A portrait of Sir Edward Winter
The newspapers have been full of the story of Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat who recently faced charges of ill-treating her maid in New York. Whatever be the truth in the reports, it brings to mind the first ever trial by jury in India, which took place in our very own Madras. This too was a mistress-employee case. On trial for the murder of her native slave girl Chequa, alias Francesca, was her mistress, Ascentia Dawes. Ascentia was the wife of an East India Company employee.
Arthur Mitchell Fraas, in his 2011 dissertation submitted to Duke University (They Have Travailed into a Wrong Latitude:The Laws of England, Indian Settlements, and the British Imperial Constitution 1726-1773) writes that she was Luso-Indian (of mixed Portuguese and Indian blood).
At the time this episode took place, there was a William Dawes who by 1656 was Secretary of the Council. In 1657, found guilty of corruption, he was imprisoned for over a year. By the 1660s, however, he had bounced back and was once again in the Council, a trusted right hand of Sir Edward Winter, the Agent for Madras, who was later responsible for the first coup in the Settlement. When by 1664-65 Winter incurred the displeasure of the EIC, an investigator was sent out, whereupon Winter retired in high dudgeon to Madapollam, a village in the West Godavari District, and from there sent letters of protest to England all of which were signed by Dawes as well.
Sometime in 1664, Chequa died allegedly at the hands of Ascentia Dawes. The Agent, George Foxcroft, and his Council were uncertain of their powers to try a capital crime and wrote to England seeking guidance from the Company. The EIC too was uncertain of the powers vested in the heads of its outposts and, so, referred the matter to the Privy Council, which in turn passed it on to Sir Heneage Finch (afterwards the first Earl of Nottingham), then Solicitor General of England, and much later the Lord Chancellor. Finch in due course pronounced that the Company had the jurisdiction to try such crimes, taking its powers from the Charter of 1661 issued by Charles II.
While matters progressed slowly in the trial of Ascentia Dawes (and we do not know if she was placed under arrest during this time), things were hotting up on the Winter front. By early 1665, the Company, not waiting for its investigator’s report, sent George Foxcroft to supersede Winter as Agent. The composition of the Council remained otherwise unchanged, Winter becoming Second-in-Council. Foxcroft began a detailed investigation of Winter’s transactions and discovered incriminating evidence. With the balance of power shifting, Dawes abandoned Winter and became a confidante of Foxcroft. Dawes was appointed Magistrate in Black Town in place of the dubashes Beri Thimmappa and Kasi Viranna. This at a time when his wife was accused of murder!
On September 14, 1665, Winter barged into the Council chamber and made several accusations against the Agent. A heated argument ensued, William Dawes in particular being vociferous in support of Foxcroft. Later, Foxcroft ordered the confining of Winter to his chambers.
But Winter was not without supporters. Two days later, the Captain of the Guard ordered the arrest of Foxcroft and his son on charges of treason. He asked the Agent to surrender so that bloodshed could be avoided. When Foxcroft refused, musketeers were ordered to march to the Council chamber whereupon Foxcroft, his son Nathaniel, Jeremy Sambrooke (another member of the Council) and William Dawes came “hastily running downe, with pistoll cocked and swords drawne”. In the ensuing scuffle, the Foxcrofts were arrested, Sambrooke injured and Dawes was killed. Foxcroft’s account has the full gory details – “all my clothes on my left side burnt by a shott levelled particularly at me, but did only burne my clothes and race the skin off my side, and went forward to Mr. Dawes that was behind me, and went quite through him, in at the belly and out at the backe.” Dawes “dyed that afternoon.”
Winter became Agent once again and, according to a letter written by Foxcroft to the Company on September 6, 1660 while in prison, “seized on Mr Dawes his house and all that he had, leaving his wife destitute wherewith to feed her family.” From this it can be seen that Ascentia, assuming that she was the wife of William Dawes, was not under arrest even a year after she was charged with murder.
Meanwhile, the Company, having received legal opinion in the Acentia Dawes matter, wrote to Foxcroft (unaware that Winter had taken over the government) stating that the respective “Governours and Councells Established by us in any of our fortes, Townes, etc., have power to exequute Judgement in all Causes Civill and Criminall.” It also pointed out that this was arrived at after consulting the King’s counsel. To clarify matters further, a letter to this effect had been obtained from the King, a copy of which was enclosed. To vest the Agent with proper authority, it was deemed fit to “Constitute you Governour of our Towne and Forte where the fact was Committed, as well as Agent, and to appoint you a Council under our Seale, which together with some Instructions and directions how to proceede in the Triall of this woman, and of such as were Assistants to her, if any were, wee have likewise herewith sent you.”
