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The Barber of Lucknow

Dr. Llewellyn-Jones is an historian with a particular interest in colonial India. She is Editor of Chowkidar, the journal of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA).


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Like other employees, George had to lay out his own money for goods wanted by the King, and to pay the wages of the tailors, carpenters, ship-fitters, and gardeners. He presented his monthly bills to the King, which were reimbursed from the Treasury. (The actual bills were long scrolls of paper, joined as necessary, and rolled up like maps.) Knighton mentions one of George's bills which, when unrolled, measured four and a half feet long, and totalled Rs. 90,000 (£9,000). It was the difference between the actual cost of goods and the bills submitted that gave George his profit.

'Mr. Derusett' reported the Resident 'is going on accumulating immense sums of money (he has already several lacs of rupees) by taking advantage of the King's habits, to obtain from His Majesty, when in a state of inebrity, orders for payment of [his] accounts'.

Punctilious in recording his outgoings, George was less specific about money received. £1,400 arrived in January 1836, but someone has cut out with sharp scissors the name of the sender. Bags of rupees arrived frequently, carried by five bearers, whom George tipped, but again, their provenance is unknown. Sensibly, George put some of his money into East India Company Bonds, payable in England, a transaction that went through the British Residency without query, despite the Resident's criticisms.

By the time of his departure from Lucknow just after Christmas 1836, George was in charge of the King's boats and bridges, his stables, known as the the Horse Establishment, his Wardrobe, his Kitchen and Cellar, his Palace, his gardens, his Crowns, and his elaborate camping tours in Awadh. 'I secured the best available talent to superintend the various appointments of which I had charge one appointment led to another and by dint of application and tact, I succeeded in all' he wrote.

So why did he suddenly leave, officially to execute some commissions for the King, although privately he told friends he had a 'problem with his mouth' and 'needed to consult a dentist in Calcutta?'

Writing to the Governor General in February 1837, Low said George had seen 'some symptoms of his power being on the decline and that he himself solicited the mission to Calcutta, with the Secret View of safely carrying off his fortune and with the settled plan of not returning at all'. The Nawab later wrote, in a face-saving letter, that he had 'discharged Derusett'. The uninhibited Agra Ukhbar reported that George had already sent down to Calcutta 'all his women, horses, jewels and furniture' six months earlier, foreseeing that the time for a speedy exit would come.

George was back in England by the summer of 1837 with a sum estimated at £90,000. He was certainly no better nor worse than many other Englishmen who exploited Awadh, including the Residents and Warren Hastings himself. Indeed, his haul was modest, compared to that of earlier Company officers. But it was George's bad luck that he fell out with Edward Cropley, who related the story to William Knighton at an opportune moment twenty years later. Only six months after George's flight, Nasir-ud-din Haider died suddenly, aged 35. He was generally thought to have been poisoned by one of his father's wives. Undoubted rogue though he was, George had looked after the King well, if extravagantly, and had proved a surprisingly able manager of the royal estates for a man who had started life as a humble barber.


Owner/Source Reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers (Taylor & Francis Ltd) from "Asian Affairs, Vol.27:1 (1966)"
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