The women who flocked to India to bag a husband

The women who flocked to India to bag a husband - From the 1600s until the Second World War, 'surplus women’ flocked to India in a bid to bag a husband. In her new book, Anne de Courcy explains why

Right through the era of “the Fishing Fleet” – the name given to the girls and women who went out to India to look for husbands from the 17th century on — engagements were often a brisk affair. After a mere half dozen meetings with her future husband, Violet Swinhoe wrote in her diary (in 1916): “James had final talk with Daddy and then we were engaged. Too queer for words. I lay down.”

The history of the Fishing Fleet dates from the days of the East India Company, that vast trading organisation with its own army that wound up virtually ruling India. In its early days, when journeys by sail could take up to six months, many Company officers only came home once, if at all, during their service.

Some formed liaisons or marriages with Indian girls. For others, the Company developed the practice of sending out batches of prospective brides, whom they maintained in India for a year, during which time they were supposed to find a mate. They were known as the Fishing Fleet; if after the year they had proved too plain or too unpleasant for even the most desperate Company man, they were shipped home as “Returned Empties”.

But most were snapped up on arrival, after courtships that lasted from a month or so to – sometimes – a mere few days. “You must not be surprised when I tell you I am going to be married on the 13th of next month to Miss Charlotte Britten,” wrote Lieutenant Stuart Corbett to his father in February 1822. Corbett was a mere 19 years old but he had managed to land one of the 1821 Fishing Fleet within a month or two of their arrival in Calcutta.

His bride, Charlotte Batten, aged 20, was one of eight sisters: their father, in rural Kent, must have despaired of marrying them all off. His solution was to send two of them out to stay with their brother in India’s happy hunting ground.

When I began to research my book The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj, I soon realised that this annual migration of young women was a vast phenomenon, not only a story hitherto untold but also a gripping aspect of our history that opened a window on the wider sphere of Empire.

In the early days, the first hurdle was the five-month journey out to India, negotiating anything from pirates to the perilous, stormy seas of the Cape of Good Hope. “The eggs all went bad and had to be thrown overboard weeks ago and though there is dessert on the table every day I cannot touch a thing, as biscuits, figs and ratafia are alive,” wrote Minnie Blane, travelling in the late 1850s.

The first shock was the arrival port, seething with humanity — saris of bright pink, scarlet and emerald green vivid against brown skins, sellers of fruit, curry and sweetmeats shouting their wares — and a heat so searing it was like opening an oven door. (One of the stranger habits of the Raj was the medical insistence on wearing flannel next to the skin even in 40-degree heat; only at the beginning of the Twenties were corsets dropped in favour of cotton underwear.)

Social life depended on the climate, often near-perfect in the cold weather but hell in the heat. Then – for those who could not go up to the hills — shoes had to be shaken in case a scorpion had curled up inside, insects gathered so thickly that every wine glass had to have a cover, fatal diseases could kill overnight, clothes would rot, termites could destroy a house’s foundations and prickly heat made life a misery.

But none of this deterred the Fishing Fleet girls — or the parents who sent them out. Some, especially in the early days, were adventuresses, women who had tried without success to find a husband in England who could support them in the way of life they wanted. Later, some were schoolgirls returning to families who lived and worked in India, yet others were despatched by parents to stay with brothers or friends with the words, spoken or unspoken, “Find yourself a husband!” ringing in their ears. Marriage, after all, was the goal of just about every woman before the Second World War.

Most were very young, and sexually both inexperienced and ignorant – like Magda Hall, aged 23. As she sat in her bedroom on her wedding day, waiting for her wedding dress to be brought, her brother-in-law, to whom she was devoted, rushed into her room. “Whatever Ralph may do tonight,” he said, “remember – it’s all right!” And that, she said later, “was all the preparation I had for married life. At the time, I wondered what on earth he could mean.”

The new arrival plunged into a whirl of gaiety – polo matches, race meetings, moonlight picnics, dances, cocktail parties and dawn rides as the blue smoke from a distant village rose against the sky.

Then there were the men. Fit from days in the open air and the sport that formed so large a part of Raj life, handsome in their uniforms, and eagerly attentive, they were enough to turn the head of any susceptible young woman.

Once married, the realities of Raj life hit home. The Fishing Fleet bride found her life subordinated to that of her husband, as his was to the Raj, a patriarchal hierarchy shot through with a rigid protocol.

Calling cards were de rigueur and there was even a document entitled the Warrant of Precedence that showed the exact status of everyone in British employ so that seating at official dinners, for instance, could be arranged according to seniority. Wives took their husband’s rank, so that senior ladies had their “own” sofa at the Club and first use of the loos after dinner.

What drove the Fishing Fleet girls in their thousands to this alien land? The answer was the inexorable, increasing pressure to marry. It is difficult for us today to realise that for most of the 19th century, a girl without fortune or great beauty became a non-person if she did not marry.

When the taking-over of India by the British government was declared in 1858, single women continued to come out. Ten years later came the opening of the Suez Canal – and a sudden shift in demographics. The trickle became a flood.

Between 1851 and 1861 the number of unmarried women in Britain almost doubled (for the next 60 years, roughly one in three women between the ages of 25 and 35 was unmarried); and most of these were in what were called “the servant-keeping classes”.

Articles were written in newspapers and societies founded to deal with the problem of “surplus women”, as they were known. For the bold, the solution was to go where the men were: the Empire, especially India.

For here marriageable men outnumbered women by roughly four to one and were avid for wives. In India a girl who was too plain or too poor to find a husband in Britain would be showered with proposals; and she and her husband would live life at a much higher standard than either could at home, with a retinue of servants, spacious bungalows and all the sport you could wish.

For many, India cast a spell that nothing broke. As one of them, Veronica Bamfield, put it: “I was one of the lucky few on whom India lays a dark, jewelled hand, the warmth of whose touch never grows cold to those who have felt it.” ( telegraph.co.uk )

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The Danger of Yelling at Your Kids and Ways to Be a Calmer Mom

The Danger of Yelling at Your Kids and Ways to Be a Calmer Mom - If you've found yourself shrieking at your child - and regretting it - this advice is for you.

My husband, our two kids, and I were enjoying an idyllic trip to Hawaii, driving up the winding (and dangerous) Road to Hana and taking in the beauty of the cliffs and coastline. And then it happened. For no apparent reason, my son, then age 5, threw a water bottle from the backseat toward my husband, and it hit the windshield with a ferocious bang. By some miracle, we didn't crash, but we did lose control...big-time. Both my husband and I were ranting, raving, screaming, threatening: "Why would you do that? Don't you know we could have been killed? Here we are taking you on the vacation of a lifetime, and you throw a water bottle for no reason?" And on and on we went, spewing way more venom than our preschooler could ever deserve or even comprehend, for that matter.

Tears began rolling down our son's cheeks, and his lip quivered as he fought back sobs. After what I'm sure seemed like an eternity to him, we calmed down and continued on our way, and I tried to bury the incident in the back of my mind.

I had almost forgotten all about it when, a few weeks later, I replayed our Hawaii-trip video. There I was, recording a waterfall out the window of the car. I tucked the camera into its bag - accidentally leaving it still recording - and then the "water bottle incident" occurred. Though the screen was black, I heard my husband and myself screaming at our son, badgering him, shaming him.

Then it was my turn to fight back tears. How could I have freaked out like that in front of my kids, at my kid? The rant sounded so much more vicious and vile than I remembered its having been, but there it was on tape - proof that I was the worst mother in the world. I may have erased that incident from the vacation video, but I don't think I'll ever be able to erase it from my memory.

Like it or not, most of us parents flip out in front of our dear children from time to time. Sometimes the anger is aimed at them, other times not, but it's almost always a deeply unsettling experience. Fortunately, there are simple - sometimes surprising - steps you can take to repair the damage, not to mention avoid meltdowns in the future.

The High Price of Losing It

First, recognize that regularly lashing out at or in front of your kids isn't par for the parenting course. It can do some very real damage to their psyches, says psychologist Matthew McKay, Ph.D., a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and coauthor of When Anger Hurts Your Kids. "Studies have shown that parents who express a lot of anger in front of their kids end up with less empathetic children. These kids are more aggressive and more depressed than peers from calmer families, and they perform worse in school. Anger has a way of undermining a kid's ability to adapt to the world," McKay says.

Gulp. And the younger the kid, the bigger the impact, experts say. "When children are little, you're their universe," says psychologist Robert Puff, Ph.D., author of Anger Work: How to Express Your Anger and Still Be Kind. "When you get angry, their world is shaken. By the time they get older, they have friends and other people in their lives to turn to, and that minimizes the impact." Also worth noting: The occasional, nonabusive freak-out is generally much less damaging than regular fireworks, which send a child the message that he or she is not safe and that there's something wrong with him, says McKay.

That said, kids can actually learn an important lesson from seeing you lose your temper and then regain your cool. "This provides an opportunity to show kids that we all get angry, but what really counts is how we repair things afterward," says McKay. Here, the step-by-steps for doing just that.

