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I am writing a short story on Irish sentiment after the Sepoy Mutiny as an assignment and my main character is a half-Irish half-Indian girl in Ireland. JML! I’m looking everywhere and can’t find a thing. Can anyone help me? If her age comes to question, she’s 18.

Interesting! It’s hard to find anything on this. I’d imagine sentiment would have been split. Many Irish served willingly in the British Army during the Indian Mutiny – look at the life of the legendary John Nicholson for example. John Purcell was a Galwayman who received the Victoria Cross for his efforts in Dehli. Some Irish would have seen the Sepoy Rebellion as a war to be put down and would have agreed with the extreme measures the British took in the rebellion’s aftermath.

Others might have seen it differently. At this time Ireland was still recovering from famine. The population had been decimated through starvation and emigration. A political writer called John Mitchell published a tract in 1861 decrying the famine as a deliberate act of murder by the English against the Irish – clearly there was discontent so it is possible that there would have been some sympathy amongst the Irish for the fate of India. I’m not sure about this though – there were many Irish working in India either in the army or in the administration who would have benefitted from colonisation and employment in India. These Irishmen abroad raised funds and sent them back as relief to the Irish poor during the famine.

There’s a great resource available online – an archive of newspapers going back to the 1800s. If you read some of the record of The Nation newspaper from the period you might get an idea of what popular sentiment was at the time. Available here: