Imagine you could travel through time and walk the corridors of the India Museum; find your way through the exhibitions of this ‘Oriental Repository’ that showcased objects gifted to, purchased or looted by the East India Company in various locations across London for most of the 19th century.
Imagine you could visit the museum in the halls of the East India House in Leadenhall Street and marvel at the displays in its successive locations at Fife House in Whitehall, the newly constructed India Office, and the ‘Eastern Galleries’ at South Kensington where you could (re)discover some of the objects before much of the collection was eventually dispersed to Kew Gardens and the British Museum in 1879, while the material destined for the South Kensington Museum remained largely in place.
The India Museum Revisited Project has sought to reconstitute the contents, displays and experience of the museum created by the East India Company (EIC). Formed to access the riches of India, East and Southeast Asia, the Company was initially created in 1600 as an enterprise by English merchants. Following its initial launch as a monopolistic trading body, the EIC became increasingly involved in politics, acting as an agent of British imperialism in India. At its peak in the early 19th century, it was the largest corporation in the world and came to rule wide areas of India, assuming administrative functions and exercising military power.
While the history of the India Museum is explained elsewhere, here we look at the experiences of its visitors as recounted in their own words. Their descriptions allow us to reimagine the collections today. But who were those visitors? And where can we find their voices today?
With few exceptions, most of these visitor accounts were published anonymously in various 19th-century British magazines or miscellanies, which are collections of various pieces of writing by different authors, sometimes next to completely unrelated texts. But that does not mean we know nothing about these visitors: it is likely that most of them had a reasonable level of education, and were financially and physically able to travel abroad. All the contemporary images show that the Museum was visited by women as well as men, no doubt mostly British or from Europe, although one valuable account is written by an Indian visitor.
These various accounts, published over a period of more than 30 years from 1842 to 1879, enable the reader to revisit the museum both in its original home and in the several locations where the collection was moved to before being eventually dispersed. Since some of these reports are quite lengthy, we present only selected quotes here. The full texts can be read here.
All quoted historical voices are presented with their original spelling and punctuation intact. Some may contain offensive and discriminatory language, or reflect outdated ideas, practice and analysis that might make the reader uncomfortable and do not reflect the views of this author or the V&A.
A first encounter with ‘Tippoo’s Tiger’ at Leadenhall Street
One of the most popular objects of the Museum has long been ‘Tippoo’s Tiger’, an almost-life-sized wooden automaton of a ferocious Indian tiger mauling a prostrate European figure, animated with growls and shrieks. The tiger is described in great detail by an anonymous author in one of the longest surviving accounts of the India Museum. Published in 1842 in Alfred Henry Forrester’s The Sea-Pie, this account is especially valuable in illustrating the museum’s displays before they were impacted by the 1851 Great Exhibition, which brought not only a flood of new material gathered or commissioned especially for the occasion but also a curatorial approach that aimed more consciously to present matters relating to economy and industry in the relationship between the metropolis and the Indian subcontinent. The anonymous author of the account itself, clearly not connected with the museum, is familiar with much of the lore and literature attached to the historical objects and perhaps also with India itself.
“The Museum of the East India Company is contained in several rooms in their House in Leadenhall Street, and it is not so remarkable for its extent, as for its diversity; owing its collection less to the act of the Company itself, than it does, to the separate contributions of individual members and servants. (…)
In a room appropriated to musical instruments, and thence called the Rajmahal, was found an article which merits particular notice, as another proof of the deep hatred and extreme loathing of Tippoo Saib towards the English. This was a most curious piece of mechanism, as large as life, representing a royal tiger in the act of devouring a prostrate European officer. Within the body of the animal was a row of keys of natural notes, acted upon by the rotation of certain barrels, in the manner of a hand-organ, and which produced sounds intended to resemble the cries of a person in distress, intermixed with the horrid roar of the tiger.The machinery was so contrived, that, whilst this infernal music continued to play, the hand of the European victim was often lifted up, and the head convulsively thrown back, to express the agony of his helpless and deplorable situation.The whole of this machine, formed of wood, was executed under the immediate orders and directions of Tippoo, whose custom it was, in the afternoon, to amuse himself with this miserable triumph over the English. (…) The machinery, unfortunately, is out of order at present, and no more than an occasional squeak can be had when the handle is turned.”
Vivid and striking impressions of ‘the East’
The 1843 issue of Charles Knight’s popular London series (1841 – 44) contains another of the earlier visitor accounts of the India Museum (see image above). Knight, a versatile editor, publisher and writer himself, is mostly known for his illustrated working-class magazine The Penny Magazine.
