Review: The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour

Full title: The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (non-fiction) 
Writer: David Gilmour
First published: 2005
Available: digitally on Amazon and possibly in a library near you (I used both options as the pictures and extremely helpful sketch over the organisation of the Indian administration wasn't included in the Kindle version)

Quote: "Their ethos is portrayed in Kipling's story 'The Head of the District' in the persons of Orde, who on his deathbed by the Indus remembers that four villages need a remission of rent because their crops have been poor, and of Tallantire, who defeats a tribal rebellion and brings order to the district after the Indian Civilian has run away."

The Ruling Caste is an ambitious book. Gilmour states in the preface that his aim is to show how the senior Civil servants of Victorian India lived from chota hazri to sundown and to portray not only their careers but their thoughts and beliefs and domestic arrangements. Somehow, he actually manages that rather well, which is a feat in only 300 pages. I have seen several reviews that complain that too many details make it a sluggish read, and certainly, there isn't a page that is not loaded with information, facts and footnotes. However, to me it read fairly easily all the same – I admit that I may not be the typical reader being both obscenely interested in the Victorian world and having a good deal of bureaucratic experience myself which probably made it easier for all those administrative proceedings to leap to life for me  – and the focus is always rather up-close and personal.

Gilmour uses a rather fixed set of characters as the focus of his narrative – we meet and get acquainted with Henry Cotton, Alfred Lyall, Henry Lawrence among others – and mixes personal accounts and letters with official accounts of the India Civil Service in the late 19th century. Therein lies one of my reservations against this book; reading it, as I was, for the express purpose of research, it was a little annoying to have the dates occasionally obfuscated, especially since Gilmour also points out that the organisation and attitudes of the ICS was not static but evolving over the period. Despite that, there are sections where accounts as far apart as 50 years are treated side-by-side and the time-gap is only visible if you actually check the footnotes. Also, you may quirk an eyebrow at finding quotes etc. from the teens and 20s in a book that has "Victorian" in the title, but seeing as I do the same thing here, I'm not really at liberty to criticise a slightly wider interpretation of the Victorian era.

It is a fascinating world Gilmour describes; utterly different from the modern bureaucracy and yet strangely familiar. His Civilians work, dream, win promotions and marry until, finally, most of them slip into oblivion as pensioners reminiscing about "the good old days" in a rather suburban atmosphere in South Kensington. The book is a treasure trove for a novelist, because it tells you so much about the mundane life and attitudes of the British Raj precisely because of it's obsessive unfolding of details, and David Gilmour's love for his subject shines through on every page. While making for an entertaining read, that fondness is also the reason for my second big reservation about this book – there is a strong bias pro-ICS/Britain that sometimes shines through. While mostly providing a rather sober look at the British Civilian, there are places when Gilmour leaps to the defence of the ICS in a rather jarring way (he clearly loathes A Passage To India, for example). It's a pity, because these almost chauvinistic little outbursts mar an otherwise brilliant and detailed study, and makes me question if there is an underlying bias that tilts the entire narrative. That nagging doubt makes me a little wary about trusting it too much, which detracts a little from its usefulness.

Nevertheless, it is still a fascinating read and recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

I gave it 4/5 on Goodreads.

Sex, Lies and Death: The Story of the Yngsjö Murder

Yngsjö is a small and rather insignificant municipality in the southernmost county of Sweden. It's the sort of place most people wouldn't have heard of unless it had been the centre of one of the most publicised murders in the history of Sweden.

Anna Månsdotter

Where it all began is debatable, but a good starting point for the story seems to be the marriage of one Anna Månsdotter to a Nils Nilsson, 13 years her senior, around 1860. It seems that it was very much a marriage of convenience rather than infatuation and Anna had counted on a financially stable and secure future. In reality, however, they ended up poor and debt-ridden. The relationship between husband and wife was strained, and Anna sought comfort in their son Per, the only of her three children to survive into adulthood.

