He looks directly and confidently into the camera. He does not smile and neither does the woman by his side. She is short in stature, wearing a patterned white dress and leaning slightly into his shoulder. He is dressed in the winter uniform of an Apothecary of the Madras Army and has on a dark blue patrol jacket with gilt buttons and stand-up red collar and cuffs.1 The couple’s dress and demeanour suggest that this is an important occasion.
The photograph is of Jonathan Chadwick and Agnes Smale, just married by the commanding officer of Jonathan’s regiment in Madras.2 It is their marriage portrait and the slight stiffness in their pose suggests that the photographer told them to be very still. It is 1860 and cameras require long exposure times.
Many of the Apothecaries in the Madras Army are Anglo-Indian, often the sons of British soldiers, as is Jonathan, recruited into the subordinate medical service.3 Their role is to act as medical assistants, dressers and compounders, the equivalent of senior nurses or junior doctors.
Jonathan would know that Apothecaries have to follow their regiments into action, so this will be an itinerant and dangerous life. As the child of an Apothecary herself, Agnes would also be aware of what lies ahead for her husband.
There are no letters, diaries or notes and no other photographs to bear witness to Jonathan’s life. All that survives is a solitary photograph of him, in uniform, with his wife on their wedding day.
- William Cornish, A Code of Medical and Sanitary Regulations for the Guidance of Medical Officers Serving in the Madras Presidency, The Government Press, Madras, 1870, p 106. ↩︎
- Marriage registration of Jonathan Chadwick and Agnes Catherine Smale, married 11 April 1860, Madras, British India Office Marriages, Reference N-2-41, Folio 107, findmypast.co.uk, accessed 6 September 2024. ↩︎
- Christopher Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India 1773-1833, Routledge, London, 2016, p 47. ↩︎
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