One of the few mentions that my father made, during my childhood, of his Anglo Indian Roots was his claim to have "arrived on the same boat as Cliff Richard". This is a claim that had long puzzled me as my father was three and a half when he and my grandparents took flight from India. How did he know? Had he read it somewhere? Did my grandmother make friends with the family?! I knew that my father had a vague memory of the Suez Canal but fellow passengers?? Well, thanks once again to the wonders of modern technology, I have been able to sort this little family tale out...
Cliff - aka Harry Rodger Webb - arrived in the UK from India by P&O boat but according to the amazing immigration records which are now available online, it seems that he arrived in 1948 to my father's 1949. Furthermore, my father was on the SS Mooltan and Harry/Cliff was on the SS Ranchi. So far, so myth...
However, Wikipedia claims that Cliff gets his dark colouring from a Spanish great great grandmother. Hmmmm....
It must be remembered that Cliff became famous in the late 1950s. He had been born in 1940 and by his late teens was doing his best Elvis impressions for British audiences (sorry, I know he has national treasure status...). This was the time when my father was enduring, as far as I have been able to establish, quite a lot of racism in his adopted home town. There had not yet been a great influx of immigrants and the Anglo Indians looked undeniably different.
So it is not unreasonable to surmise that any Anglo Indian in "Cliff" was glossed over. After all, the same had been done much earlier in the century for Hollywood star Merle Oberon. Looking at the few bits of available family history for Cliff, one can find the person listed on Wikipedia as Spanish using Find My Past. Since she married a Smith, though, I have decided not to put any more time into trying to prove my Anglo Indian theory! What is definitely true is that there were a lot of Anglo Indian Christian families with Spanish sounding names because they were (are) descended from Portuguese/Indian liaisons and marriages in the nineteenth century. Santos, de Cruz and others are all often in the records....
If this is true, it is a great shame that Harry Webb, on becoming "Cliff Richard" felt unable to stand up for his roots. It is entirely a product of the times of course and one can understand why he would have done it. I do wish they could get him onto Who Do you Think you Are? though! Be nice to know if I am right. My father, of course, is convinced Cliff is Anglo Indian.
And on a related subject, if you have even the slightest suspicion that your relations may have emigrated/immigrated/travelled abroad by ship, do look into the travel records available online. Most have original images of the ships' registers. These give passenger names, professions, ages, address that they are going to and lots of other useful information.
If you want a "celebrity sighting", search for Harry Rodger Webb and there is "Cliff" and his whole family, arriving for a new life in 1948, a year after the Partition of India. Good job that he did, my mother would have missed out on her first teen crush - maybe I had better check the photos to see just how similar Dad and Cliff were....
No comments:
Post a Comment