Violet Mona and Reginald Peel: An Indian Life and Afterwards

 Violet Mona and Reginald Peel: An Indian Life and Afterwards

We know Violet Peel as the second wife of Reginald Peel; their story exemplifies

the English families who lived, worked, and died under the British Raj (colonial

rule).

Violet’s expression on the blog* is resolute:, ready to cope with the climate, the

wildlife and the daily fear of malignant disease. Raj officers’ wives are now

parodied as ‘memsahibs’, flaunting their ‘white privilege’ but that, even if true,

was no defence against the privations of a posting to India, Malaya or some other

outpost of the empire.

Violet and her twin sister Flossy (Florence) May were born in October 1897 to

George Grant, an Army accountant, in the cantonment (barracks) in Coloba, one

of the seven islands in the Bombay Presidency.** Her other siblings were born

wherever her father was stationed – George, Gibralter (1893); Arthur,

Ahmednager in Maharashtra (1895); twins Henry and Albert, Ajmer in Rajasthan

(1903). Ajmer Junction was also an important railway hub, where Reginald Peel

worked and where his eldest son died.

Reginald’s life typified how India could both give and take away. He married

Frances Maude Vlieland in June 1906; his first son Francis was born in March

1907, and died in Ajmer that November at nine months old. Frances died of

malignant malaria, a condition of pregnancy, in Wellington Mansions, Fort

Bombay, in February 1914, aged just 29. There was no birth in 1912 or 1913, so

there may have been an unrecorded stillbirth or miscarriage.

Reginald’s was an ‘old’ Indian family. He was born in 1873 in Moradabad in

Bengal and (like his father Nathaniel) was a comptroller (auditor/accountant) on

the BB&CI.*** Headquartered in Churchgate in Bombay (now Mumbai), his work

could take him 500 miles away to Ajmer and Sirwi (now Sirui), where Barbara,

his third child, was born in November 1911. Reginald’s second son, Clifford, born

in December 1908 and never in India, was named after Reginald’s own younger

brother, who lived for only a month after his birth in Bengal in 1874.

Reginald would have shared social and professional circles with George Grant

and his family in Ajmer and Bombay. In June 1916, he came home to announce

his engagement to his parents-in-law, Charles and Alice Vlieland. Whether it

was a conciliatory or a bitter interview, while the marriage took place in Naini

Tal, Bengal, in September, Clifford and Barbara did not go with him.****

Reginald had five sons in his ‘second family’: Keith (b. 1917, who we have just

met on the blog), Clarence (b. 1919), John (b. 1923), Laurence (b. 1927) and

Michael (b. 1929). The eldest three sons were born in Bengal, so Reginald must

have been posted to the ABR or the EBR network; ***** the gap in births between

Clarence and John and John and Laurence may again mean infant deaths

Now the picture becomes less clear, and if any descendant families can help to

complete it, please contact the blog.

Violet and Reginald left India some time after John’s birth in 1923, settling in a

rural village in West Sussex, where Laurence and Michael were born. In 1937,

Violet took a lease on 19A Eaton Place, a beautiful John Nash-built terrace

running down to the sea in the ‘old India hand’ quarter of Brighton around

Eastern Road. Reginald died there aged 64 in January 1938, and Keith was

probably married from the flat later in the year.

Violet died in 1992 aged 94. She married Horace George Wood in 1945; he died

in 1957, so Violet was widowed again after 12 years of marriage. Her brothers

Henry died in 1964 and George in 1970, her sons Keith in 1941, John in 1985

and Clarence in 1986. John deserted from the Army and was imprisoned for

stealing when on the run in 1948, aged only 25, possibly triggered by Keith’s

death. We are still investigating the Surrey Assizes’ records, so may know more

later.

*14 August 2013.

**Violet and Flossy were born into a city suffering the worst outbreak of plague

in Mumbai’s history. We shall make a separate post on how the outbreak

changed the city and the lives of everyone who lived there.

***BB&CI = Bombay, Baroda and Central Indian Railway.

****One explanation is that Reginald did not want to burden the 19-year-old

Violet with a 4- and 7-year old stepchild and was happy to leave them with their

grandparents. The other is that Charles and Alice were totally opposed to

abandoning their grandchildren, and especially Clifford, to Violet’s care in India,

and Reginald acceded.

***** ABR = Assam Bengal Railway; EBR = Eastern Bengal Railway.