The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj

Anne de Courcy's new book reveals the stories of the British spinsters who headed to India to catch a husband 

In 1834 16-year-old cadet Edward Sellon noted in his diary that now stationed in India, he had “commenced a regular course of fucking with native women”. In the early days of British rule in India young civil servants and soldiers like Edward had Indian mistresses or even wives. Mixed marriages were encouraged to improve British-Indian relations. But the new censorious Governor General of Bengal, Lord Cornwallis, instigated a series of reforms in the 1780s which steadily divided Indians and British. The children of British men and Indian wives were forbidden from being educated in England and banned from jobs with the East India Company. 

Soon, sexual relations, let alone marriage, with native women was anathema to the British community - to the sexual frustration of East India Company employees, most of whom who had to remain single until over 30. Back in England, one in three women aged 25-35 were unmarried from 1851-1911, and parents of young women lingering on the shelf began to realise that India, with three British men for every one woman was an ideal husband-hunting ground.

'India, with three British men for every one woman was an ideal husband-hunting ground.'  

Dubbed the 'Fishing Fleet', the women who set sail faced severe seasickness and discomfort, especially in the early days of smaller ships and long queasy months at sea. So many of them departed that the East India Company started charging a £200 bond to ensure that these women could support themselves after arrival, and to deter 'adventuresses'. They did not always succeed. Some fled scandal, like Violet Hanson whose marriage to a homosexual man had been annulled, while Grace Trotter concealed her 'shameful' Indian blood to marry a high up civil servant and become a Lady. 

Most women were unprepared for the culture shock awaiting them. Desiree Hart recalled her arrival in Bombay: “At last I was cleared by the doctors and immigration officials and descended the gangway clutching my small luggage to find myself surrounded by hordes of beggars showing stumps where hands and feet should have been.” Once safely with relatives or friends, the girls had to acclimatise to oppressive heat. Their skin might redden with a fiery prickly heat rash, like “sitting on thorns,” especially if they obeyed medical advice (given to both sexes until the early 1900s) to wear flannel underwear at all times. In sweltering temperatures, women wore tightly laced corsets, stockings and petticoats under high-necked, long-sleeved dresses until well into the 20th century.

'Women wore corsets and stockings under high-necked, long-sleeved dresses until well into the 20th century'

De Courcy uncovers the equally stifling protocol at work in the Raj; the formal exchanges of cards and stilted visits, where people were seated according to strict precedence. But as the Fishing Fleet girls soon discovered they were permitted plenty of pleasures unavailable to them in England, for instance, it was quite permissible for a young woman to down a 'chota peg' of whiskey on an evening. Women staying in the large stations and cantonments, plunged into a social whirl of clubs and gymkhanas, sports and dances. One young deb in 1930s Madras found “sheer pleasure and interest” in the “social pattern of dancing, riding, swimming, and picnics, Mah Jongg, and amateur theatricals, choir singing" and above all "plenty of friends of both sexes for the first time.” 

While some of the Fleet bagged a husband at sea, others landed one within a week or two of arriving in the country. Suitors flocked to meet the new influx of women off the boat and were scrutinised in turn. The top prize was a '£300-a-year' East India Company man, (later the Indian Civil Service), followed by an army officer or merchant. Against this exotic background girls enjoyed being competed over by multiple suitors. Honor Penrose got engaged during an elephant ride. Her fiance later confessed that he 'was a rotten dancer and thought if he waited until they reached civilisation and he proposed to her after treading on her toes in a foxtrot she might have refused him'.

“The thought of becoming pregnant was held over our heads like a flaming sword”

Few indulged in more than a few chaste kisses. Shy Bessie Bruce, the daughter of Viceroy Lord Elgin, enjoyed a tentative courtship by her father's aide-de-camp Henry Babington Smith, who won her heart by giving her botany lessons. De Courcy firmly argues that Victorian sexual morality held sway for British ex pats long after the old queen was in her grave. Even in the 1920s, a great deal of sexually ignorant young women believed that kissing could make them conceive. “The thought of becoming pregnant was held over our heads like a flaming sword,” recalled one. 

After marriage, as well as the risk of sickness and natural disasters (snakes, floods, riots, earthquakes, landslides to name a few) there was also the danger of boredom for young couples based in remote areas. For many, de Courcy explains, marital life came as a shock. Servants did all domestic work and with their children sent to be educated in India (believed to be healthier for them), wives had time on their hands. "One after one, the babies grow into companionable children; one after one England claims them, till the mother's heart and house are left unto her desolate," wrote Maud Diver. If their husband died - as many did - there was no shortage of replacements and de Courcy mentions widows being proposed to on the steps of the church after husband's burial. 

Not all the Fishing Fleet were successful, and some sailed sadly home. As as a poem from the Illustrated Weekly mocked in 1936, they went 'back to Putney and Byfleet/...Bond Street Beauty sadly worn/Through drinking cocktails night and morn'. I wonder what became of them...

The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (2012).