Chapter 4 Slavery and Sati

Chapter 4

Slavery and Sati

Abolitionism has a distinct place in the story of the making of modern Britain. The campaigns against the slave trade and slavery brought the religious conviction of Quakers, evangelicals, and others into the political mainstream, introduced the idea of a national lobby, demonstrated how outside pressure could be brought to bear effectively on parliament, and revealed the power of a moral crusade.1 Antislavery also refashioned the 243/920 national identity. As Linda Colley and David Brion Davis argue, abolitionism fostered a sense of moral superiority that gave Britons confidence in a “mission to lead the world.”2 The “idea that Britain should set a moral lead to the world” would prove lasting; as Brian Harrison notes, it informed various reform movements from antislavery onward, including the one for nuclear disarmament.3 Vital here is the fact that the campaigns against the slave trade and slavery became models. Victorians adopted tactics first employed or perfected by abolitionists, shared their sense of being moral crusaders, and took inspiration from the long and difficult, but eventually successful struggle to end slavery. Staple tactics of later reformers that antislavery activists pioneered or revitalized included using paid lecturers; publishing single-issue journals; collecting pledges; circulating petitions to parliament; and creat- ing national networks of local 244/920 societies—including exclusively female ones—to generate public pressure.4 Victori- ans tended to view abolition as a moral crusade or found inspiration in the lonely struggles of early abolitionists, as the examples of Richard Cobden, J. S. Mill, and Josephine Butler demonstrate.5 Harrison argues for the vital part played by antislavery in the emergence of a “heroic British reforming tradition,” one that encouraged individuals to take up an endless stream of good causes.6 A key feature of this tradition was the con- stant spillover of individuals into new causes. William Wilberforce and T. F. Bux- ton were founding members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824.7 Four years later Buxton joined Tho- mas Clarkson and William Allen at the opening meeting of the Society for the Diffusion of Information on the Subject of Capital Punishments. The participation of these 245/920 prominent abolitionists in other humanitarian movements might well be explained by Bentham’s oft-quoted statement on animal rights: “We have begun by attending to the condition of slaves, we shall finish by soften- ing that of all the animals which assist our labours or supply our wants.”8 Examples of nineteenth-century reformers moving through a long series of causes are legend. Joseph Sturge supported the peace movement, antislavery, anti-Corn Law agitation, Chartism, complete suffrage, and adult education.9 Elizabeth Pease Nichol’s list of causes included antislavery, anti-Corn Law activism, Chartism, temperance, abolition of religious tests, higher education for women, and medical reform.10 George Thompson has been described as “the archetype of the mid- Victorian professional reformer,” who began as an abolitionist lecturer in the 1830s, went on to a host of other causes, including temperance, the Peace Society, anti-Corn Law 246/920 agitation, and land reform in India, before settling down as editor of a general reform newspaper.11 Samuel Gurney the younger served in 1864 on the executive committees of eleven philanthropic bodies. Howard Temperley uses Gurney’s example to demonstrate how the British and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society was integrated into “a great complex of organizations, many of them with interlocking committees, devoted to education, peace, temperance, universal suffrage, women’s rights, free trade, prison reform, religious conversion, famine relief and innu- merable other worthy causes.”12 Part of this story is the nurturing of Victorian activism that took place in domestic and social circles devoted to abolition. This was often the case with women, where family ties to abolition could be an indicator of future activism. Mary Carpenter and Elizabeth Blackwell were both reared in Bristol by fathers opposed to slavery, while Barbara Leigh 247/920 Smith Bodichon’s grandfather, William Smith, had played an important role for over two decades in the campaign against the slave trade.13 Emmeline Pankhurst grew up in an antislavery family and as a child went to bed listening to stories crafted by her mother from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.14 Josephine Butler’s family were abolitionists and she turned to the history of antislavery for inspiration when dispirited in 1875.15 Eleanor Rathbone came from a family that supported nearly every major nineteenth- century reform cause in Liverpool dating back to the campaign against the slave trade.16 As a teenager Harriet Martineau fell under the sway of Mary Carpenter’s abolitionist father, Lant Carpenter.17 Quaker families and social circles were noteworthy for producing female activists. Elizabeth Pease Nichol worked with her father, Joseph Pease, on the campaign against slavery in South Asia; Eliza Cropper was the daughter of one 248/920 leading Quaker antislavery activist and husband of another; and Elizabeth Heyrick, whose 1824 pamphlet Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition, galvanized abolitionists, belonged to a Quaker circle of prominent antislavery activists in the Leicester area.18 Indeed, antislavery is important for the emergence of Victorian feminism, as Clare Midgley has argued. It provided women with new opportunities for public activism and political involvement. Women were active with financial and moral support in the crusade against the slave trade. In 1825 the first female antislavery society was founded in Birmingham, followed by many others in a national network of local societies during the great campaigns of 1825–1838. Many of these societies were founded by women themselves, who raised and disbursed significant funds. Women gave speeches, wrote poetry, published important tracts, and ed- ited journals to promote the cause. In 249/920 massive numbers they signed national petitions against slavery and the apprenticeship system in 1833 and 1838. And they introduced or actively sponsored novel strategies such as abstention from slave-produced products, employing paid traveling agents, and door-to-door canvassing.19 Such activism reinforced and challenged conventional notions of gender roles. Many women were motivated by a sense of responsibility for domestic affairs and ideas of feminine compassion. Crusading against slavery was an extension of a presumed female duty to protect the weak and a special ability to feel for others. The plight of slave women and children were thus women’s particular concern. They contrasted the condition of female slaves and slave families with the conditions that British (middle-class) women and their families took for granted. They crafted powerful images of enslaved women as passive victims enduring physical 250/920 and sexual abuse, and of families brutalized by degraded slave owners, images meant to elicit from British women a well-defined sense of philanthropic duty. But abolitionism also led some women beyond traditional gender roles. Elizabeth Heyrick’s call for immediate emancipation, supported by abstention from sugar, resonated with female audiences increasingly con- vinced that the male-dominated campaign for gradual abolition was a failure. Heyrick and others developed strategies for by- passing the men who controlled the antislavery movement. One was to utilize the network of female abolitionist societies to press for immediate emancipation; the first society to go on record with the new demand was the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1827. Another was to exert financial pressure on the men running the Anti-Slavery Society, which the Female Society for Birmingham did with success in 1830. More generally, 251/920 they took the message of immediate emancipation to the street and helped arouse the public demand for action. Above all, they politicized the domestic sphere, transform- ing women’s responsibility for household consumption and tea-party sociability into a political base capable of major boycotts. In this and later antislavery activities, Midgley argues, British women acted in protofeminist ways. They challenged male authority over the direction of policy and asserted their in- dependence; they helped fashion a national political movement that pioneered strategies for mobilizing public opinion; they organized their own local societies and created national networks of contacts and associations; and they politicized domesticity and developed gendered arguments regarding important public issues.20 These linked stories of antislavery, humanitarianism, and female activism provide another clue to Rammohun Roy’s 252/920 transnational celebrity. This becomes evident once a fourth narrative is introduced. The movement to abolish sati (suttee) in In- dia parallels the antislavery campaigns in key respects. It too witnessed shifting goals and campaign strategies before final success, and it provided inspiration at a moment of indecision in the history of antislavery. The campaign against a perceived form of human sacrifice tapped into and energized the humanitarian conscience. It reinforced activist tendencies to take up multiple causes, opening up South Asia to the moral imagination of some reformers and encouraging others to apply lessons learned there to domestic