369. The First British Indians: The Suffragette Princess (Ep 1)

14:55William:And he's aware, isn't he, that they've taken this incredibly rich kingdom, the richest land in India was his. And now he's having to write for every fiver he wants to put on the horses at Newmarket.

15:07Anita:Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, he's leading a dissolute lifestyle. Let's not, you know, make any bones about this. But what he becomes bitter about is when they start to cut him off. Because they start thinking, the India office, Queen Victoria's been too indulgent of this guy. Why should we be paying his gambling debts? Or if he wants the latest styles for his children. Why should we be doing that? So they start returning his invoices saying we're not going to pay them. And so he has to start selling his jewels, you know, whatever little he has left from this vast fortune that had been amassed by the Sikh empire.

15:47Anita:And he writes to the queen, accusing her government of having to, you know, of having set out to destroy him from the very beginning. I'll just read a little bit from one of the letters, Willie, that he wrote in Rage. From childhood, I have been absolutely in the hands of the government without a will or independent action of my own, trusting implicitly to their good faith. And now there appears to have been a deliberate intention from the first to leave my children and family to gradually sink in this world.

16:16William:And in 1886, he finally starts, doesn't he? He packs up with his wife and children and he tries to go back to India to raise the flag. He tries to reconvert Sikhism. And he has a plan, which the British get on to, that he's going to foment a revolution in India. And so there's one very simple solution for that that the British have. They just don't let him get there.

16:38Anita:Yeah, he gets as far as Aden. You're absolutely right. The British controlled port on the Red Sea. All voyages go through the Suez Canal. That was the trajectory. He is stopped at Aden. He is arrested. His family is arrested. Sophia's first arrest, and it will be the first of many, happens when she is nine years old. So what happens in Aidan is that he declares himself, Duleep Singh, Sophia's father, as the implacable foe of the British. That he is going to get back to India one way or the other. The Tsar is going to rise up with him. They are going to pincer the British out of the north of India.

17:17William:And this is a complete reversal from the days in his 20s when he was this apple of Queen Victoria's eye. The darling of her eye.

17:26Anita:Absolutely right. Absolutely right. It is the most sour of relationships. So he's staying in Aidan, refusing to go back home to England and be a good boy. But what he does at this point, Willie, is why I actually, you know, for somebody I really did care for when he was a little boy. and I felt terribly sorry about his separation from his mother, how the British put her in a tower, how they forced him as a frightened little boy to sign this piece of paper that gave over his kingdom, his diamond, his future, and was sort of sent off to become a Britisher. I despise what he does at this point because he cuts his family loose.

18:06Anita:He tells his wife, who is already depressed enough to be married to such a neglectful man. That, you know, you go back, take the kids back. I have nothing to do with this. I am onwards to India. So she has to go back to England penniless. He has sold everything, everything for this adventure to go and reclaim his throne. He has thought nothing about the welfare of his children. He buggers off to Paris. He's got a secret meetup with his mistress, a chambermaid from Kennington called Ada Wetherill. Remember her name. We're going to meet her again in episode four. She's going to be very important.

18:44William:Who he meets in basically a bordello.

18:47Anita:It's a knock-in shop. Yes, Cox's Hotel, appropriately named. Ada works there. And Dilip is a frequent flyer, shall we say. And that's how those two get together.

18:59William:It's all very tragic. Tragic, tragic story.

19:02Anita:100%. Bamba washes up back in England with six listless children. She is abandoned. She is humiliated. She is broken. People are spitting at her in the streets because they are, you know, the newspapers, which once adored Dooley, are now talking about him being a traitor, that he's trying to side with the Tsar. What, you know, what the hell? This ungrateful Eastern potentate. Who the hell does he think he is? And she dies in 1887. Sophia is 10 years old. It's actually Sophia who gets ill first. She catches typhoid. Her mother, who has just managed to pull herself out of a bottle long enough to be distraught and is nursing her and is praying on her knees every night for her to recover, catches the typhoid.

19:48Anita:And the very morning Sophia opens her eyes and her fever has broken. The first thing she sees is her mother dead on the floor by her bed. So just imagine that kind of trauma. She sort of never forgave herself for that, that she had the illness that then spread to her mother.

20:06William:And then only six years later, Eddie dies, the much beloved Eddie. And he develops pneumonia, doesn't he?

