Mss Eur F699/1/2/8

This sub-series consists of folders of copies of telegrams sent to various individuals, mostly from the Governor General, Charles Canning, or the Private Secretary to the Governor General, and a register volume in which the telegrams were recorded. (The successive Private Secretaries during this period were Humphrey de Bohun Devereux, during the first five months of Charles Canning’s tenure as Governor General, Gerald Chetwynd Talbot from 1 August 1856, and Lewin Bentham Bowring from 1 April 1858 until 1862.)

Copy telegrams from the Private Secretary include messages to individuals including:

Sir Robert Hamilton; the Private Secretaries to the Governors of Bombay and Madras; Cecil Beadon, Member of the Supreme Council of India; F.B. Gubbins; Sir Richmond Shakespeare; the Deputy Post Master General, Bombay; R. Temple; W. Grey; Captain W. Osborne; G.E.W. Couper; Major Thuillier; Mr R.H. Davies; and Major Meade.

Copy telegrams from the Governor General include messages to individuals including:

Lord Harris, Sir Charles Trevelyan, and Sir William Denison, successive Governors of Madras; Lord Elphinstone, and Sir George Clerk, successive Governors of Bombay; J.R. Colvin, and G.F. Edmonstone, successive Lieutenant Governors of the North Western Provinces; Sir James Outram, and C.J. Wingfield, successive Chief Commissioners of Oudh; Sir John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner / Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab; Sir Robert Montgomery, Chief Commissioner of Oudh, and Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab; Sir Patrick Grant, Sir Colin Campbell, and Sir Hugh Rose, successive Commanders in Chief; Lady Charlotte Canning; J.P. Grant, President in Council, and Lieutenant Governor of the Central Provinces; Post Master General, Calcutta; Chief of the Staff; Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India; Sir H.B. [Bartle] Frere, Member of the Supreme Council of India; and the Earl of Elgin, Canning’s successor as Viceroy of India.

Subjects of the copy telegrams include:

The deployment of troops; military instructions and military news, to the Commander in Chief and others; the Persian Expedition; travel plans and arrangements; the Governor General’s movements; military and civil appointments, promotions, and resignations, including the appointment of Sir Robert Montgomery as Chief Commissioner of Oudh; mail; taxes; Lord Elgin’s journey to, and arrival in, Calcutta; and other various matters, such as hill birds being sent to the Governor General, steam navigation in the Indus, the petition for the Governor General’s recall, and Lady Canning’s ‘dangerous illness’.

The telegrams were originally contained in bundles of one hundred telegrams, each with a labelled board on the top and a board on the bottom of the bundle. The telegrams were each assigned a running number, and this number was written either on the reverse of the copy telegrams or on a piece of paper wrapped around the telegram, along with who the message was from, who the message was addressed to, the date, and the subject of the message. This information was presumably written by the Private Secretary.