When You Shriek at Your Kids

Real-mom meltdown: When Jennifer*, of Huntington Beach, CA, went to visit Disneyland with her three kids, she didn't realize the "happiest place on Earth" would be the setting for one of her ugliest parenting moments. "It was a big outing for us, and the park was very hot and crowded that day," she recalls. "Two of my kids have cystic fibrosis and could use a special pass to bypass the lines. But my 13-year-old went and lost his. Out of nowhere, I yelled, 'You've got to be bleeping kidding me. What the hell is wrong with you?' Immediately, my son started to cry. He had never heard me swear or be so mean to him, and he was devastated. Everyone standing around us was looking at me in disgust. I had to keep apologizing. Tears were streaming down my face because I had obviously hurt him so much."

A University of New Hampshire study found that 90 percent of parents admitted to having hollered at their children, ages 2 to 12, within the course of a year (the other 10 percent must have either been angels or had selective memories).

To avoid a scream-fest, try this trick: In that white-hot moment of anger, visualize your child as a baby, says Sandra P. Thomas, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and coauthor of Use Your Anger: A Woman's Guide to Empowerment. "Older kids and teens are not adorable like babies, and sometimes they can be very obnoxious," she explains. "When you remember them as the babies they once were, that can do some good."

So can taking a break. "If you're able, take a time-out and walk into another room, even if it's just for a minute or two," says psychologist Laura J. Petracek, Ph.D., author of The Anger Workbook for Women. The key here is getting some literal distance from the situation and recovering your sense of calm.

If your anger has already boiled over, the most important thing now is to own up to what you've done wrong. Don't give in to the temptation to blame your child for triggering your outburst. "Say, 'I am very disappointed at your carelessness, but I shouldn't have yelled like that. It was wrong for me to lose it in that way, and I'm very sorry,' " advises Thomas. (Tip: Don't overdo the apology - if you dwell on it, it can make a kid feel as if he's truly been victimized.) Then promise that you will try your best not to do it again, comfort your child as needed, and move on.

When You Spar With Your Spouse

Real-mom meltdown: Angie*, of Seattle, says life has been particularly stressful since her husband lost his job - and their arguments sometimes play out in front of daughter Lexi, age 3. "Just last night, I was yelling at him for not cleaning the house," she confesses. "Lexi came over, tugged on my shirt, and said, 'Be nice to Daddy.' The look in her eyes was one of terror; it stopped me in my tracks. We eventually made up and tried to assure her that Mommy and Daddy still loved each other, but I don't know if she bought it."

It can be devastating for a child to see her parents get furious with each other, warns Charles Spielberger, Ph.D., a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger at the University of South Florida. It's important to circle back quickly and do damage control. Don't try to explain the situation away by reciting a laundry list of ways in which your spouse provoked you - this will only further embroil your children in the drama and stress. "Instead, you might say, 'I was really mad at your dad earlier. We've talked about it, and we're working it out. People who live together get angry sometimes. We're sorry for yelling. We still love each other,' " Thomas recommends. Even if you still want to throttle your spouse, telling your kids you are smoothing things over will help ease their fears and make them feel more secure.

If you can, emphasize what you'll do differently next time, says Jerry Deffenbacher, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Colorado State University, who studies anger issues; this will help a child learn from the experience. For instance: "I was mad that your dad burned the garlic bread, but I apologize; I shouldn't have shouted at him like that. I was frazzled from a really hard day. Next time, we'll remember to set the kitchen timer when we use the oven."

Keep further comments to a minimum. Overexplain yourself, and you could wind up turning your kid into a mediator or therapist, cautions Puff. There's no need to drag her even deeper into your drama.

When You Argue With a Stranger

Real-mom meltdown: While Fiona*, of Detroit, was buckling her youngest son into his car seat after a trip to a bakery, an older driver pulled up near her and began honking. "He was screaming, 'Close your f--door!' without having given me any warning that I was blocking his spot. I raged right back, 'Can't you see I'm putting my baby in his car seat, you $%*#@?!' My tween in the backseat was pretty rattled by my outburst, and I felt horrible about it."

Your first instinct might be to apologize to your kids for having gotten mad - but don't. Everyone gets angry, so you shouldn't be sorry for having experienced this emotion. (This is especially important if you have daughters - girls from a young age are told they shouldn't show anger, says Puff, encouraging them to bottle up their feelings.)

Instead, tell the kids what set you off. Explains McKay: "You might say, 'That man said something that really hurt my feelings, and I got very upset.' " Next, apologize for how you expressed your anger. "Make sure they know that swearing - or whatever you did - was not the appropriate reaction," says Thomas. "Emphasize that you would never want them to act that way." Also say you are sorry if your outburst scared or embarrassed them. (Let's face it - it probably did.) Explain that you let your emotions get the best of you, and that you'll handle it better next time. And then comes the real challenge: making sure that you do.

