Sarah Sophia Whittle
(b 24 Aug 1833)

The narrative that follows is transcribed from Alexander (Sandy) Waddell's invaluable summary in his biographical documentation of the Little and Martin families.

Summary transcript

I was recently (Feb 2014) contacted by John Holliday, who is currently finalising a biography of his ancestor, the missionary Walter Henry Medhurst ^{1,  2,  3} who in 1817 became the second husband of Sarah Sophia Whittle's aunt. Well, ahem, from our point of view is that perhaps a little off our beaten track? Indeed it may seem so, but from the brief extracts that John has shown me and from circumstantial evidence already available, a most extraordinary episode of family history emerges. Of course, for the full story you will have to get a copy of John's book when it's published next year.

The story begins in Madras, where in 1807 there erupted a bitter dispute between the Governor, Sir George Barlow, and the Commander in Chief of the Madras Army, Lt Gen Hay Macdowall. Things became so acrimonious that Macdowall resigned, set off back to England and was drowned when the ship sank en route. This sets a suitably sombre background to what followed.

Lt George Martin (as Sandy says in the Summary above, no relation to 'our' Martins) was deeply involved in defending the Army against charges of treason (punishable by death), when suddenly his wife died at their residence in Chitaldrug, four days journey from Madras. He arranged for his elder daughter Eliza (aged just 14) to marry a fellow officer, Lt George Braune, and to take charge of his younger daughter Sophia (aged 12 at most). But as Eliza reached 21, her younger son died, her husband died and her father died. Eliza and Sophia were now orphans. Within fifteen months, however, Eliza had met and married the missionary Walter Medhurst, and sailed off with him to Malacca in Malaya.

Happy ending? Well, not for Sophia who was left behind in a Madras orphanage, where she languished – without the support of any family or friends – for five long years. Without rushing to judgement, I find it almost incredible that she should have been abandoned so casually. However, some ten years later, after many adventures, she hopefully found happiness in marriage to Thomas Whittle in Singapore, and the birth of their daughter Sarah Sophia the next year.

But a year or so later she died – or did she? – cruelly misused by fortune to the bitter end. At the tender age of 15, Sarah married Dr Robert Little and bore him six children, including my great grandmother Margaret Little, before she too died in her mid thirties – or did she?

To see a more detailed account, and a most interesting progress report, by John Holliday in a recent issue of the magazine Madras Musings, click here.

#	Individual	Spouse / Partner	Family
‑6	Col George Martin (d 17 Jun 1815)	Elizabeth (d 1808)	Eliza(beth) Martin (1794 – 1874) Sophia Emma Martin (ca 1797 – 1860 or later)
‑5	Eliza(beth) (Betty) Martin (1794 – 1874)	Lt George Henry Braune (ca 1781 – 26 Nov 1815) (m 14 Oct 1808)	Son (b 1810) Son (d 1815)
		Walter Henry Medhurst (29 Apr 1796 – 24 Jan 1857) (m 19 May 1817)	Sarah Sophia Medhurst (16 Nov 1819 – 9 Aug 1836) = Lockwood (m 17 Feb 1836) Walter Henry Medhurst jr (1822 – 1885) Eliza Mary Medhurst (Jul 1828 – 20 Feb 1886) = Charles Batter Hillier = Charles Marshall Hole Martha Medhurst (Jan 1831 – ca 1890) = Saul Augusta Liberta Medhurst (1 Aug 1840 – Mar 1926) = Bates
‑5	Sophia Emma Martin (ca 1797 – 1860 or later)	Thomas Wat(t)erman Whittle (d 26 Oct 1834) (m 23 Nov 1832) surveyor	Sarah Sophia Whittle (b 24 Aug 1833) Thomas (Tommy) Wat(t)erman Whittle (Jr) (8 Dec 1834 – 1848, Q1, London, vol 2, p161)

I was initially led to believe that Sophia had died in 1834. In fact it now seems certain that it was her husband Thomas Watterman Whittle Sr who succumbed at that time. She herself certainly survived until at least 1860. I'm applying for the death certificate of her young son Tommy.

In a document passed on to me by Simon Potter, there is an intriguing (though rather mangled entry) relating to Sarah's marriage to Robert Little in 1849 (the year after her father died). We see amongst the list of witnesses the name of her mother Sophia Whittle ...

I very much trust that this is for real, and that she did indeed live on to see her daughter happily hitched to such a pillar of local society. Hopefully this will be confirmed in due course when John Holliday's book emerges from the press.

Reproduced from 'Descent of Walter Waddell from Robert the Bruce' family tree generously provided by Simon Potter

We are left to ponder the words of Sydney Smith, the wittiest, wisest, and most humane of clergymen of that era, "We talk of human life as a journey, but how variously is that journey performed! There are some that come forth girt, and shod, and mantled, to walk on velvet lawns and smooth terraces, where every gale is arrested, and every beam is tempered. There are others who walk on the Alpine paths of life, against driving misery, and through stormy sorrows, over sharp afflictions; walk with bare feet, and naked breast, jaded, mangled, and chilled."

