Alfred Lermit (1799-1829) & Maria Elizabeth Baker (1800-1864)
Alfred Lermit petitioned (using the formal East Company documentation) to become a cadet in the Bengal Infantry of the East India Company in 1817. He was nominated by Alexander Allan on the recommendation of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse and George Julius. The records listed his education as “The grammar school, Cambridge”, and “my parents are dead and my guardian is G Julius Esq of Richmond1”. Alfred attested in these records that, in the absence of any parish records, he was born in Middlesex, London, on 11 October 1799.
Maria Elizabeth Baker, the daughter of George Baker, a music master, and Maria Hosier, was born on 12 October 1800 and baptised at Poole. The family moved to London in the 1800s and lived at No 4 Euston Crescent, Somers Town.
On 10 July 1818, Cadet A. Lermit arrived at Madras, and went to serve in the Twelfth Regiment Native Infantry of British East Company stationed at “Mundlaisir” (now Mandleshwar), North West Provinces (now Madhya Pradesh), on the banks of the Narmada river. From 1819 to 1864 the ancient town of Mandleshwar (known for its many temples) was the headquarters for the District of Nimar, managed by an agent of the governor at Indore. In January 1819, Alfred was listed as an Ensign in the 1st Battalion 11th Regiment of Native Infantry when he sailed from Calcutta; in 1820 he was listed as on furlough (East India Register).
In July 1821 Alfred Lermit married Maria Elizabeth Baker. “On the 4th, at St Pancras’s, Alfred Lermit Esq of the Hon East India Company’s military service, to Maria Elizabeth, daughter of George Baker Esq of Euston Crescent” (Champion London July 1821).
On 1 August 1821 Mrs Maria Elizabeth Lermit took out a bond for £400 (a requirement of the East India Company for good behaviour on those travelling on the Company’s ships to live in their territories)2. The sureties for the Bond were John Law Baker, Church Passage, Newington Butts and James Evans, Upper Thornhaugh St, Capt RA.
In March 1822 Lieutenant and Mrs Lermit landed at Calcutta from London on board the Ganges.
Alfred and Maria lived at “Mundlaisir” as this was listed as their residence in the baptismal records of their children. Two of their children died in infancy: Mary Thomson Lermit (1824-1825) and Alfred George Talman Lermit (2 August 1828-1829). Their middle child, Gerald Thomson Lermit (born 25 April 1825), survived.
The children were baptised at Mhow (a chaplaincy in the archdeaconry of Bombay), a garrison town 14 miles from Indore. The British Resident (the British political representative in an Indian “indirectly ruled” Princely State) at Indore was Gerald Wellesley. Mhow was a cantonment town founded by the British in 1818, and was the headquarters for the army in the area.
Alfred served with the Champaran Light Infantry in 1822-3, and in 1823 raised the Mandleshwar Local Battalion.
An account (using contemporaneous language) in the British newspapers described an attack on an English officer by an Indian soldier in 1828: “An extraordinary attempt at assassination it appears, was made at Mundlaisir on the morning of 25 August. Adjutant A. Lermit, of the Local Corps, had just returned from mounting guard, and he had reached his house, when a sepoy of the corps rushed into the compound, nearly naked, and armed with a very long sword. In a moment he aimed a violent stroke at the Adjutant, but fortunately, by some strange chance, the weapon turned in his hand, otherwise the blow must have been inevitably fatal, as that officer received a very severe contusion from the back of the sword, immediately across the jugular vein. The sepoy then inflicted a deep wound across the shoulder and right arm, laying the bone bared, which drove him to the ground, and, before he could attempt to rise, the villain stabbed him twice in the back. In another instant he would have been dispatched, had it not been for the grenadier Sobador, who, at great person risk, threw himself into the wretch’s arm, and enabled Adjutant Lermit to get out of his reach. In the struggle, the Sobador’s sword belt was cut through, and he was wounded in the leg, as was a sepoy in the hand, before the atrocious offender could be secured. We are happy to add, that, on 30th of August, Mr Lermit was doing well, the facts above stated being communicated to us by himself – Government Gazette.” ( Bell’s Life in London)
In December 1829 Alfred was appointed adjutant to the Mundlaisir Local Corps.
The Standing Orders of the Bengal Native Infantry (1829) outlined the duties of the Adjutant: “The officer holding this appointment ought to possess considerable knowledge of the Hindoostanee language; to be well acquainted with the habits, customs, and prejudices of the Sepoys; to have great command of temper; to be completely master of the Drill, in all its parts; and above all, to feel pleasure in the performance of his duty.”
On 9 January 1829 he was listed as being on leave for 4 months to Bombay.
Captain Alfred Lermit of 12th Regiment Native Infantry died of fever, and was buried at Bombay on 3 June 1829, aged 32 years. He left no will, and the East Indian Company records indicated that his debts exceeded any money he was due.