Short-Circuiting Your Anger

To keep your cool going forward, follow these ground rules:

1. Ask the right question When a child is being difficult and your temper is about to flare, follow this advice from McKay: Instead of thinking, Why is he doing this to me?, focus on the child; he's probably acting out for a reason. Is he hungry, bored, tired, or in need of attention? Try to meet his need instead of letting your anger get the best of you.
2. Keep an anger journal that documents when you lose your cool. "Look for patterns - what time of day do you get angriest? Under what circumstances?" advises Deffenbacher. "Once you identify those anger 'flash points' in your life, brainstorm ways to minimize them." You can even get your kids in on the act: Say, "It irritates me when you ignore your chores - how can we make this a better situation?" By giving your kids a voice, you're empowering them to be part of the solution.
3. Minimize marriage spats "In a calm moment, you and your spouse should agree to handle your next argument differently," Deffenbacher says. "Give yourselves permission to walk away if you're getting too angry in front of the kids. Develop a code word for when you are getting really mad, and let that signal that you'll discuss the issue later, in private, when you're calmer."
4. Talk through your emotions out loud when you're with your kids and a stranger annoys you. "Say, 'Wow, that person just cut me off - how rude! But maybe there's an emergency she had to deal with, or she just didn't see me. Whatever the case, I'm not going to let it ruin my day,' " recommends Deffenbacher. By doing this, you're modeling how to handle life's everyday frustrations - and how to control your anger before it controls you. ( Team Mom )

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Love Knows No Gender Difference

Love Knows No Gender Difference - Think married men and women show their love in vastly different ways? Not necessarily.

Although popular culture reinforces the stereotype that there's a gender gap when it comes to expressing affection, few studies have actually tested the notion.

A small new study suggests, however, that men are just as likely as women to be openly affectionate. The study, which also identified some differences between the sexes, was published recently in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"Men and women are actually more similar in the ways they express love than they are different," said study author Elizabeth Schoenfeld, a researcher at the University of Texas in Austin. "But we also learned that, even in the wake of feminism, wives express love by being less assertive and more accommodating, while husbands show love by initiating sex or sharing activities together."

The study involved 168 couples in first marriages living in rural central Pennsylvania. Data was collected in initial interviews, followed by telephone interviews in which husbands and wives separately reported activities and interactions. The interviews occurred within two months of when each couple was married and then annually, with a final set of interviews conducted after 13 years of marriage.

At the conclusion of the study, 105 of the original couples were still married, three were widowed and 56 were divorced. Almost all of the participants were white, and more than half had a high school education.

Contrary to some common gender stereotypes, the research showed that the more men loved their wives, the more likely they were to be affectionate. They were also more likely to involve their spouses in their leisure activities and in household chores. Love did not, however, mean a husband did more chores around the house or was more eager to relieve his wife of the chores for which she was responsible.

The researchers found, in general, that a husband's love may create an environment in which the couple does a variety of things together. The more husbands loved their wives, the more likely they were to initiate sex. For wives, though, increased love for their husbands meant they were actually less likely to make the first move.

Why would that be? "If a wife is feeling unloved, it could be that she is attempting to kick-start the marriage," Schoenfeld said.

Wives' love was less associated with interest in joint activities, and relied more on expressions of love. More love also was associated with greater accommodation to husbands' moods and needs.

"Biting their tongues, letting men initiate sex more often, showing a willingness to allow men to assert themselves a little more -- this is what we saw when women were more in love," Schoenfeld explained.

Some experts believe differences between men and women in marriage are typically overemphasized.

"There aren't too many real gender and sex differences between men and women on the whole," said Stevie Yap, a researcher in the department of psychology at Michigan State University in East Lansing. "If you look at the overall research, gender differences don't usually hold up."

Yap, who recently published research on happiness and marriage in the Journal of Research and Personality, found that although matrimony doesn't tend to make people happier than they were when they were single, it appears to protect against declines in happiness that can occur in adulthood.

Yap said only a few gender differences actually have been shown by research to be real: men tend to be physically stronger and more sexually active, and have a greater tendency toward aggression. He said that even these three characteristics, however, can be affected by socialization and experience.

Schoenfeld, too, thinks differences between the sexes have been exaggerated.

"Don't be fooled by popular stereotypes," she said. "Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. We are all on planet Earth." ( HealthDay News )

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Do Tight Times Make Close Marriages?

