Black Hole of Calcutta

The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small dungeon where troops of the Nawab of Bengal held British prisoners of war after the capture of Fort William on June 20, 1756. According to an account by a survivor, 123 of 146 prisoners died of heat exhaustion in the confined conditions. Certain historians now believe the number to be at most 43.

Background

Fort William had been established to protect British East India Company trade in the city of Calcutta, in the region of Bengal. In 1756, in preparation for expected skirmishes with French forces, the British began building up Fort William's military strength and defenses. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, was unhappy with British interference, having achieved his station despite opposition by the East India Company, and perceived a direct threat to his own rule.

Siraj organized an army and laid siege to the fort, whose defenders took many casualties. The garrison's commander organized an escape, and left a token force in the military fort under the command of John Zephaniah Holwell, a onetime military surgeon who was a top East India Company civil servant. Desertions by allied troops, mainly Dutch, made even this temporary defense untenable, and the fort was taken. Indian soldiers took the surviving 64 to 69 men of the British contingent prisoner, together with an unknown number of Anglo-Indian soldiers and other persons of mixed ancestry, many civilians, who had been sheltering in the Fort. During this period some prisoners were able to escape, and others attacked their guards. The troops, apparently acting on their own, then packed the prisoners in a guard room measuring 14 by 18 ft (4.3 by 5.5 m) and locked them in overnight. Prisoners begged for water or escape, growing delirious from heat exhaustion. As time passed, men collapsed from heat stroke, suffocation, or trampling. The prisoners were not released until morning, when Siraj Ud Daulah awoke. By then, certain modern historians believe, some 43 members of the garrison were dead or missing for other reasons, but the presence of so many non-combatants in the Fort at the time it fell mean that the overall numbers who died cannot be stated with any precision.

The corpses were thrown into a ditch. Holwell and three others were sent as prisoners to Murshidabad; the rest of the survivors obtained their liberty after the victory of a relief expedition under Robert Clive. The Black Hole was later used as a warehouse, and an obelisk, 50 feet (15 m) high, was erected in memory of the dead.

The Holwell account

Holwell wrote an account of the incident in which he claimed that of 146 prisoners, 123 suffocated when imprisoned in the tiny room. His version of events, which was not challenged by other survivors, was widely accepted at the time in Britain.

The following description from a 1911 encyclopedia portrays Holwell's point of view vividly:

The dungeon was a strongly barred room and was not intended for the confinement of more than two or three men at a time. There were only two windows, and a projecting veranda outside and thick iron bars within impeded the ventilation, while fires raging in different parts of the fort suggested an atmosphere of further oppressiveness. The prisoners were packed so tightly that the door was difficult to close.

One of the soldiers stationed in the veranda was offered 1,000 rupees to have them removed to a larger room. He went away, but returned saying it was impossible. The bribe was then doubled, and he made a second attempt with a like result; the nawab was asleep, and no one dared wake him.

By nine o'clock several had died, and many more were delirious. A frantic cry for water now became general, and one of the guards, more compassionate than his fellows, caused some to be brought to the bars, where Mr. Holwell and two or three others received it in their hats, and passed it on to the men behind. In their impatience to secure it nearly all was spilt, and the little they drank seemed only to increase their thirst. Self-control was soon lost; those in remote parts of the room struggled to reach the window, and a fearful tumult ensued, in which the weakest were trampled or pressed to death. They raved, fought, prayed, blasphemed, and many then fell exhausted on the floor, where suffocation put an end to their torments.

About 11 o'clock the prisoners began to drop off fast. At length, at six in the morning, Siraj-ud-Dowla awoke, and ordered the door to be opened. Of the 146 only 23, including Mr. Holwell (from whose narrative, published in the Annual Register for 1758, this account is partly derived), remained alive, and they were either stupefied or raving. Fresh air soon revived them, and the commander was then taken before the nawab, who expressed no regret for what had occurred, and gave no other sign of sympathy than ordering the Englishman a chair and a glass of water. Notwithstanding this indifference, Mr. Holwell and some others acquit him of any intention of causing the catastrophe, and ascribe it to the malice of certain inferior officers, but many think this opinion unfounded.

Alleged victims

Holwell's account included a summary of the alleged victims:

"List of the smothered in the Black Hole prison, exclusive of sixty-nine, consisting of Dutch and English sergeants, corporals, soldiers, topazes , militia, whites, and Portuguese , (whose names I am unacquainted with), making on the whole one hundred and twenty-three persons.

