Why did George Orwell join the Indian Imperial Police? He told Sonia Brownell – who was curious as to why her husband pursued this career rather than ‘Oxbridge’ – that it was a ‘long and complicated story’. He died before answering her question. The careers of two uncles, George Limouzin (1881-1977) and Arthur Blair (1846-1879), provide important contextual clues for a deeper understanding of the background to this decision considering they both served in the Indian Imperial Police.
Except for Jacintha Buddicom’s testimony that her childhood friend wished to study at the University of Oxford, there is little evidence Orwell wanted to follow this traditional academic and social path from Eton College to Oxbridge. Buddicom recounted that their family matriarchs were supportive of the idea but Orwell’s father, Richard Walmsley Blair (1857–1939), employed in the Opium Department from 1875 until his retirement in 1912, was ‘adamant’ his son would follow the Blair family footsteps into the ‘Indian Civil’. Mr. Blair did consult with Andrew Gow (1886–1978), his son’s tutor, enquiring if a scholarship was possible, only to be told poor academic results made this unrealistic. The ingenuousness of Gow’s advice has been questioned but either way, Orwell never received a tertiary education and joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1922 as a Probationary Assistant District Superintendent.
Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950) had been born in Motihari and his parents married in Nainital. One school friend, the historian Steven Runciman (1903-2000), recalled Orwell being sentimentally entranced by ‘the allure of the East’ and was not ‘the least bit surprised’ he decided on this option rather than university. Buddicom also understood this was ‘a sort of tradition with his father’s family’ believing it was entirely Mr. Blair’s idea and that Eric just ‘fell in with it’. One biographer, finding it challenging to imagine the ‘unassuming’ Mr. Blair being ‘adamant’ about anything, surmised it was ‘perfectly reasonable that he would want to stop spending his limited income on educating a son who was old enough to begin a suitable career’. This seems like case closed but recently uncovered primary sources shed more light on his father’s personal context and ambitions for his son.
The youngest of the ten children born to Thomas Arthur Richard Blair (1802–1867) and Frances ‘Fanny’ Catherine Blair (1823–1908), Richard W. Blair was no stranger to family tragedy. By 1874, before he reached adulthood, his five sisters were dead. The only one of his brothers who survived into the twentieth century was Horatio Douglas Blair (1854–1939) also employed in the Opium Department. All his other siblings had died childless by 1884. In one of Orwell’s early novels, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the protagonist’s family is reminiscent of his own:
Gran’pa Comstock, for instance, himself one of a litter of twelve, had produced eleven progeny. Yet all those eleven produced only two progeny between them, and those two – Gordon and his sister Julia – had produced, by 1934, not even one. Gordon, last of the Comstocks, was born in 1905, an unintended child; and thereafter, in thirty long, long years, there was not a single birth in the family, only deaths. … Every one of them seemed doomed, as though by a curse, to a dismal, shabby, hole-and-corner existence.
Orwell’s great-grandfather, Charles Blair (1776-1854) and great-uncle, Henry Charles Blair (1775-1794), had received privileged educations at Westminster School where students were prepared for Oxford and a career in the Anglican Church. In his correspondence, the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey (1774–1843) who was expelled from the school, provided a rare insight into the privileged lives of these aristocratic, slave-owning Blairs. Charles Blair’s son, Reverend Thomas Arthur Richard Blair M.A., appears to be the only one of Orwell’s ancestors to attend university, albeit briefly, at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1833. Orwell was a clergyman’s grandson.
Reverend Blair also served with the 72nd (Duke of Albany’s own Highlanders) Regiment of Foot. In an eleven-year career, commencing when he enlisted as an Ensign in 1819, Blair served abroad at the Cape of Good Hope for 3 years, 282 days and at home for 6 years, 223 days. Blair’s regiment was engaged in the ongoing colonial warfare against the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape when he arrived. Ensign Blair was promoted to Lieutenant in 1820 and then Captain in 1825. Both of those promotions were ‘by purchase’, a system, until reformed in 1871, which ensured the officer class would predominantly be gentlemen of means. His own father, Charles Blair, had been a Captain in the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. Charles Blair was later stationed at the Cape of Good Hope as a Collector of Customs c. 1808-1826 and owned at least the two ‘enslaved’ people during this time. His brother Henry Charles Blair, who had purchased a commission in the 23rd Regiment of Foot at sixteen years of age, died of yellow fever while his regiment was endeavouring to quell the slave revolt on Saint Domingo (now Haiti), in the West Indies.