Per Nilsson

At some point - it's not entirely clear when, but likely when Per was still a child - Anna started sexually molesting her son who grew increasingly dependent on her. It's not clear if Nils ever suspected anything - inquiries were made into the cause of his death after the incidents of 1889 but nothing conclusive that pointed to foul play could be found. Either way, after his death in 1883, when Per was 21, the relationship could carry on without outside interference. However, nothing can long be kept a secret in a small community, and soon tongues started wagging about the unnaturally close relationship between mother and son (judging by the number of people who could later testify that it had been their habit to sleep in the same bed, they weren't exactly discreet either). This may have been the reason why Anna persuaded Per to get married in 1888.

Hanna Johansdotter

The young bride was one Hanna Johansdotter, 21 years of age and the daughter of a respected pillar of society, lay judge and church usher Johan Olsson. The idea was that Anna would then move in with her own mother, but when push came to shove, she stalled and she soon came into conflict with her daughter-in-law. The relationship between the two women was one of intense rivalry over the rather vague and quite frankly weak-willed Per, and Anna resented having to share her son with his wife, despite the marriage originally being her idea.

Meanwhile, Hanna, who was genuinely fond of Per, felt she was treated as an outsider and complained of Per's treatment of her to her family. She even tried to get her father to intervene and force Anna to move out, and he promised to help buy her out and build her a new house. However, Hanna soon realised that their future happiness depended on their removal from Anna's presence altogether, and she pushed for selling the family farm and moving. According to witnesses, Hanna had told them that she and Per had never lain together. She also expressed fear of her mother-in-law both verbally and in writing. The day before she died, she is said to have cried and told a neighbour that:

"I am so afraid of Anna Månsdotter that it feels like someone stuck a knife in my breast whenever I see her. As soon as she comes home lately, she and Per shut themselves up in the stable, where they keep conferences. This happened today too. I think they are conspiring against me. I simply don't dare to go home! I even want to scream - because I am thinking of something wicked." 

Her last letter to her parents, seven days before her death ends: "I will not remain in Yngsjö. I have told Per so."

Exactly what happened next isn't known as the only people who could have told were either dead, or constantly changing their accounts. Most likely Hanna had begun to suspect the true nature of her husband's relationship with his mother, or she might even have discovered them in flagrante. Anna would later claim that Hanna had confronted her and told her that she knew everything. Either way, someone - most likely Anna - decided she had to die.

On the morning of 28 March, 1889, a neighbour visited and couldn't find Hanna anywhere. Upon returning a few hours later, he found Per who said she'd likely gone out. The neighbour was sceptical and persuaded Per to look for her. They found the trapdoor to the basement open and Per peeked down and said - quite without any real emotion: " Oh, here she lies, dead from the fall. Oh no, woe me!"

The neighbour started screaming and more people soon arrived. When they helped lift Hanna up the stairs, they nothed a deep red groove around her neck, as if after a noose. One of the local women also notced that she wasn't completely dressed - she wore a shift and stays, but no dress bodice. No one thought to notify the police, though. Instead, they turned to the local vicar and told him of their suspicions. He then notified the authorities and the district doctor who performed the autopsy concluded that there could be no doubt that she had been murdered.

Both the victim's father and several other locals began pressuring Per and his mother, trying to get them to confess. After five days, Per finally relented but refused to implicate his mother. It wasn't until after Per's confession that the police was notified and the first real interrogations were held. The general view was that Anna wasn't just involved, but the instigator of the whole affair, and most of the inevstigation was aimed at proving that fact.

While the exact hows were never fully established beyond the fact that Hanna was killed, either by Anna or by Per and Anna in collaboration and that mother and son helped each other to cover up the foul deed, the "why" seems pretty straight-forward. Hanna had come between mother and son and she did not intend to yield. She had some knowledge, or anyway a well-founded suspicion, of a criminal relationship between them, and so she had to die.

Both mother and son were sentenced to prison for the illicit sexual affair and they both received the death penalty for their share in the murder of Hanna Johansdotter. Anna was beheaded (with an axe) in August 1890, but Per, who had appleaed to His Majesty the King for mercy, had his sentence transformed into a prison sentence. Virtually all their neighbours supported his appeal and when he was finally released after 23 years, they welcomed him into the community with open arms. He finally died from a disease of the lungs in 1918, and is said to have expressed relief at his upcoming demise.

