Stranded: Indian Travelling Ayahs Negotiating Waiting and Repatriation

Mobile Female Servants from India

Travelling ayahs occupied a unique role within the British Empire. The most frequent way in which women were attracted to the profession was when European families in India who employed local ayahs were posted back to Britain or elsewhere in the Empire and persuaded their ayahs to accompany them. Some of these women found the profession congenial and took employment on other voyages, many remaining constantly mobile for years. For instance, an ayah employed by a local planter in India moved to Malaya with the family, and when the planter’s family subsequently visited England, the ayah went with them. Eventually, following the dissolution of the service contract with that family, she continued to work as a travelling ayah for other families (AN, 1913; IOR, 1928).

The experiences and expected roles of travelling ayahs were markedly different from the lives of ayahs in India. Travelling ayahs worked in the transient spaces of ocean passages and destinations. Whilst ayahs in colonial households in India had clearly defined responsibilities, primarily childcare, travelling ayahs were often expected to juggle multiple roles as nanny, cook, laundry-maid and caregiver to the entire family. These increased responsibilities were not necessarily rewarded with increased pay and were accompanied by the insecurity of ending their contract far from home. Once landed at the intended destination, especially in Britain, most ayahs travelled back to India with new employers and their families, on contracts which were arranged either by their previous employers or by various brokerages, principally the Ayahs’ Homes which provided accommodation for transient ayahs in return for payment. Travelling ayahs were, thus, accustomed to constantly being on the move and for many who had made the journey regularly, in some cases as many as 40–50 times, their destinations, primarily in Britain, became familiar spaces where they established networks and acquaintances (Homeward Mail, 1880, 1888; Marshall, 1922). ² When travelling to other parts of Europe, this familiarity was absent, but ayahs always found ways to negotiate repatriation to India, or another onward passage. Using several case studies, this paper investigates the ways that ayahs actively negotiated situations of extreme precarity and instability, sometimes aggravated by the reluctance or inability of authorities to fulfil their responsibilities. In all cases, repatriation to India was eventually achieved.

Negotiation Waiting and Repatriation: Fleeting Agency Amongst Travelling Ayahs

When travelling ayahs embarked on their journeys, they understood that they would have to straddle two places and two worlds. However, issues including administrative negligence, irresponsible employers and sometimes contingent world events, such as the outbreak of the two world wars, could maroon them in just one. They were often stranded.

Frequently, employers discharged their ayahs either immediately upon arriving at their port of disembarkation or after the employers settled in their destination (Datta, 2021a; Homeward Mail, 1886; London City Mission Magazine, 1922; The Sketch, 1895). Such abrupt cessation of employment and frequent abandonment was a severe challenge for ayahs. According to the unwritten norms, verbal contracts or abstractly written contracts agreed between ayahs and their employers, the employer was responsible for the ayah until new employment was found or until she had worked long enough to save the money to buy a passage back to India. Employers frequently refused to meet these expectations, however (Datta, 2021a). Yet, while destitute stranded ayahs became a recurring problem across the British Empire, particularly in Britain itself, imperial administrators repeatedly refused to institute clearly spelt out regulations to address the issue, despite being pushed to do so by elements within civil society (Datta, 2021a). Such uncertainties and insecurities did not reduce the traffic of ayahs across the British Empire. Many became seasoned negotiators in their efforts to repatriate themselves. Even in precarious situations where often an indefinite period of waiting was imposed on them, ayahs actively engaged with their employers, imperial administrators and elements of civil society to find ways to secure a passage home.