20:16Anita:Yeah, Sophia's beloved little brother that she has actually acted as mother to ever since her own mother died is so promising. He has just won a place to eat him. And before he gets to take it up, he develops pneumonia and he dies. And, you know, Sophia sits by his bedside, just like her mother sat beside her with Bamba and Catherine while he's slipping in and out of consciousness and calling for his parents. It is awful. so there you have you know Sophia sitting by little Eddie's bedside with her sister Bamba also named after their mother and Catherine looking at this little boy fighting a fever that he just can't escape and he's slipping in and out of consciousness and he's asking for his his mother and father and he dies and he's buried in Elverdon in the churchyard next to his mother and people still go on pilgrimages there.

21:11William:A very tragic little graveyard under these very English conifer trees. I went in pouring rain, which didn't add to the kind of atmosphere of happiness about the whole place.

21:21Anita:Well, I mean, if you do ever venture that way, you'll see that there are always little tributes left in front of these three graves.

21:28William:Lots of flowers by blue sheets. Flowers and candles. Yeah.

21:31Anita:And little notes. Yeah. So the Dilip Singh family, and Sophia's just basically losing everybody she loves. You know, a father who then very soon after Eddie dies, he dies broken and broke in a Parisian hotel, never made it back to Punjab, never got his reputation back, was destroyed by this second relationship with Ada Weatherill, more of that in the fourth episode of this miniseries. And the three remaining sisters are now effectively looking after each other. Victor the eldest, he's at Sandhurst, he doesn't really, he hasn't really got a paternal bone in his body. Freddie's at Cambridge, nobody else is going to come and save them.

22:10William:Who's paying the bills and where are they living?

22:11Anita:Good really good question because Indians don't like to hear this but it is Queen Victoria who intervenes and it is Queen Victoria because of her affection largely for Sophia who decides to put her hand up and catch this desperate family. So she puts these children under the guardianship of a man called Arthur Oliphant when Sophia, Catherine, Bamber, Victor you know are getting older just before they're all going off to their own adventures. She gives Sophia primarily, but the other sisters are in tow, a home, Faraday House on the grounds of Hampton Court Palace. It's a grace and favour residence and she gives an allowance of£200 a year to keep it up.

22:49Anita:And this is where Sophia is going to live on and off for the rest of her life.

22:52William:Is it in the palace or on the grounds?

22:54Anita:Right opposite the front gates of Hampton Court. So it's part of the Crown Estate, or it was part of the Crown Estate at that time. And it was one of this real estate of grace and favour that the Queen would give to those she had the most affection for. So there would be heroes from the mutiny, as the British called it. Anyone who had fought and lost their lives, their wives and children could find a home here in these grace and favours, or dignitaries or favourites of the court. and Sophia is one such. So this is going to actually be pretty much the centre point of her life for the rest of her life.

23:31William:And how old is she by the time she moves into Faraday House? We saw her at age nine coming back from Aden. What is she now?

23:38Anita:She's 18 years old when her coming out occurs at Buckingham Palace. She has her debut in front of Queen Victoria herself and there's a very beautiful little detail about how Queen Victoria allows her to kiss her on both cheeks which is really a sign of favour Otherwise, you know, people curtsy from a distance. But Sophia is kissed and embraced. And she has tea with the Queen.

24:00William:So she hasn't lost any of her status.

24:01Anita:Sophia hasn't. But Victoria loathes her sisters, absolutely hates them.

24:06William:Why?

24:07Anita:Because they hate her. Right. That's the thing. And she has spies looking, you know, after these children who are constantly feeding back anything disloyal that they might say. And Sophia is always regarded to be sort of the pliant one, the mannered one, whereas the other two are called wild and feral.

24:24William:And she grows into quite a beauty.

24:26Anita:She's not classically beautiful. I find her beautiful. I think she's beautiful too. And the newspapers at the time, well good, and the newspapers at the time found her beautiful. Partly it was because she knew how to dress herself.

24:37William:She's wearing some very fancy togs on the pictures I'm looking at here.

24:40Anita:She's able to wear the very latest fashion. And in fact, the British embrace her. They call her, you know, sort of a perfect Edwardian princess, a thoroughly English gal, notwithstanding her Oriental name is how the church times put it. But, you know, despite this quite vacuous life that she's leading, you know, going to every party.

25:06William:Breeding prize Pomeranians. I like that.