Why Orwell’s parents settled on ‘Arthur’ as a middle name for their only son rather than the traditional Blair choices – Horatio, Charles, Henry and Thomas – seems to be a nod towards this grandfather he never met. However, the career of a paternal uncle, unknown in Orwell scholarship, is an interesting one; Arthur Blair (1846–1879) was a District Superintendent of Police in Bengal.
THE BLAIR BROTHERS IN INDIA
Richard W. Blair’s imperial service as an Assistant Sub-Deputy Opium Agent in Bengal commenced on the 4th August 1875. He was first stationed near Motihari, at Mozzuferpore (Muzaffarpur) in the year his wife-to-be, Ida Limouzin (1875–1943) was born. When he arrived, Horatio Douglas Blair and Arthur Blair were already stationed in India. Horatio was in the Opium Department at Kheree (Khere) and Arthur, based at Noakholly (Noakhali) was making good career progress in the Police Department. In 1873, Horatio had been appointed to the Benares Agency, subject to passing chemistry and surveying exams, as an Assistant Sub-Deputy Opium Agent. Horatio and Richard were reunited, in March 1876, when they sat these examinations together in Patna, Bihar:
The Opium Assistants have, properly speaking, to be examined by the Central Committee of Examination. However, to save the extra cost to Government of fresh examination papers in Botany, Chemistry, and Surveying, it was arranged that the Opium Assistants should appear to be examined in the above subjects along with the Native Civil Service candidates, on condition that the Central Examination Committee should share the cost from funds at their disposal. [1]
Twenty-three candidates were examined, including five ‘Assistants in the Opium Department’ who were required to pass the special subjects of Surveying, Botany, and Chemistry. Both Blairs did very poorly with the examiner mentioning, in his report to the Secretary of Bengal, that ‘the Opium Assistants have not passed in any subjects’. He was dismissive of complaints suggesting ‘the failure to advertise the new examination rules’ prevented adequate preparation and comment that there was ‘a general paucity in quality candidates’. One ‘native’ candidate, by some mistake of the ‘Local Committee’ was examined in Hindustani instead of Bengali but still managed a pass on one of the subjects, although he understandably failed the others. Richard Blair did particularly poorly, achieving just 15/150 for Surveying and Measurement; 15/60 for Botany; and 11/60 for chemistry: a grand total 41/270.
Following the First War of Indian Independence, what Orwell’s father and uncles would have called the ‘Mutiny of 1857’, Superintendents of Police, with rare exceptions, were to be European. They were recruited in several ways during this period but from 1893, it was only possible if one sat a competitive examination in England, as Eric Blair did in 1922. Blair sat challenging exams, often identical to those attempted by officer candidates for the military services, over an eight-day period:
The passing grade for the examination was 6,000 marks out of a possible 12,400. This did not mean, however, that all the numerous applicants who had received a passing grade would be accepted as candidates. From this particular group only the top twenty-six were; and Blair with a score of 8,463 was seventh on the list. In September he and the twenty-five other successful candidates were required to take a riding test, for which he prepared himself during the summer at a stable in or near Southwold, and was placed twenty-first on the list of twenty-three who passed.
Although it is generally thought that Richard Blair and his siblings were ‘privately tutored’ at home, Arthur Blair had been well-educated at a reputable grammar school. He is listed on the 1861 census as a scholar attending ‘East Street Grammar School’ (Milton Abbey School) at Blandford Forum which was also known as ‘the Eton of the West’. No records of any of his siblings participating in formal schooling have been located and it would have been particularly unaffordable for a widow with few means to formally educate the youngest child of such a large family at a quality school. Possibly Arthur showed more potential.
In 1859, he attended a fête with his father and two sisters which a local newspaper trumpeted, under the headline, OPENING OF THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS, as celebrating ‘the completion and opening of a beautiful group of buildings in which it is intended to give the rising generation in the locality the full advantage of our national system of education’. It is evident that his education prepared him more than adequately for his career as a District Superintendent of Police. Arthur Blair successfully passed his ‘police paper’ in 1864, when he was eighteen years of age.
