A Lesser Known Pottinger Remembered in Bombay

This Christmas Eve I took the opportunity to have a nose around the beautiful St Thomas’s Cathedral in Bombay’s old Fort district (and mah thanks a big plug to the good folk at Bombay Heritage Walks who introduced me to the area – if you’re in Bombay do arrange a tour with them, well worth it). The church that exists on the site at the moment (which is Church of North India – Protestant), dates back to 1865 though churches have stood on the site since the 1670s. Inside it has some impressive masonry and stained glass, however what attracts mostly are the commemoration stones around the outer walls to various British worthies and soldiers who lost their lives in Bombay or India at some point. One commemoration tablet that caught my eye was to a Pottinger.

Now anyone familiar with Hong Kong history will know that name and very likely have walked up or down Pottinger Street in Central, the street of stone slabs that is a market allowing you to get up and down between Queen’s Road Central and Lyndhurst Terrace. That Pottinger, the one you’re thinking about (as was I) is the Anglo-Irish soldier come Empire administrator Henry Pottinger, the first Governor of Hong Kong (1841-1843). Henry had indeed spent his youth with the East India Company in India rising to the post of Resident at first Sindh and then Hyderabad. In China it was of course Pottinger who negotitated the Treaty of Nanking ending the First Opium War – those infamous Unequal Treaties to the Chinese. That Pottinger moved on to be governor of the Cape Colony and Madras before eventually dying on Malta in 1856.

Eldred Pottinger…going local

But here, in a corner of the Cathedral in Bombay, we’re remembering his nephew Eldred (1811-1843). Eldred too went to India and served in the Bombay Artillery fighting in Afghanistan and becoming a political officer in Herat. However, things got bad and he was taken hostage for quite a while which broke his health. After being released he travelled to Hong Kong (presumably to see his uncle who by then had become the Colony’s first then Governor) but sadly died shortly after arriving. However, his memorial tablet was raised and still stands in St Thomas’s Cathedral in Bombay.

St Thomas Cathedral, Bombay