In the age of sailing travel was slow, leisurely, full of danger and anticipation. A voyage from Britain to India took between three to four months; ships stopped at St Helena in the western Atlantic, the Cape of Good Hope, Aden or Socotra (Yemen), before finally reaching Bombay. There was the unexpected too, not least the prospect of shipboard romances. Warren Hastings, on his second appointment to the East India Company, met the love of his life, the Dutch-born Baroness Imhoff, on board the Duke of Grafton.
By the mid-19th century steamships that were smaller and faster, sailed via the Mediterranean and the Red Seas toward the East. The Suez Canal reduced travel time yet further and there were more travellers. Men who came east to serve the British Empire and then, as the 19th century wore on, more women travellers. The latter sailed out with their husbands, but most came to find husbands, constituting as Anne De Courcy writes in her book, Husband-Hunting in the Raj, the “fishing fleet”.
As the historian Alison Blunt writes, from a handful of Portuguese women travellers who came to Goa in the 1620s, by 1810, there were around 250 European women in India. In 1872, in North West Provinces (present day Uttar Pradesh), there were around 5,000 British women, and in 1901 British women numbered 42,004 in a British population of around 1,54,691. During this period, a certain social segregation and imperial distancing was already in place in India and British men were encouraged to marry their own ilk.
Travel advice books covering myriad subjects, from travelling in comfort to household management and cookery, became a popular genre from the 1870s onward. They ranged in style from the mere pedantic to those gossipy and amusing; they were also fancifully titled and dedicated. For example, Flora Annie Steele and Grace Gardiner’s book on household management was dedicated to those girls who would be house mothers in our Eastern empire.
Most such books appeared from the 1880s onwards and many went through several reprints. A Few Words of Advice on Travelling and its Requirements Addressed to Ladies by HMLS saw its fourth edition in 1878. Other examples are: Indian Outfits & Establishments: Practical Guide for Persons About to Reside in India (1882) by an Anglo-Indian (a compilation of articles published in the magazine called Bazaar); In 1909, Maud Diver’s The Englishwoman in India, that in its epigraph extolled the British woman in India, without whom the Empire would have been impossible; the pseudonymous Chota Mem’s The English Bride in India, andTopical Trials: A Handbook for Women in the Tropics by Major Leigh Hunt and Alexander Kenny. Catering to a growing group of solo women travellers was Lillias Campbell Davidson’s Hints for the Woman Traveller at Home and Abroad (1889).
The auxiliary steamer County of Sutherland at sea under steam and sail. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD-Mark]
For the voyage Eastward
In the late 19th century most ships to Bombay left from Southampton, Southwest of London, a journey of around 28 days with stoppages. They sailed via Gibraltar to Malta before reaching, four days later, Port Said in North Egypt. The journey from the Red Sea to Aden was described in most advice books as trying. There were those who preferred to travel overland through Europe by first taking the steamer from Dover to Calais and then the train through Paris, Macon, to Turin, before taking the steamer from Brindisi in Sicily to Alexandria.
Late autumn was the best season to travel out, for then one arrived in Bombay in time for the mild winter. It made, if required, the later rail journey through India easier to endure than in summers when it could get very hot.
HMLS provided advice on what to wear for the journey:
“…choose a simple dress of soft warm tweed, of a dark grey colour, made in the Princess form and buttoned down the front from the neck; the skirt must be furnished with pockets on either side, made deep enough to hold little things likely to be required whilst lying on the berth, such as a few pocket-handkerchiefs, smelling-bottle, eau-de-cologne, small brush and comb, scissors, etc. A more stylish dress must be worn for landing…It is a good plan to use very old underclothing, such as can be thrown away when soiled.”
For the likes of solo intrepid women travellers who journeyed on their own, Lillias Campbell Davidson offered some special advice in her Hints to Lady Travellers.
Besides essentials such as bath and bath towels, medicines, a reading lamp, light reading material (to also not increase luggage weight), Davidson suggested some safety measures as well: “a door-wedge which is a great convenience”, a railway-key that allows access through train compartments, and a compass vital for the traveller “who has to be her own guide.” And there were quirky health essentials too, such as packing along an eye-stone to pick off dust in one’s eye. This was inserted below the eyelid, and the eyeball rolled along with the stone, the dust mote then stuck to the stone and then could be easily retrieved.