The newspaper and government records of Arthur Blair’s promotions, transfers and furloughs during the decade before his brothers joined him in Bengal are extensive. The list of districts, towns and cities Arthur was stationed (1864-1878) included: Bancoorah (Bankura); Berhampore (Baharampur); Bogra (Bogura); Burden; Calcutta (Kolkata); Chittagong Hill Tracts; Cuttack; Gaya; Howrah; Jessore; Lohardugge (Lohardaga); Mymensingh; Nadiya (Nadia); Nuddea (Nabadwip); Rungpore; and Tirpoot (Tirhut). In the year Richard W. Blair joined his two brothers in Bengal, Arthur was appointed ‘Justice of the Peace’ and promoted temporarily, although his substantive rank was that of a District Superintendent (fourth grade) to be an additional Deputy Commissioner of Police in Calcutta. This role continued into the following year. In 1877, he was appointed to act as Assistant Inspector-General of Railway Police for the Bengal Division after the previous incumbent was suspended from duties. These are reasonably sound indicators that his superiors recognised talent.
On the 21st July 1878 Blair commenced three months leave, sailing five days later from Bombay on the Cathay, a P&O Steamship bound for Southampton. The following year, he is granted furlough, from 15th May for ‘1 year, 4 months and 22 days’ but never returns to India, where his two brothers continue serving in the Opium Department into the 20th century.
In a terrible historical irony, Orwell’s Uncle Arthur, District Superintendent of Police, died of phthisis [2], once thought to be a hereditary disease, in the presence of a servant on 13th October at 7 Paragon, Bath. Probate records show his personal estate was under £450 and that he was employed as a ‘District Superintendent of Police in the Province of Bengal in the East Indies’. His mother, also residing at the same address, was ‘the sole Executrix’. Horatio had married, the month after Arthur’s death, on the 14th November 1879 to an American, Millicent O’Donnell (1854–1940) in Mussoorie [3]. Richard and Horatio (with his wife) return to this same apartment for the next two decades while on leave from the Opium Department.
Horatio and Millicent had three children (all born in India) and the 1901 census (taken on the 31st March) reveals that one of their daughters, Margaret Rosabel Blair (1890–1984) along with Orwell’s mother and sister, are all residing with Fanny Blair in Bath. Their eldest son, Robert Cuthbert Blair (1880–1911) was educated the Royal Military College, served with the East Lancashire Regiment in South Africa before transferring to the Indian Army in 1902. He was a Captain in the 6th Gurkha Rifles by 1909. He appears to have suicided, throwing himself overboard from a mail steamer in 1911. The remaining four members of the family emigrated to New Zealand before the outbreak of World War One.
Except for Horatio, resident in New Zealand, R.W. Blair was the only member of his family who had survived what was an inordinate amount of tragedy. Although Arthur Blair was dead nearly a quarter-of-a-century before Orwell was born, he seems as likely have been in Richard W. Blair’s mind when he named his first-born son as his own father, who died when he was ten [4]. Mr Blair wanted his only son to follow in his brother’s policing footsteps.
UNCLE GEORGE
Limouzin family history, supported by other contextual clues and primary sources, suggests that Ida’s youngest sibling, a policemen–soldier–aviator known as ‘Limmie’ was a significant influence on the young Eric Blair c. 1914–1922.
Jacintha Buddicom mentioned that Orwell had ‘an Aunt Ivy Limouzin and an Aunt Nellie’ in her recollections of their childhood years. Buddicom only knew three of Ida’s siblings – Nellie, George and Charles Limouzin – the ones she must have met or heard about from Eric and subsequently listed on the family tree in her memoir. Both Nellie Limouzin (1870–1950) and Charles W. Limouzin (1868–1947) were very significant figures in Orwell’s life. George Alfred Limouzin (1881–1977) had married Ivy Kate Wallis (c.1888–1932) in 1910.
