Gazette Back Files Search
Outcome: The party holds the missing-lascar notices, the Zorab inquest returns and sale catalogue, the letters debating Roy's observations, and the notice for The Ghat Mothers. Roy's own articles have been removed from the bound volumes. A clerk placed Roy at a garden house in Maniktala.
Participants
- Katherine Ward — began alone; paid a clerk
- Georgiana Wentworth — found the gap where Roy's articles should be
- Emma Wentworth
Summary
On Monday 10 October 1814, Katherine Ward spent the morning in the back offices of the Calcutta Gazette with a paid clerk and decades of bound volumes. Emma and Georgiana joined her from Clive Street, and the search began to yield.
What Happened
- Found. Notices of lascars vanishing from the riverfront at night. The Gazette’s inquest returns recording two deaths at the Zorab and Sons godown on the Strand three weeks apart, and the catalogue for the Zorab private sale on Wednesday evening, with its Tibetan bronzes, turquoise, birch-bark manuscripts in an unidentified script, and a sealed reliquary of unknown metal that will not be opened before the sale (Lot 14).
- The correspondence. A run of letters to the editor debating disappearances near the Baranagar temple, in which a correspondent named Rammohun Roy defended his observation that three persons had gone unaccounted for from the temple’s neighbourhood and that the establishment had offered the same form of words each time, against critics who accused him of hinting at respectable native merchants without evidence.
- The gap. Georgiana found that Roy’s original articles, the ones the letters answered, are not in the bound volumes. Someone removed them.
- The pamphlet. A subscription notice for The Ghat Mothers, testimonies of women of the Baranagar district whose husbands and sons were lost to the temple, translated by Roy. Never published.
- The clerk. Roy left the paper two years ago after a falling-out with the old editor and lives at a garden house at Maniktala, north-east of the city (Roy Garden House).
Outcome & Consequences
- Roy has a name, a house and a grievance, and the party has all three. The garden house is reachable.
- The suppression is visible in the paper itself. A gap is evidence.
- The Zorab sale is on the party’s calendar for Wednesday, with the reliquary and the birch-bark manuscripts marked.
- Katherine’s paper track is open.
Connections
People
Discovered
- Ram Mohan Roy NPC neutralNamed as the correspondent whose articles are missing; located at Maniktala
Had participant
- Emma Wentworth Player character neutralTook part
- Georgiana Wentworth Player character neutralFound the gap where Roy's articles should be
- Katherine Ward Player character neutralBegan alone; paid a clerk
Places
Located at
- Calcutta Gazette Office Location neutralThe bound back files, a paid clerk, and the press working next door
Events
Discovered
- Zorab Sale Event hostileThe sale catalogue and the two inquest notices