One of the key aims of the Ayahs and Amahs project is to reconstruct, describe and analyse the historical experiences of ayahs and amahs and to investigate the way that visual and literary representations of these women travelled with them along circuits of the British empire. Our new online exhibition, Ayahs and Amahs: Transcolonial Journeys,Continue reading “Transcolonial Journeys: The Ayahs and Amahs Project’s online exhibition”
Category Archives: Ayahs
The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History
Part II: The Home at Hackney It is the Hansons then (“aka” the Rogers), who appear in front of the door to the imposing new premises, along with the four sari-clad women, in 1900 (figure 2.1). Christian Hanson and wife Amina were listed as “Manager” and “Matron” respectively of the Ayahs Home on King Edward’sContinue reading “The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History”
The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History
This year a new English Heritage Blue Plaque will be unveiled at 26 King Edward Road, Hackney, in London, to commemorate the Ayahs’ Home that operated there in the opening decades of the twentieth century. This public recognition of a major part of Britain’s imperial history has been some time coming. Rozina Visram, historian ofContinue reading “The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History “
She Travelled: The Portrait of Joanna de Silva, the Indian Ayah at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
My encounter with Joanna de Silva, a nursemaid from eighteenth-century Bengal, India, was rather serendipitous! I came to know of the portrait of Joanna through a research network of scholars and enthusiasts committed to unravel the history of Indian ayahs and Chinese amahs, the native nursemaids in the service of European employers in colonial India.[1]Continue reading “She Travelled: The Portrait of Joanna de Silva, the Indian Ayah at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York”
“For Nannie”? The controversial case of a Sinhalese “amah” in white Australia
The historical relationship that connects Australia and South Asia is one that we are just beginning to understand.[1] Our project brings a new dimension to that story by exploring the experiences of South Asian women who journeyed across the Indian Ocean and came to Australia as nursemaids to children. One such woman was Sinhalese amah,Continue reading ““For Nannie”? The controversial case of a Sinhalese “amah” in white Australia”
Thomassee: The first Australian ayah
Many of the stories of the travelling ayahs and amahs that we are learning about today concern those women who travelled between Asia and England during the period of the British Empire. As part of this project, however, we are looking for stories of women who travelled south from India and China, to Australia. TheseContinue reading “Thomassee: The first Australian ayah”
Locating Ayahs in Transit: A Passage to Australia and other Parts of the World
As a social historian whose work focuses on domestic laborers in colonial India, I intend to unravel the story of Indian female domestic workers who travelled to Australia, directly or via England, and to other British colonies in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Today in India’s imagination, Australia chiefly looms large as a majorContinue reading “Locating Ayahs in Transit: A Passage to Australia and other Parts of the World”
Her Devoted Ayah
Our project on the Travelling Ayahs and Amahs looks at families and family life embedded in histories of empire. In this first of a series of blogposts on the project, Victoria Haskins shares the stories from her own family, that sparked her interest in this history. In August 1858 Margaret Ann Goldie, a young womanContinue reading “Her Devoted Ayah”
Ayahs and Amahs 