In October 1852, Mrs Kelly’s ayah found herself stuck in Britain and could foresee an indefinite period of waiting before she would be able to secure a passage back to India. She had travelled with Mrs Kelly from Calcutta to Suffolk on the understanding that upon reaching Britain Mrs Kelly would send her home. Instead, Mrs Kelly abandoned her ayah upon arrival in Britain without paying either her wages due or her passage home. Thereafter, the ayah appealed to the British administrators in the East India Company (EIC) Office, for help in securing a passage back to India. When the EIC proved unresponsive, the ayah demanded their attention by an act of public demonstration: she stood in front of the EIC building while holding a placard which read: ³

Poor Ayah. No rice no milk poor baby in Calcutta no husband here to love poor Ayah, he want me, I want him, he cant (sic) get here brought here by bad bad woman—wont (sic) send me to Calcutta. Pity Pity. (The Globe, 1852)

By the following day she had caught the attention of the imperial authorities. A police constable arrested her and presented her to the London Mayor’s Court. The Court established that she had been wronged by her employer Mrs Kelly and that the EIC Office should do the needful to repatriate her and reunite her with her family. Consequently, the EIC Office complied, albeit reluctantly. By eloquently performing her emotive appeal in a strategically chosen location, the ayah succeeded in evoking the sympathy of the magistrate and pressurising a recalcitrant EIC to repatriate her. The case exhibits how the ayah actively chose to engage with her situation and space of waiting, and how she successfully exerted agency to repatriate herself when her employer and imperial administrators had failed her.

Over 40 years later, in 1899, an ayah named Nasiban was faced with a similar situation when her employer abandoned her without wages or a passage home immediately upon arrival in London (IOR, 1899). After wandering the streets of London looking for help, she made her way to the West London Police Court at Bow Street where she presented her case in front of John Rose, the Metropolitan Police Magistrate. Like the ayah in the previous case, Nasiban emphasised that she had been deceived by her employer, and that she was eager to return home to her husband. Like Mrs Kelly’s ayah, Nasiban used emotive language to effectively articulate her longing for home and desire to be repatriated. The frequent use of words like ‘home’ and emphasis on separation from their spouses and children seems to have been calculated to appeal to the ideology of family values, which prevailed in Victorian Britain. The magistrate was indeed moved by Nasiban’s appeal and called on the India Office, which replaced the EIC as the responsible authority in 1858, to help. In the meantime, he put Nasiban into a workhouse so that she would have accommodation until she could find a way home to India. In his letter to the India Office, the magistrate mentioned that ‘she speaks English with difficulty’, which makes the effective way in which Nasiban presented her case even more impressive. Nasiban was not paralysed by the difficulties and injustices she faced: rather she was motivated to find a solution. In line with the governments officially unarticulated but long-established informal policy (see Datta, 2021a), the India Office refused to interfere in the case by aiding Nasiban or attempting to find the employer and force her to pay for the Nasiban’s repatriation. However, Nasiban’s emotive actions had made such an impression on the magistrate that he personally worked with the poorhouse to find Nasiban an employer who would pay her passage on the condition that she worked as a travelling ayah on her way home. Whilst not justice, in the sense that Nasiban did not obtain the wages she was owed or the passage home she was promised, Nasiban’s effective communications did earn her a way home when her employer and the imperial authorities had shied away from their responsibilities.

Interestingly, when men from India were stranded in Britain or other parts of the world, their choice of words to attract the attention of colonial administrators was markedly different from that used by women. Between 1899 and 1910, Indian men who ranged from being stranded as tourists or as destitute oculists or as abandoned performers pled to the British Consul and India Office for their repatriation (IOR, 1900, 1910a, 1911). Like the ayahs, they too were eagerly attempting to manage their repatriation. However, their means of attracting administrative attention were different. For instance, in 1906, a group of Indian male performers, brought to Europe by their employers to tour Europe, were suddenly abandoned in Marseilles. In their pleas for help, the stranded men cited their dire economic situation, and how they were cheated by British nationals, nothing about home or family was mentioned (IOR, 1906). Therefore, the men only mentioned their destitute situation, lack of means to survive and difficulty in finding means to return to India. Evidently, there was a gendered perception behind the choice in the vocabulary the men and women selected in similar situations to display their need and urgency to repatriate. While the women highlighted their urgency and need to repatriate through ideas of home, family, children and spouse, the men primarily highlighted economic difficulties.

