Indian Dancing Girl
One of the more elaborately framed and coloured portraits of a nautch girl.
Moorli Dhur & Sons
Bearer
Although Hobson Jobson (1903, p. 77) defines Bearer as, besides a palanquin carrier, also as "b. (In the Bengal Presidency) a domestic servant who has charge of his master's clothes, household furniture, and (often) of his ready money.
Lawrence Military Asylum, Sanawar, Kasauli
Founded in 1847 by Sir Henry Lawrence, what is now the Lawrence School is a prestigious boarding school that serves much of the country's elite and the middle-class aspiring to join that elite.
Amphitheatre, Coronation Durbar, Delhi
A nicely framed view of the 1911 Durbar, with an Impressionist's blend of hats and heads, the first and only which a British monarch George V attended and was honored under an Oriental pavilion. It was the high noon of postcards too.
Meerut. Electric power house
A postcard celebrating an electric power plant, apparently in the cantonment area.
How We Make Love in the East
There are few intimations of relations between Europeans and Indians on postcards – or other media for that matter – making this postcard a startling exception. “Stay quiet about it,” says the sweeper in Hindu-Urdu. “Sure,” replies the soldier.
Too hot to write this week, the sun has dried up all the ink.
Moorli Dhur & Sons, at Ambala, a railway junction 130 miles away from Lahore, dominated the Punjab postcard market by 1910. Perhaps because of its distribution clout, it published a humorous series on different aspects of life for colonial foot
The Bowachi
One of Moorli Dhur's series on Indian domestic staff shows a cook cutting a bird with a knife between his toes while smoking a hookah. Many publishers – Johnston & Hoffman in Kolkata, Higginbothams in Chennai, Thacker, Spink & Co.
Memorial Well, Cawnpore
Perhaps no image was more common in 19th century British albums from India than the Memorial Well at Cawnpore [Kanpur]. It was a tribute to the women and children apparently executed in unclear circumstances by rebellious Indian soldiers under the
General View of Old Fort Mooltan
Compare this hand-colored view to the identical more detailed black-and-white postcard of the old fort and mausoleum of Shah Rukn-e-Alam.
