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WHEN DITCHERS AND JACK TARS COLLIDE: BENEFIT THEATRICALS AT THE CALCUTTA LYRIC THEATRE IN THE WAKE OF THE INDIAN MUTINY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2014

Mary Isbell
Mary Isbell*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The collision I explore in this essay is not a physical one, though it does emerge from a performance event that brought Ditchers (European residents in Calcutta) and Jack Tars (sailors in the Royal Navy) to the Calcutta Lyric Theatre on February 25, 1858. The collision actually manifests in print, as conflicting reviews of this event. Announced in the silk playbill pictured in Figure 19, the sailor amateurs of HMS Chesapeake offered a benefit theatrical to raise money for the Indian Relief Fund, a charity offering support to “widows, orphans, or other representatives of those who perished in the mutiny” (“Indian Relief”) (Figure 19).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 3: EDITORS' TOPIC: VICTORIAN INDIA , September 2014 , pp. 407 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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