There were also cases wherein employers did not abandon their ayahs, but the ayahs themselves found the agreed-upon waiting period intolerable and attempted to repatriate themselves prematurely. In 1910, Mary Michael, an ayah in the service of Mr and Mrs Chaudhari arrived in London. The fact that the employer in this case was an Indian family suggests that ‘race’ may have had little impact on class relations between ayahs and their employers. ⁴ The contract of employment between Mary and the Chaudharis was based on the understanding that Mary would travel from India with the Chaudharis, would serve them as an ayah in residence during their stay in England and would return with them once their planned visit was completed. Upon arrival in England, however, Mary found the work expected from her as an ayah in residence to be more burdensome than she had anticipated and attempted to terminate her service by giving her notice to the Chaudharis. The employers had refused to accept her notice, and withheld her due wages and return passage, citing the employment conditions in the contract (IOR, 1910b).

Desperate to end her employment at the Chaudhari’s and return home to India, Mary left her employers and sought accommodation in the Ayahs’ Home. Because her wages had been withheld, Mary was unable to pay for her accommodation, but she carried with her the ‘excellent references’ she had received as a travelling ayah for previous employers. Using these references and her previous experience as a travelling ayah in Britain, Mary negotiated a temporary living arrangement at the Ayahs’ Home while she appealed to the India Office to require her employer to pay for her return passage and her wages. Following a detailed investigation by the India Office, which involved interviewing the neighbours of the Chaudhuris, their friends as well as other servants employed in their household, the India Office found that Mary had been well-treated by her employers and in a letter to Mary and the Ayahs’ Home, wrote that: ‘the Secretary of State sees no reason to interfere on her behalf’ (IOR, 1910b). No evidence was found in the surviving records as to what happened to Mary Michael thereafter, so we cannot know whether she returned to her employer or waited in the Ayahs’ Home until she could secure new employment on a passage back to India, but it is clear that she was both proactive and resourceful in extricating herself from a situation in which she was unhappy and seeking alternative ways to return home.

While the above cases occurred in generally peaceful times, wars could make crafting repatriation even more challenging. During World War I, Britain prohibited all civilian women and children from travelling overseas. ⁵ Consequently, Indian ayahs who had arrived in Britain as the war began found themselves stuck in the country until it was over (IOR, 1917). Few could have expected that this would take four years. Once ayahs were informed by their employers, by their usual lodging institutions, the Ayahs’ Homes, or by the India Office, that they could not travel to India, they employed a range of strategies to seek passage home and reunion with their families.

While records recording subaltern experiences are particularly slim during wartime, three nameless cases were reported in a 1917 letter from the Ayah’s Home (via London City Mission) to the India Office, wherein the secretary of the Foreign Branch of the London City Mission (writing in the capacity of a representative for the Ayahs’ Home) explained that while there were many ayahs stranded in the Ayah’s Home due to the war, three ayahs were in particularly great distress and insisted on travelling back to India. While one of the ayahs emphasised her need to reunite with her children, others insisted simply on the need to return home (IOR, 1917). What were the special factors in the cases of these three ayahs that led the Ayahs’ Home to report their situations to the India Office? Were the ayahs causing disruption in the home? Were they suffering from inconsolable agony? Or was the Home using the cases to suggest that this might soon become a larger concern for the Home which might require the intervention of the India Office? The records offer little clue. Like many such subaltern subjects, the three ayahs appear only momentarily in the documentation, only to disappear again without leaving any trace of their names, places of origin or ultimate fate. However, what we can decipher from this letter is that these ayahs, while waiting for an uncertain period in Britain, made their dissatisfaction with their situation known and, like Mrs Kelly’s ayah who demonstrated in front of the EIC in 1852 or Nasiban who presented her case to the Police Magistrate in 1899, used emotive appeals to strengthen their request for repatriation. In some way, they prevailed upon the Ayahs’ Home to communicate with various administrators on their behalf. Thus, even in the most precarious of times, ayahs exhibited an active engagement with waiting, refusing to passively accept an indefinite period of separation from home and family.

