IOR/L/PS/5/464, ff 1a-9

This part of the volume consists of copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 29 of 1850, dated 11 May 1850.

Enclosure No. 3, dated 28 April 1850, is a letter from the Political Agent at Aden, Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Arthur Malet, reporting on affairs at Aden and within its vicinity. Haines states that ‘the several Arab Tribes’ adjacent to Aden are at peace with each other, the roads leading to Aden are ‘unmolested’, daily supplies are regular and abundant, and that no smallpox or other contagious disease exists at Aden or in the neighbourhood.

Enclosure No. 4, dated 20 April 1850, is a letter from Haines to Malet, forwarding a report from the Senior Naval Officer at Aden station, Captain John Parke Sanders, commanding the Honourable Company’s sloop of war Elphinstone, reporting on affairs at Jiddah [Jeddah, also spelled Judda in this item], Hodeida [Al Hudaydah] and Mocha. Sanders reports on matters including complaints from the ‘British Native merchants’ (also referred to as ‘Indian Merchants’) at Jiddah of the (in Haines’s words) ‘impositions, exactions, and other unlawful and arbitrary proceedings’ (folio 5) of the Turkish [Ottoman] Pasha of Jiddah, Haysb Pasha [Ḥasīb Pāshā], towards them, and the perceived lack of support and protection they had received from the British Vice Consul there.

Enclosure Nos. 5-6, listed in the abstract of contents as copies of the Bombay Overland Times and the Bombay Overland Telegraph dated 11 May 1850, are recorded as missing in a note dated 31 October 1906.