Gendering the Globe: The Political and Imperial Thought of Philip Francis
2010; Oxford University Press; Volume: 209; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/pastj/gtq034
ISSN1477-464X
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoAbout 10.30 p.m. on Tuesday 8 December 1778 some Indian servants saw a man dressed in black trying to climb out over the compound wall of a house on the outskirts of Calcutta. They knew that the owner of the house, a Swiss-born East India Company official named George Grand, had gone out, leaving behind his 16-year-old wife, Catherine Grand. Accordingly, they seized hold of the intruder, and in the moonlight the jemadar, the chief servant, recognized him ‘by his figure, his face, and his colour’. As the jemadar later testified, it was ‘Mr. Francis, the Counseller’: that is, Philip Francis, one of the five members of Calcutta’s Supreme Council, a body established by parliament in 1773 to oversee the East India Company’s affairs in the subcontinent. George Grand subsequently filed a plaint in Calcutta’s recently instituted Supreme Court, accusing Francis of having ‘ravished, debauched, lay with, and carnally’ known Catherine Grand. At the trial the following spring, Grand’s servants testified in detail to what they had seen on 8 December; while several European witnesses described how Francis had previously paid Catherine Grand conspicuous attentions. She was not present at the trial, and no conclusive proofs were offered as to what exactly had occurred inside the Calcutta house on the night in question; but none of this affected the outcome. Grand had repudiated his wife almost immediately after Francis’s incursion; and on 11 March 1779 three of the four judges of the Supreme Court found the latter guilty of ‘criminal conversation’. Damages were awarded against Francis of 50,000 rupees, the equivalent of half his annual salary as a member of the Supreme Council.1
Referência(s)