Once World War I ended, the frequent travel of British families accompanied by their ayahs resumed and so did the trend of employers abandoning their ayahs upon reaching their destination. During the interwar years, the archives show that ayahs were travelling with their employers not only to Britain but also increasingly to other European countries. Interestingly, the trend of abandoning ayahs at the end of a voyage was markedly less common in other countries than in the UK, possibly because much smaller numbers of families travelled to those countries and those who did could be easily traced and forced to bear the cost of repatriating their ayahs. ⁶ Nevertheless, such cases did occur from time to time, and dealing with destitute and stranded Indian subjects in various parts of the world was a regular issue with which British administrators had to engage. Laura Tabili, Rehana Ahmed and Samita Mukherjee note that by the turn of the 20th century ‘tens of thousands of South Asians’, mainly lascars were stranded in British port cities across the world (Ahmed & Mukherjee, 2012; Tabili, 1994, 2012). Examination of the archives shows that a minority of these stranded South Asians were stranded ayahs.

Being stranded in a country outside, the British Empire created other kinds of difficulties for ayahs. Although, in terms of culture, food and climate, Britain could feel foreign to Indian ayahs, they were at least familiar with ‘Britishness’ and most had some command of the English language. Being cast adrift in another European country, which did not have the usual ayah traffic or Ayahs’ Home as a brokering institute, could be considerably more alienating. These increased challenges were mitigated, however, by the fact that British administrators appear to have taken their responsibilities to their Indian subjects considerably more seriously in ‘Europe’ than they did in Britain itself. The records suggest that it was easier for an Indian destitute in a foreign land to obtain government aid and be repatriated to India than it was for an Indian destitute in Britain. In fact, Indians in distress in foreign nations were helped and repatriated at the earliest possible opportunity (IOR, 1924). ⁷ This proactive approach contrasted with the policy in Britain, where the government consistently sought to avoid addressing and paying for the repatriation of destitute Indians (Datta, 2021a; Saini, 2018). This policy of positive engagement, however, led to multiple misunderstandings and disputes between different areas of government as to which department was to bear financial responsibility for the whole process of repatriating Indian travellers stranded in other European countries. In most cases, it transpired that the Government of India had to bear the majority of the costs. As a result, the Foreign Office issued a circular as early as 1911, which clearly stated that the repatriation of Indian subjects at the expense of Indian revenues should not be authorised without previous reference to the India Office (IOR, 1911). The circular also made it clear that liberal usage of the aid to destitute Indians in foreign countries should be avoided to ‘discourage the arrival in Europe of impecunious natives of India’. It further clarified that once the legitimacy of the Indian subject is established by the Foreign Office and the Secretary of State, the expenditure incurred by the British embassy in the relevant country would be ‘defrayed out of the revenues of India’. Despite the circular’s warning against liberal usage, the frequent implementation of this policy put strain on Indian revenues, leading to the circular being updated in 1911, to state that wherever possible, the concerned stranded Indian or a relative should sign an undertaking that the whole or part of the cost of the repatriation would be returned to the Government of India at a later date (IOR, 1911).

In August 1919, Mary Anne, an Indian ayah, travelled with Mrs Irene Trapman from India to Italy (IOR, 1920). Once the voyage was complete, Mary Anne repeatedly requested that her return passage be arranged. Initially, Mrs Trapman had delayed addressing the request, but Mary Anne’s requests to be sent back to India became regular and insistent. Mary Anne’s repeated demands to be reunited with her husband, Jogi, in Bombay were clearly designed to put moral and emotional pressure on Mrs Trapman to fulfil her responsibilities. Finally, in September 1920, more than a year after they arrived in Italy, Mrs Trapman informed Mary Anne that she had no resources to send the latter back to India and would, therefore, contact the British Consul in Italy for assistance. In her letter to the British Foreign Office in Leghorn, Mrs Trapman explained that her journey from India to Italy and the employment of Mary Anne was arranged and paid for by her fiancé Mr Alexander Tucker, a wealthy businessman in India. He had also promised Mary Anne that he would pay her wages and for her return passage to India. However, Mrs Trapman claimed that since her arrival at Italy she had telegrammed Mr Tucker several times and heard nothing from him. She further explained that as she was limited in her own resources, and that Mr Tucker had agreed to pay the ayah’s expenses, she was unwilling to pay either the ayah’s wages or return passage. She, therefore, requested the British Consul in Italy to help send Mary Anne home.