Anna Månsdotter, moments before her execution

Even today, and even internationally, the murder in Yngsjö 1889 stands out as a sort of bizarre, 19th century Freudian tragedy. It's hardly surprising that the case has been the subject of several books as well as being filmed several times. Anna Månsdotter was also the last woman in Sweden to be executed, and as such, she is the object of some interest. Sadly, but perhaps typically, I noted that while both she and Per has an entry each on the Swedish Wikipedia, Hanna, their victim, does not.  I think she deserves better than to be a footnote in her murderers' story.

Sources:

Main source is Yngsjömordet by Yngve Lyttkens, Stockholm, 1951

The images are all in the public domain and full information can be found:

1. Anna Månsdotter
2. Per Nilsson
3. Hanna Johansdotter
4. Execution of Anna Månsdotter


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Wilhelm Voigt: The Captain of Köpenick

Wilhelm Voigt at his arrest (source: Wikipedia)

In October, 1906, Wilhelm Voigt, aged 57, was down on his luck. He'd first been convicted of theft at age 14, and had since then managed a rather impressive career of thievery and forgery. In February of 1906, he'd been released after a 15 year long sentence for having broken into the building of the Court of Justice at Wongrowitz, in Posen, and stolen the money box. It would later be noted by the judicial authorities that the sentence had been "excessively heavy and to have been imposed after a somewhat irregular trial."[1]

According to the accounts that were later given of his prison time, Voigt had been an exemplary prisoner who had shown great interest in reading, especially history, and apparently upon release, he had expressed a desire to live an honest life. He finally settled down outside of Berlin to work as a shoemaker. His employer, aware of his antecedants, later testified that "Voigt had rewarded his confidence, and had led an honest and most industrious life, and had made himself useful in a variety of ways. He had regularly attended church, had eaten his meals with the family of his employer, and had been kind to the children." [2] However, as a former prisoner he was an "undesirable", and on those grounds he was expelled from Berlin by the police. According to his employer, "[w]hen the order for his expulsion came, Voigt had utterly broken down and had felt that his last chance of leading an honest life."

But apparently Herr Voigt decided not to take this lying down. No, instead he planned and executed a caper which would resonate across the known world. First, he visited several used-clothes stores  and managed to piece together a uniform of an officer of the 1st Foot Guards. Thus equipped, he was ready to execute his coup.

His exact intentions may be disputed – he would later himself claim that "it had not been his original intention to rob the municipal treasury, that what he had chiefly desired to secure was a pass which would have enabled him to earn an honest living" [3] but that might obviously not have reflected the truth. Undisputed, however, is the fact that on 16 October, 1906 he commandeered all in all 11 soldiers from the local garrison and travelled with them by train to Köpenick, where he led them into the town hall. He then placed the local Burgomaster, Dr. Langerhans, and his treasurer under arrest for charges of crooked book keeping. He told the local police to care for law and order and to prevent calls to Berlin for one hour at the local post office. Then he ordered the treasurer to hand over the money box, containing 4,002 Marks. Frau Langerhans, the wife of the Burgomaster, would later state to the press that "it was the extreme politeness of the 'captain' towards herself and his official gruffness towards her husband which chiefly convinced her that he was a real officer." [4]

He then told some of the soldiers to take the arrested men to Berlin for interrogation in two commandeered carriages and left the remaining guards under orders to stay in their places for half an hour. Himself, he left for the train station and disappeared.