All advice books were unanimous about not carrying or packing too much – either as hand baggage or for use in India. The parcel post and friends who traveled often allowed for things to be quickly dispatched from England.
British men and women in India during the Raj. Photo credit: LIFE Photo Archive via Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD India]
In praise of the durzee
As for clothes for the memsahib, the book, Indian Outfits and Establishments stated, “Enough at starting should be taken for a year, or even two years; for in India fashions do not succeed each other so rapidly as at home, and even in last year’s bonnet or hat you will not feel yourself demode.”
Photo credit: Wikimedi Commons [Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0]
HMLS added that most things could also be stitched in India. There were several advice books that provided guarded praise for the durzee or the tailor. In Outfits and Establishments, there was more detail:
“The durzee is a reliable, good impersonator but on occasion not to be trusted. The Indian durzee is a very clever worker, good at imitating, but bad at originating. Give him a good pattern (and) you can get new ones by post from home as often as necessary and he will turn out a dress very nicely, with strong, neat workmanship.”
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD-Mark]
Advice books listed some essentials and HMLS made especial recommendations about formal wear.
“The black silk dress has to be really a good one and I should advise, as well as two bodices, two skirts also…in fact you should be able to make two costumes out of one dress. Your evening dresses you will be able to alter with the occasional addition of little extras, such as flowers, ribbons, and so on. If you can afford a lace dress (I should prefer it of white), so much the better; it will outlast many other evening dresses, and lace, even if not of an expensive kind, is always useful, and can be made up over and over again on different coloured slips.”
The memsahib had to be cautious when handing out clothes for washing;
“(Y)our linen should not be trimmed with work; the washerman (dhobie) is….is a creature with rough hands, and on dainty laces and trimmings works his sweet will; he has apparently a malicious pleasure in tearing off buttons and strings, and at the very first wash reducing handsome linen into untidy dilapidated garments.”
Men too had their own travel guidelines. What they needed most were white suits, ideal in the heat, and then the wide-rimmed and sturdy “solar topee” that could be easily bought on arrival.
British men in India during the Raj. Photo credit: LIFE Photo Archive via Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD India]
Interior decoration
It was best to hire furniture in India considering that the husbands were transferred every few years. Cane furniture however could be bought in India as it was cheaper and a lot of it could be prettified with “enamel paint and cretonne cushions”.
It made far more sense to buy pianos. The historian Alison Blunt cites the letters of Frances Wells, a British woman to her father in England. Pianos in India were made to suit local conditions. Frances Wells wrote that her piano was “bound completely in brass, so as to stand the climate, with a packing case lined with tin, and a red wadded cover which is necessary in India and four glass insulators to keep white ants off.”
Instead of blankets, Outfits and Establishments recommended the razai or “ressaie”:
“There are issued to the troops in India a most useful sort of light mattress, which can be used either to lie on or as a covering. It is called a ressaie, and can be procured cheaply in almost any station, or even where there are no troops. It will last for years.”
In looking at the statistics for the Lily Absinthe website, we note that lately we’ve been getting a lot of traffic from India. So, to give a shout-out to India, we thought we’d take another look at the British Raj, an era that dovetails with the era of clothing that we focus on. 🙂
Cooling off in South India, c. 1890
Fall in the American Southwest can feel like a continuation of summer and as such, there is often little difference between “Summer” and “Fall” when it comes to clothing and especially with late 19th Century clothing. Another place that can get just as hot is India and it certainly had an effect on clothing worn by Westerners, and the British in particular, during the British Raj. Compared to the climate in Great Britain, India’s climate has a wide range of variation ranging from the wet tropical south of Kerala or Tamil Nadu to the alpine-like Jammu and Kashmir in the north and as such, changes in clothing were required.
The heat of the summer could be excruciating brutal to Westerners and especially women. Those who could would depart for the cooler climates of the various hill stations located in the foothills of the Himalayas. Even the administrative capital of British India would relocate from Calcutta to Simla (known today as Shimla), a town located in northern India which the British had remodeled into a small-scale replica of England.