This despatch reached William Jearsey, the Chief at Masulipatam, who was sympathetic to Foxcroft. Following the coup, Jearsey had warned ships to stay off Madras in order to deprive the Fort of vital supplies. The vessel bearing the documents avoided Madras and berthed at Masulipatam. Fearing Winter, Jearsey sent his assistant Robert Fleetwood, a friend of Winter, to deliver the King’s Commission and the EIC’s letter. Winter received him in the Fort on March 28, 1667, and permitted him to publicly read the King’s Commission. Also read was the warrant issued by Jearsey, commanding Winter to set free and reinstate Foxcroft, in the light of the papers received from England. Winter, however, chose to ignore the letter. He in fact wrote back to the EIC stating that he was certain that the documents were counterfeit and wondered at the boldness of Jearsey in issuing warrants of such high consequence!
Winter had held back all despatches from Madras ever since he took charge and it was only on January 18, 1667 that the EIC got to know of the coup, thanks to a letter from another Foxcroft sympathiser, Sir George Oxinden, the Chief at Surat. The King asked the Lord Chancellor to investigate. Consequent to this, a commission was issued on December 4th, ordering the reduction of Fort St George and the restoration of Foxcroft to his office. A fleet of five ships and a frigate, fitted out for “warfare or trade”, sailed for Madras. The vessels arrived on April 21, 1668 and after a protracted negotiation with Winter, got him to yield. Foxcroft was made Governor by October, and permission was granted to Winter to stay on in Madras. All was now set for the trial of Ascentia Dawes.
Following the procedure set out by the King’s Counsel, 24 persons were summoned to form a grand jury. It returned the indictment as it was, confirming that she had to be tried for murder. It was decided that the jury for the trial would comprise twelve men, six English and six Portuguese, and 36 people were summoned, the large number necessary in the event the accused objected to some of them sitting in judgment. As it happened, she objected to just three – Sir Edward Winter (which prejudice is quite understandable), Robert Fleetwood (a Winter man) and Hugh Dixon, Gunner of the Fort and probably a participant in the coup. The foreman of the jury was Edward Reade, a son-in-law of Thomas Winter, the brother of the erstwhile Agent and whom, surprisingly, Ascentia does not appear to have objected to.
The trial was held in April 1669. The examination of witnesses went on for about two hours at the end of which the foreman sent in a note to the Governor and his Council, who constituted the Court. It said that the jury found Ascentia guilty of murder but not in the manner and form described in the indictment. It also sought further instructions from the Court which responded stating that it was the duty of the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty or not.
The jury went into a huddle again and after a short while Reade declared that the accused was not guilty. As this was contrary to all expectations, the Court thought he had made a mistake and asked him again, whereupon he repeated that Ascentia was not guilty.
The Court then asked the members of the jury, and they agreed with the foreman. With that Ascentia Dawes was set free and passed from the pages of history forever.
The case of Rex vs Dawes, however, set a precedent. The Governor and Council, in their letter to London on April 15, 1669, lamented that the case had come to such a conclusion because “we found ourselves at a loss in several things, for want of Instructions, having one man understanding the Laws and formallityes of them to instruct us…” This was to mark the beginning of a process of judicial reform in Madras which, after several stages, culminated in the formation of the High Courts of Judicature in 1862. It also saw the upgrading of the post of Agent of Madras to that of Governor, who remained the executive head till 1947. The note from the King's Counsel on how the trial was to proceed was to serve for years as the basis on which the EIC settled cases in its possessions in India.
What was not new then, and continues even now, are conflicts over the treatment of domestics.
A Turing and a Reverend too!
There are at least two more instances in the early history of Madras, of domestics/slaves being killed by their employers. Both of them are mentioned in Dodwell’s Nabobs of Madras (1926).
The first was Mrs. John Turing (one of a long line of Turings in Madras that culminated in James Matheson Turing whose son Allan is said to be the father of modern computing), who in 1761 had several ‘Coffree girls’ in her service. In 1769, according to Dodwell, she came “into painful prominence, being indicted for causing the death of one of her slaves. Though acquitted, she withdrew from the settlement for some time.”
The second was the Rev. St. John Browne, who in 1775 was appointed Parson of St Mary’s by the Court of Directors without, as the Church of England was careful to add later, “reference to the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London.” Browne was disgraced when his servant, while trying to escape his master’s blows, fell from a terrace some twenty feet high. “The wretched man was left lying there all night and died two days later.” Some were of the view that the Rev. Browne had to be pardoned as he committed the crime under the influence of alcohol. But he was tried and found guilty of ‘homicide through misadventure’. He was sent back to England.
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