Description
The Calcutta Gazette has printed since 1784 and is the government’s paper, which means it prints what the Company wants printed and, far more usefully, everything the Company requires to be printed: proclamations, shipping intelligence, insolvencies, estate sales, inquest returns, births, marriages, deaths, and advertisements from anyone who can pay.
The office keeps bound back files. A clerk will fetch them for a small fee and will not care why.
This is the party’s primary documentary resource in Calcutta and the one most likely to be underused, because players expect archives to be gated and this one is not.
Notable Features
- Bound volumes by year, and a rudimentary index that covers proclamations only. Everything else is read by hand.
- The other papers. The Bengal Hurkaru and the India Gazette also print, and a thorough researcher checks all three, because what one suppresses another may carry.
- No editorial memory. Nobody at the office remembers anything. The paper is a machine that ate the city’s information and will give it back to anyone patient.
The Senses
- Smell. Paper, printing ink, dust, and the sweetish rot of bindings that have been through eleven monsoons.
- Sound. A press working in the next room, and nothing else.
- Colour. Brown. Foxed paper, brown ink gone rusty, dark shelving, one window.
Connections
In Play
Chapter 4, Session 10 (9–10 October 1814) — the back files opened. On Monday morning Katherine paid a clerk and worked the bound volumes alone; Emma and Georgiana joined her after the Strand. Found: the missing lascars, the correspondence that stops and the pamphlet that never appeared; the Zorab inquest notices and the sale catalogue (Zorab Sale); and a gap in the volumes where Roy’s original articles should be. A clerk pointed them to Maniktala and Roy Garden House (Gazette Back Files Search).
Appearances
What Happened Here
Connections
People
Visited by
- Emma Wentworth Player character neutralJoined Katherine at the back files after the Strand (Chapter 4, Session 10)2 sessions, Landfall to The Third Course
- Georgiana Wentworth Player character neutralJoined Katherine at the back files after the Strand (Chapter 4, Session 10)2 sessions, Landfall to The Third Course
- Katherine Ward Player character neutralPaid a clerk and worked the bound back files alone (Chapter 4, Session 10)2 sessions, Landfall to The Third Course
Places
Part of
- Lal Dighi Location neutralNear the civic square
Events
Location of
- Gazette Back Files Search Event neutralThe bound back files, a paid clerk, and the press working next door