Dadabhai Naoroji 1825–1917
The First Indian MP was a major influence on India’s fight for independence
Dadabhai Naoroji was born in Khadak, near Bombay (now Mumbai), on 4 September 1825, the son of a Parsi priest. He was educated in Bombay where he excelled at economics and at the age of only 30 became the first Indian professor.
In 1855 Naoroji travelled to England where he set up a branch of Cama and Co, the first Indian firm in the UK. He combined commerce with politics, and was a professor of Gujarati at University College London too.
He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress which campaigned for self-rule for India, and originated the ‘drain theory’ presenting British rule as a drain on India’s financial resources.
Naoroji stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Holborn in 1886. He was then adopted for Central Finsbury. His candidature was given a boost when Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury doubted that “a British constituency would elect a black man”. This was felt to be a low remark for a leading politician, and Naorobi was elected in 1892.
He is generally recognised as the first Indian MP. Although the Anglo-Indian David Dyce Sombre was elected for Sudbury in 1841, he was later disqualified as a result of electoral irregularities.
Naoroji died in Bombay on 30 June 1917 at the age of
91.
Investigating Overcrowding
For the first time in 1891, householders were asked to indicate the number of rooms occupied if fewer than five. This was linked to efforts to measure overcrowding. There was, however, no definition of “room” which could include a wide corridor or scullery or larder in some houses. If householders were confused and left the space blank, the implication was that they had more than five rooms. In Scotland the 1891 census asked for the number of rooms that had one or more windows.
At a time of great mobility of labour, the position of the many lodgers in the country was a challenge. In previous censuses a lodger had sometimes been treated as a separate household; in others a lodger would be described as part of the family. In 1891 the definition that was given to the enumerators dropped
the term “lodger” and substituted “occupier”. The “occupier of a tenement living alone” would have their own schedule. There were still anomalies, however, with lodgers being described as such, particularly if they dined with the family.
There were now three columns for employment status. These were introduced on the recommendation of a Treasury Committee of 1890 which was wrestling with complex questions of national wealth, taxation and development. The categories were “Employer”, “Employed” and “Neither Employer nor Employed”. The last category meant “working on own account” or self-employed. Those unemployed or doing work involving intermittent layoff such as sailors waiting for a ship probably used the last category. The captains of fishing vessels were given schedules to fill out if they were going to be out on census night, and so was “every fishing boat of foreign nationality which brings fish regularly to ports of the UK”.
Enumerators’ instructions recognised the complexity of modern working life. As well as the medieval terms of “master” and “apprentice”, there was new guidance concerning managers, foremen and superintendents.