Upon receiving the appeal, the consul in Leghorn, M. Carmichael promptly wrote to the Foreign Office and the India Office requesting some guidance in how to address the case, observing that whilst he had come across similar cases, this one was unique because the appellant appeared to have some resources but refused to pay for the ayah’s passage back to India. He further alerted the Foreign Office and India Office, ‘I fear that this native may eventually be stranded here, and I venture to suggest that inquiry should be made in Bombay as to the truth of the above story and possibly that Mr. Tucker might be approached in the matter…’ (IOR, 1920). Within 10 days of receiving the appeal, the India Office wrote back to the consul in Leghorn, advising him to arrange for the immediate repatriation of the ayah to Bombay ‘in the event of becoming destitute’ and assuring him that the cost for the same would be paid by the India Office (IOR, 1920). In this case, the speed and clarity of communication and the speed of the approval of the plea are impressive when compared to similar cases of ayahs stranded in Britain, where the India Office always refused to take responsibility or to pay for repatriation, even when the ayahs appealing for help were destitute. It shows that the India Office was significantly more concerned to help destitute Indians in ‘foreign’ European countries than it was in Britain (Datta, 2021a).

Mary Anne appears to have been a victim of a broken romance between Mrs Trapman and Mr Tucker. When Mrs Trapman eventually realised that Mr Tucker was not going to reply to her communications, she responded to Mary Anne’s insistent appeals to be reunited with her husband by contacting the British administration, which dealt with the issue promptly and efficiently. Yet again we witness a case wherein the ayah effectively used emotive words and actions that expressed her desire to go home and be reunited with her family. Mary Anne, therefore, was active in her waiting and efforts to travel back to India. Anthropologist Ghassan Hage has shown that even in the most paralysing situations, when individuals actively and purposefully engage with an inevitable waiting, their endurance, intent and resilience constitute a sign of agency (Hage, 2009). Therefore, Mary Anne demonstrated a fleeting, episodic and nontheatrical agency through her repeated appeals for repatriation, couched in a language designed to apply moral and emotional pressure to her employer.

Even when the India Office had set policies in place to deal with ayahs and other Indians stranded in Europe, administrators could find themselves involved in negotiation with British Indian subjects over the terms on which help would be offered. The administrators attempted to dictate the terms of such aids, but some ayahs actively resisted or negotiated over such issues, even under the most trying circumstances. In some cases, ayahs were well informed about their choices and did everything they could to negotiate how and under what terms of contract they returned back to India.

