22 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DF
Charlotte Square has seen colourful India links. No. 22 was home to Lady Gordon and her granddaughter Jane Cumming, described as a “Dark skinned girl, a native of India” in an 1810 trial: two girls’ schoolmistresses sued for defamation, having been accused of lesbianism. Sir John Peter Grant, judge in India, lived at No. 6. His son, Lt-Governor of Bengal, had published the 1860 play Nil Darpan, criticising British indigo planters. At No. 18 lived Lt-Gen. Alexander Dirom, author of Narrative of the Campaign in India (1794), and at No. 31 resided William Adam, counsel for the East India Company.
Book on the court case involving Jane Cumming Gordon, the ‘dark-skinned girl’.
Front page of Neel Darpan.
Find out more