25:08Anita:Yeah, she enters crafts and wins with her dogs. And she's also very good on a horse. Her stock is rising. The sisters is sinking. And Victor and Freddy are sort of nothing and nowhere. Victor's a lot like his father and he's being closely watched.

25:30William:I think you're underestimating this nice antiquarian who does some lovely antiquarian stuff.

25:34Anita:He will be very important, Freddie, but not in any way that newspapers will notice or society will care. That's why he goes off to live in Norfolk quietly and collect books and coats of arms. You know, that's Freddie. But Freddie is a great supporter, solace to the rest of the family. Even though Sophia is the one that they can bear and the one that they like, she isn't from what British society would call a safe family, a safe background. She's got a father who tried to bring down the Raj. Her grandmother escaped a British fortress. Her elder brother, Victor, is as scandalous as his dad was and is declared bankrupt.

26:14Anita:And that's reported widely in the press. and you know freddy quietly living his antiquarian life in norfolk um where he's so eccentric freddy he banishes electricity from his house he thinks it's awful i love the sound of him collects jacobian art you'd like him even more because he's obsessed i love jacobian art he loves all that and he also he loves the monarchy so one little detail which i found when i was doing research is that he hanged a portrait of oliver cromwell upside down in his toilet So anybody who was taking a leak would have a look at Cromwell standing on his head. So, you know, you've got a really sort of strange family.

26:52Anita:But we're going to take a break now because this thoroughly English girl who's been sort of moderately educated, but not too much.

27:01William:In Brighton of all places.

27:03Anita:Yeah, I mean, they're all sort of packed off to different places to try and improve them. Something will happen in 1902 which will change everything. And this thoroughly English gal who everybody loves and invites to every party is going to end up enemy of the people despised by the British press. Join us after the break.

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28:38Anita:Welcome back. So the year is 1902. The three sisters are desperate to get to the Delhi Darbar, the celebration of Edward VII's coronation. Victoria has died. Her son has taken over. There is going to be this great, grand spectacle for Edward's coronation. Edward's not going to be bothered to turn up. He won't turn up. But the great and the good, everybody from Sophia Society is going, but the girls don't have an invitation. And so they sort of scheme and they beg and they try and they end up going behind the back of the Secretary of State for India and turning up. and actually what should have been a triumphant homecoming for them, you know, sort of returning to the place where your father was a Maharaja, is awful.

29:31Anita:Will you just go through sort of the kind of treatment that, because I think it's true to say, and I have said this, that this is the first time Sophia will experience racism. In England, she's a little darling. She's Queen Victoria's favourite. Everybody, you know, she only sort of skitters across the top of high society. In India, she's another brown face among millions.

29:50William:And this, I think, is a frequent feature of the colonial period, that Indians such as Gandhi come to England. They become successful lawyers. They have a circle of vegetarian, spiritualist, mystic-loving friends around them. And the minute they go back to India, suddenly they're downgraded. They become colonial subjects. They're not treated with any respect at all. They're treated as the colonized. and this is what Sophia finds having been very much you know the the the queen of crafts with her Pomeranians and uh all the rest of it and riding around on an early bicycle and

30:24Anita:this sort of thing absolutely lady ladies magazines love her they can't get enough of her you know but

30:29William:the colonial authorities rather than regarding her as a uh a top top reader or whatever regard her as a massive threat because she is the deposed daughter of the deposed king of the Punjab he can stir things up.

30:42Anita:Yeah and Willie they told them no they told them not to come but they sort of snuck on different boats to get over to India and they're there anyway so when they do reach India they are frozen out. The British officials at the Darbar treat them with contempt they're not invited to any of the main ceremonies they are pretty much shunned and this is something that Sophia's never seen. The other thing she's never seen is how much her father and grandfather had you know there are no roads in lahore named for her father and grandfather but there are lots named for victoria there are statues of victoria everywhere there's sort of a reflection of london

31:24William:still there sitting in the middle of the mall in lahore yeah yeah the mall exactly you know so

31:29Anita:there are all these reflections of of british places in her country but her people are not acknowledged and her family is not acknowledged.

31:40William:And even the Afghans have a nice memorial in the middle of Lahore in the form of the Zamzam gun, which is the great gun of the Punjab, which is an Afghan gun. But there's nothing from the Sikh period which is visible or which is celebrated. There are beautiful Sikh pavilions of course in Lahore Fort.