Of Council — E. Eyre, Wm. Baillie,. Esqrs., the Rev. Jervas Bellamy.

Gentlemen in the Service — Messrs. Jenks, Revely, Law, Coales, Valicourt, Jeb, Torriano, E. Page, S. Page, Grub, Street, Harod, P. Johnstone, Ballard, N. Drake, Carse, Knapton, Gosling, Bing, Dod, Dalrymple.

Military Captains — Clayton, Buchanan, Witherington.

Lieutenants — Bishop, Ifays, Blagg, Simson, Bellamy.

Ensigns — Paccard, Scot, Hastings, C. Wedderburn, Dumbleton.

Sergeants, &c. — Sergeant-Major Abraham, Quartermaster Cartwright, Sergeant Bleau (these were sergeants of militia).

Sea Captains — Hunt, Osburne, Purnell (survived the night, but died next day), Messrs. Carey, Stephenson, Guy, Porter, W. Parker, Caulker, Bendall, Atkinson, Leech, &c., &c."

Controversy

The main controversy about the incident is the number of captives from the British fort confined inside the room. As described above, Holwell claimed it was 146; later accounts and analysis suggested that number to be exaggerated. In 1915, British scholar J.H. Little challenged Holwell's claims in his article "The Black Hole — The Question of Holwell's Veracity", arguing that Holwell was an unreliable witness and his veracity is questionable. Little went so far as to label Holwell's version "a gigantic hoax". Other historians, including Indian scholar Brijen Gupta, disagreed with Little's strong belief, but nevertheless downplayed Holwell's account. Little's analysis does cast a shadow of doubt over the incident:

• Little argued that after the deaths in the occupation of Calcutta and the subsequent evacuation and desertion, 146 British prisoners could not have been left in Siraj's hands three hours after the surrender.

• Bholanath Chunder, a Bengali landlord, opined that a floor area of 267 square feet (25 m²) could not contain 146 European adults. In order to prove this, Bholanath fenced round an area 15 by 18 feet (4.6 by 5.5 m) with bamboo stalks and counted the number of his Bengali tenants who could be crammed into it. The number was found to be much less than 146, and a Bengali villager's body occupies much less space than a British soldier's. (By comparison, modern subway standards specify 3 square feet for rush-hour standees, 146 people in the Black Hole would have had less than 1.8 square feet.)

• Finally, no list was made of the British soldiers surrendering at the fort, not even a count of heads. Many escaped between the surrender and the confinement in the 'Black Hole'. Even Holwell was offered by a friend the chance to escape. Therefore, the true number of deaths in the 'Black Hole' could well have been considerably fewer.

However, the objections above are all questionable because Holwell's list of the alleged victims overtly includes Anglo-Indians and East India Company sepoys. Aside from the aforementioned list, in his account he writes of being crushed by a fellow inmate who was a "Topaz" (a black Catholic soldier) moreover, the only female survivor, Mrs. Carey, was described as a "country-born" woman, which in the language of the time meant of mixed blood. The impression left by the myth, however, was that Holwell had documented that all the victims were European, a claim that was repeated by British propagandists. Historian Little, and many other authors, repeated this error. It is now understood to be false. It was recorded that 3,000 'unnecessary people', labelled as 'black Christians, Portuguese, slaves, &c.' were inside Fort William along with the British defenders, and Holwell has made it clear that many of the victims were taken from amongst these non-European masses, indeed, as many as could be crammed into the only prison cell within the fort.

The Monument

Holwell had erected a tablet on the site of the Black Hole to commemorate the victims, but at some point before 1822 (the precise date is uncertain) it disappeared. Lord Curzon, on becoming Viceroy in 1899, noticed that there was nothing to mark the spot and commissioned a new monument, mentioning the prior existence of Holwell's; it was erected in 1901 at the corner of Dalhousie Square, which is said to be the site of the Black Hole . At the apex of the Indian independence movement, the presence of this monument in Calcutta was turned into a nationalist cause celebre. For reasons that are somewhat obscure, Subhash Chandra Bose, an influential Indian National Congress leader, lobbied energetically for its removal. The Congress and the Muslim League joined forces in the anti-monument movement. As a result, the obelisk was removed from Dalhousie Square in July, 1940 and re-erected in the graveyard of St John's Church, where it remains to this day.

External links

• The Straight Dope: Is the black hole of Calcutta a myth?
• Banglapedia: Black Hole Incident

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)