The case of Miss Martha Tirky, an Indian ayah stranded in Hamburg, Germany in June 1924, is a telling example in which British administrators found themselves in negotiation with a well informed and determined woman who, over a lengthy period of time, used her knowledge of the imperial system to secure the most advantageous outcomes for herself at every step. Martha Tirky travelled with her employers from Calcutta to Germany, but upon arrival in Hamburg, she was dismissed. She immediately approached the British Consul to enquire whether they could pay for her return passage. Although not destitute, she chose to explore whether the British administration in Britain could pay for her return passage rather than spending the wages she had earned, suggesting that she was aware of the various ways in which British administrators might aid Indian subjects stranded in other parts of the world. Upon receiving her plea, the consul contacted the India Office, observing that Martha was neither destitute nor distressed but that it was unlikely that she would be able to find employment as a travelling ayah for a return passage from Germany to India, since there were few families making such a journey. During the discussion of her case, members of the India Office agreed to explore whether Martha had enough resources at her disposal to return to India, or if she was really destitute. They highlighted, ‘the general principle is that we do not repatriate Indians from this country (referring to Britain), but do so from other countries if shown to be destitute’ (IOR, 1924). In their communication with the consul in Germany, the India Office stressed their suspicion that, ‘this woman apparently been sitting in Germany for more than to see can her repatriation be done at the cost of the Government expense (sic)’ (IOR, 1924). The consul confirmed that Martha had claimed that she did not have enough resources to travel home, but no specific details were mentioned as to how that was verified. It seems likely that Tirky had the wages she had earned on the outward passage, but these were insufficient to cover the passage home. Moreover, Tirky may have been reluctant to spend her wages on transport to India, since this would mean she had effectively worked for several months for no substantial reward. Receiving the news that Tirky could not afford to pay for transport home, the consul in Germany began exploring the cheapest possible passage for her, but found that a passage to India direct from Hamburg would cost the India Office a minimum of 58 pounds. Therefore, it was decided that Tirky would be sent to Britain, from where the passage would have been cheaper, and where she might, with the help of the Ayahs’ Home, find an employer willing to pay her fare, relieving the government of responsibility. The Secretary of State emphasised that since Tirky was a Christian, he was sure that the Ayahs’ Home in London would be more than willing to help. Upon receiving a communication from the India Office regarding Tirky’s case, the Ayahs’ Home did indeed offer to take her in and confirmed, ‘if the Ayah can be got to this Home between now (August) and the middle of September we should be able to get her a return situation to India. Passage (deck) paid and a small wage for her services on board the steamer’ (IOR, 1924). Interestingly, whilst all these arrangements were in progress, members of the India Office expressed concern as to whether Tirky was a secret agent: suggesting that, ‘she may on her return act as agent for German propaganda’ (IOR, 1924). This discussion raises the question of whether the prompt repatriation that the India Office offered to Indians stranded across Europe was partly motivated by political and security concerns prompted by the fear of alliances between Indian nationalism and rival imperial powers.

By mid-August 1924, Martha Tirky’s journey from Hamburg to London had been arranged by the consul, and an advance for the travel costs from Hamburg to London was sent to her. It eventually transpired, however, that Tirky had not been waiting passively for an official response to her appeal. Rather, she had been actively exploring and engaging with alternatives. On 10 March 1925, seven months after the advance had been sent, the consul alerted the India Office that Tirky had not travelled and despite repeated requests, had not returned the advance to the consul. Upon investigation, the consul discovered that Martha Tirky had taken up residence with a missionary, Reverend Szallies in Kreuznach, and she claimed that as she was 40 years old, she could not travel alone. Clearly, this was disputable as Martha had previously explored the option of travelling alone back to India from Hamburg (IOR, 1925).

Over a year later on 3 November 1926, Martha Tirky’s case resurfaced in the correspondence files between the British Consul general in Cologne and the India Office. The Kreuznach Social Welfare Department contacted the British Consul in Cologne alerting them that following the destitution of the German missionary with whom she was staying, Tirky had become destitute and was ‘a charge on the public funds’ (IOR, 1926). They claimed that Tirky had explained to them that the India Office had offered to return her to India in 1924 and that she would like to explore whether that offer was still valid. The India Office was understandably irritated at the reappearance of Martha Tirky’s file on their desks, but nevertheless agreed to help her and once again arranged for her passage to London and thereafter an admission to the Ayahs’ Home. Tirky was forwarded a ticket, and all arrangements were made for her smooth transition into the Ayahs’ Home on 28 December 1926. However, once again Tirky did not make the trip to London. She explained in her deposition to the consul that she was ill from influenza and hence did not feel comfortable travelling (IOR, 1926). Records do not reveal whether this was true or whether Martha was buying time to explore various avenues open to her. However, given the previous turn of events, the latter appears more likely.