causes. Women in Britain found opportunities for public participation in the anti-sati campaign, which raised gender issues of violence and legal injustice. The movement to suppress widow burning also brought the name, ideas, and deeds of Rammohun Roy to the attention of slavery abolitionists, 253/920 humanitarians, and early feminists in Bri- tain. Adding to his renown as a religious controversialist, anti-sati activists helped forge the idea that Rammohun was a partner in the moral crusades and spirit of reform sweeping through early nineteenth-century Britain. Much has been written about sati, the colonial campaign against it, and the prominent role played by Rammohun before and after its abolition in 1829.21 Most of the attention has been directed at the situation in Bengal, and similarities to the campaign against slavery have largely been ignored. This chapter reestablishes connections between these two movements that peaked at roughly the same momentous point in British history. Chapter 5 then situates Ram- mohun’s fame in the context of those forgot- ten ties. The colonial context in which both slavery and sati were situated is important. Slavery 254/920 and the slave trade were integral to the first British empire and were actively pursued by private individuals and encouraged by the state. The practice of sati predates British power in India, but, as Ashi Nandy argued in a classic essay, it resurged in Bengal after British rule was established.22 Moreover, sati was condoned by East India Company officials in ways suggestive of a common eighteenth-century attitude about slavery. Until the 1760s slavery in the New World was widely viewed as a practical way to overcome labor shortages and thus necessary for economic growth and national prosperity.23 For Company officials, tolerating a custom seemingly rooted in ancient practices, enjoined by sacred texts, and enjoying popular support was no less an act of colonial pragmatism. Keenly aware that their fledgling Raj rested upon the good opinion of the people they ruled, the Company developed a broad tolerance of Indian social customs and 255/920 religious practices summed up in the policy of noninterference. It responded to humanitarian pressure in the same way that defenders of the slave trade and slavery did, raising the specter of revolt as the consequence of rash intervention, a parallel in strategies that Wilberforce noticed in parliament in 1813.24 Throughout the 1820s, Company officials insisted that abandoning a liberal policy of re- specting a religiously sanctioned practice would inflame public opinion and jeopardize British rule.25 The campaigns to end slavery and sati shared a similar moral sensibility rooted in a common religious impulse. To be sure, secu- lar arguments regarding the superiority of free labor and distress at the suffering of women were important factors. But the preem- inent role played by evangelicals and Dis- senters in both movements is legend, and the fact is that the campaigns against slavery and sati became moral crusades. The conviction 256/920 that slavery was a sin and a blot on the Brit- ish national honor ran parallel to the belief that toleration of sati entailed participation in a crime offensive to both God and humanity.26 This explains why religious activists in one campaign could easily lend their support to the other. Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Bux- ton—all prominent figures in the antislavery movement—also drew public attention to sati, the latter two in parliamentary debates between 1813 and 1825.27 Buxton’s interest in widow burning was stirred by the missionary and anti-sati activist James Peggs, who took up the antislavery cause in India during the 1840s.28 The overlap between the two campaigns was evident in 1823, when—during the same session of parliament—Buxton introduced the first parliamentary motion calling for the (gradual) abolition of slavery and presented the first petition to parliament calling for the suppression of sati.29 257/920 The clash of imperial pragmatism and moral outrage produced similar results in both campaigns. Those in authority sought to appease humanitarian sentiments by appealing to the prospect of eventual abolition while cautioning against rash action that en- dangered imperial interests. In the case of slavery, the hope that ending the supply of slaves would eventually end slavery—though soon shown to be illusory—contributed to the conviction that the institution was on the road to extinction. Abolitionists thus concen- trated on ameliorating the condition of slaves after the trade was ended in 1807. The first measure that many embraced was slave registration, introduced in 1812. The idea was to accumulate accurate data regarding the number of slaves and their condition, to prevent illegal importations, to inhibit mis- treatment, and to ensure the legal status of freed persons. The measure met with stiff opposition from the West Indian lobby, 258/920 which stalled a central registration system until 1820. Nonetheless, a door had been opened for government intervention.30 When abolitionists sought to push that door further open, as Buxton did in his 1823 motion—which called for the immediate emancipation of all children born to slave parents after a date to be determined—those in power demurred. Acknowledging the de- sirability of eventually ending slavery, Ge- orge Canning stated the government’s position that abolition could come only when it was “compatible with the well-being of the slaves themselves, with the safety of the colonies, and with a fair and equitable con- sideration of the interests of private prop- erty.”31 This vague commitment to emancipation was designed to appease abolitionists while reassuring the West Indies lobby that it was a mere “political expedient needed to keep the humanitarians at bay.”32 259/920 There are clear parallels to the situation regarding sati at this time. After mostly ignoring widow burning for the first half-century of its rule in Bengal, the East India Company reluctantly addressed sati with a mindset remarkably similar to Canning’s in 1823. In 1789 the Calcutta government recorded an initial opinion that sati was legal under Hindu law, adding that it trusted that the “repugnant” custom would slowly disap- pear as Hindus “discern the fallacy of the principles which have given rise to this practice.”33 In 1805, however, Calcutta requested a legal opinion on the textual basis of sati in Hindu law and broached for the first time the possibility of abolishing or at least regu- lating the practice.34 Nothing was done until 1813, when the Calcutta authorities issued their first instructions. Additional regulations followed in 1815 that included the collection of annual statistics on the number of satis. The regulations of 1813 and 1815 260/920 remained in effect until abolition in 1829. They restricted sati to circumstances sanctioned by Hindu sacred texts, as interpreted by the Company’s pandits. Sati was forbid- den for women younger than sixteen; for those pregnant, under the influence of intox- icants, or coerced; and for those with young children, unless support for these had been arranged. Other restrictions were imposed regarding when satis could take place.35 As with slave registration, this limited form of interference balanced imperial pragmatism with moral outrage by looking to the promise of gradual abolition. By restricting sati to those cases supported by Hindu scriptures, the Company could maintain its policy of noninterference, ensure that especially inhu- mane or even murderous practices were ended, and proclaim its trust that the diffusion of Western education and modern knowledge would gradually undermine Indi- an support for the custom. Not surprisingly, 261/920 the policy met with approval in London from Canning.36 The Company was moved to action by re- quests for guidance from local officials wish- ing to prevent satis in cases involving adoles- cent or pregnant wives, or women with small children.37 Baptist missionaries and evangelicals also played a critical role. They gathered data on the incidence of sati and critically ex- amined the scriptural texts supporting the practice. They raised the issue at home in parliament and in missionary publications during the period 1812–1813, when the Com- pany’s charter was up for renewal. It is likely that the 1813 and 1815 regulations were draf- ted with an eye toward appeasing humanitarian sentiment.38 Reliance on ameliorative measures such as slave registration and the sati regulations would give way to demands for decisive action. By the mid-1820s, many antislavery activists believed that piecemeal reforms 262/920 were of little value in the face of obstruction- ist tactics by the West Indian planters and their parliamentary allies. Important here were reports on the conditions of slaves that illuminated the continued misery of enslaved Africans. A slave rebellion in Demerara, and the harsh repression that followed, added to the sense of urgency.39 The founding of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, with its commitment to emancipation, albeit gradually, marks the change in attitude. Elizabeth Heyrick’s 1824 pamphlet calling for immediate abolition gave radical voice to the sentiment in favor of parliamentary action. Over the next decade, antislavery activists toured the country, magazines exposing the evils of slavery proliferated, provincial antislavery organizations sprang into existence, and petitions advocating emancipation flooded into parliament. As noted, women emerged as important public actors during