[79] The person the Nabob alluded to was Kishendass, the son of the late Dewan of the Nabob of Dacca, who visited Calcutta on his way to Juggernaut; and as he was strongly recommended to Mr. Drake, the President of Calcutta, by Mr. Watts, the chief of Cossimbazar, on account of services rendered by his family to the Company, he was treated with kindness and attention.
[80] The outposts of Calcutta were attacked on the 18th of June, 1756.
[81] Orme, vol. ii. p. 78.
[82] Mr. Drake.
[83] Captain Minchin.
[84] Vide Parliamentary Reports, vol. iii. p. 144.
[85] Mr. Mill, by his quotation from Seir Mutaquerin, and his observations upon the former state of prisons in England and India, appears desirous not only of palliating the guilt of the Nabob and his servants, but of throwing a share of the blame upon the unhappy sufferers: "Some search," he observes, "was made for a convenient apartment, but none was found; upon which, information was obtained of a place which the English themselves had employed as a prison, and into this, without further inquiry, they were impelled. It was unhappily a small ill-aired and unwholesome dungeon called the Black Hole; and the English had their own practice to thank, for suggesting it to the officers of the subadar as a fit place of confinement."—Mill, vol. iii. p. 149. Though I refrain from commenting on the tone in which the author quoted treats this memorable catastrophe, I must directly question the justice of the conclusions he has drawn from his own premises. Assuredly the use of a room of twenty feet square, with two small windows, as a prison for one, two, three, or ten prisoners, can be no justification for forcing, at the point of the sword, 146 captives into this inadequate space; much less for keeping them there, when their sufferings became so dreadful, and the death of almost all certain.
[86] The "Cumberland" seventy-four had Sir G. Pocock's flag on board.
[87] The "Marlborough" Indiaman carried a large proportion of the troops and stores.
[88] A village on the left bank of the river Hooghly, twenty miles in a straight direction below Calcutta, but more than double that distance by water.