Between December 1926 and late March 1927, Martha made no efforts to contact the consul in Cologne, the India Office or the Ayahs’ Home in London, which had secured and reserved a place for her in December. But, in early April 1927, Martha once again wrote to the consul to enquire if they could extend the previous offer once again. This time while the India Office and the consul were still willing to extend the same offer, the Ayahs’ Home was full and they asked Martha to delay her arrival until September 1927, when they expected opportunities for her. After this there were no further communications until September 1927, when the Ayahs’ Home reached out to the India Office alerting them that there was an opportunity for Tirky and that if interested, she should arrive in London at once. The consul in Cologne contacted Tirky with the warning that this would be the very last opportunity for her to take advantage of their generous offer to repatriate her. But Martha had other plans. In the meantime, she had found company with a member of a German missionary society known as Gossnersche Missionsgsellschaft and she planned to travel with them to India directly from Germany. However, upon learning from Tirky that British administrators were willing to pay for her passage to India, the missionary wrote to the consul in Cologne on 30 October 1927, enquiring whether the British government would defray the cost of her passage. Frustrated and furious at such ‘an audacious request’, the consul explained to the missionary the history of their interactions with Martha and made it clear that they would under no circumstances pay for her passage home (IOR, 1927). Throughout the case, we witness how Martha Tirky refused to passively accept the solutions proffered by British administrators, but actively pursued her own best interests, engaging with new opportunities whilst seeking to keep the option of a paid passage home on the table. Martha Tirky demonstrated considerable agency and resourcefulness, and her independence caused multiple disruptions in the procedures of the India Office, who never did get their advance back. After October 1927, Martha disappears from the record, so seems likely that she returned to India with the Gossnersche Missionsgsellschaft, at their expense.

While British administrators sought to discipline and control British imperial subjects in European spaces, it is clear from Martha Tirky’s case that some of these subjects also had an effective understanding of the disciplines under which administrators laboured. Tirky was able to use such knowledge to her own advantage, not only receiving a cash advance that she never paid back but also effectively using the availability of a return passage at imperial expense as a safety net whilst she sought further opportunities in Germany. Martha Tirky did not wait passively on the responses of British administrators, but actively manipulated them, whilst forging local relationships and capitalising on available networks to exercise fleeting agency (Datta, 2021b) and make her own choices in a process of personal self-determination with regard to her repatriation process. Tirky’s relationship with the Empire was not one of passive dependency but of ongoing active negotiation. She clearly wanted to return to India but refused to do so on the administrators’ terms, instead she repeatedly forced them to respond to her actions, using the imperial system as a fallback position before eventually negotiating her return to India through German Christian networks quite independent of the British Empire.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, travelling ayahs once again found themselves stranded and indefinitely waiting. At least one ayah was trapped outside the British Empire upon the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1939, Lieutenant J. Hesse and his wife travelled from India to France for a brief holiday, accompanied by an ayah. Apparently due to the outbreak of war on 3rd September, the Hesse’s were unable to return to India and Mrs Hesse wrote to the British Consul General in Paris, claiming that they had insufficient funds to pay the ayah her wages or to buy her a return passage. The Consul General recommended that she should communicate directly with the India Office in London. Mrs Hesse wrote to the India Office, suggesting that the ayah ‘could work her passage back as a child’s nurse—she came as a deck passenger and could return as such.’ She further appealed, ‘I would be most grateful if you could help in taking charge of my ayah and sending her back to her home’ (IOR, 1939). The India Office responded to this British officer’s wife as they usually did in such cases in Britain, declining to take direct responsibility for the ayah. They suggested three different options: first, that due to wartime travel conditions the India Office strongly encouraged the family to retain and support the ayah until they could find another family interested in risking travel during war. Second, if the first option became too inconvenient for Mrs Hesse, then she should ‘communicate with the British Consul in Marseilles’ as cheaper passages to India were often available from the port. Third, the India Office could suggest to the Ayahs’ Home in London to register Mrs Hesse’s ayah’s name and inform her ‘anytime should they hear of a family travelling overland and wanting to pick up an ayah at Marseilles.’ This way, Mrs Hesse would have to pay the ayah’s passage only as far as Marseilles (IOR, 1939). Perhaps understanding that little help was to be expected from the India Office, Mrs Hesse and her ayah had begun exploring other options, apparently with some success. A few weeks later, Mrs Hesse responded that they had found a cheap passage for the ayah from Paris and that the ayah had already sailed and would arrive at Simla by the end of November 1939. Whether this was true, whether the Hesses’ simply abandoned the ayah in Paris or whether the ayah found her own way back to India we will never know from the records. However, this case illuminates that the insecurities caused by war affected ayahs but that did not make them passive subjects in the process of waiting. The risks of war and ensuing indefinite periods of waiting did not stop ayahs from travelling to foreign places while serving employers during wartime, however. There were at least 26 ayahs who acquired passage permissions or visas to visit various European countries between 1939 and 1945. ⁸ Whether they made use of those permissions and actually travelled is impossible to know from the available ship manifests and immigration records. But the fact that they were willing to seek such permissions in times when international travel meant facing the constant risk of U-boat attack demonstrates that ayahs were prepared to navigate their way through the most dangerous and trying of circumstances. ⁹