this phase of the campaign, founding their own societies, 263/920 mobilizing another abstention campaign, and leading the demand for immediate emancipation. These efforts bore fruit: by 1830, as James Walvin notes, “the extent and depth of anti-slavery feeling [in Britain] is difficult to overstress.”40 This was not, however, a seamless campaign steadily gaining strength and culmin- ating in an explosion of public opinion in the early 1830s. Davis notes that in 1826 and 1827, antislavery was sunk in “a state of leth- argy and hopelessness,” and that another two years of bitter internal debates followed. Among the most contentious issues were whether to bring public pressure to bear on parliament and what type of legislative intervention to demand.41 It was only after 1830 that a consensus emerged in favor of immediate abolition, an idea that provided the spark for the final massive effort to persuade parliament to act. In the eyes of one contemporary, the change after 1830 was so stark as 264/920 to mark a revolution, one in step with the overthrow of Old Corruption.42 Why the change? Some attribute it to outrage at reports of persecution of missionary antislavery activists in the West Indies, along with growing anger at the various means by which West Indies planters evaded or obstructed slave regulations.43 Others credit the activities of the Agency Committee, a group of young activists instrumental in giving a radical tone to the movement and its tactics. The Agency Committee promoted the idea that slavery was a sin and as such should be abolished immediately. This simple message galvanized the antislavery campaign, lifting it above the parliamentary maneuvers of Old Corruption into the realm of a religious crusade, thus freeing abolitionists from the re- straints of Canningite pragmatism.44 The campaign against sati peaked in the late 1820s, at the moment when antislavery was in the doldrums. Indeed, anti-sati 265/920 activists anticipated what was to transpire shortly thereafter in antislavery. They kept attention focused on a simple moral fact (sati is evil). They made special appeals to wo- men45 and helped pioneer the tactic of female petitions. And they found a way to cut the Gordian knot surrounding the issues of imperial security and moral evil. Before slavery abolitionists discovered in the sinful- ness of slavery sufficient reason to act, sati abolitionists demonstrated that humane intervention in the colonies was perfectly safe. Immediate, not gradual, abolition was the cry of the anti-sati lobby by the late 1820s,46 a cry met by the criminalization of sati in 1829 without incident. It may be coincidence that the successful conclusion of the campaign against sati was quickly followed by an explosion of antislavery activity. The interest in sati that some antislavery activists had long shown gives reason to think otherwise. As we shall see, 266/920 anti-sati campaigners organized in 1829 a society to suppress human sacrifice in India, which launched a nation-wide effort to petition parliament for the speedy abolition of sati, infanticide, and the like. Among con- tributors to this society were the slavery abolitionists Buxton and Joseph Sturge.47 Bux- ton had taken an early interest in sati and thought it “a stain upon the B[ritish] name.” His private papers indicate that he con- sidered making its abolition one of his life’s missions. As indicated, he introduced in 1823 the first parliamentary bill to end sati. He remained interested in the issue thereafter, enough so that some contemporaries thought him responsible for the suppression of sati in 1829. News of the latter reached Britain in the spring of 1830 and energized Buxton. In speeches before the Church Mis- sionary Society and in Commons, Buxton seized on the news as proof that action 267/920 against moral evil could be taken without threatening imperial interests.

It is a matter of the most sincere & I think just gratifica- tion to me that the practice of burning widows . . . has been abolished, & that hitherto at least no evils have resulted from that act of humanity. The natives appear to understand our motives & to submit quietly to our decision—& thus without convulsion or bloodshed, a practice has been extinguished, revolting to human nature.48 That same spring, Buxton announced his strong support for “bolder measures” against slavery in a letter citing suppression of sati as “comforting” news.49 What exactly Buxton meant by bolder measures in March of 1830 is not obvious. What is clear, however, is that he and other antislavery activists soon employed tactics and ideas that the campaign against sati had successfully wielded against moral compromise sanctioned in the name of empire. Jörg Fisch notes that the British campaign against sati escalated after 1818 and reached 268/920 its high point between 1828 and 1829.50 Baptist missionaries were crucial actors in this. The first major pamphlet on the subject in Britain was published by William Johns, a medical officer and Baptist missionary in training expelled by the East India Company in 1813.51 While not calling for outright abolition, Johns’ 1816 pamphlet set an example for later works in terms of tone, organization of evidence, and even title page layout. More important was Johns’ fellow Serampore missionary, William Ward. Ward’s was an early voice against sati in Bengal, and beginning in 1813 missionary magazines in Britain re- packaged his accounts to highlight the need for missions. Initially, Ward was reluctant to call for decided intervention, contenting himself with what Lata Mani calls a matter- of-fact descriptive approach that contrasted with the missionary magazines’ portrayal of Hindu horrors.52 Ward’s attitude soon changed. In 1817 and 1820 a messy53 third 269/920 edition of Ward’s multivolume A View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hin- doos appeared in London, and Ward re- leased a more orderly edition in 1822. The tone in these editions, as Mani demonstrated, is decidedly different.54 Ward joined the missionary magazines in depicting sati as a shocking example of the barbaric practices of a superstitious and idolatrous people. Viewing it as a form of human sacrifice, Ward traced sati’s prevalence to the condition of Hindu women. He now felt confident challenging the policy of noninterference, asking rhetorically “shall these [sati] fires never be put out?” and answering “Forbid it, British Power! Forbid it, British humanity!”55 Ward made a fundraising tour through Britain in 1819 and 1820. Sati figured prom- inently in his lectures. Versions of some of these lectures were published as letters to correspondents in an 1821 volume; that same 270/920 year he published a letter on sati in the Times.56 In his published letters, Ward reiterated his argument that sati was a prime example of Hindu depravity and made explicit appeals to British women to take up the cause. He included newly available information regarding the numbers of satis in Bengal.57 The data Ward cited was generated by the 1815 regulations. The first statistics were published by parliament in July 1821 and new returns followed on a regular basis throughout the 1820s.58 The early data suggested that British regulation had led to a dramatic increase in the number of satis.59 Moreover, the highest incidence rate seemed to be in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. The number of recorded satis peaked in 1818, then decreased significantly to a con- stant level in the 1820s.60 The initial impression, however, that regulation was a failure 271/920 remained strong, perhaps because so many satis took place near the seat of British power. The dissemination of this data, coming as it did fast on the heels of Ward’s volumes and lectures, explains why the first public meeting and petition calling on parliament to prohibit sati took place in 1823, as well as why the next year an unsuccessful attempt was made to alter policy by some of the Company’s directors in London.61 More public meetings and petitions followed in 1825, 1827, 1829, and 1830 (the last before news had reached Britain of the regulation criminalizing sati). These too drew attention to Company data that disproved the idea that widow burning was gradually disappearing, as did speakers addressing parliament and the Company’s Court of Proprietors.62 From 1825 onward, an increasing number of pamphlets and journal articles on the subject also appeared, most expressing outrage at the steady, if not increasing, numbers of sati 272/920 under Company regulations.63 All this attention led one observer in 1828 to claim that people in Britain thought only of sati when discussing India.64 As Mani has pointed out, by this point the public at home was con- vinced that the custom should be abolished. Even the Company’s semiofficial organ, the Asiatic Journal, conceded the point.65 A crucial factor was the testimony of ob- servers in India that sati could be safely pro- hibited. The opinion of various officials fa- voring interdiction found its way into Com- pany proceedings and debates in London during the 1820s, and from there into parliamentary papers. This official testimony was recycled repeatedly in the pamphlets, speeches, and petitions produced by oppon- ents of sati, who compiled similar comments from missionaries, Indians, and other critics. The consensus of these presumed experts was that sati was not enjoined by sacred texts, that it was not widely practiced, and 273/920 thus that abolition would not be violently opposed. Many pointed to previous interventions—such as prohibiting infanticide, intro- ducing