Margaret Johnston Baldwin

Margaret Johnston Baldwin and an Indian servant


Born in Penang on 10 August 1863 and baptised there on 2 September 1863, Margaret Johnston Baldwin was the daughter of Captain Archibald Thomas Baldwin (1831-1884), later a Colonel commanding the 7th Madras Native Infantry, and his wife Margaret née Johnston (1830-1898).

Then known as Prince of Wales Island, Penang is a small island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. In the nineteenth century it was considered a part of the Bengal Presidency and was governed from Calcutta.

Margaret appears on the 1891 census, aged 26, living with her widowed mother and younger brother Raymond, aged 19, at Portsea in Hampshire.

At the time of the 1911 census, she was living at The Chantry, a religious house at Exeter in Devon. The census describes her as a ‘Visitor helping in the work.’

Margaret never married. She died, aged 86, on 26 September 1949 at Camberley in Surrey. The abstract of her will gives her residence as 25 Nelson Street in Edinburgh.

The Indian man seen here with Margaret is identified as 'Boodida,' which I think might be a reference to his white hair [it seems to be part of the name of the Ash Gourd or white pumpkin in Telugu].

Photographer and location unidentified. According to an inked inscription verso in a period hand, the photograph was taken in November 1865.

 


Code: 126596
© Paul Frecker 2024