However, for those unable to escape the hot weather, adjustments were made in clothing choices. One of the most common adaptations was the increased use of linen as a basic material for both men and women’s clothing. For men, one of the more typical styles (I restrict my comments to civilian wear, military is a whole other thing) was the sack suit, the all-purpose daily working outfit for government officials, businessmen, and anyone else attempting to maintain an aura of respectability. Below are two pictures, most likely from the 1920s:
One variation on the sack suit was the use of jodhpurs or riding breeches:
And for some group shots:
In both above pictures, it appears that the men are wearing suits either made from linen, wool- probably tropical wool, or even cotton drill. Of course, by today’s standards the sitters in each of these pictures appear to be very formally dressed but in actuality, this would be considered normal day wear.
And for more informal settings:
For women, fabric choices were more broad to include cotton, silk, wool, linen, and pique. In selecting a suitable wardrobe for India, the following advice was offered in the 1882 book Indian Outfits & Establishments: A Practical Guide for Persons About to Reside in India by “An Anglo-Indian”:
With regard to dress, some of the most serviceable materials are thin woollen or cloth, which are adapted for the cold weather; plain white washing calico or linen for morning wear in the hot weather; uncrushable net, gauze, or lace for evening wear, with silk slips, made body and skirt in one, to wear under them ; one good black silk made with square and high body, and one or two afternoon dresses, mixtures of silk and cashmere, or tussore; some loose morning wrappers of washing materials, and one or two tea gowns of some patterned material now fashionable. Also a cloth habit, and two white washing ones; these are not expensive and exceedingly comfortable; they should not be made quite tight, but skirts and coat bodies (half fitting) separate. I found mine more useful than I can express. Pique was the material I had one made of, thin hunting cord the other.
However, velvet and velveteen were not recommended:
…do not take out velvet or velveteen if you can avoid it, as there are various insects which revel in velvet of any kind; you would have to keep it always in tin, and, notwithstanding all precautions, you would very likely find the nap eaten off in places when you took it out.
The author also recommends that one not take too many dresses with them because of the problems of storage in the tropical/semi-tropical environment. Rather, she recommends that the patterns and fresh material be obtained from England and to either sew new dresses yourself or have a local tailor or durzee make it.
Below are a few pictures of women in India:
This portrait appears to have been taken sometime either in the mid to late 1870s or early 1880s.
The above two portraits appear to be from the mid to late 1890s. The above portraits may be a touch more fancy than what was worn everyday, given India’s climate but no doubt made of lighter materials than the the equivalent dress at home in Britain.
And of course, one was not complete without a riding habit. Horseback riding, walking, and other light exercise were highly recommended as a means of countering “lethargy” and “indolence,” two of the hazards that the British were believed to be susceptible to. In modern terms, it simply meant not letting the heat get to you. 🙂
Fashion adaptation to the environment is always an interesting topic and especially so when it comes to the British response to conditions in India. Although sheer practicality would seemingly point to the idea of complete adaptation (i.e., “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”), this was not the case with the British. For various social, cultural, and political reasons, the British sought to maintain a cultural and social distance from the native Indians and fashion was one means of on maintaining that distance. However, at the same time, many Indians (usually ones who had direct dealings with the British in one way or another) gradually adopted Western dress (another fascinating topic that deserves its own set of posts).
Ultimately, when different cultures meet, invariably there is an exchange of ideas and this is especially true when it comes to fashion (and food, for that matter- Indian restaurants can be found in just about every major city in Great Britain). Today, India is a vibrant, modern country with a thriving fashion industry that has adopted many elements of Western dress and then blended them with their own styles and aesthetics.
Rohit Bal, Bridal Fashion 2013
Ritu Kumar, 2016 – 2017
This initially started off as an excursion into a brief look at how Western dress of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras adapted to conditions in India but it seems that we’ve wandered off into a broader evaluation of fashion and cultural exchange and it demonstrates that fashion does not exist in a vacuum but rather is a reflection of the social and cultural beliefs of a particular time and place. We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief excursion and we’ll be taking a closer look in future posts. 🙂
.jpg "The auxiliary steamer County of Sutherland at sea under steam and sail. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD-Mark]")
_-_LIFE.jpg "British men and women in India during the Raj. Photo credit: LIFE Photo Archive via Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD India]")
_-_LIFE.jpg "British men in India during the Raj. Photo credit: LIFE Photo Archive via Wikimedia Commons [Licensed under CC-PD India]")