capital punishment for brahmans, and individual officials acting to prevent satis—as proof that interference would not provoke unrest. Some argued that many In- dians would indeed welcome abolition.66 The cumulative effect was a successful challenge to Company claims about the religious nature of sati and the dangers of intervention. The balance of imperial realities and moral principles had come down on the humanitarian’s side. Chapter 5 explores how Rammohun Roy helped tip the balance. Here we need to dis- cuss the fact that winning the British public over had something to do with women. From the start, as Clare Midgley has shown, female participation was as important to the campaign against sati as to the struggle against slavery. Initially, evangelicals used sati and 274/920 the condition of Indian women to appeal to British women to support missionary activity. As with antislavery, this reflected common attitudes regarding female responsibility for the home and family, and it paralleled efforts to engage middle-class women in domestic philanthropic work among lower- class women and children. This call to save Indian women and children was successful. Missionary societies came to rely on the funds raised by local female auxiliaries, and as early as 1814, one such auxiliary, the Southwark Ladies’ Association, had commit- ted itself to rescuing Hindu women from sati.67 After about 1820, the missionary effort focused on female education as a means to eradicate the presumed superstition and ignorance undergirding sati and other social evils. This drew women further into the mainstream of the sati campaign. Ladies’ societies and auxiliaries turned their fundraising skills to the project of establishing 275/920 schools for female education in India. One of them—the Ladies Committee of the British and Foreign School Society—also funded and selected the first female missionary, Mary Anne Cooke, who was dispatched in 1821 to head a girls school in Calcutta. This was a significant development. Free- ing Indian women from what was deemed their ignorance opened a door to new opportunities for British women.68 As Jane Haggis points out, the latter were pushing this door open themselves. The wives of missionaries were challenging limits on their activity, opening schools for girls and articulating the need for a separate missionary establishment devoted to female education in India. This led to the establishment of the Society for the Propagation of Female Education in the East in 1834, which recruited single women to be teachers in India. This effort drew little opposition, largely because missionary wives had already made this seem appropriate. In 276/920 addition, men felt it inappropriate to recruit and train single women. Finally, the plan was in accord with expanding philanthropic activities for British women, as the career of Elizabeth Fry and the campaign against slavery indicate.69 In short, Haggis argues, during the 1820s and 1830s, “[e]vangelical doctrine and the Woman Question were coming together in new formulations of the most appropriate roles for women and men.”70 This assessment is shared by others. Midgley notes that the British discourse on sati was dominated by missionaries who needed “to appeal to a female audience.” Their discourse accorded a “central place . . . to the question of female emancipation,” that is, liberating Indian women from their sup- posed degradation through Western education. But this call for emancipation, Midgley adds, was situated in an imperial and conser- vative evangelical context that left 277/920 unchallenged gender roles at home.71 Other appeals to British women to engage with sati, however, came closer to doing just that. This is evident in the petitions against sati that women signed. Until the 1830s, petitioning was a form of pressure politics reserved for men. Prior to that, women occasionally signed petitions against slavery, and there were instances of petitions organized and signed by women alone. But encroachments by women in this area were ridiculed or res- isted, as with the 1829 petitions in favor of Catholic emancipation and those supporting parliamentary reform during the period 1830–1832.72 Midgley argues that public attitudes changed only with the massive petitioning drives against slavery and apprenticeship that took place after 1830, when women signed petitions by the hundreds of thousands and organized their own national petition drives. Midgley finds several reasons for the change. One was the precedent set by 278/920 women who signed petitions against sati in 1829 and 1830.73 Petitioning against sati began in 1823 and reached a peak between 1827 and 1830. The majority of the 107 petitions presented to parliament were organized and signed by men. Some 20 percent were signed by four- teen different groups of women representing various Dissenting congregations and provincial towns.74 In Midgley’s view, these female petitioners were careful not to challenge male authority in the realm of legislative matters, adopting a “humble feminine tone” and couching their action as an extension of their domestic roles. They stressed that their motives were humanitarian, not political, and that they were moved to act by the suffering of women. This followed what advocates of female education in India were doing, using conventional ideas to widen the acceptable sphere of activity for women. But it also recalls the implicit challenge to gender 279/920 roles raised at this time by antislavery women pressing for immediate abolition. In the case of sati, female petitioners asserted “a public role for British women in moralising the imperial nation and reforming the Em- pire, based on their particular ability as women to represent the interests of colonised women to the imperial Parliament.” Moreover, some petitions may have been in- spired by the sense that—as a London pamphlet put it—if men would not act, then British women “ ‘will surely unite to quench this murder and fire.’ ”75 At the very least, the women who petitioned against sati were pioneers. They did not meet with ridicule and rebuke, as did the women who signed petitions for Catholic emancipation. Theirs was an important first step toward direct participation in the mainstream of British political life, where petitioning parliament was an important priv- ilege and a means of shaping parliamentary 280/920 debates. In making this a respectable under- taking for women, the sati petitioners opened the door for the massive participation of women in the petition drives against slavery and apprenticeship. If the latter mark “the first large-scale intervention by women in Parliamentary politics,” then the petitioners of 1829 and 1830 were in the vanguard. Although petitioning against sati and slavery, as Midgley notes, did not evolve directly into political self-assertion in Britain as it did in the United States, it surely paved the way.76 Anti-sati activists set this stage by making female participation acceptable as “part of women’s philanthropic mission to women.”77 The domestic discourse on sati was saturated with images and narrative structures designed to appeal to women and their sense of responsibility for household affairs. As Midgley notes, Wilberforce set the tone in his 1813 speech to parliament, drawing a stark contrast between the fireside pleasures of an 281/920 idealized British household with the fireside evils of Hindu women burning.78 Later commentators emphasized that sati made children into orphans and more lurid accounts recounted heart-wrenching separations of mothers and children. Often there was mention that the ritual could require a son to light the funeral pyre that would consume his living mother along with his just-de- ceased father.79 Appeals to a sense of women’s special mission to protect the weak and the helpless were commonplace. These usually were accompanied by narratives of powerless women—including mere adoles- cents—browbeaten by greedy in-laws and devilish priests, or physically restrained. Ac- counts of women who jumped from the flames and then were tricked or coerced back onto the pyres received particular attention.80 The strategy was to create emotional images of Indian women as passive (or powerless) victims, and then draw a sharp 282/920 contrast with the privileged status of (middle-class) women in Britain.81 This was the same strategy that antislavery propa- gandists were employing, one that owed its success to established patterns of female philanthropy. The result in both cases was the mobilization of philanthropic British women against evil in the colonies.82 William Ward was central to this effort. In his lectures, letters, and books from 1817 to 1822, Ward appealed for action from women in ways suggesting new arenas for their exer- tions. Ward employed all the usual rhetorical strategies designed to rouse British women into action to protect families and the helpless. He stressed that Hindu women were often physically restrained on the funeral pyres of their husbands and, should they try to escape, beaten back and held down. The fact that sati required sons in mourning for their fathers to light the pyre that would consume their living mothers led Ward to ask, “Who 283/920 shall count the groans and screams of all these widows in the scorching flames, and the tears of all these orphans?” He pointed out how sacrificial victims could include girls of eight and women of eighty.83 The general condition of Hindu women also drew Ward’s attention. They were little more than household slaves, victimized by systems of early marriage and polygamy, and—because