Tiger And The Wren

Fergus Wiggin

Description

The four decades from early 1910 to the 1950s were arguably the most turbulent times in modern history, as they included two world wars, the Partition of India (in 1947) plus pandemic outbreaks of deadly diseases like influenza, which killed millions and disrupted the lives of many more. The author, born in 1930 into a British colonial family, was in the middle of this mayhem. His situation was made worse by the untimely death of his mother when he was aged only three, which resulted in him being looked after by native carers and then attending boarding school in the Himalayas. Fergus Wiggin spent his formative years trying to cope with this responsibility. A gifted individual with almost total recall, he tells his amazing, detailed stories of overcoming adversity, bringing dry history alive with touching moments and haunting memories. He met his wife when he was aged just four; endured life threatening extraordinary experiences from an earthquake, a leopard, hyenas, reptiles, a lost cow and a Spitfire plane. In contrast, he had all his worldly goods stolen and had mischievous antics with Mahatma Gandhi, who referred to Fergus as the 'Last Raj Boy of India'. This all makes a fascinating and compelling read.

Sujets

• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 03 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785452185
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published 2017
Copyright © Fergus Wiggin 2017
The right of Fergus Wiggin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-178545-217-8 ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-218-5
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my extended family ‘DEAR OCTOPUS’
Particularly
To my mother whom I never knew
To my dear and caring father whom I thought I knew
To my loving sisters who were parted from me when needed most
To my beloved children and their dearly loved spouses
But most of all
To my darling wife who gave me back the family I wanted
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Photographs
Appendices
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It has taken me over three years to get this far. I have discovered that producing a biography can be a painful but ultimately rewarding experience. Memories were evoked which often opened old wounds that had been hidden away in the recesses of the mind without being healed. Unhappy skeletons in the cupboards of my subconscious have been brought out, dusted and exposed as being just the dry, old, innocuous bones they always were. This process has been quite an emotional one and could not have been completed without the strong support and forbearance of my darling wife. These few inadequate words are an acknowledgement of all the help Jennifer has given me. This book could not have been written without her!
I also acknowledge my debt to all those members of the family who have contributed to the contents of this history. In many cases they will not even have realised that their memories of the past were being painlessly extracted for purposes that will now become clear to them! My thanks go to a good neighbour and friend Colin Gill for his help in copying photographs and manuscript to a professional standard.
Finally, my acknowledgements go to the authors and publishers of the two books which I used as reference for providing most of the background details concerning the personal involvement of my father and great grandfather in the ‘First World War’ (by Martin Gilbert) and ‘The Sepoy Mutiny’ (by V.A. Stuart).
FOREWORD

This book was written as the result of chance remarks by my two sisters during the years just prior to me retiring in 1992. I suddenly realised that each one of the three of us appeared to have a different view of our parents. This conundrum was of particular interest to me because, whilst I had little recollection of our mother who had died of pneumonia when I was only three years old, their perspectives on our father really surprised me. I had been close to him for forty years, yet their views differ not only from mine in many significant ways, but also between themselves! This made me realise that the lives of all parents must be blurred by both the special child/parent relationship and the familiarity of a long, sentimental association, when viewed by their children. If I had the chance to have a one to one conversation with anyone who has ever lived, my choice would now be to have it with my father! It occurred to me that we are all so busy getting on with our own lives and concentrating on our own particular interests that the existence of our parents is taken for granted. The result of this natural state of affairs is that any awareness of them as people who have lives unrelated to our own is distorted by introspection.
These thoughts made me realise that this apparent paradox in the way siblings view their parents and each other also applied to my own children. Accordingly, I decided to write a short biographical history of the family in general and the lives of their parents in particular. Every event or incident actually occurred, and the detailed backgrounds of description reflect either research or my own experience in the many situations or locations concerned. Only the timescale or connecting sequences are subject to the usual vagaries of memory in those who are alive to verify and relate from hearsay the subject matter of each case. If some of the contents appear incredible or even bizarre then, to misquote, the fault may lie in the paucity of the reader’s experience and not in the reality, because truth is indeed stranger than fiction! It is hoped that those of my family who are closest to me will read and get something useful out of this interesting story of their roots. For myself, if there is one virtue which has to be singled out as a common denominator in this history of a uniquely valiant colonial family, it can be summed up as being ‘constancy’. The dictionary defines it as:-
The quality of being dependably faithful and firmly enduring.
CHAPTER ONE

PROLOGUE: ANTECEDENTS
I still have the ‘oil on wood’ portrait of our ancestor John Wiggins. My father had given it to me a few years before his death in 1975, along with his citation for gallantry during the Great War and a letter dated 1st January 1943 from King George the Sixth, confirming him as a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi had been right. It proved that I was a ‘real RAJ boy’! John was his great great grandfather and his third son Francis founded the Colonial branch of our family. He was the last direct-line male scion to have been born in England, until the birth of my own son Kevin there well over a century and a half later. Francis came out to India in 1809 as an ensign in the 31st Native Infantry Regiment, which had been recruited for service in the Subcontinent as part of the East India Company Army of Bengal. John Company, as it came to be known, had been founded by a charter from Queen Elizabeth I in the year 1600. It had no territorial ambitions and only recruited a force of native sepoys with British officers, for the sole purpose of protecting the trading posts and factories which had been built under licence from the reigning Mogul emperors. These centres were located in Calcutta and Madras, since these sites were close to the mouth of rivers which gave trading access to both the hinterland and the sea. Trading was only profitable when it was not interrupted by unrest in the surrounding countryside, and the Company’s native troops were used to impose law and order, as and when required. In the unsettled feudal circumstances of that time, the many Kingdoms and Principalities in India were constantly warring with each other to gain an advantage of special interest. It became inevitable that the organised regiments of John Company would slowly expand British influence over an increasing area of the subcontinent. This resulted in the centres of Calcutta and Madras becoming Presidencies, with their own separate resident Company Governors. Each had an army to ensure the security of the trading area associated with it. The Portuguese and French had similar trading establishments at Goa and Pondicherry but, whilst the former became allies of the British by the marriage of Charles the Second to Catherine of Braganza, the latter were forced to take up arms in India as a result of a war that had been declared between France and England in Europe. The French were defeated and ejected from the Subcontinent. The port of Bombay, called the ‘Gateway to India’ by the Portuguese, was ceded to Britain as part of Catherine’s dowry. This then involved the British Government in the direct affairs of India for the first time. Trade prospered, and Bombay soon became a third quasi Presidency, with an army to secure the south-west area of the country.
At the end of the next century, the British Government was forced to acknowledge that it could no longer avoid getting involved in the administration of the Subcontinent. Parliament passed the India Bill in 1794 which allowed the British Government to join John Company in the administration and defence of the country, particularly those territories which were directly annexed to the crown by default or conquest following a breakdown of law and order. A British Governor General was appointed and his Administration, or Raj as the natives called it, was located in either Calcutta or the hill station town of Simla, depending on the season. The main Calcutta Presidency offices and cantonments of its ‘Bengal Army’ were also centred there. This army was charged with the task of securing the territory of Northern India which stretched from a border with Afghanistan in the west to Burma in the east. Francis Wiggins served with distinction in this region and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1810 and Captain in 1814. He served during the storming of the ‘impregnable’ fortress at Bhurtpur and was severely wounded near Lucknow in 1817, during the ‘Pindari War’ against the Mahrattas. However, he recovered to marry Mary Barten in 1820. She had recently come out from England with her family. They had three children, George in 1822, a daughter in 1824, and Frederick in 1826. Francis continued his service in Oudh and on the border with Burma, until he was taken off the active commission list for reas