Do Tight Times Make Close Marriages? - Most partnerships, business or personal, are easy when money is easy. The lucre seems to take the sting out of any disagreements, and, frankly, the cost of disharmony is too high. But according to a new report from the National Marriage Project, the Great Recession hasn't necessarily been thinning out the ranks of the married.

The survey of 1,197 married Americans aged 18–45 found that about a third of people reported that the economic downturn had been hard on their marriages. For an almost equal number of people, however, the financial strain had brought them closer. And according to the report, adorably titled "The Survey of Marital Generosity," about 38% had put the brakes on the divorce they were considering before the thin times hit.

This may be due to some old-fashioned shoulder-to-the-wheel, pull-together, family-comes-first, stick-to-it-iveness on the part of the married couple. Or it may simply be that divorce and life after divorce are huge financial hits. Several august oracles (including, maybe) predicted that the recession would increase divorce. But so far, that hasn't been true.

Meanwhile in China, which has been undergoing a sustained economic boom, divorces have shot up. Mind you, money isn't the only influence in a marriage's demise. The divorce laws in China have been loosening up and women have been gaining more economic freedom than they had been accustomed to, two factors that usually lead to more splits.

As a measure of national well-being, the divorce rate is a double-headed beast. A high rate of divorce can lead to a lot of economic and family instability, especially in countries or communities where women have little access to education or wealth. On the other hand, an extremely low level of divorce can mean that people are stuck in abusive marriages, especially — you guessed it — in countries where women have little access to education or wealth.

Similarly, divorces that are delayed for financial reasons can be good or bad news. If people find a way back to happiness by sitting through the hard times together, so much the better for them, their wealth and their children. But if economic strains are making an untenable domestic situation even more perilous, and even harder to escape from, this can have very serious — even tragic — consequences. ( time.com )

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Will the Kids Get Their Parents to Marry?

Will the Kids Get Their Parents to Marry? - If a new interview in USA Today is to anything to go on, kids seem to have done what Jennifer Aniston couldn't: got Brad Pitt to settle down.

Pitt, whose six children with Angelina Jolie (that striking woman with big lips — maybe you've heard of her?) range in age from 2 to 9, is even reconsidering whether he will get married. He and Jolie had famously claimed they'd make it legal only when it was legal for gay people too. But he didn't reckon with his little persuaders.

"The kids ask about marriage," he tells USA Today. "It's meaning more and more to them. So it's something we've got to look at." Moreover, while he still has a passion for motorcycles, architecture and photography, he admits that a lot of his bandwith is taken up with less exotic pursuits. His kids' safety is a big issue for him, as is cooking. "You've got to make sure they've brushed their teeth and eaten a good breakfast. You want to be present if they wake up with a bad dream."

This is Brad Pitt. The Brad Pitt of secret, slightly perverse, midday maternal fantasies throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. Talking about his kids' dental hygiene. Bit of a buzzkill, no?

Even a beast as iconoclastic as Brangelina, it seems, cannot resist the normalizing force of children. Remember when Bill Gates claimed he wasn't going to leave his children much money in his will? And then he actually had children, got to know them and changed his mind. A bit. Instead of a few hundred thousand, as he initially suggested, the Gateses are going with 10% of their wealth. So ... more like hundreds of millions.

It's not a huge surprise that the Jolie-Pitt brood want their parents to get married. Scratch any parent and you'll find a person whose child wishes that s/he was less weird, stood out less, just disappeared into the indistinguishable mass of humanity known as "grown-ups." That's why the suburbs, where the families live, end up seeming so vanilla. It's not what the neighbors are saying. It's the pressure from the damn conformist kids.

Yes, kids crave stability, but it's not stability that makes the Jolie-Pitt kids want their parents to be legally wed. It's that they want to blend in. (By the way, good luck with that, guys.) Or, more specifically, kids want to stand out in ways that they have agency over. They don't wish to have attention thrust upon them for things not of their choosing.

Pick up any memoir by a child of a celebrity and if you don't find them saying, "Cary Grant was just Dad to me," they're saying, "My mother, a.k.a. Joan Crawford, ruined my life." It's as if there's a rule: no matter what you do with your life, to your children you must appear normal. Right up until they accuse you of being stultifying old conformists.

The data is clear that long-term, monogamous, loving relationships between parents are very good for children. History also seems to suggest that these relationships are facilitated by the institution of marriage (though that may be changing). Brad and Angelina may have been too untamed once for anything as stuffy as a marriage license. But then they had children have already done their domesticating damage. And there are worse reasons to get married than because six small people who love you want you to.

Just, for the love of mercy, do it quietly. ( time.com )

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