de- prived of education—prone to the worst su- perstitions, including sacrificing their own infants and even themselves.84 The degraded condition of women in Hindu society served as Ward’s focal point in appealing to British women. His letter to the Times was addressed to the ladies of Liver- pool and the United Kingdom, and elsewhere he called on women to form associations to agitate against sati.85 Ward asked female readers to contrast their privileged lives with the lot of their sisters in India.86 He called on the “benevolent females” who supported 284/920 Bible societies to “make the case of their sex in India a common cause,” to “become the guardians of these Ten Thousand orphans surrounding these funeral piles,” to raise up Indian women who would earn future honor as that nation’s “female moral writers, her poets, and her teachers; [as] her Moores and Frys.”87 As the reference to Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry indicates, Ward respected the power of devout women to effect change. Midgley attributes this—and his willingness to circumvent male authority with direct appeals to women—to Ward’s radical youth.88 “There can hardly be a misery,” Ward wrote to the Times, “connected with human existence, which the pity and zeal of British females, under the blessing of Providence, is not able to remove, and if this dreadful case be properly felt in every town of the united kingdom [sic], these immolations must shortly cease for ever.” Schools must be founded and knowledge passed on, Ward 285/920 proclaimed, so that Indian women could become the equals of their privileged counter- parts in Britain. This great philanthropic project, he insisted, was the task of women: “Other triumphs of humanity may have been gained by our Howards, our Clarksons, our Wilberforces; but this emancipation of the females and widows of British India must be the work of the British fair.”89

Others implored British women to turn their benevolent attention to Indian women.90 Most notable was the General Baptist missionary James Peggs, who asked Buxton to bring sati before parliament in 1821. That same year Peggs and Mary Anne Cooke left for India on the vessel carrying Ward back to Bengal. After a brief stay in Serampore, Peggs helped establish the General Baptist mission in Orissa before retiring to Britain in 1825 for health reasons.91 After returning, Peggs was pivotal in rousing the public to action against sati. In the crucial period after 1827, he published numerous pamphlets, lectured across the country, founded an influential society, and encouraged petitions to parliament. Like Ward, Peggs also invited women to support the campaign. Midgley notes that he called for female petitions to parliament, but in a tentative fashion that 286/920 did little to overcome male resistance to such activity.92 Some women, however, were receptive to the idea, and there are reasons to believe they were stirred into political action by Peggs. Certainly, he welcomed the idea. Peggs made both subtle and explicit appeals to British women. His published works bore provocative titles such as The Suttees’ Cry to Britain and India’s Cries to British Humanity. The former employed contrasting gothic and roman fonts on the title page to drive home his message that India was one of the dark places on earth requiring humanitarian intervention.93 In these works Peggs reiterated the rhetorical strategies used by Ward and others to draw women into the campaign, including the usual depictions of helpless women coerced into sati and of sons compelled to burn their mothers.94 He encouraged British women in Bengal and Bri- tain to unite to sign petitions and took pride when the first three female petitions were 287/920 presented, adding that a parliament that had abolished the slave trade would surely not “for ever permit the burning of widows.”95 His familiarity with the antislavery campaign extended to tactics. Peggs printed poems—at least one written by a woman—appealing to British women to turn their compassion to the sufferings of Indian women and children.96 Midgley notes that antislavery activists had long made such use of women’s poetry, particularly during the campaign against the slave trade.97 The poems that Peggs printed made similar appeals to a sup- posed special sensitivity of women to the suffering of others. With these poems, his rhetorical strategies, and appeals to British women to petition for abolition, Peggs was manifestly trying to draw British women into a new national mission. Finding evidence of divine guidance in Britain’s triumph over Napoleon, Peggs saw in this victory proof that it was now “the evident and imperious 288/920 duty of Britain to spread her protecting shield over these defenceless widows and orphans.”98 Women were responsive. In 1828 Peggs published his appeal to the women of Britain and Ireland to petition parliament against sati. The next year, he established the Coventry society to abolish human sacrifice in India, which drew “many ladies” to its initial public meeting. At this meeting, Peggs praised those supporting the cause, including a Salisbury woman who had donated five pounds. He reiterated his call for a network of abolition societies across the country that “would rouse the public mind, and fix it upon the subject” of sati. “Let Britain ‘plead for the widow,’ ” Peggs told his audience, by petitioning parliament to abolish sati and other forms of human sacrifice in India. Another speaker asked the women in attend- ance to take pity on Indian women “for in that country they were often consigned to 289/920 death at an early age, merely because they were women.” The Coventry meeting ended with unanimous approval of petitions to both houses of parliament calling for suppression of sati.99 Was it mere coincidence that that same month—February 1829—women’s groups began submitting their petitions to parliament? One reason to suspect not is the fact that the first petition came from a Gen- eral Baptist congregation, Peggs’ own de- nomination.100 Another is Peggs’ direct appeal to women, which echoed an earlier one by Ward, asking them to join a new national crusade, sanctioned by Providence after the wars against France. A third reason to believe that Peggs drew women into public activism is his use of visual imagery. In 1828 Peggs published a second edition of The Suttee’s Cry to Britain. It was here, Midgley notes, that he first asked women from throughout the United Kingdom to petition parliament.101 Also new to this second 290/920 edition was an illustration that became an iconic representation of sati, in part because he used in the subsequent editions of India’s Cries (see figure 4.1). Lata Mani places this illustration in the context of recorded eyewit- ness accounts, most of which were by European men. These accounts marginalized Indian women, ignoring their suffering and the material factors underlying sati. Western men, she argues, fixed their attention instead on the presumed ritual nature of sati, viewing this with a mixture of fascination and horror captured well by the illustration that Peggs introduced to the British public in 1828.102 291/920

Figure 4.1 “A Suttee,” by unknown artist. From James Peggs, India’s Cries to British Humanity . . ., 2nd ed. (Lon- don: Seely and Son, 1830). This visual image needs to be situated in another context as well. The fact that sati was an act of violence against women con- ducted as a public spectacle permeated Brit- ish accounts. Eyewitnesses reported that Hindu widows were sometimes drugged before they performed sati or, more commonly, physically restrained to keep them from flee- ing. One rhetorical image was of women ly- ing “bound as sheep for the slaughter.”103 292/920 Peggs’ illustration reiterates this with its de- piction of ropes binding the woman to her dead husband and men using swords to bring down a canopy of wood and leaves to ensure that escape would be impossible. It also hints at a crowd of Indians to the left and behind the pyre. Narrative accounts circulating in Britain stressed that satis were noisy public events. Many suggested parallels to blood sports at home. The Baptist missionary Joshua Marshman—responsible for the comparison to the slaughter of sheep—was one of the first to turn attention to the crowds. Their behavior suggested to him that sati was but a brutal spectator sport. Hastening to the scene of a sati, Marshman reported that it

