Eliza Fanthome (born 1845) was a British woman best known for surviving the Indian Rebellion of 1857 as a girl.
Eliza Fanthome was born to the Christian Anglo-French district clerk James Fanthome. [1]
In 1857, she experienced the Siege of Cawnpore. During the Satichaura Ghat massacre, she was abducted by a private individual. Being the captive of a private individual, she avoided the Bibighar massacre. She later testified that she was held as a slave by the Muslim Meerun Jan, who subjected her to rape and forced her to live as his slave, ioundee, and that she was forced to cook for him and wash the feet of his several wives. [1] She also testified that he forced her to live with the brother of one Meanjon Syed for about one year. [1]
The British freed Eliza Fanthome from slavery by hiring two informers to rescue her from the rebel camp where she was being held, a task they succeeded in. Meerun Jan was never captured by the British, but Meanjon Syed was sentenced for complicity to fourteen years of deportation to the Andamans. [1]
She was one of a few survivors of the Satichaura Ghat massacre. A handful of women were taken prisoner by individual captors, avoided being placed in the Bibighar, and therefore also avoided the Bibighar massacre. Of these known survivors were Ulrica Wheeler, Amelia Horne, the drummers wives Eliza Bradshaw and Elizabeth Letts, and Eliza Fanthome, who was twelve years old at the time. [2] [3]
In 1896, J.F. Fanthome published the novel Mariam: A Story of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 about a Christian woman, Mariam, and her daughter Ruth, during the rebellion. He claimed the story was based on the notes of Ruth and that he had not published the novel until after the death of Mariam in 1892. The novel was likely based on the story of Eliza Fanthome: J.F. Fanthome was married to Winifred, daughter of Marie Le Maistre, who died in 1892, and was the paternal aunt of Eliza Fanthome. [1]
The novel Mariam: A Story of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was the basis of Ruskin Bond's A Flight of Pigeons , who in turn was the inspiration for the Hindi film Junoon (1978). [1]
Lakshmibai Newalkar, the Rani of Jhansi, was the Maharani consort of the princely state of Jhansi in the Maratha Empire from 1843 to 1853 by marriage to Maharaja Gangadhar Rao Newalkar. She was one of the leading figures in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, who became a national hero and symbol of resistance to the British rule in India for Indian nationalists.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859.
Ann Eliza Young also known as Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning was one of Brigham Young's fifty-five wives and later a critic of polygamy. Her autobiography, Wife No. 19, was a recollection of her experiences in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She grew up in a polygamous household which moved to Utah during the Mormon migration. Ann Eliza was married and divorced three times: first to James Dee, then Young, and finally Moses Denning. Her divorce from Young reached a national audience when Ann Eliza sued with allegations of neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion. She was born a member of the LDS Church, but was excommunicated shortly after her public divorce from Young.
Nana Saheb Peshwa II, born as Dhondu Pant, was an Indian aristocrat and fighter, who led the rebellion in Cawnpore (Kanpur) during the 1857 rebellion against the East India Company. As the adopted son of the exiled Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II, Nana Saheb believed that he was entitled to a pension from the company, but as he was denied recognition under Lord Dalhousie's doctrine of lapse, he initiated a rebellion. He forced the British garrison in Kanpur to surrender, then murdered the survivors, gaining control of the city for a few days. After a British force recaptured Kanpur, Nana Saheb disappeared, with multiple conflicting accounts existing of his further life and death.
Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by British novelist John Masters, which was the basis of a 1956 film starring Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community, who were caught in their loyalties between the departing British and the majority Indian population. The Anglo-Indian characters in the novel, like many members of their community, are closely involved with the Indian railway system.
The siege of Cawnpore was a key episode in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The besieged East India Company forces and civilians in Cawnpore were duped into a false assurance of a safe passage to Allahabad by the rebel forces under Nana Sahib. Their evacuation from Cawnpore thus turned into a massacre, and most of the men were killed and women and children taken to a nearby dwelling known as Bibi Ghar. As an East India Company rescue force from Allahabad approached Cawnpore, 120 British women and children captured by the rebels were butchered in what came to be known as the Bibi Ghar massacre, their remains then thrown down a nearby well. Following the recapture of Cawnpore and the discovery of the massacre, the angry Company forces engaged in widespread retaliation against captured rebel soldiers and local civilians. The murders greatly enraged the British rank-and-file against the sepoy rebels and inspired the war cry "Remember Cawnpore!".
Azimullah Khan Yusufzai also known as Dewan Azimullah Khan, was initially appointed Secretary, and later Prime Minister to Maratha Peshwa Nana Saheb II.