“The opening of the Museum at the India House to the public once-a-week, on Saturdays, from eleven to three, is a creditable act of liberality on the part of the Directors. The rooms appropriated to this purpose are not a continuous suite (…). In passing to another apartment, which forms also a part of the Library, we enter a small ante-room, which is occupied by a splendid howdah, or throne, part of it of solid silver, adapted for the back of an elephant, in which Oriental princes travel: it was taken by Lord Combermere at Bhurtpore. (…) The next room, filled chiefly with books, contains, however, several curious objects: here are Tippoo Sultan’s Register of Dreams, with the interpretation of them in his own hand; and the Koran which he was in the habit of using. A visit to this Museum is certainly calculated to render impressions concerning the East more vivid and striking.”
Remarkable collections under ‘dusty glass cases’
The following, much shorter account is written by the German physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus (1789 – 1869). As personal physician to King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, Carus joined the monarch on his incognito journey through England and Scotland in 1844. During their visit to London in June, Carus decided to visit the India Museum, which he ‘was driven to’. His verdict, which he notes in his travel journal, comes not without disappointment:
“The India House was really open to-day, and I visited its remarkable collections. One enters and walks with a certain feeling of reverence, when one considers that in this building are contained the central offices whence emanate all orders for the government of the immense Indo-Britannic Empire! Notwithstanding its blackened Ionic portico, it does look rather old and insignificant for a building of such importance. The rooms containing the collection are low, and the objects of curiosity are only seen under dusty glass cases; in fact the house does not at all look as if it were the centre from which 170,000,000 of human beings are governed! Among the collections here there is no doubt much that would reward a more careful study. (…) The collection of objects of natural history is not considerable, and it is evident that no one well acquainted with such things had taken any interest in it, or an East India Company might have had a different sort of museum!”
‘Here you can learn more in a few hours than you could from any existing publication’
We now hear from a contributor to the 1858 issue of the popular British magazine The Leisure Hour, a general-interest periodical, published weekly from 1852 – 1905 by the Religious Tract Society.
Writing in the immediate aftermath of the First War of Independence in 1857 (the ‘late events’ referred to in the opening sentence below), the author of this account adopts a thoughtful approach to the collections. They could not have foreseen that the East Indian Company was soon to be deprived of all its powers and that the museum would enter a peripatetic period before eventually being extinguished.
“This Museum, to which late events [First War of Independence in 1857] have given a more than ordinary interest, occupies a series of apartments, or floors, one above another, in the India House, Leadenhall Street. (…) The collection is, in fact, well deserving of the closest study and scrutiny (…). There is enough here to teach the people of England, in a few hours, more of the inner life and social customs of the Hindoos than they are likely to get from years of desultory reading, or, indeed, than is to be got at all from any existing published works. (…) The complaint is just: as a mass, we know next to nothing of the hundred millions of Hindoos who are our fellow-subjects; we gaze with surprise and wonder (…) at the proofs they send us of their unaccountable perseverance in minute and laborious undertakings, and of their unrivalled skill in such masterpieces of patience and manual dexterity; but of the Indian people (…) we know nothing, or next to nothing. Now, the East India Museum would afford a key to a good part, at least, of this mystery, and, if rightly used, would render valuable service in enlightening us with regard to a subject which is becoming day by day of more importance to Englishmen.”
A ‘temporary dépôt’ for a ‘most interesting museum’
After the First War of Independence in 1857, the East India Company was wound up and the British government established a new department – The India Office – which assumed responsibility for all Indian affairs. With the transfer of the East India Company’s assets to the India Office, the practical dimension of the museum was driven forward by John Forbes Watson (1827 – 1892), the newly appointed ‘Reporter on the Products of India’ responsible for the collections. Under Forbes Watson, the Museum was undergoing a series of disruptive relocations, starting with the museum’s move to Fife House in Whitehall in 1861.
On 3 August 1861, The Illustrated London News – in the year of its first publication in 1842, the world’s first illustrated weekly news magazine – not only reported on the demolition of East India House in Leadenhall Street but also published a first detailed insight into the ‘New India Museum’ at its latest, all too temporary location. The following anonymous visitor account is accompanied by a half-page illustration: together, the text and image allow us to join a group of visitors, perhaps imagine their comments while they look at the displays, and visualise the museum’s atmosphere at that time.
“The collections of native products, and the specimens illustrative of the arts and industrial pursuits of the people of India, which for several years past had been on view at the old India House in Leadenhall-street, have been removed to Fife House, Whitehall. The museum, newly arranged, under the direction of Mr Digby Wyatt, Dr Forbes, and Mr Downing, was opened to the public on Wednesday week. (…) The building is not well adapted for the purposes of a museum, but it may serve as a temporary dépôt for the extensive collection of silks, jewels, metal wares, and other produce and manufactures which illustrate the wealth of our Indian empire (…). There is no branch of industry or of manufactures, and scarcely any description of raw produce, which is not illustrated in this most interesting museum.”