was a horrible sight. The most shocking indifference and levity appeared among those who were present. I never saw any thing more brutal than their behavior. The dreadful scene had not the least appearance of a religious ceremony. It resembled an abandoned rabble of boys in England, collected for the purpose of worrying to death a cat or a dog. A bamboo, perhaps twenty feet 293/920 long, had been fastened at one end to a stake driven in- to the ground, and held down over the fire by men at the other. Such were the confusion, the levity, the bursts of brutal laughter, while the poor woman was burning alive before their eyes, that it seemed as if every spark of humanity was extinguished by this ac- cursed superstition. He went on to recount how the crowd used bamboo poles to stir and push the woman’s body, “as you would repair a fire of green wood, by throwing the unconsumed pieces into the middle.”104 Marshman’s account proved popular. William Johns reprinted it in his 1816 pamphlet and repeated it—down to the gory details—at a Manchester meeting. At that 1827 meeting, Johns regretted “that in this country we appear to have retro- graded, for whilst we have legislated to prevent cruelty to animals, we allow a portion of the human race, nay even of our own sub- jects, to have cruelties practised upon them at which humanity shudders.”105 294/920 The reference was to the recent legislative success of the fledgling animal protection movement in Britain. Throughout the eighteenth century, there were an increasing number of voices raised against the ill-treatment of animals. From 1800 onward, a series of parliamentary bills were introduced, and the first law protecting some domestic animals from abusive treatment was passed in 1822.106 Those leading the campaign recognized the need for a society to promote the cause, and in 1820–1821, appeals went out to those “actuated by a compassionate regard for the sufferings of the brute species.”107 These appeals resulted in the establishment of the Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in 1824. William Wilberforce and Thomas Fow- ell Buxton were present, the latter in the chair, at the founding meeting. As already noted, this is but one example of the spillover of humanitarian reformers from 295/920 one cause to another. One possible reason for the spillover in the case of sati was the linkage of the Indian ritual and blood sports. Important here was Wilberforce, who, in 1813, entered into the parliamentary record Marshman’s graphic comparison of brutal crowds delighting in violence to women and animals. Once parliament began addressing animal abuse, commentators kept the comparison alive in the 1820s by asking how the British nation could concern itself with the plight of mules and hogs, but stand silently by while helpless women were tortured to death in India.108 One measure of the strength of these perceived parallels between violence done to women and to animals is the fact that in 1830s, when the SPCA began campaigning against select sports, James Peggs entered the fray. He petitioned government to stop bull running at Stamford, a sport so popular that the law prohibiting it 296/920 could be enforced only by sending in a de- tachment of light dragoons.109 Women provide another reason to believe that the comparison between sati and blood sports resonated with an awakening humanitarian impulse in Britain. Comparisons of restrained women and tethered animals sac- rificed for the amusement of noisy, callous crowds in India and Britain struck female audiences differently than male ones. Evid- ence for this comes from the fact that the SPCA, initially a male stronghold, soon drew avid support from women: over one-half of the society’s nineteenth-century legacies, for example, came from women.110 Traditional philanthropic motives predominated in the society’s early stages, as women again took on the role of compassionate protectors of the helpless. It is noteworthy, however, that sati and animal cruelty emerged as linked issues at nearly the same time in public discourse and that both were successfully 297/920 legislated against within the same decade. Midgley argues that in “petitioning parliament [to abolish sati] women were becoming publicly involved in defining the limits of male behaviour, asserting the value of a woman’s life and the unacceptability of male violence.”111 With but minor substitutions, Midgley’s sentence would also accurately characterize how the Victorian women who supported what became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSCPA) challenged male behavior and re- duced male violence by asserting the value of animal life against the men who abused work animals or gambled at dog or cock fights. The working class men who first bore the brunt of the RSCPA’s interventions saw it this way. Their often violent resistance to what they perceived as meddling in their work and recreation was a classic response to encroachments on traditionally sanctioned male behavior.112 298/920 A brief look at antivivisectionism adds to the impression that sati helped set the stage for later campaigns by British women against male violence. This late Victorian and Edwardian movement was supported by women “in numbers exceeded only by the suffrage societies,”113 and its leadership was predominately female.114 Their oppon- ents—the medical community and its public defenders—were by and large male. Women were mobilized for the antivivisection campaign by the same appeals to traditions of female philanthropy and a special capacity for compassion that had attracted earlier women to antislavery and anti-sati.115 The new crusade owed much else to those earlier movements, drawing on the successful use of itin- erant lecturers, circulating tracts, fundraising techniques, and the like. Although most would see antislavery as the inspiration for these tactics,116 the campaign against sati likely contributed something as well. For 299/920 instance, if—as Richard French argues—the strategy of Victorian crusaders was first “to make vivisection ‘infamous, then illegal,’ ”117 then the campaign against sati deserves con- sideration as the model, since it was one of the first successful examples of the strategy. Certainly the antivivisectionists’ use of graphic illustrations and related emphasis on brutalized spectators suggests a debt to the anti-sati movement. They circulated grue- some images of restrained animals enduring violence that recall Peggs’ famous illustration, and they emphasized the dehumanizing effects on the medical students who observed vivisections.118 As Coral Lansbury has shown, antivivisectionists drew frequent comparisons to blood sports to condemn vivisection for appealing to the basest motives in spectators.119 This attempt to delegitimize a socially accepted practice—one whose moral evils were seemingly offset by its practical benefits—by drawing parallels to blood 300/920 sports and their demoralizing effects looks back to Joshua Marshman and other oppon- ents of widow burning. Relevant here is the way that some women came to identify with animals as victims of male violence. Lansbury argues that late Victorian women “saw themselves as horses being flogged and beaten, and many saw their own condition hideously and accurately embodied in the figure of an animal bound to a table by straps with the vivisector’s knife at work on its flesh.” During lectures by antivivisectionists, women in the audience “would often sob and become hysterical, to the de- light of the jeering medical students.” Lans- bury attributes this to a new consciousness fashioned by Elizabeth Blackwell and others who drew explicit parallels between various gynecological procedures and vivisection. In this new consciousness, the vivisected animal “embodied all the fears of sexual surgery: images of women strapped to chairs or 301/920 tables, feet held high in stirrups, and the gynaecologist standing over them with a knife.”120 Such comparisons between violence to women and to animals, each restrained and helpless before callous onlook- ers, were not new. They had been first made in the 1820s during the campaign against sati. The fact that these comparisons were still stirring women into action at the end of the century suggests that sati may have had more than a momentary impact on the Brit- ish public imagination. The campaign against sati drew women in- to public activism in important ways. Efforts by William Ward and James Peggs to create a national crusade in which women would play a vital role—even take the lead—bore immediate fruit that helped shape the direction of British humanitarianism for decades to come. The campaign opened up new aven- ues of political participation for women and raised issues of female emancipation and 302/920 violence against women. It is also important to remember that the anti-sati agitation was one of the first major successes of a burgeon- ing humanitarian movement, one in which women by social consensus were accorded a privileged role. If antislavery should com- mand special status in the story of British humanitarianism and pressure-group politics, also deserving of credit are the men and women who demonstrated that it was possible to rouse the nation against moral compromise in the name of imperial interests in India. But this narrative is incomplete without mention of Rammohun Roy. The Bengali reformer helped unleash this humanitarian impulse, providing key evidence against a main argument of imperial pragmatism. He also addressed gender issues that appealed to British middle-class women. The result was a celebrity status that spilled over into transatlantic antislavery circles and nascent 303/920 feminist ones in Britain. As the next chapter demonstrates, it was not only Unitarians de- fending an expansive vision of Christianity who claimed Rammohun as their own. 754/920 109. Gillen, Royal, Chaps. 25, 27, 29–34, 36 (Morning Chronicle quotations, pp. 209, 210); Van der Kiste, Ge- orge, pp. 31–32, 46, 70–71, 80–81, 105, 128, 150; Kriegel, Holland, pp. 6, 49–50, 184–85, 187, 190, 198, 220, 232, 239, 371, 391. For the duke’s heterodoxy, see Aspland, Memoir, p. 579n, and Gillen, Royal, pp. 168–69. 110. Aspland, Memoir, pp. 481–89, 578–79n. Supporting evidence comes from the duke’s comments about the Athanasian Creed: “This is but a Creed, and con- sequently of human invention” (Gillen, Royal, p. 169). For the duke’s habit of making marginal notes in books he owned, see Gillen, Royal, pp. 168–69, and Van der Kiste, George, p. 80. 111. Literary Gazette, July 23, 1831, p. 475; for Rammo- hun’s invitation, see Minutes of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 3, June 18, 1831 session, RAS. 112. For the text of the letter and Sussex’s marginal notes in Rammohun’s volume, see appendix B.

