After moving to Devon, my Indian grandmother came across a leaflet containing a copy of an 1805 painting by Chinnery of two children dressed in traditional Indian clothing. The children spent extended periods of their childhoods with their uncle at his home, Southernhay House, in Exeter, now a hotel near where I live ^[1]. Surprised, my grandmother told us how a copy of that painting had hung in her childhood home in India: The Residency of Hyderabad. How is Southernhay House in Exeter connected to my grandmother’s life in India, and what is significant about the children in the painting?

James Kirkpatrick was working, as British Resident, for the East India Company at the turn of the 19th century, when he fell in love with Hyderabadi noblewomen: Khair-un-Nissa Begum ^[2]. By the early 1800s attitudes towards cross-racial and cultural marriages were changing for the worse ^[3], placing them both in socially and politically difficult positions. Despite this, they married in 1800 and had two children. The family lived in the Residency of Hyderabad, later my grandmother’s home. But in 1805 Kirkpatrick died and the future of his “natural children” had to be dealt with. It was decided that his children (only three and five) should be torn away from India and sent to live in England. Their distraught mother had little to remember them by, other than the children’s Chinnery portrait. Within a month of arriving in England, they were christened with new “English” names: William and Katherine Kirkpatrick and were prohibited from contacting their Indian family ^[4].

This forceful, racist erasion of their past and identities is crucial to understanding the effects and outcomes of colonisation such as the concept of “colourism” which was likely, a key influence in determining the children’s futures. So why do we, as a society, struggle with acknowledging, accepting, and embracing mixed identities?

In a letter, written by an East India Company employee, who was deciding the futures of his mixed-race children in the late 1700s, the importance of skin colour is made apparent. It quotes, “The two eldest…almost as fair as European children should be sent to Europe.” ^[5] This reflects how some Anglo-Indian children, were abandoned by their English fathers due to their skin colour. In the painting, the children are depicted with pale complexions, this is likely to be an accurate representation, considering how easily they were absorbed into British society. Therefore, it is highly possible that their paler rather than darker skin tones, unknowingly acted as their tickets to the high society lives they led in England.

So, where does Exeter enter the story? “Much of [the children’s] holidays” ^[6] were spent visiting their uncle’s house in Exeter (Southernhay House). Where to this day, Katherine’s impressive butterfly collections are displayed ^[7]. However, the children “pined” ^[8] for India, with Katherine even saying in a later letter, that, “not a day of my life has ever passed without my thinking of my mother” ^[9]. As such, their uncle planted Indian palm trees outside the house, to remind them of their former home. Indeed, the highly regarded historian William Dalrymple described the house as “a miniature red-brick replica” ^[10] of my grandmother’s home: the Hyderabad Residency. To this day there is a resemblance between the houses, Exeter’s own little pocket of colonial India remaining through the ages largely unchanged.

Later, Katherine did manage to re-establish a link to her Indian past. By chance, she visited Swallowfield Park which was the home of Henry Russell, assistant to her father in India. Here, she came across the original painting of herself and her brother. She burst into “floods of tears” ^[11] and became determined to contact her Indian relations, which finally was done. This act of empowerment in regaining the connections to her past, enabled her to learn about her Indian heritage, and the life she may have led, if her skin had been a few shades darker. Sadly, Katherine was never able to unite with her Indian family, but she had at least found some reconciliation with her past.

The story of Katherine and William in Exeter tells a global story of the huge personal impacts of colonisation, the effects of cross-racial and cultural marriages, racism, acceptance, “colourism,” stolen and re-found identity. I am the outcome of a cross-racial and cultural marriage. My grandmother was from Hyderabad and my grandfather was from England. As such, I feel a great connection to this story. It is vital to learn about such stories. Not only Katherine and William's but also every other child resulting from a colonial Anglo-Indian marriage, deserves appreciation, recognition, and respect, rather than being ostracised or having their identities rubbed away and re-written by societies so inexcusably afraid of the intermingling of races.

References:

[1] White Mughals by William Dalrymple (Harper Collins 1st Ed 2002)

[2] White Mughals by William Dalrymple (Harper Collins 1st Ed 2002)

[3] In addition to research done in White Mughals by William Dalrymple (Harper Collins 1st Ed 2002), see: Marriage in British India | Merryn Allingham (undated article) (date I accessed article: 10th December 2024)

[4] White Mughals by William Dalrymple (Harper Collins 1st Ed 2002)

[5] The Curious Case of Kitty Kirkpatrick by Shafia Fiaz posted 4th August 2020, sharedc, ulturalheritage.wordpress. com

[6] Page 471, line 27, White Mughals by William Dalrymple (Harper Collins 1st Ed 2002)

[7] Currently housed in Southernhay House, Exeter (2025)

[8] pg 471, line 14, White Mughals etc

[9] pg 490, White Mughals etc. Dalrymple ref to undated document in private archive of Kirkpatrick’ descendants

[10] pg 472 line 2, White Mughals etc

[11] pg 480, line 13, White Mughals etc

Photo: Southernhay House, Exeter, 2008, by Derek Harper, geograph.org.uk; CC BY-SA 2.0; via Wikimedia Commons.