Speaker
Anita Anand
Appearances over time
4 episodes
Episodes
4Podcasts
Quotes & moments
A French expeditionary force of 37,000 men landed west of Algiers at Sidi Ferrouj in June 1830, overwhelming the city in just three weeks.
Princess Pauline Duleep Singh was born on Boxing Day 1887 in a dilapidated Moscow boarding house called the Hotel Bolsoy, while her father awaited a summons from Tsar Alexander III that never came.
Princess Catherine Duleep Singh was born in 1871 in Belgravia, the eldest of the three Duleep Singh sisters presented as debutantes before Queen Victoria.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was born on 8 August 1876, making 2026 the 150th anniversary of her birth.
Despite initial resistance, the sheer force of 37,000 French troops caused Algiers to fall in just three weeks after the June 1830 landing.
Princess Irene married Frenchman Pierre Vilmont in a society wedding in Paris in March 1910, but records show she was suffering epileptic fits as early as 1915 and her mental health deteriorated rapidly.
Sophia's first arrest occurred when she was 9 years old, when her father was stopped at Aden by British authorities in 1886.
Oxford University did not formally award degrees to women until 1920, meaning Catherine and Bamba left with education but no official qualification.
Irene Duleep Singh was subjected to electroshock therapy for her 'neurasthenia', a brutal Edwardian-era treatment that William Dalrymple noted had scarred his own grandfather for life.
Abd el-Kader's travelling capital city, the Zmala, housed no fewer than 60,000 people and could be packed up and moved at a moment's notice.
Bamba Müller died in 1887 after contracting typhoid from Sophia; the morning Sophia's fever broke, she found her mother dead on the floor beside her bed.
Oscar Wilde received a sentence of two years hard labor in 1895 for male homosexuality, illustrating the extreme legal danger for men compared to the legal invisibility of lesbian relationships.
Pauline Duleep Singh married army officer John Torrie in 1914 but was widowed just a year later when he was killed at the catastrophic Battle of Loos, where the British lost approximately 60,000 men in four days.
It took France 7 years of combat and 100,000 soldiers to destroy what Abd el-Kader had built in just 2 years and 5 months.
Lena Schäfer, the German governess who became Catherine's lifelong companion, was 12 years her senior and arrived when Catherine was around 16.
The British establishment would overlook brown skin if it came with a title. Maharajas got into clubs and courts; Ada and her daughters got nothing. Pauline and Irene suffered not just racial prejudice but the added burden of their mother's low class.
Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh were the daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and his second wife Ada Wetherall, a working-class woman Queen Victoria despised. Their working-class names alone — Beryl, Irene — told the whole story: these girls were never going to be admitted to court.
Maharaja Duleep Singh spent a year in a run-down Moscow boarding house waiting in vain for Tsar Alexander III to champion his cause. That Boxing Day, Ada gave birth to Pauline there. The name Alexandrina — a hedge, perhaps for the Tsar, perhaps for Victoria — said everything about a man who had run out of options.
Irene Duleep Singh began having epileptic fits by 1915 and spent time in nursing homes being treated for 'neurasthenia' — the Victorian catch-all for depression and anxiety — including electroshock therapy. Her husband eventually left her. She moved back to Paris, the city of her worst memories, and started breaking apart.
Irene changed her will on the morning she died, cutting out her sister Pauline and leaving everything to Dr. Barnardo's Homes for Poor and Unwanted Children. It was a final, silent accusation: I was unloved. I was unwanted too.
Ada Duleep Singh was dismissed as a chambermaid or worse, but she nursed soldiers at Verdun, ran up £17,000 of debts at Monte Carlo, then marched into the India Office and demanded a small house and a hat shop in exchange for never bothering them again. They gave it to her.
For decades, no one knew what happened to Pauline after she vanished following the will case. Historian Peter Bunce traced her through a distant relative's family tree to a French death certificate: she died of TB on 10 April 1941, at a sanatorium above the Pyrenees, buried by authorities alone, like her father before her.
Not one of Maharaja Duleep Singh's children — across both families — had children of their own. The Lion of Punjab's bloodline simply stopped. Sophia had purpose; Catherine had love and mission; Pauline and Irene simply evaporated.
When Irene's will left everything to Dr. Barnardo's, Pauline contested it, claiming Irene was not of sound mind. Then Bamba intervened — hiring feared KC Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, who tore Irene's reputation apart with racist slurs and revelations of self-harm. Bamba lost, paid all costs, and never spoke to Pauline again.
On 8 October 1926, Irene left two notes before walking into the sea near Monte Carlo. Her letter to her lawyer ended with the phrase 'I am homeless' — despite having an estate of £30,000. The final Princess of Punjab had nowhere she belonged.
Frederick Duleep Singh, the antiquarian Norfolk bachelor who collected Jacobite art, was the one member of the first family who opened his home unconditionally to Pauline and Irene. He sent Ada money anonymously. When he died in 1926, the last restraint on Bamba's hostility disappeared.
When Hitler became chancellor in 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship in 1935, Catherine — a brown-skinned Indian woman in a same-sex partnership in Prussia — simply stayed. She was invisible enough to survive and well-connected enough, through Lena, to be protected — for now.
During the WWI naval blockade, German civilians starved through what became known as 'the Turnip Winter.' Catherine remained in Kassel even as hundreds of thousands died of malnutrition and disease — refusing to leave Lena behind. Only when she herself was starving did Sophia finally manage to extract her.
While Oscar Wilde got two years hard labor in 1895, lesbian relationships faced zero legal penalty in England — not because of tolerance, but because the Victorian legal mind literally could not conceive that women would do such a thing. This invisibility both protected and erased women like Catherine.
Pauline Duleep Singh appeared on the cover of Country Life in 1911, styled as 'Princess Pauline' in a ball gown. But for those who knew her background, it was a sniggering title — the beautiful daughter of a disgraced Maharaja and a suspected brothel worker, being dressed up as respectable.
Analysis
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- History 84%
- Society & Culture 10%
- Health & Fitness 6%
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