Limouzin had an adventurous and long life. Family lore posits that ‘Uncle George’s tales of adventure’ sparked Eric’s desire to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (where both he and Aunt Ivy’s father had also served); that he taught Eric to ride a horse sufficiently well to pass the entry requirement for the Indian Imperial Police; and provided the funds for the ‘Saloon Rifle’ Eric used to shoot rats in the Suffolk hay ricks. Orwell certainly wrote fondly, in ‘Bare Christmas for the Children’, published in the Evening Standard, describing his purchase of ‘a fairly lethal weapon known as a Saloon Rifle’ for seven shillings and sixpence. [5]
This family oral history records that Limmie was stationed in Burma for three years as an officer cadet in the Indian Imperial Police. He was ‘mad about horses’, a superb horseman and played a great deal of polo (which was the only reason he had joined). No documents about this service have yet been found and the timeline is still unclear. There is hard evidence in Thacker’s Directory that Limouzin was employed as an ‘Assistant’ at ‘Chas R. Cowrie & Co.’ – a trading company based in Rangoon – c. 1902-1905 which suggests, if he was in the Burmese Police, it must have been c.1899-1901.
Charles Rennie Cowie (1851-1922) was a Scottish East India merchant. He had been the manager of the Rangoon Oil Company (which became Burmah Oil) before founding this trading company in 1879. Cowie had patented a process where rice husks were used as furnace fuel, effectively halving the cost of milling rice. There was the added benefit that the burnt rice husks proved an effective deodoriser for refuse dumps. It is likely that George Limouzin’s father, Francis Limouzin (1835-1915), who had lost much of his money in rice speculation, knew Cowie and arranged the position for his youngest son at Chas R. Cowrie & Co..
By early 1906, Limouzin had emigrated to South Africa and joined the Natal Carbineers. He fought in the Bambatha Rebellion (or the Zulu Rebellion) where his claim to have met Gandhi, a Sergeant-Major in the Indian Stretcher Bearer Corps, is very contextually believable for several reasons, not least that Limouzin spoke Hindi. Their service overlapped, both receiving the Natal Native Rebellion Medal for this campaign. Official records reveal that Limouzin, who served more than fifty days in the field, was also awarded a clasp.
Limouzin’s service in this vexed colonial military campaign deserves more research in the South African archives. There is much more to be uncovered!
Following his demobilisation after the rebellion was quashed, George ran a trading store in the Eastern Cape with a sibling. After this brother died in 1908, George continued to manage the business, married and his daughter Molly was born in 1911. Around about this time, Limouzin enlisted in the First City Artillery Regiment. It appears he was on secondment, or a training course in Britain, when war was declared on Germany. He fought with the British Expeditionary Force at Mons and Ypres which earned him another medal, the ‘Mons Star’. It was during this period that Uncle George first appeared, at a very impressionable stage, in the young Eric Blair’s life.
George Limouzin’s military records list 56 Craven Avenue, Ealing West as his address during World War One. This was the home of his eldest sister, Nora Ward née Limouzin (1866–1945) who Ida admired, naming her own daughter, Avril Nora Blair (1908–1978). Aunty Ivy lived with Nora during the war. The Limouzin side of Orwell’s family congregated at Nora and Ida’s homes. When Norah’s son, Neville Lascelles Ward (1893–1914), was killed in the first month of World War One, at the Battle of Mons, George Limouzin was serving on the same front. Orwell’s father and a brother-in-law (who lost an eye in the war) had also enlisted. It was a terrible time for innumerable families but inspired a patriotic poem in Neville’s honour. Ida sent, what would become her son’s first published writing, ‘Awake! Young Men of England!’ to the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard.
Limouzin’s wartime service took a new direction after his experiences on the Western Front. He was to become one of the original members of the Zuid Afrikaanse Vlieenier Korps (the predecessor to the South African Air Force) shortly before it was amalgamated into the British Royal Flying Corps. His aviator’s certificate (No. 2419), earned piloting a Farman biplane at the military school airfield in Shoreham, is dated the 29th of January 1916. Lieutenant Limouzin was subsequently posted to No. 26 Squadron.
When the armistice was finally signed, George was recuperating from malaria in a military hospital in Colchester. By July 1919, he was enjoying what post-war London had to offer (and had fond memories of drinking champagne at the Café de Paris for ninepence a glass).