31:58Anita:And also the tomb of Ranjit Singh still is in Lahore and I've been there. But you know, other than that it's kind of like her whole entity has been deleted. But you know where it hasn't been deleted? It hasn't been deleted in the minds of the people. So everywhere she goes when she travels to Punjab from the Delhi Darbar, she is greeted by Sikhs primarily, but not singularly, who throw themselves at her feet and say, you are the lion's cub. Tell us what you want us to do. Do you want us to fight? We will fight for you. And you know, this respect that she gets from people who look like her completely turns her mind.

32:39Anita:And while she's in this sort of state of mental and emotional turmoil, she gets introduced to Indian nationalists.

32:45William:Lala Lajput Rai, who's not a famous name in Britain, but is well known in India, leading early nationalist, 1907, on that visit, she meets him. And she's very much in this group of people who will be in the centre of what will be the Indian National Congress and so on.

33:01Anita:And what they start telling her about what Indians are experiencing, her eyes, you know, the scales fall from her eyes. What was I thinking? Hang on, they don't accept me. Okay, they're nice to me, but look at what they're doing in this country. And you're right, she starts to mix in nationalist circles. She starts to become political. And Lala Lajputaraya is like a father to her, like the father she really didn't have in her own father. You know, he sort of cares for her. He shows her love and respect. And she writes furiously to her friends because Lala Lajbat Rai eventually will be caught in a lati charge.

33:40Anita:A charge with long sticks. Latis are these long sticks that the police and the military used. And they could beat you savagely with them. And, you know, this is an older man who is peacefully protesting. And he gets whacked over the head and he dies.

33:57William:So there's a moment of sort of complete revelation that this people that she thought respected her have rejected her. And the people she's forgotten about, her own people, the Sikhs and the people of northern India, cluster around her and give her the respect that she's not been getting from anyone else.

34:15Anita:But they also expect something from her. You know, what they're saying is, tell us what to do. And she's like, I've never had to tell anybody what to do in my life. And when Lala Lajpatrai is killed, she snaps and she actually puts in writing in her diary how much she hates the British. She has never thought this in her life. She has fought her sisters who have hated the British for quite some time. That is no way to live. They're not our enemy. What are you talking about? Our father abandoned us. They're the ones who took care of us. But after Lala Lajpatrai dies, well, that's it. So when she returns back to England...

34:55William:She's a changed woman. She's completely different.

34:58Anita:Well, she starts doing things for other people rather than being sort of this selfish magazine pin-up. She starts fundraising for the Lashkas, you know, these Indian sailors who are dumped in England without being paid. You know, she starts looking after the abandoned Ayas who come over with small English children. and then, you know, when the children outgrow their need, they don't have the money to get back. And the most important thing is that she hears this voice that echoes what she's heard in India. And in India, it went, avas, though, avas, though, avas. In England, the cry is, give us a voice, give us a voice, give us a voice.

35:38Anita:And it is coming from the suffragettes. So we shouldn't be too surprised, Willie, that she throws herself into the cause. She recognizes it.

35:50William:For those who don't know who the suffragettes are, explain to us, Anita, who they are, because a major force at the beginning of the 20th century.

35:58Anita:So women didn't have the vote. And it's, you know, fairly, we're talking about the 1900s. They don't have the vote. Okay. And they are fighting to be recognized first politely with suffragist organizations who try and lobby politicians, argue their case. And then the suffragettes who are much more militant. They march, they smash windows, they set fire to post office boxes.

36:23William:Set off bombs every so often.

36:24Anita:I mean, they don't kill people, but they do destroy property, rip up the orchids in Kew Gardens. The kind of thing that people thought, oh, that's not what women do. It's a scandal. And these women are scandalous. They are detested by the press. It's a male-owned press. And so they are demons, harridans in the eye of the British press establishment. And Sophia, knowing this, knowing that she had, you know, sort of done the backstroke and the adulation of the British establishment, throws herself with these wicked, wicked women. She not only donates money, she drives press carriages through the streets of London.

37:05Anita:And this was one of the things that the suffragettes did to attract press attention, but also to wind people up. They would sort of drive their press carts covered in all their votes for women badges and park them outside theatres so that when the drunkards came out from a musical performance, there would be a Barney and there would be a fight and they could be seen to be fighting physically against the establishment.

37:30William:Now, all this culminates in Black Friday, the 18th of November, 1910. And the man behind it is?

