The Queen's Daughters in IndiaBushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
History
The Queen's Daughters in India
Bushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
Prostitution -- India; Women -- India -- Conduct of life; Women -- India -- Social conditions
2. A wife brought by her own husband, the man himself being engaged
by an officer of the regiment as a servant, and allowed to hold his
unwilling wife in such servitude.
3. British, granddaughter of a former Governor-General, daughter of
a General, wife of a Commissioner; eloped with a soldier, and when
deserted entrapped by a Mohammedan and kept as a slave, to whom
British soldiers resorted in troops, almost, because a white woman;
they paid the price of shame to her native master; rescued when almost
dead. We found her in a miserably dirty bed at a native Lock Hospital,
where the Government allowed her four annas (about fourpence) a day
for subsistence. We ourselves rescued another British woman from
the clutches of the same Mohammedan slave-holder. We found her in a
fortified room, built on the top of a large house, a neck-breaking
outside stairway leading to her abode. She had suffered horribly at
the hands of the British soldiers admitted to her. Her reason was
injured beyond repair. In the absence of her master, she was guarded
by a native servant armed with a knife, who had been instructed in
her presence to plunge it into her if she tried to escape. A very
courageous gentleman accompanied us, and succeeded in so frightening
her master that we were permitted to lead her away.
4. An orphan seized by a wicked woman and reared to shame.
5. A young girl brought by her own brother and sold to the chakla.
6. Cabul girl of high birth who lost her father in the Afghan war. She
was only twelve when left without protection, and her father's groom
persuaded her to come away with him under promise of marriage; sold by
him to shame. She wept bitterly, exclaiming, "Oh, the shame of being
pointed out as a bazaar woman!" We asked her why she did not go to the
Cantonment magistrate and plead her own case, for she said she had
money secreted with which she could take care of herself, if once she
could get away. She replied, "Why should I tell him? I am only a black
woman; I fear him." When about to return to the south, we revisited
this station and hunted this woman up, offering to assist her to
escape; but her courage failed at the last moment, and we were obliged
to leave her behind to her fate.
7. An Egyptian woman from Cairo, enticed away from her home when a
child and sold to an old woman in Quetta, then carried to India.
8. A Kashmiri woman; ill-treated by her husband, she ran away with
another man who promised to make her his wife, but sold her into
shame. "It is a bad job; I don't like it," she said in the best
English she could control, while the tears were in her eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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