 337, 360, 365n, 379, 382, 387-88, 391, 633, 660, 663-64, 717, 720, 726, 730-39, 742, 744, 746-47, 751, 753, 759, 761, 764-66, 770, 773, 877 women in medicine 1, 6, 713, 717-21, 727, 730, 758-60, 762, 897-98, 905-06 women in nursing xi, 89, 513, 717-18, 724-25, 769, 781-82, 784, 786, 794, 897 women, status of 6, 14, 232, 288, 717, 723, 726, 772, 774-75, 777-79, 899 women’s hospital 712, 717-18, 720, 728-29, 746, 758, 769-70, 773, 898, 906 Wood, Charles 32-33, 40, 52, 57, 91, 95, 393, 478, 711, 838, 842, 858, 888 workhouse infirmar y 46 n, 171 n, 262 workroom/shop 112, 117 Wylde, Frances 784 Yule, Henry 141, 190-91 n, 194, 198, 200, 331, 840, 891 zemindar 6, 8, 10, 13, 124, 134, 153, 164-66, 171, 262, 299-300, 394-97, 399, 401-03, 405, 409, 414-42, 446-47, 467-69, 471-73, 479-81, 483,

952 / Florence Nightingale on Social Change in India 485, 487-88, 490, 494-96, 498-99, 501-02, 504-05, 508-15, 517-18, 524-25, 529-32, 534, 536-44, 548-49, 551-53, 557-60, 562-77, 579-82, 584-91, 593-98, 601, 603-09, 611-20, 622, 626, 634-38, 643-44, 646, 648, 654, 677, 680, 696, 698, 704, 707,

713, 807, 809, 812, 832, 853, 885, 896, 900 zenana 660, 718-20, 725-27, 739, 746-47 Zenana Mission 719-20, 726, 739, 765 n, 773 Zulu/Zulu War 268