General Duff Case Study: At home in India

MadrasAt home in India

Although Patrick made the arduous voyage between India and Britain five times, most of his adult life was spent in India. While on one return visit to Britain in 1774, he married his cousin, Ann Duff (1748-1776). She soon died at Madras, however, as he wrote to his uncle James Gordon in 1776: ‘My last from Madras was giving you the Melancholy account of the death of my wife, I still greatly feel her loss, and I believe no man had ever more reason to regret the death of a wife; for she was possessed of the greatest sweetness of disposition without one single fault which I was able to discover in near two years we liv’d together, most of which time she enjoy’d but an indifferent state of health; as my loss is now irretrievable I shall for the future drop the subject.’[1]

He was to marry again, in 1794, when as a landed gentleman he married Dorothea, the sister of Andrew Hay from whom he had purchased his estate. But in between these marriages he lived the life of a bachelor. In July 1785 he wrote concerning rumours of an attachment between himself and a Miss Donaldson that he ‘had no more intention of marrying than I have of blowing my brains out’.[2] But he was not without female company, for he had at least three children with Indian women during his stay. Such relationships were common, yet, as Durba Ghosh points out, we often know little about these women.[3] However, the letters do indicate some concern for these ‘bibis’ and Duff’s bonds of both affection and duty with his children.

His children were sent back to Britain to acquire an education under the care of his brother John in London. [4] Sending John Kenneth on a Danish ship to join his brother Davie in London, Duff in 1785 wrote: ‘I told you before, & I repeat it again that it is my intention should I live, to give them the best education England can afford and to set them out in a proper manner into the world, for tho’ they have the misfortune to be illegitimate and of a half cast they are not to blame; the fault is all my own and for that reason I think myself doubly bound to provide for them, and I am as fond of them as if they were of a good cast & had been born according to the rules of Law and Gospel.’[5] Two years later, the eldest boy had been sent to Scotland to visit relatives, much to the initial concern of his father: ‘I am not sorry you have sent Davy to see his Relations in Scotland it was what I did not intend, as I did not know how he might be treated; I know such as he did not meet with much encouragement there sometime ago; the people in that part are certainly more enlarged in their ideas than they were in my younger day.’[6] In the same letter he confessed that: ‘I believe I have got another of the same sort, tho’ not so fair as either of the others, I have given him the name of William, you won’t see him until I come myself; he is a fine stout good humoured fellow  of only eleven months old. I did not intend to have any more of these, but what is to be done, a man more than a woman is not at all times master of his passions  don’t you show this part of the Letter to Mrs Duff.’[7]

While in India, his children did not live with him, but rather at the house of his friend Colonel Deare, where they were cared for by an Indian housekeeper. Patrick got his brother’s wife to commission paintings of his two eldest boys, which were given to this woman ‘who took care of them after their Mother’s death, and who used them in the kindest manner, and who tho’ black possesses a heart that would do no discredit to a white lady’. [8]  Duff’s letters point to the complexities and contradictions of British racial attitudes in the later eighteenth century, and to the significance of the East India Company’s role in bringing these issues ‘home’ to Scotland and to Britain more broadly.

Patrick himself had a country house four miles south of Calcutta and ‘a Bungolo or Straw and Matt house at the Practice ground near Dum Dum’.[9]  Here he had a piece of ground and he solicited his brother to send him out seed. He was particularly in search of tomato seed which he had ‘from the Sevt at Batchlors Hall Madeira, they throve here remarkably well but I think are now degenerating, they were the first of the sort ever seen in this Country, and I wish to have some more’.[10] He was also in search of hop seed ‘or indeed any thing else in that way which could be procured without much trouble; I have now given over hunting, I cant take so much exercise in any way as I was once accustomed to, for that reason I divert myself with my Garden; I succeed very well with vegetables &c for the table’.[11]

Muslin V&A 2

Figure 3. Embroidered muslin. 1855. Dhaka, Bangladesh. 0214(IS). Victoria and Albert Museum.

Family members provided other British provisions to make his life in India more comfortable. Boots were sent out by his brother from London, although the maker had forgotten that, thanks to his leg being broken by a shot at the siege of Allahbad in 1763, Duff had one leg over an inch shorter than the other. [12] In 1785 he ‘ wish[ed] to have the best military books sent me, also books of fortification & Artillery which may be most in repute; enquire of some of the Booksellers and send me all as are in estimation’.[13] In return, Patrick sent items from India that he thought would be of interest to his relatives. His brother received, variously, a table service and a tea set directed to the Jamaica Coffee House in London, an Indian matchlock and sword with a basket handle, and a parcel of muslins (perhaps similar to those seen in figure 3). In 1776 he sent his uncle James in Scotland a small cask of pickled mangos which ‘may be a rarity in the North’.[14]  In sending these gifts, Patrick played a small part in creating awareness of artefacts from Asia in Britain.  At the same time, Patrick used his gifting practices to affirm familial bonds with valued members of his network. In the case of his uncle James, such bonds also connected Patrick with Madeira and the wealth that would allow him to aspire to purchase a Scottish country estate.

Previous / Next


[1] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 4, Patrick Duff to James Gordon, from Calcutta, 24 November 1776

[2] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 2, Patrick Duff to James Duff, from Fort William, Bengal, 15 July 1785.

[3] Durba Ghosh, Sex and Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge, 2006), p. 17.

[4] Christopher J Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773-1833 (London, 1996), p.79.

[5] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 2, Patrick Duff to James Duff, 15 September 1785.

[6] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 3, Patrick Duff to James Duff, from Cawnpore, 2 March 1787.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 3, Patrick Duff to James Duff, from Cawnpore, 22 June 1787.

[9] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 2, Patrick Duff to James Duff, from Fort William, Bengal, 15 July 1785.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 2, Patrick Duff to James Duff, 15 September 1785.

[13] Ibid

[14] Gordon of Letterfourie papers, Bundle 4, Patrick Duff to James Gordon, from Calcutta, 24 November 1776