A Sad Story Of Colonial Life

I don't know what year James Harvey d'Egville went out to India. It was probably circa 1820 (+/- 1) and his arrival in Calcutta will have been recorded in the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies. This is the repository of news of all daily life; a divertisement for those enduring the harsh conditions.

I can't even say where James originates but if I do find him I predict that the young mariner was born in either Portsea or Ipswich. He is already a skilled and brave navigator which suggests that he went to sea at an early age.

In 1821 his wife Maria dies during a traumatic birth. Most British women would not now contemplate motherhood at twenty years of age and can expect many other opportunities in a long life.

Within twelve months James has found another woman to share his life. She becomes yet another Sophia d'Egville.

Then just two years after the death of his first wife James dies from fever, his age is unrecorded in the Journal, all the promise he has shown is brought to an untimely end. He leaves behind a "widow far advanced in pregnancy."

I hope that they survived - but they may well now lie in a weed-choked Calcutta cemetery. In these post-colonial times one feels that none of these people should have been there, both enduring and inflicting misery.