The Indian Connection

I knew that we had relatives who lived in India from an early age. My mother often spoke of this, telling me that she grew up eating curries in London, cooked by her grandmother who had lived in India. Another story was of her Aunty Nancy, who grew up in India, talking in Hindi to local Sikh Indians in the 1960s in Southall and becoming blind because her aya (nanny) had opened the curtains of her bedroom when she had measles, damaging her eyes. Tales of the family going to the hills in India to get away from the oppressive heat, a male infant dying in India and the children having ponies to play with. There were also stories of amazing things brought back from India, oil paintings, artefacts and photo albums full of photographs taken in India. The photo albums have disappeared, possibly due to Aunty Nancy getting rid of things she couldn't see and didn't know the value of.

My research started with Richard Barrett who I had been told lived in India with his wife Elizabeth Murphy and his 10 children.

This is Richard Barrett (1858-1924)

He was in the Leinster Regiment (color sergeant), working in India from 1890 to 1894 - not very long. The family lived in Deesa and Agra as far as his military records show. 3 of his children were born in India - Richard, Amelia and Edward. Edward was the infant who also died at 1 1/2 years old from'teething'.

So far, nothing unexpected, but then I made a discovery that Richard had spent his youth in India as his father, William Barrett, had also served in the Leinster Regiment and had been sent to India 1865 to 1876. So living in India was not new to him - he lived in Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Mooltan, Roorkee and Dinapore. He was there from when he was 7 years old to 18 years old. His younger brother John also joined the Leinster Regiment and ended up living in India at the same time as Richard with his family. Lots of their brothers and sisters were born in India too.

This is Elizabeth (Lily) Murphy (1862-1945), Richard's wife. She was my mother's grandmother who she spent a lot of time with while growing up in Southall.

She was born in Cork, Ireland. A recent discovery that I have made is that she also spent her youth in India. Her father, Miles Murphy, joined the Leinster Regiment and spent 1867 to 1876 in India living in the same places as the Barretts. Maybe Richard and Elizabeth got to know each other out there when they were young.

These are some of Richard and Elizabeth's children:

Lily William and Aunty Nancy (real name - Annie).

Here is Richard (he was captured in WW1 and was in a prisoner of war camp in Germany and survived). He must be about 14 years old in this photo.

Here is Eileen who died in her early twenties from tuberculosis. She was the youngest, never lived in India, but was born in England:

So - in all, two generations of the Barrett family lived in India. Possibly more might turn up and the research progresses.

James Barrett and Gertrude Williams

I am not a Barrett, but my mother Eileen was. Her mother (my grandmother) Gertrude was Welsh from north Wales - Ruthin and her father (my grandfather) James was Irish or from an Irish family.

Here is Gertrude Williams, photo probably taken when she had moved to London and living in Southall - she seems to be in her mid twenties:

And here is James (Jimmy) Barrett about 19 years old in the Leinster Regiment (many from the Barrett family were in this Irish regiment- his father, uncle, brother in law, grandfather and great grand father!):

James Barrett was born in Greenwich, London in 1901, not in Ireland. He travelled over the world as a young man in the merchant navy, joined the army for 5 months - he obviously didn't like it- and joined the merchant navy again. My aunt gave me his passport which showed he travelled to these different places before the age of 22:

Montevideo, Uruguay

Rosario, Santa Fe', Argentina

River Plate, Argentina

Alexandria, Al Iskandariyah, Egypt

Not bad for those days! The family story goes that he hit his head while on a merchant ship and he spent a week in a coma in Germany. One of his voyages is incomplete when he was 20 years old, so this could be the reason and I know he ended up in hospital in his 40s with a mental illness that the family attributed to a brain tumour. He actually died from tuberculosis - confirmed through a postmortem without inquest. So this story is still unconfirmed.

Here he is again in a school photo taken when he was about 12 years old. He is in the front row, second from the left:

This was a garrison school (you can tell this by reading the board and the teachers wearing military uniform), probably in Farnborough, Hampshire, taken in 1913.

Here he is again, even younger, about 9 or 10 years old outside the family house in Aldershot or Farnborough with his brothers and sisters. In all he had 9 brothers and sisters. He was the second youngest and there was an age gap of 19 years between him and his eldest sibling, Mary. At the back is Amelia (Milly), Henry (who died in WW1), Hilda and at the front James (Jimmy) and Eileen (who my mother was named after who died in her early twenties).

He was with the Heavy Rescue Squad in WW2, which was an awful job. He would have had to dig in to houses that had been blown up to recover people who were alive or dead and make the buildings safe.

He died in 1949 at the age of 47.

My aunt remembers him as a jolly man who got on with everyone he met. The kind who would buy everyone in the pub a drink. My grandmother used to manage the money to make sure this didn't happen too often!