4 SLAVERY AND SATI

1. Anstey, Atlantic; Bolt and Drescher, Anti-Slavery; Temperley, “Anti-Slavery.” 2. Colley, Britons, pp. 352–60; Davis, Slavery, p. 127 (quotation). 3. Harrison, “Genealogy,” p. 122. 755/920 4. Harrison, “State,” p. 292; Temperley, “Anti-Slavery,” p. 33; Hollis, “Anti-Slavery,” pp. 294–95. 5. Hollis, “Pressure,” p. 10; Harrison, “Genealogy,” pp. 122–23, 129–31. 6. Harrison, “Genealogy,” p. 124. 7. Ibid., p. 120. 8. Quoted in Anstey, “Pattern,” p. 36. 9. Temperley, British, p. 72. 10. Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 126; Midgley, Women, pp. 151–53. 11. Rice, “Anti-Slavery,” pp. 17–19. 12. Temperley, British, p. 73. 13. Harrison, “Genealogy,” p. 125; Anstey, Atlantic, pp. 261, 364–65; Manton, Carpenter, pp. 76–77; Herstein, Mid-Victorian, pp. 1–8, 117–23. 14. Harrison, “Genealogy,” pp. 135–36. 15. Ibid., pp. 130–31; Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 115. 16. Harrison, “Genealogy,” p. 135. 17. Manton, Carpenter, pp. 17–18, 25; Martineau, Autobio- graphy 1: 92–96, and 2: 9–10. 18. Davis, Slavery, pp. 185–86; Fladeland, Men, pp. 178–79; Midgley, Women, pp. 75–76, 122. 19. Midgley, Women, Chaps. 2–3. 20. Ibid., pp. 93–118, 154–55; Midgley, Feminism, Chap. 2. 21. Two recent works of note are Mani, Contentious and Fisch, Tödliche. 756/920 22. Nandy, “Sati,” pp. 168–94. 23. Davis, Slavery, pp. 74–82. 24. HPD, vol. 26 (1813), cols. 1072–1074. 25. H. H. Wilson to Capt. R. Benson, Military Secretary to Government, November 25, 1828, BL, APAC, L/L/13 (1030), vol. 3, doc. 9, ff. 231–34. A concise statement of the Company’s official stance on toleration of sati can also be found in an 1827 dispatch to India, a summary of which the Company chairman read to the Court of Proprietors during a debate on sati on June 18, 1828: AJ 26 (1828): 116. 26. Davis, Slavery, pp. 129–53, 165–66; Walvin, “Rise,” pp. 155–56; Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 1–7; Asiatic Ob- server (Calcutta) 2 (n.d.[1824]): 365. 27. Mani, Contentious, pp. 137–38; HPD, vol. 26 (1813), cols. 859–862, 1066–1067; HPD, 2d ser., vol. 5 (1821), cols. 1217–1222; HPD, 2d ser., vol 9 (1823), cols. 1017–1020; HPD, 2d ser., vol. 13 (1825), col. 1044; Barclay, Buxton, pp. 45, 54–55, 76. 28. Buxton, Memoirs, p. 95; Temperley, British, pp. 94, 103. 29. HPD, 2d ser., vol. 9 (1823), cols. 257–275, 1017–1019. 30. Walvin, “Rise,” p. 154; Davis, Slavery, pp. 175–77; Fladeland, Men, pp. 145–49. 31. HPD, 2d ser., vol. 9 (1823), col. 286. 32. Davis, Slavery, 193. 33. BSP, 1821, vol. 18, no. 749, p. 316. 34. Ibid., p. 318. 757/920 35. Mani, Contentious, pp. 18–19. 36. Governor-General (Lord Amherst) in Council letter to the Court of Directors, December 3, 1824, and Governor-General Lord Amherst, Minute of March 18, 1827, in Majumdar, Progressive, pp. 126–29; HPD, 2d ser., vol. 5 (1821), cols. 1221–1222. 37. Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 367–77; Mani, Contentious, pp. 18–20. 38. Mani, Contentious, pp. 18, 137–145, 219fn71; Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 404–405; Buchanan, Memoir, 48–50, 94–100, 102–104. 39. Fladeland, Men, pp. 169–71; Walvin, “Rise,” pp. 154, 157; Davis, Slavery, pp. 196–98. 40. Walvin, “Rise,” pp. 157–58; Davis, Slavery, pp. 180–84; Temperley, British, pp. 9–11; Hollis, “Anti- Slavery,” pp. 294–95; Midgley, Women, pp. 103–109. 41. Davis, “Cropper, 1823–1833,” p. 162; for an influential contemporary view of this period, see Stephen, Antis- lavery, pp. 97–125. 42. Stephen, Antislavery, pp. 118, 122, 154–55, 159–72. 43. Davis, Slavery, pp. 195–98; Temperley, British, pp. 11–12. 44. Temperley, “Anti-Slavery,” pp. 34–35; Stephen, Antis- lavery, pp. 112–15, 127, 136–41, 159–75. 45. The appeal made its way even to the fashion conscious: see Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée 1 (1832): 104. 46. For a clear indication of this sentiment, see MR (NS) 3 (1829): 835. 758/920 47. See “First Report of the Coventry Society for the Aboli- tion of Human Sacrifices in India” (February 1, 1830), in General Baptist Repository (1830): 113–116, esp. 115. 48. RH: MSS Brit. Emp. s 444: Papers of Sir Thomas Fow- ell Buxton, vols. I (pp. 311–13, 349, 357–60), IV (pp. 10, 89), X (pp. 21–24, 25–28, 31–34 [quotations, pp. 23, 25]). Buxton’s notes to his Commons speech on the abolition of sati are much longer than what is recorded in Hansard’s: HPD, 2d ser., vol. 24 (1830), col. 1356. 49. Buxton, Memoirs, p. 198. 50. Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 404–405. 51. Potts, British, pp. 148, 196–98; Johns, Collection. 52. Mani, Contentious, pp. 140–47; Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 404–405. 53. The first two volumes appeared in 1817, while Ward was still in Bengal, and on returning to Britain Ward added two additional volumes in 1820. Hence, the first two volumes state that the third edition comprises two volumes, while the last two volumes list four. 54. Mani, Contentious, p. 148. 55. Ward, View (1817) 2: 47–61, 92–129; View (1820) 3: Preface (xvii–lv), 277–81; and View (1822) 1: Preface (xliv–liv), xi–xiii, cxix–cxx, 279–81, and 3: 329–35. Quotation from View (1820) 3: Preface (xlvii) and View (1822) 1: Preface (xlvii). 56. Mani, Contentious, pp. 148–49; MsR (1819), pp. 357–59; Ward, Farewell, pp. 62–98. 759/920 57. Ward, Farewell, pp. 62–84, 96–98; “Letter from the Rev. W. Ward, Missionary in India, to the Ladies of Liverpool, and of the United Kingdom,” Times, January 3, 1821, p. 3. The Times letter was reprinted in AJ 11 (1821): 141–47. 58. BSP, 1821, vol. 18, no. 749, pp. 295–565; 1823, vol. 17, no. 466, pp. 155–295; 1824, vol. 23, no. 443, pp. 311–71; 1825, vol. 24, nos. 508, 518, pp.223–444; 1826–1827, vol. 20, no. 354, pp. 303–469; 1828, vol. 23, no. 547, pp. 149–76; 1830, vol. 28, no. 178, pp. 783–1067. 59. Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 382–83. 60. Ibid., pp. 388–94. 61. MsR (1823): 250–52; BSP, 1826–1827, vol. 20, no. 354, pp. 307–40. 62. HPD, 2d ser., vol. 13 (1825), cols., 1043–1044; Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1827, p. 3; OH 20 (1829): 544; JHC, 85 (Session 1830), pp. 148, 184, 235; AJ 23 (1827): 356; 407–408, 689, 691; AJ 26 (1828): 116, 119. 