East India Company

Many of those who served with the East India Company (EIC) were Scots.  George Birrell (Number 5) served as an officer in the EIC's army in Calcutta before retiring. Calcutta was purchased by the English in 1699, but the beginning of the Bengal Presidency as an administrative unit can be dated from the treaties of 1765 between the EIC and the Mughal Emperor and other Indian rulers (painting by Benjamin West - collection British Library) showing the Mughal emperor Shah Alam handing a scroll to Robert Clive, the governor of Bengal, which transferred tax collecting rights in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company). The EIC created its own army in 175 and, a few years later, recruited local Bengali men to join. So by 1764, there were more than twenty Indian battalions in addition to the regiments of European infantry. 

Scottish seamen’s outstanding navigational and seafaring skills, the combat expertise of Scottish soldiers and officers, and Scottish administrators’ superior knowledge of arithmetic, bookkeeping and accounts combined to give Scots significant influence in the EIC in India and South East Asia. The EIC men were adept at seeking out lucrative opportunities, acting as merchants, bankers, shippers and insurers, and all aimed to make a fortune and return home. Much of the wealth that Scots were accumulating through these activities in India and South East Asia came back to Scotland to be invested in the social and economic fabric of the country. By the second half of the 18th century as much as £750,000 per annum was being remitted back to Scotland. Birrell clearly benefitted handsomely from his period in India for a report from a legal dispute states that he was able to lend £2,000 to a David Drummond. 

Birrell’s eldest daughter, Helen, married Major Evan Macpherson, also serving with the EIC army. In 1821, following a report by two civil servants who had travelled into the hills near Madras that here was a ‘tableland possessing a European climate’, Macpherson built a horse trail into these hills.  His road opened up the area and enabled the Madras Government to open a sanatorium at Ooty. Later it became the hill station to where the Madras Government and its officials moved from May to October each year during the hot season. 

Although many served in the EIC army for a limited number of years before retiring and happily settling back into life in Scotland, others relished the life of an army officer and life abroad. Having served with the EIC in India, James Alexander (Number 30) transferred into the British Army in 1825. If he was seeking more adventures he certainly was successful, as the list of the wars he took part in appear like a soldier’s equivalent of today’s students’ round the world trips. He fought in the war between Persia and Russia, the Russo-Turkish War, the War of the Two Brothers in Portugal, the 6th Cape Frontier War in South Africa, the Crimean War, and the Land Wars in New Zealand. In between some of these wars he found time to travel on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society to conduct an exploring expedition into parts of Africa where he collected rock specimens, pelts of rare animals, birdskins, weapons and implements, as well as drawing maps of the region. He retired from active service in 1877, but that year was largely responsible for the preservation and transfer of Cleopatra's Needle to England. Not unreasonably he was knighted for his services 

Alexander Binny who briefly lived at Number 17 worked as an Agent for the EIC; a position he no doubt landed thanks to his brother, Charles, who had become Secretary to the Nabob of Arcot. The Nabob was an ally of the British East India Company, but also harboured great ambitions of power in the South Indian arena. However, he borrowed heavily, and as many East India Company officials, in India or in the United Kingdom, were his creditors, by the 1780s the debts of the Nawab were having a direct impact on British politics. In 1795, Arcot died from gangrene poisoning, and was succeeded by his son, Umdat-ul-Umara. It was at this time that Alexander was appointed as the vakeel (representative) of Nabob Umdat-ul-Umara in Calcutta. However, a few years later Umdat was accused of supporting Indian rebellion and was deemed an enemy of the British, and it seems likely that Alexander had to leave India. He married in 1758 and had eight children. At least two of the sons were employed in India.

John Grieg ( a lodger at Number 29) was a Superintending Surgeon in the East India Company Bengal Army. In 1848, he married Jane Earle/Shadwell, who had been widowed two years previously. She was the illegitimate child of Lt Col. John Augustus Shadwell, an officer in the Bengal Army, and had been conceived while he was serving as Lieutenant in 26th Native Infantry in Cawnpore in 1805. She was christened in Calcutta in 1808, three years after her birth. In 1821, when she was only sixteen, she married William Henry Earle, also serving in the Bengal army. Their son, William, joined the Bengal army and became a Major General. 

Another Superintending Surgeon in the East India Company was Dr Alexander Kennedy (See Number 6) who returned from working in Madras to live and practice in Edinburgh until his death in 1823. His wife and children lived on in the house until 1840. This painting is from 1830 and shows a British officer in palanquin with Indian bearers.

For daughters of men employed by the EIC in India, Malaysia and elsewhere, opportunities for marriage were almost wholly limited to other EIC employees. Millicent Goudie, the youngest daughter of the commander of the army settlement at Fort St George, that eventually grew into the city of Madras, married Dr Charles Fleming, another surgeon working for the EIC. In 1818 the couple returned to live at Number 16. However, many wives never returned. Isabell Carnegie, who had married Richard Caunter (Number 6) in Penang, where he was the Superintendent of Police, died there in 1824, leaving Caunter to bring up small children on his own. Part of her inscription on her grave in Penang reads: ‘Wisely estimating the true nature of those Christian duties which properly belonged to her situation, it was her chief ambition to acquit herself with propriety in the several relations of a Wife, Mother, Daughter and Friend… surely the pure innocence of a life employed in the practice of domestic virtues was the best preparative against the unexpected and awful summons.’