Conclusion

For travelling ayahs, waiting was an inevitable part of the job. Such waiting usually took place far from home in situations where payment of wages and provision of promised passages home were unreliable, and where gendered expectations might be at odds with the exigencies and opportunities of circular migration. Consequently, for ayahs, waiting could involve isolation and lack of both support networks and material resources. Whilst such waiting undoubtedly involved precarity, it did not involve passivity or paralysis. Paul Corcoran has argued that an anxious hunter waiting to capture prey necessary for his own survival is in a precarious situation, but his waiting is an active act of preparation and is full of possibilities (Corcoran, 1989). The case of ayahs is much like the hunters in Corcoran’s study: they exhibited preparedness, resourcefulness and endurance in negotiating precarity, pursuing their aims and modelling the limits of conventional gender pressure on their patterns of migration.

In a range of case studies spanning a period of 70 years, this paper has shown ayahs actively engaging with their employers, imperial authorities and elements within civil society to safeguard their welfare and secure passage home. The tactics they used ranged from moral pressure, exerted through Mrs Kelly’s ayah’s public demonstration outside the EIC, and Nasiban’s appeal to the Police Magistrate, to Martha Tirky’s calculated exploitation of imperial insecurity and the official desire to maintain a positive image of the British Empire in the eyes of other European nations. Ultimately, all these women seem to have achieved their aims and secured passage home, even when the imperial authorities were clearly reluctant to help them.

The experience of waiting for ayahs, then, was significantly different to the experience of more recent migrants from formerly colonised countries explored by scholars, such as Khosravi (2016), Dhupelia-Mesthrie (2016), Keshavarz (2016) and Chatterji (2017). Unlike these recent migrants, ayahs were not criminalised, and there was no attempt to limit their mobility. The authorities’ only concern was that their mobility should not be at official expense. Consequently, whilst more recent migrants often found themselves resisting deportation, ayahs’ interactions with the authorities were primarily focused on securing rather than resisting, repatriation.

This difference in experience can be attributed to the changes in global capitalism over the past century: in particular, to changes in the relations between imperial metropoles and colonised peripheries brought about by the transition from a colonial economy based on imperial rule to a postcolonial neoliberal economy in which peripheral nations are formally independent entities. When the sun never set on the British Empire, and both the UK and India were conceived of as ‘British’, authorities had little interest in limiting mobility within the Empire and British subjects, including even colonial subjects gendered feminine, who in the case of ayahs were relatively free to move wherever their economic services were needed. In the neoliberal economy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the ongoing need for the labour of formerly colonised subjects to maintain the wealth of the elite was balanced by fears that the numbers of migrants moving would destabilise class relations within metropolitan societies. Consequently, control of mobility became a central political issue. Whilst ayahs were exploited and marginalised, they were not completely excluded from the global economy that dominated their lives in the way that many peripheral subjects today are. The extent to which ‘independence’ can be equated with liberation for those at the peripheries, therefore, remains an open question.