37:39Anita:Well, Winston Churchill, you may have heard the name. So Winston Churchill is the Home Secretary. Winston Churchill has had some experience of Sophia de Leipzig. And I think it's fair to say he doesn't like her. He doesn't like her at all. Because not only has she been sort of rattling tins and going on these runs and making a spectacle of herself, she's been selling the suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace, which the Daily Mail has loved to get angry about. so you know it's wound up the establishment so much that King George V who's now on the throne you know Edward doesn't reign for very long tries to get her thrown out of Hampton Court he goes to his private secretary and he said is there any way of removing this tiresome princess from this place it's embarrassing and the answer that goes back is if you want to put Queen Victoria's goddaughter out on the street you do it because let us tell you here at the India office We think it might send out a rather dangerous message to India where things are already restive.

38:41Anita:And we're talking about 1910 here. There's trouble brewing. And how is it going to look that this little Indian chit of a girl is standing up to the British establishment? This takes us neatly to Caxton Hall, November 1910. The 18th of November, I think one of the most depressing days in British democratic history. So the government's been dragging its feet on this piece of legislation called the conciliation bill. And the conciliation bill would give the vote to some women. But on the 18th, the prime minister Asquith effectively kills it dead. He says it's not going to have enough time to pass.

39:19Anita:He guillotines it. He suffocates it. Emmeline is ready. She's thawed. Emmeline Pankhurst, who is this pale-faced, absolute virago of a woman who leads the suffragettes.

39:32William:Queen of the suffragettes. Yeah.

39:34Anita:She knew this might happen. So she's gathered about 300 of her most committed suffragettes and they plan to march to Parliament and hammer down the door and make Asquith explain himself. Not as a huge mob, because Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, has cleverly passed a piece of legislation that makes it illegal to walk in groups of more than 12. So what they do, the suffragettes, because they are smart, is that they separate into many different groups of 12 and leave at five minute intervals to get to the House of Commons. And Sophia de Leep Singh is in the vanguard of this, marching shoulder to shoulder with Emmeline Pankhurst and the rock star suffragettes of their day.

40:19Anita:They reach the gate, St. Stephen's Gate. If you've been to Parliament Square, you'll know it very well. And they are effectively kettled by the police. They're sort of pushed back and not allowed to move. It doesn't seem violent. The place is filled with bystanders. There are sailors on shore leave who've turned up because it's been well trailed in the press that Asquith is not going to let this bill pass and that the suffragettes aren't going to let that stand. And so everybody is expecting violence. The suffragettes put on a good show, right? So it's filled with men. It's filled with police officers on horseback, in uniform, some not in uniform, and just members of the public.

41:00Anita:Lots of men gathered in Parliament Square. And the police have been given a really unusual order that day. They've been told, don't arrest the women, discourage them. Sort of a euphemistic line. But what it means is basically push them, hurt them until they give up and go away. because what Winston Churchill doesn't want is he doesn't want these bloody women clogging up the legal system, standing in courtrooms, denouncing the unfairness of not giving women the vote and making their speeches and going to prison and going on hunger strike and embarrassing him and the crown even more. So what follows on Black Friday when Safira's kettled at the gate with Emmeline, the next group arrives and then the group after that and then the next group.

41:50And Sophia is forced to watch as these women are, there's no easier way of putting it,

41:55Anita:sexually assaulted by the police. Some are picked up and thrown against pavements and railings. You've got members of parliament hanging out of the windows just to get a better look at what was going on because it's a complete circus. Police officers picking up women and throwing them into crowds of men saying, here, do whatever you want to these bloody bitches. You know, they're obscene testimony from that day. It is gruesome what is done. Women's breasts are punched. They are kicked between the legs. They are thrown back and thrown back but not arrested. And you've got Emmeline and Sophia and the others at the gate saying, arrest them, just arrest them.

42:34Anita:And no arrests are being made.

42:36William:And what happens to Sophia herself? Is she assaulted?

42:39Anita:What she does is she's a tiny, tiny slip of a woman. This violence goes on for six hours, but quite sort of early on. She manages to slip the cordon. She's tiny, right? She's about five foot tall.

42:52William:Roughly like another land of the Punjab on this podcast.

42:55Anita:I have two inches on her, let me tell you.

42:58William:Five-two.

