Cawnpore, Bengal Presidency, British India.
Photographer: John Murray.
Rubbles, ruins, a well and an ornamented cross are what had greeted Dr. John Murray at the infamous site of Bibighar in Cawnpore, British India, as he had set up his Daguerreotype to capture this scene in 1858 – barely a few months after an E.I.C. force of British and native soldiers had discovered the bodies of European women and children, murdered and carelessly dumped inside the same water well that on this day was the subject of Murray’s photo.
One of the only two photographers to capture the scene of the crime when events were still fresh in memory and virtually present on the ground, though Murray had been spared the horrors that had appalled and incised the military contingent, and in turn spurred them to commit atrocities in the name of vengeance. He had nonetheless been conscious of what lay interred inside the well as he had taken his place behind the camera in the dishevelled landscape, steps away from the human remains.
While Murray was most certainly not the only western photographer to capture the sights of British India in the 18th century or the aftermath of the mutiny for that matter. He was among the pioneers of his era, and in spite of only being a part-time amateur.
A native of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and the son of a farmer, Murray was by profession a Doctor of Medicine with his degree earned from the University of Edinburg – a prestigious college that was founded in 1583 and now is one of the world’s top universities.
He had arrived at Calcutta in 1833, after having secured employment with the East India Company, and spent the first nine years as an assistant surgeon with the Bengal Medical Services. In 1842 he had earned the Medal of Aliwal for the infallible service he had rendered as a field surgeon during the battle of Aliwal, which had marked the beginning of the end of the Sikh empire in Punjab, and in 1849 had been appointed as the civil surgeon of Agra – then the British administrative headquarters of the province.
At Agra Murray had invested another twenty years of his career, monitoring outbreaks and researching ways to curb Cholera that in the 18th century was the leading cause of deaths among European civil and military personnel station in British India, and it was also, here, in Agra he had finally become acquainted with photography in 1849 – the very same year he had been appointed as a civil surgeon.
Though the invention of the Daguerreotype by the French in 1839 and its availability in Calcutta by 1840 had spurred the East India Company to encourage its employees to take up photography and subsequently led to the establishment of photography clubs in the Presidential capitals of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Murray himself had become involved with photography quite late in his life, and not because he had needed to cultivate a new hobby but rather to help his wife with her sketch work.
His involvement with photography, however, had allowed him to explore his artistic skills and as his interest had grown in the field he had forged ahead to document a wide variety of subjects ranging from architectural landmarks to people and the aftermath of the mutiny. He had mostly preferred to produce his work as large wax paper negatives and on one occasion had even journeyed back to London with 400 wax paper negatives for exhibition.
Murray’s photo of the well of Bibighar is unique for it is one of the earliest to be captured with a camera. Although the Bibighar incident by the time of Murray’s visit was already known in England and Europe with tabloids and magazines having embedded it in public discourse. His along with Christopher Tyler’s photos are the only ones that reveal what the place actually looked like in 1858, and prior to it being developed as the memorial well garden – renamed after India’s independence as the Nana Rao Park.
The white iron fence that can be seen in Murray’s photo was erected close to the well by the E.I.C. military personnel stationed at Bibighar at the time. Inside the fence is an ornamented cross built to serve as a gravestone and to commemorate the memory of the deceased. The bodies of the murdered women and children were never recovered from the well for burial but instead interred inside by having the mouth of the well covered with earth and later brickwork.
Why the women and children were murdered remains a topic of discussion. What is known, however, is that their murder was orchestrated, according to several eyewitnesses, by Nana Sahib’s chief lieutenant Tatiya Tope, the courtesan Houssani Khanum Begum and her supposed lover Savar Khan. The incident was a turning point in the mutiny of 1857 and its repercussion lasted well into the nineteenth century, almost right up till the Independence of India in 1947.
After news of the incident had reached the public, whatever sympathies the rebellion had initially found in England and abroad had disappeared overnight and the tarnished image of the loyal Sepoy was only redeemed by Indian soldiers fighting in the allied armies in the World Wars.
Murray spent nearly four decades in British India. He left photography in 1870, some 28 years before his death in 1898 in Sheringham, England. Among his most iconic photos is the vintage photo of the Taj Mahal. He had a keen interest in Mughal architecture and during the time he lived and worked in British India, he produced a huge collection of such architectural photographs.