63. For examples, see OH 8 (1826): 1–20; Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 5–6; and Peggs, Suttees’ Cry (1827), pp. 50–68. 64. Letter to the editor of India Gazette, June 1828, reprinted in OH 20 (1829): 349. 65. Mani, Contentious, pp. 23–24; AJ 23 (1827): 358–59. 66. For key examples, see: BSP, 1826–1827, vol. 20, no. 354, pp. 309–337; Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 8–10, 14–15, 17–33; OH 8 (1826): 2–4, 7–12, 17–18; Peggs, 760/920 Suttees’ Cry (1827), pp. 15–30, 54–82; Peggs, Suttees’ Cry (1828), pp. 31–50, 57–96; and John Poynder, Speech before Court of Proprietors, March 28, 1827, in AJ 23 (1827): 696–706. 67. MsR 2 (1814): 136–40. 68. Midgley, “Female,” pp. 95–105; Midgley, Feminism, Chap. 3. See also Mani, Contentious, pp. 143–44. 69. Haggis, “White,” pp. 51–53. See also Midgley, Femin- ism, pp. 95–98, and Mani Contentious, pp. 143–44. 70. Haggis, “White,” p. 53. 71. Midgley, “Female,” 110–12; see also Midgley, Femin- ism, pp. 121–22. 72. Midgley, Women, pp. 63–64; Midgley, Feminism, pp. 81–83; Colley, Britons, pp. 278–80. 73. Midgley, Women, pp. 62–71. 74. Midgley, “Female,” pp. 95, 106–108. For examples of these female petitions, see AVP, Session 1829, p. 1515; AVP, Session 1830, pp. 52, 148; and General Baptist Repository (1829): 140 [sic: correct pagination is p. 120]. 75. Midgley, Feminism, pp. 80–85 (quotations), and “Fe- male,” pp. 108–109. 76. Midgley, Feminism, pp. 85–86, and Women, p. 69 (quotation). 77. Midgley, “Female,” p. 108. 78. Ibid., p. 97. 79. For a few examples, see: Marshman, Essays, pp. 2–3 [FI (MS) 1 (1818): 302–303]; Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 761/920 39–41; Peggs, Suttees’ Cry (1827), pp. 23–24; Poynder, Speech, in AJ 23 (1827): 689; and HPD, 2d ser., vol. 5 (1821), col. 1219. 80. Good examples can be found in: MsR, 2 (1814): 136–40; Johns, Collection, pp. 31, 58; Marshman, Es- says, pp. 9–10, 13–15, 65 [FI (MS) 1 (1818): 308–309; and 2 (1819): 319–21, 483]; Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1827, p. 3; OH 20 (1829): 185–86; and Poyn- der, Speech, in AJ 23 (1827): 691–92. 81. The following make plain this strategy: Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 42–43; Asiatic Observer 2 (1824): 360–61; OH 23 (1829): 461–62. 82. Midgley, Women, pp. 94–102; Midgley, Feminism, pp. 72–73; Mani, Contentious, pp. 31–32, 143–44, 162. 83. Ward, View (1817) 2: 100–111; View (1820) 3: Preface (xliv–xlvii [quotation, xlv]); Farewell, pp. 73–81; and “Letter from the Rev. W. Ward,” Times, January 3, 1821, p. 3. 84. Ward, View (1817) 2: 112; View (1820) 3: Preface (xlviii–xlix), 161–62, 278–81; Farewell, pp. 63–80; and “Letter from the Rev. W. Ward,” Times, January 3, 1821, p. 3. 85. Ward, “Letter from the Rev. W. Ward,” Times, January 3, 1821, p. 3; Farewell, p. 63; and View (1820) 3: Pre- face (l). 86. Ward, View (1820) 3: Preface (l). 87. Ward, Farewell, pp. 62–63, 81–82. 88. Midgley, Feminism, pp. 74–75. 762/920 89. Ward, “Letter from the Rev. W. Ward,” Times, January 3, 1821, p. 3. 90. See, for example, Grimshawe, Earnest, pp. 42–43, Asi- atic Observer 2 (1824): 360–61, and OH 23 (1829): 461–62. 91. Peggs, Brief, pp. 4, 32–34; Peggs, Letter, p. 3; Buxton, Memoirs, p. 95. 92. Midgley, “Female,” pp. 106–107, and Feminism, pp. 79–80. 93. This followed the example set by William Johns in his 1816 pamphlet (Collection). Peggs’ pamphlets on sati and other social problems also follow Johns in collecting testimony describing the social problem and the possibility of mitigating it. 94. See, for example, Peggs, India’s Cries (1830), pp. 20–24. 95. Midgley, “Female,” p. 107; Peggs, Suttees’ Cry (1828), p. 91fn; Peggs, India’s Cries (1830), pp. 97–98 (quotation). For Peggs’ enthusiasm for the first female petitions, see his “First Report of the Coventry Society for the Abolition of Human Sacrifices in India,” in General Baptist Repository (1830): 113–116, esp. p. 114. 96. Peggs, India’s Cries (1830), pp. 16–17, 112. 97. Midgley, Women, pp. 29–32. 98. Peggs, India’s Cries (1830), p. 111. 99. OH 20 (1829): 539–45 (quotations, 540, 541, 542); for more on the Coventry society and its campaign, see Midgley, Feminism, p. 79. 763/920 100. General Baptist Repository (1829): 140 [sic: 120]. 101. Midgley, “Female,” p. 107, and Feminism, p. 80. 102. Mani, Contentious, plate 5 and Chap. 5 (especially p. 178). 103. Marshman, Essays, p. 65 [FI (MS) 2 (1819): 483]. For a similar image, see Asiatic Observer 2 (1824): 25. 104. Marshman, quoted by William Wilberforce, HPD, vol. 26 (1813), cols. 860–61fn. 105. Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1827, p. 3; Johns, Col- lection, pp. 28–29. 106. Fairholme and Pain, Century, Chaps. 1–2; Moss, Vali- ant, pp. 9–19; Harrison, “Animals,” pp. 788–89. 107. Monthly Magazine, quoted in Fairholme and Pain, Century, pp. 24–25. 108. Joseph Hume, HPD, 2d ser., vol. 5 (1821), col. 1221; OH 1 (1824): 551–52. 109. James Peggs, letter to the Home Secretary, Nov. 6, 1839, NA: HO 44/33. For the suppression of bull running, see Moss, Valiant, pp. 131–33. 110. French, Antivivisection, p. 240. 111. Midgley, “Female,” p. 112. 112. Harrison, “Religion,” pp. 116–17. 113. Lansbury, Old, p. 83. 114. French, Antivivisection, pp. 239–40. 115. Ibid., pp. 242–46. 116. See, for example, ibid., pp. 220, 228. 117. Ibid., p. 252. 764/920 118. Ibid., pp. 255, 257, 303, 414. 119. Lansbury, Old, pp. 91, 176. 120. Ibid., pp. 84, 89–90, 94.

5 RAMMOHUN ROY AND EARLY VICTORIAN FEMINISM

1. Collet, Life, pp. 89, 105–106; Majumdar, Progressive, pp. 150–151; Singh, Rammohun, pp. 198–99, 209–211; CRR 1: 27–37; Fisch, Tödliche, pp. 411–12. 2. Mani, Contentious, pp. 47–48, 55–59, 207 (notes 26–27); Singh, Rammohun, pp. 199–212. The March 1819 letter is often misdated as March 1818: CRR 1: 40–41. Most scholars agree that the letter was written by Rammohun under the name of a Tantric saint and friend who knew no English: Collet, Life, pp. 101–102; CRR 1: 41–42; and Killingley, Rammohun, p. 129fn. 3. Majumdar, Progressive, pp. 123–26, 130–31, 139–48, 156–63, 165–68, 178–79; Collet, Life, pp. 255–66; Mani, Contentious, pp. 49–54, 59–65; CRR 1: 493–543. 4. Robertson, Rammohan, pp. 30–39, 148–64; Mani, Contentious, pp. 54–57. 5. Robertson, Rammohan, pp. 162–63. 6. Singh, Rammohun, pp. 152–62, 221–23; Potts, British, pp. 230–33.