43:01Anita:So she sort of slips out because she sees this one police officer who is repeatedly picking up a woman and smashing her against the concrete. And this woman gets up again because the women will not go back. That's the other thing. You know, they've been treated so harshly, but their absolute commitment is we are going to get this vote this day. We are not going to retreat. No retreat. and so this poor woman who's dazed after being smashed against the concrete gets up again she's picked up again off her feet dashed to the ground again Sophia sees this and thinks actually third time she is gonna die so she rushes in she gets in between the police officer and this unnamed suffragette we never learn her name and she body checks the man away now he would have been shocked out of his shoes, Willie, because it would be like seeing, I don't know, one of the huge celebrities of the day, Zendaya, popping up in a riot and pushing a police officer back.

43:59Anita:And all he wanted to do was get the hell away from her because wherever she is, there is press attention. And the police officers that day have covered up, some of them, their identifying numbers so that they can behave whatever way they want and there'll be no repercussions. Sophia, having pushed him off this woman and potentially saved her life, won't let it go. And she starts screaming at him. Show me your number. Show me your number. Just show me your number. And he tries to melt into the crowd. She follows him. She's a nutter, right? You know, you score this as a win that you've saved this woman's life.

44:35Anita:But she is not having it. She wants to bring this man to justice. So she keeps following him through the crowd. She is getting tossed around like a rag doll and getting battered from all sides, but she won't stop. And she manages to get this policeman's number, V700, V700. And she repeats it and repeats it and repeats it. And finally, after six hours, these women are arrested. Sophia is one of them. I've seen the arrest record. But none of them are charged because the Home Secretary cannot afford to let these women tell their story of Black Friday in front of the general public.

45:11William:So how is this covered, Anita?

45:14Anita:Well, I mean, it leads to a real sea change in public opinion because there are press, like I said, everybody was expecting a spectacle that day. So there are photographers and they see what is happening. There's one picture on the front page of the Daily Mirror of a suffragette called Ada Wright, who's curled up on the ground with policemen looming over her and one man trying to protect her. And there are others of, you know, sort of these sticks. It's very reminiscent of the Lati charges I described in India. You know, the The policemen are sort of taking these long sticks and hitting these women.

45:44Anita:And these pictures are now public. So the mood, the tide starts to change a bit. They're still frightened of these annoying Harrodin women, but they have some sympathy. So when Sophia starts to complain about V700, because she does, let me tell you, she won't let it go. She escalates and escalates and escalates. And because she is someone, people are even entertaining her complaints. It gets to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. It goes higher. It finally ends up with the Home Secretary. And I have seen a little note that he writes, because he is so fed up with this woman, send no more reply to her.

46:24Anita:W. S. C. Winston Spencer Churchill. You can see where his pen angrily dug into the paper. It's fabulous. A fabulous piece of historical ephemera.

46:37William:So she now has a taste for this. In our modern terms, we probably call her the beginnings of an activist. And her next thing is the tax resistance. In 1909, an organization called the Women's Tax Resistance League has been founded. And of course, Sophia joins it immediately. She refuses to pay the tax on her servants. She refuses to pay the dog license on her famous Pomeranians that she takes to crafts. She refuses to pay the carriage license. So she writes out to the tax office. She tears up their demand. And she tells him, I shall pay no taxes until I'm allowed to vote. No taxation without representation.

47:14William:Quite right, so far.

47:15Anita:Yeah, yeah. And, you know, when they then come for her, they basically, the bailiffs aren't going to let this go. You know, the tax office isn't going to let this go. They come in and they take her jewels. They turn up. They seize her jewels, which is really such an echo of the seizure of the Koh-i-Noor from her father. All of these things will be completely provocative to her. There's a wonderful thing that happens. Bailiffs turn up one day at the Faraday house. They've got this warrant. The housekeeper's opening the door, doesn't want to let them in, but they go charging past her. They go upstairs.

47:51Anita:They take the lady's jewellery out. And this ring in particular is going to be auctioned off in Ashford. And what happens is that the suffragettes know this when this happens. and they fill all of the seats with suffragettes. I love it. And any man who is there, they sit on them. They sit on the men or they sit behind them growling in their ears.

48:13William:Don't get in the way of a suffragette.