The incident caused great mirth and excitement. Only a few days after the incident The Times could report that in Berlin "(t)he music-halls are already giving representations of the whole drama, illustrated postcards with descriptive verses are being sold in thousands in the streets, and the schoolboys have invented a new game which they call 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick' and in which they re-enact the comedy in all its details." [5] As the National-Zeitung reported "(i)mmeasurable laughter convulses Berlin and is spreading beyond the confines of our city, beyond the frontiers of Germany, beyond the ocean. The inhabited world is laughing, and if we still had an Olympus, the gods would undoubtedly be laughing too". [6]

But there was more to the attention that just ridicule, though. To a great many people, this was a comment on German society. In the words of the National-Zeitung only two days after the incident "(t)he boldest and most biting satirist could not make our vaulting militarism, which 'o'erlaps itself and falls on the other side' the subject of a satire which could stand comparison with this comic opera transferred from the boards to real life /.../ Somebody's brains and somebody's backbone have been lost; the honest finder is invited to hand them in at the office of the Köpenick town-hall". [7) The Social Democratic Vorwärts found "(t)he chief actor in the farce /.../ much more intimately acquainted with that mental attitude of the officials which has been produced by militarism and by Prussian administrative practice than all those questionable geniuses who have just been philosophizing in the Conservative Press upon the specific Prussian spirit." [8] The "Köpenick Caper" was considered by many to be the inevitable consequence of the "rule of uniform" and it gave rise a number of acerbic comments. The Berliner Tageblatt summed up the feelings of a great number of Germans when they wrote "(w)e talk of our civic pride, of manly courage before the thrones of Kings, of the State based on law, and of our constitutionalism. It is a strange commentary upon these and upon the rest of the fine phrases we employ, but it is undoubtedly a fact that in Prussia the uniform governs." [9]


On 26 October, Herr Voigt was arrested and later charged with "unlawfully wearing uniform, with offending against public order, with depriving subjetcs of their liberty, with fraud, and with forgery." [10] At the trial, sympathies lay almost universally with the defendant. Even the judge in the case the chief in summing up the case passed his chief censure "upon the police system or expelling discharged prisoners from places where they had settled down to a new life and to honest work." [11] He then admitted several of the extenuating pleas which were advanced by counsel for the defense, and, after having found Voigt guilty on all counts of the indictment, sentenced him to four years' imprisonment. Kaiser Wilhelm II, however, pardoned him on 16 August, 1908, and Voigt would go on capitalizing on his fame until he died in 1922.

The case gave rise to several books, songs and plays. There was simply something irresistibly fascinating about the simplicity and sheer gall of Wilhelm Voigt's exploit. Not only had he dared to camly impersonate a Prussian officer; he had managed to do so in such a manner that it never even occurred to the soldiers that he was not the genuine thing. As The Times put it; "(f)rom his studies of the German officer at work and at play this decrepit cobbler of nearly 60 years of age, with his horny hands, his white hairs and his gaunt figure bowed by years of penal servitude, was able to evolve a personage which passed for a captain of the 1st Foot Guards." [12] And even if the comments on "the rule of uniform" weren't entirely on the mark, in the general debate following it was claimed that "the soldiers who took part in the raid are understood to have been exonerated from all blame by their genuine military superiors and to have been told that they acted quite correctly. Some /.../ jurisconsults are indulging in speculations as to what would have been the position of those ten soldiers if /.../ they had shot down or bayoneted the unhappy Burgomaster of Köpenick. there appears to be consensus of opinion that they could not have been held legally responsible for their homicidal action." [13] As such, the interpretation of the event at the time was as important as what had actually transpired.

And poor Dr. Langerhans? Well, not suprisingly, he was overwhelmed by the public ridicule and sent in his resignation a few days after the incident. However, the citizens of Köpenick held a meeting at which they passed a resolution of confidence in their Burgomaster and promised to stand by him.

As a great writer once put it – all's well that ends well, isn't it?


Footnotes:
1. "The 'Captain Of Köpenick.'." Times [London, England] 3 Dec. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012
2. Ibidem
3. Ibidem
4. "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
5. "The Köpenick Raid." Times [London, England] 20 Oct. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
6. The National-Zeitung, as translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
7. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
8. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
9. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
10. The 'Captain Of Köpenick.'." Times [London, England] 3 Dec. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012
11. Ibidem
12. "The 'Captain' Of Köpenick." Times [London, England] 30 Oct. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
13. "The Köpenick Raid." Times [London, England] 22 Oct. 1906: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.

(This post was originally posted on my old blog)