REFLECTION
The reasons why Orwell decided to join the Indian Imperial Police in 1922 have been widely discussed but never satisfactorily settled, mostly due to the information included in the second edition of Jacintha Buddicom’s memoir in 2006. It is not difficult to imagine two adolescents, in love with literature, making romantic plans to attend university together – nor to understand how the impact of Blair’s shameful behaviour which – in Buddicom’s own words, ‘by trying to take us the whole way before I was anywhere near ready for that’ – ruined their relationship. The wishes of a father, adamant about the direction of his only son’s future career, are also readily understood.
Orwell, in his Observer review of India Called Them by Lord Beveridge, clearly valued the ‘picture of British India’ that his parents experienced ‘in the forgotten decades between the Mutiny and Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills’. Steven Runciman had observed the young Eric Blair’s nostalgic attachment to this world nearly thirty years previously. Orwell noted in the review that the Beveridge was ‘one of the very first batch of “competition wallahs”’ admitted to the Indian civil service by competitive examination instead of through influence and property.
Orwell’s family were extremely focused on his academic progress which practically meant one had to be able to sit exams successfully. Mr Blair understood the challenges, through personal experience and must have reflected on the reasons for his brother Arthur’s success. Orwell’s mother and her siblings attended good schools in Bedford, an epicentre of Anglo-Indian education during the second half of the 19th century, where girls were encouraged to sit public examinations. Orwell was enrolled at St Cyprian’s, a noted ‘scholarship factory’, with the support of a maternal uncle, Charles W. Limouzin, and well-prepared by a ‘cramming’ school in Southwold during 1922 to pass the civil service examinations.
This new biographical information, connecting the three Blair brothers – Richard, Arthur and Horatio – to shared experiences of imperial service in Bengal, deepens our knowledge of the ‘tradition with his father’s family’ mentioned by Buddicom. It also goes some way to explaining why Mr. Blair was so adamant his son would join the Indian Imperial Police and follow in Arthur Blair’s footsteps with the confidence that a quality education had instilled.
George Limouzin re-enlisted during the Second World War in the South African forces. Like his namesake George Orwell, Limmie was patriotic and clearly had a need for action. By 1938, Orwell is serving in a militia at the Spanish front. Unable to enlist in the British army at the beginning of World War II, he joins the Home Guard and later becomes a war correspondent. It is not at all challenging to imagine how Uncle George, a policemen, soldier and aviator, influenced the young Eric Blair’s romantic attachment to the idea of service in the East and a life of action.
In 1922, it appears to have been inevitable that Eric Blair would do as his father wished and join the Indian Imperial Police, following in the footsteps of these two Anglo-Indian uncles.
NOTES
[1] This crumbling document was located while researching in the West Bengal Archives in late 2023. At the time, it was exciting to find a primary source about Blair’s work in the Opium Department but later it led to reflection on the effort he and Ida had made to ensure Eric Blair was extremely well-educated.
[2] The myths abounding about phthisis, more commonly known as consumption or tuberculosis, during the 19th century are well covered by Katherine Byrne in Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination.
[3] Blanche Evelyn Limouzin (1872-1903) died in Mussoorie shortly before her sister gave birth to Orwell in Motihari. Blanche attended school with two of her sisters in Bedford and was the only relative to attend Richard and Ida’s wedding in Nainital during 1897.
[4] Orwell’s maternal grandfather, Francis Limouzin (1835–1915) had lost an infant son named Arthur (1862–1865) from his first marriage.
[5] Peter Duby (1946-2023) was Orwell’s first cousin once removed and a keen family historian. His grandfather was George Alfred Limouzin, Ida’s brother, who lived well into his nineties. Orwell offered to plant a tree on Jura when he learned that he and Peter shared a birthday. My tribute to Peter Duby was published last year in The Orwell Society Journal.
* Source: Gandhi (1961) Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: Volume V (1905-1906), Ahmedabad: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. p. 368
If you enjoyed this post more detail, including detailed referencing, can be found in the published article: “The Two Arthurs”, George Orwell Studies, (2024) Vol. 9, No. 1 pp. 135-144
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The late Peter Duby, Orwell’s first cousin once removed, was a font of Limouzin family lore about his grandfather “Limmie”. Fiona Duby has been generous with photographs and documents. Kathryn Le Gay Brereton helped with extra genealogical research. Stephen Buckley’s intelligent insights and support are always highly-appreciated. Sue Brown and Mark Sutton have generously shared photos. Sincere thanks to all!
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