48:15Anita:You better not. And this amazing woman, she's an artist. If you are an artist, you will know. Louise Jopling Rowe, celebrated Victorian painter, friend of Oscar Wilde. She buys the ring and she goes across the room at the end and she hands it back to Sophia. Brilliant. And of course, the crowd goes mad and the suffragettes unfurl. their banners and it's a movie it's a movie this rally in the auction i mean you know it's it's fabulous so yeah she she does that she refuses to sign her uh census papers she she scrolls across it you can go to prison for that as well you know as women do not count i refuse to be counted she's just a pain and this is all escalating the bombing campaign of the suffragettes when they're setting fire to things and destroying the contents of letterboxes that's stepping up as well People are worried that they are actually going to kill people because, you know, they're ratcheting up their campaign.

49:08Anita:And then suddenly it all ends with the war. And the suffragettes, including Sophia, put down their demands. Sophia throws herself into the war effort. She becomes a nurse for those broken Indian soldiers coming back.

49:20William:In the Brighton Pavilion of all places, in this Indian-looking domed construction in Brighton. And that's now filled with wounded Indian soldiers from the trenches. And she goes and nurses them. This is a quieter and more gentle and loving side. She's maternal.

49:38Anita:She is the same woman who wanted to look after Eddie and look after her sisters and take care of everybody, but who's been forced into the situation of having to fight for those who can't fight for themselves. After the war in 1918, the Representation of the People Act kicks in. Now, that means women over 30 with a property qualification will get the vote. Not full equality, not by any means. That won't come. until 1928.

50:03William:But quite a step forward.

50:04Anita:Yeah, it's a breaking of a dam. You could definitely say that. And Sophia carries on sort of being prominent in the suffragette movement. Actually, if you go to Parliament Square, there is a suffragette statue and her name is on it. So that's a recent addition, just sort of paying homage to what the women of this country and elsewhere owe women like Sophia. She lives a quiet life in Buckinghamshire.

50:31William:I can't imagine anything that she does is completely quiet.

50:35Anita:No, she does sort of take in refugees during the Second World War. She looks after them.

50:43William:She's alive as late in the Second World War. She absolutely is.

50:46Anita:And I have met two of them that she looked after.

50:50William:God, this is such an extraordinary thing. So she vaults from the world of Rajat Singh, which seems so very long ago in the mid-19th century, right up to 1948, is it, when she finally dies?

51:00Anita:She dies the 22nd of August, 1948. So yeah, and she sees the country that she loves, India, ripped in half. Her father's kingdom, torn asunder. She's 72 years of age. She dies and leaves instructions for her funeral, which I think are very beautiful. I mean, the band is to play a full Wagner funereal march. It's a Christian funeral, but she is to be cremated afterwards and her ashes are to be taken back to India.

51:29William:Are they taken back to India?

51:31Anita:Yes, they are by Bamba, but we'll get to that in her sister Bamba's story. But one thing I just wanted to add, in her will, even though partition has unleashed the very worst of communal hatred among the Punjabis of India and what is now Pakistan, she leaves in her will she divides between three girls schools a hindu one a muslim one and a sikh one and when in her life she was asked to give her entry for who's who people bang on for ages about how clever and wonderful they are she writes nothing at all which is why she disappeared from history so comprehensively because she was useless at blowing her own trumpet she just gave one line under interests, she said, the advancement of women.

52:22Anita:That's it. That's her entry, her name and that. And that, in a nutshell, is Sophia, who's the most well-known of the sisters now, but was completely unknown not so long ago.

52:34William:And you've all got to go out and buy Anita's wonderful biography.

52:38Anita:Well, there's lots of stuff in there if you'd like to.

52:41William:There's also an exhibition now at Kensington Palace with an illustrated book full of extraordinary photographs. But we will be continuing this story into territory we haven't gone before with the story of Sophia's sister. So who are we going to do next, Anita?

52:59Anita:Well, we've got Bamba, Catherine. So, you know, one is a hellraiser. One is seriously beautiful, but living the most alternative lifestyle of the time. who falls in love with her German governess, lives in Kassel for the best part of 30 years, right through the First World War, right into the rise of Nazi Germany, and who in the middle of the 1930s, and I will give complete credit to Peter Banz, who did the book that you were talking about, the beautiful book, because he's uncovered a lot of this stuff. Quite literally, an Indian Schindler is a story that has now sort of developed, rescuing Jewish families from concentration camps.

53:38Anita:Her name is Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh, and her story has never properly been told. So if you want to hear that and you don't want to wait, join Empire Club to access the entire series. And you can just follow the link in the description. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durham.

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