Such was Sophia's life. But she had, unwittingly of course, handed on the baton of her own existence to her daughter Sarah, without whom the Little and Waddell families would have been unrecognisably different, and for that all of us should be deeply grateful.

The letter that follows was written by Sarah Sophia Whittle at the age of 9 to an unspecified Aunt:

• possibly a sister of her father Thomas Waterman Whittle
• alternatively Aunt Eliza(beth) Medhurst née Martin, sister to her mother Sophia Emma Whittle née Martin

Note that Sarah evidently prefers her second name Sophia, but to avoid confusion with her mother she eventually settled for Sophie.

Note also that she evidently has a younger brother Thomas (Tommy), named after their father, and it sounds as though he moved on to prep school in London earlier that year. It also appears that she has a younger sister, at that time staying with the Aunt to whom the letter is addressed.

It does all seem to additionally refute the idea that Sophia Emma Whittle died in 1834, especially as the said Mamma had evidently written to Sarah from Singapore just four months previously!

Mrs Way seems to have been the proprietress of a small residential private school for the education of youngsters whose parents were out East running the Empire. She was evidently a kind and conscientious person, and young Sophia seems to be happy enough (but do we detect an adult influence in the phraseology at one or two places in the letter?).

Boys of course would move on to prep school at the age of 8 and thence to public school at 13, but for girls the prospects were very limited. It didn't do to enjoy education for its own sake – marriage was virtually their only career path, and what husband would want to play second fiddle to an intellectual wife? Kingsley's exhortation to "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever" was no idle threat!

The letter that follows was written by (Sarah) Sophia Whittle at the age of 28 to her daughter Jessie (aged 8:01) in England. Notice the reference to the Biblical Flood – though The Origin of Species had been published three years earlier, the family was staunchly Presbyterian and theologically conventional.

As per the previous letter, Sophia's children are being educated back in England at small private establishments run by educated gentlewomen as entrepreneurial facets of the imperial system. Even so, there was clearly some kind of hierarchy, as Jessie was about to move up from Miss Eyre's establishment to join her elder sister Sophie at Mrs Mack's.

I really don't know who Tom and Harriet might have been – possibly fellow-pupils?

The letter that follows was written by (Sarah) Sophia Whittle at the age of 28 to her daughter Jessie (aged 8:06) in England, some four months after its precursor.

Not a lot has changed, really, although the letter itself is quite informative.

As before, Jessie is being privately educated back in England and has by now moved up from Miss Eyre's establishment to join her elder sister Sophie at Mrs Mack's.

Also, she and her elder sister Sophie have evidently been to visit their Aunt Mary and young cousins – not to mention Grandmama. And have they seen Uncle William and cousin Jane recently? I really can't yet account for any of these good people, and further information about Thomas Whittle's family background is very hard to find.

I'm intrigued by the domestic staff that are mentioned. I'd guess that Clarke was a British-born nanny for young Margaret (here referred to as Margarita – in later life she was known as Rita within the family before morphing imperceptibly into Old Grannie).

Baba Robert's Ayah was his nursemaid in Indian terminology, though in Chinese terminology she would be called his Amah, both very respectable titles. For once, Wikipedia isn't terribly helpful. An ayah wasn't necessarily a native woman – Rudyard Kipling's ayah, for example, was a Portuguese Roman Catholic, presumably from Goa. In his earliest recollections of childhood in Bombay, recounted in Something of Myself, he tells us "Our ayah was a Portuguese Roman Catholic who would pray – I beside her – at a wayside Cross. Meeta, my Hindu bearer, would sometimes go into little Hindu temples where, being below the age of caste, I held his hand and looked at the dimly-seen, friendly Gods."

Baba Robert's 'China Boy' came as a complete surprise, however, but now I think I understand. Unless already equipped with a wife, it was almost essential that a European should engage a 'China boy' immediately upon arrival in the Far East. A 'boy' was a virtually indispensible valet, servant, launderer, provisioner, cook, waiter at table, interpreter, amanuensis and factotum. He would make any necessary travel arrangements, buy the tickets, pack or unpack the trunks, get them to or from the railway station or quayside. He would also organise all the household or mess finances and engage or dismiss junior staff as circumstances required. Indeed, as readers of the Wooster and Lord Emsworth stories will immediately recognise, the 'China Boy' was an inscrutable combination of Jeeves and The Efficient Baxter. Click here for a very readable account of this system by an old China Hand at the turn of the last century.

The Auntie with whom the children walked down to the village might quite possibly have been a family relative, of course, but would surely have been dignified by her Christian name. However, it was the custom in Colonial times for non-European servants (or, in the USA, slaves) who had been with the family for a long time, and who had cared for several generations of the younger children, to be referred to affectionately and respectfully as Uncle (think Uncle Tom, or Uncle Remus), Aunt or Auntie (indeed, again in the Southern USA, as Mammy). Click here for the rather toe-curlingly pious antebellum memoir Sketches of Old Virginia Family Servants – double-click to turn the pages.

One can't help being amused by Baba Robert's pugnacity with the stick – it clearly presages his fearless self-reliance in adult life as a famously tough district commissioner in British North Borneo, of which we read in his profile.