On 7 August 1829 a public auction was held to sell the household items of the late Captain A Lermit. This included furniture, silverware, books (including a French dictionary and 3 French books), clothing, and amounted to £4,711
Following Alfred’s death, Maria Elizabeth returned to England on the ship Charles Kerr, which sailed from Bombay on 5 February 1830. She, along with her sister Jane Baker, had been given the care of the three children of Gerald Wellesley (1790-1833, son of Richard Marquess of Wellesley) of the Bengal Civil Service and many years the Resident of the Indore Princely State and his Indian wife/mistress ‘Culoo’.
On the same voyage returning to England was James Vaughan, recently retired from the Madras Civil Service (as Collector and Magistrate of Malabar). On 19 July 1830 “Maria Elizabeth Lermit a widow of the district of Trinity St Marylebone” married James Vaughan at St George’s, Hanover Square. On 9 August 1830 the three children (Agnes, Charles and Frances) of Gerald Wellesley were baptised at the same church (with their parents named as Charles and Culoo Fitzgerald of 29 Carbuton Street). Gerald Wellesley died in 1833, and although he never formally acknowledged his children he left life annuities to three “protégés or adopted children” and he also named as their guardian Maria Vaughan or in the case of her death, Jane Baker, “being confident they will discharge the trust in the way I could”. An annuity of £100 was provided for the guardian. Only Agnes survived to adulthood. [British Library Untold Lives]
James Vaughan lived at 11 Chester Terrace, Regent’s Park from 1831 to 1833 (this was one of the first of the great terraces in Regent’s Park to be occupied); he died in Cheltenham on 4 January 1833.
In November 1838, the marriage was announced of “on the 13th inst. At Brighton, Colonel Creagh CB to Maria Elizabeth, relict of the late James Vaughan Esq, Madras Civil Service” (The Examiner). Andrew Creagh had joined the army as a lieutenant in 1794, and thereafter had a distinguished military career, latterly commanding the 81st Foot regiment: “He was actively employed in St Domingo in 1797 and 1798; in Holland in 1799 including the actions [of August-October]. He served in Portugal and Spain in 1808 and was present at the battles of Rolica and Viniera, where he was severely wounded while in command of a light brigade, and for which he received a medal. He was engaged at New Orleans in the actions [of December 1814 & January 1815]. He was subsequently appointed aide-de-camp to his late Majesty William IV.” (Blackburn Standard February 1845).
At the time he wrote his will in 1839, Andrew Creagh was living in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Maria Elizabeth’s son (and so Andrew Creagh’s stepson), Gerald Thomson Lermit, later said he had been educated at Boulogne for a while.
Colonel Creagh was Barrack-master at Burnley, Lancashire, where he and Maria Elizabeth were living when he died in February 1845.
In the late 1840s and 1850s, Maria Elizabeth (“Mrs Col. Creagh”) was listed as arriving at Cheltenham in the social columns of the papers; the reports of her departure said she was leaving for London or the seaside. She was sometimes accompanied by Miss FitzGerald. In 1851 Maria was lodging at Imperial Square, Cheltenham, and her occupation was given as “(Service Retired)”. On 25 June 1856, Agnes Fitzgerald married the Rev Edward Finlay (MA of Worcester College, Oxford, and curate at Stratford St Mary from 1854-56) at Dedham, Essex.
In the 1861 Census, Maria was described as head of the household of Undercliff House, Ventnor, Isle of White; she had several grandchildren staying with her.
On 11 September 1849, her son Gerald Thomson Lermit of Lexden had married Elizabeth Henrietta Downes, second daughter of William Downes of Hill House, Dedham. In 1853 he was appointed Headmaster of Dedham Grammar School, and Maria Elizabeth eventually retired there.
Maria Elizabeth “of 17 Imperial Square, Cheltenham but late of Dedham” died on 31 May 1864 and was buried at Dedham.
Her gravestone in Dedham churchyard:
To the glory of God and in loving memory of Maria Elizabeth Creagh, relict of Colonel Andrew Creagh CB and formerly the widow of Captain Alfred Lermit 12 BNI, this stone is erected by her only son
Her sister, Jane F Baker, was living in Dedham in 1861 and in the census return was described as aged 53 “formerly governess” living at High Street Dedham.
She died in 1886 aged 78 and buried at Camberwell.
Footnotes:
- George Julius (1775-1866) was born in St Kitts, where he inherited the Mansion estate aged 5; the estate [DETAILS of SLAVERY] was sold to his uncle in 1813. He trained as a medical student at Edinburgh before working as a surgeon in India from 1797 to 1812, after which he was Apothecary to the Royal Household at Kew. He married Isabella Maria Gilder in Shoreditch in 1795. [UCL Legacies of British Slavery] ↩︎
- The bond for the Maria Elizabeth Lermit when she sailed to India following her marriage in 1821 also references Miss Harriet Gilder. Possibly this is the Miss Gilder who departed from Bombay in January 1826 to London. ↩︎