The voice of a sole Indian visitor
A more personal and poignant response to the collections in their setting at Fife House, now only huddled together and deprived of all the human and sensory associations that had formerly animated them, was recorded in 1862 by a young Indian visitor, Rakhal Das Haldar, then a student at University College London who came to England ‘against the wishes of his more Hindu relatives’. During his stay, Haldar kept a diary in which he tells us, amongst others, about his regular visits to museums in London, his experience of the opening of the International Exhibition in May 1862 and his visits to other places, such as Bristol.
Haldar – the sole Indian visitor to the collections whose responses have been noted – records that it was his sixth or seventh visit to the museum so that for all the pathos it evoked, it clearly touched a powerful chord within him. Haldar’s deeply personal observations stand in striking contrast to those of European and British visitors.
“It was painful to see the state chair of gold of the late Lion of the Punjab [the throne of Ranjit Singh] with a mere picture upon it; shawls without Babus; musical instruments without a Hindu player, jezails and swords without sipahis and sawars; golden ornaments without bhobi [women]; and above all, hookahs without the fume of fantastic shapes!”
Haldar joined the Bengal Civil Service after his return to India.
Reunion with an ‘old friend’ and the prospect of a new India Museum
The following accounts of the museum, published from May-July 1869 in the British Literary Magazine The Athaeneum, which focused on literature, music and art reviews, dates from the period when the collections (or some part of them) were displayed in the upper storey of the newly built India Office. The arrangement, unsatisfactory as it was, was never intended as more than a temporary solution: the author concludes with the confident statement that ‘There will be a new India Museum’, but it was not to be. Within six years the collections had been moved to a further temporary home in the ‘Eastern Galleries’ at South Kensington. But first, let’s take some time for a reunion with an old friend:
“But we almost forget our old friend, the tiger. Who has not seen and, what is more, heard him at the old India House? and who, having suffered under his unearthly sounds, can ever dismiss him from his memory? (…) Luckily he is now removed from the library; but what is also lucky, a kind fate has deprived him of his handle, and stopped up, we are happy to think, some of his internal organs (…) we do sincerely hope that he will remain so, to be seen and to be admired, if necessary, but to be heard no more. (…) The only question which has not ceased to puzzle every one who has scaled the heights of the India Office is, why illustrations of the past and present of Indian produce, manufacture and art must be exiled to such a place as this, unsuited alike to the quality and quantity of what it should at present hold, and incapable, of course, of satisfying any future emergency. We are happy, however, to understand that this question has also been answered at last. There will be a new India Museum; and India, who is told to be proud of her new India Office, we think, will be prouder still to possess a building which will worthily contain all that bears testimony to the past and present development.”
Opening hours on Sundays for the Working Class and deserted ‘Eastern Galleries’ in Exhibition Road
The last visitor account featured here was published on 31 May 1879 in The London Journal, a British penny fiction weekly, published from 1845 to 1928 and one of the best-selling magazines of the 19th century.
Dating from a few months before the India Museum’s closure as a separate institution, the author describes the collections in their final location, the ‘Eastern Galleries’ on Exhibition Road, on a site today occupied by Imperial College. For a few years, the collections had room to breathe in these galleries, although they were not much visited despite the museum’s efforts to open on Sundays for working-class visitors, as described by this last voice from the museum’s past.
As previously mentioned, in 1879 some of the collections were dispersed – mostly to Kew Gardens and the British Museum – while the material destined for the South Kensington Museum remained largely in place. In 1955 the Eastern Galleries were demolished, and several key works from the collection were incorporated into existing V&A displays, while the bulk of the collection was placed in storage.
“Among the social questions which of late have taken rather a prominent position is that of the opening of museums and picture galleries for a certain number of hours on a Sunday (…). It is highly important, for the future progress of industry, that our working classes should have the opportunity of comparing what is done in their own country with the methods of other countries (…). If a few hours in every Sunday afternoon were allowed to them for visiting the various public exhibitions, galleries, and museums (…), we are convinced that nothing but good could arise from it (…). On the whole, the visitor will come away impressed (…) with the fact that the Indian Museum is a noble collection, which ought to be far better known than it is now, but they cannot help realizing the truth that, practically, every obstacle has been thrown by the authorities at headquarters in the way of the free and uninterrupted enjoyment of its many beauties by the general public, of which its deserted rooms alone are more than sufficient evidence.”
About the India Museum Revisited Project
The India Museum Revisited project is hosted by the V&A Research Institute and has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The central output of the project is a book with the same title, The India Museum Revisited, written by Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor Arthur MacGregor and published by V&A Publications in association with UCL Press in October 2023. In addition to the hard copy, a free, digital copy is available via the UCL Press website.
The material presented here as well as on the project’s own website and in additional blog posts (accessible via the project page) is intended to make available in greater detail some of the resources on which Arthur MacGregor’s book is based on and updates his findings about the India Museum with newly emerging information from time to time.