In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, subalterns are the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire. Antonio Gramsci coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians who explored the political-actor role of the common people who constitute the mass population, rather than re-explore the political-actor roles of the social and economic elites in the history of India.
Flashman in the Great Game is a 1975 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the fifth of the Flashman novels.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, following the huge success of his bestselling 2003 debut The Kite Runner. Mariam, an illegitimate teenager from Herat, is forced to marry a shoemaker from Kabul after a family tragedy. Laila, born a generation later, lives a relatively privileged life, but her life intersects with Mariam's when a similar tragedy forces her to accept a marriage proposal from Mariam's husband.
Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi was a Hanafi jurist, rationalist scholar, Maturidi theologian, philosopher and poet. He was an activist of the Indian independence movement and campaigned against British occupation. He issued an early religious edict in favour of doing military jihad against British colonialism during 1857 and inspired various others to participate in the 1857 rebellion. He wrote Taḥqīqulfatvá fī ibt̤āl al-t̤ug̲h̲vá in refutation of Ismail Dehlvi's Taqwiyat al-Imān and authored books such as al-S̲aurah al-Hindiyah.
A Flight of Pigeons is a novella by Indian author Ruskin Bond. The story is set in 1857, and is about Ruth Labadoor and her family who take help of Hindus and Muslims to reach their relatives when the family's patriarch is killed in a church by the Indian rebels. The novella is an adaptation of the novel Mariam: A Story of the Indian Mutiny (1896) by J. F. Fanthome and is a mix of fiction and non fiction and was adapted into a film in 1978 called Junoon by Shyam Benegal, starring Shashi Kapoor, his wife Jennifer Kendal, and Nafisa Ali.
Satti Chaura Ghat or Massacre Ghat is a famous ghat in Kanpur, the industrial hub of Uttar Pradesh state in north India. It is located on the bank of the River Ganges in Kanpur Cantonment near Jajmau.
Sir Hugh Massy Wheeler KCB was an Irish-born officer in the army of the East India Company. He commanded troops in the First Anglo-Afghan War, and the First and Second Anglo-Sikh Wars, and in 1856 was appointed commander of the garrison at Cawnpore. He is chiefly remembered for the disastrous end to a long and successful military career, when his defence of Wheeler's entrenchment and surrender to Nana Sahib during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 led to the annihilation of almost all the European, Eurasian and Christian Indian population of Cawnpore, himself and several members of his family included.
The Vellore mutiny, or Vellore Revolution, occurred on 10 July 1806 and was the first instance of a large-scale and violent mutiny by Indian sepoys against the East India Company, predating the Indian Rebellion of 1857 by half a century. The revolt, which took place in the Indian city of Vellore, lasted one full day, during which mutineers seized the Vellore Fort and killed or wounded 200 British troops. The mutiny was subdued by cavalry and artillery from Arcot. Total deaths amongst the mutineers were approximately 350; with summary executions of about 100 during the suppression of the outbreak, followed by the formal court-martial of smaller numbers.
Akbarabadi Mosque was a mosque in Delhi, India. It was built by Akbarabadi Mahal, one of Shah Jahan's wives in 1650. One of the several Mughal era mosques in Old Delhi, it was demolished by the British, following their recapture of Delhi during the 1857 Uprising. It is believed to have existed in modern-day Netaji Subhash Park locality of Old Delhi.
Kocharethi is a Malayalam novel by Narayan, often described as Kerala’s first tribal novelist, that was published in 1998. The novel, through the lives of its protagonist Kunjupennu and her childhood love and later husband, Kochuraman, depicts the history, traditions and travails of the Malay Arayan tribal community in Kerala in the twentieth century. While Narayan completed the manuscript of the novel in 1988, it was published only ten years later by the D C Books. The novel was critically acclaimed and went on to win the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
Tantia Tope was a notable commander in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Amelia Horne also known as Amy Haines and Amelia Bennett (1839–1921) was a British memoir writer. She is known for her memoirs describing her experiences as a survivor of the Siege of Cawnpore during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, having been taken captive by a sowar during the Satichaura Ghat massacre, thereby avoiding the Bibighar massacre.
Margaret Frances Wheeler, also known as Ulrica was a British woman who survived the Siege of Cawnpore during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 having been abducted and kept prisoner by Ali Khan, a sowar, during the Satichaura Ghat massacre, thereby avoiding the Bibighar massacre. Her subsequent actions unknown, a rumour was spread that she valiantly executed her captors and subsequently committed suicide to preserve her honour; this was used as war propaganda by the British press. Other accounts suggest her death in Nepal after fleeing with the Indian rebels, or her survival until 1907 having spent her life in seclusion at Cawnpore as wife of Ali Khan, who "was kind to her". Her ultimate fate was never confirmed.