The Memsahibs and her Servants in the British Raj

Jenny Mallin


Region:
Anywhere
Notice Period:
Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
Type:
Probus, U3A, Rotary, WI, Family History, Horticultural Groups, Women in Business,
Fee:
Paid: £65 for a Zoom talk (55 minutes with Q&A afterwards)
Category:
History
Updated:
21st June 2021

We discover the very first memsahibs to set foot into India in 1617, and how a fair amount of hoodwinking by these ladies who travelled out to the East Indies at a time when the East India Company expressly forbade women to do this. We learn of the fishing fleet ladies, those English young women of marriageable age who soon found themselves faced with the social stigma of spinsterhood that were now looked upon as objects of pity as fate had dealt them an unlucky hand and their only way to gain a hand in marriage was to go in search of a husband, and quickly… We learn of the challenges that lay ahead for them in running a household and the considerations that they would need to bear in mind when hiring their servants.

Views: 821 | Enquiries: 4

About Jenny Mallin

Winner of "Best in World Cookbook" by the Gourmand World Cookbook Society for 2017, Jenny is a regular speaker to a broad variety of groups looking for an interesting and unique talk on her British Raj family. She has given over 500 talks across the world, on cruise ships as well as prestigious locations such as the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata built to commemorate Queen Victoria as Empress of India to hundreds of WI, U3a and Family History groups.

Jenny’s career has been the culmination of several instinctive paths in her life which have led her to enjoying being an author and now a public speaker. With almost thirty trips to India over the past thirty years, she has explored and uncovered the history of her ancestors and their interesting path.

The re-uniting for Jenny of a family heirloom of a book which her great x 4 grandmother started in 1844, Madras which she remembers seeing in her mother’s pantry, is a time capsule in itself. This cherished book holds not only the handwritten manuscripts of recipes which were passed down from mother to daughter for the next five generations, but also hints at the technological changes ushered in by the industrial revolution which had a positive effect of intertwining the economies of India and Great Britain.

With her passions for cooking, India, research and writing, Jenny’s award-winning cookbook “A Grandmother’s Legacy” has been a labour of love – a memoir that mingles the history of her family when they lived in India, with her grandmothers’ recipes that were prudently passed down through the generations.

Recently interviewed by Jenni Murray on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, Jenny has also been featured in “The Lady” magazine, “Who do you think you are?” magazine as well as “Waitrose Magazine” and “Sainsbury’s Magazine”. Jenny has been able to impart knowledge of her family’s cuisine through her teaching at notable cookery schools, including the renowned WI headquarters, Denman College in Oxford.

Jenny’s past career has also influenced her with her continuing interest in both research and travel from her early days in television production at the BBC where she picked up skills in how to present but also carved out a career there in researching. The following decade of the 1980s found her working in high tech as a Corporate Travel Buyer for twenty years and with her engaging personality and knowledge was able to easily connect with her market and secure global airline contracts to the benefit of her company.


Send a message to the speaker

If you are interested in this talk and wish to contact the speaker, please complete the following form:

 
Please provide your contact name
 
Please provide the name of your group
 
Your phone number so that the speaker can contact you
 
Your email address so that the speaker can contact you
 
Give details about the event, time of day and location
Prove you are human please.
Use the slider to drag the puzzle so that the top and bottom are aligned , or use an alternate text based challenge by clicking here.
Eighteen, 96, sixty one or 43: which of these is the largest?
 

Site Search

Search across all speakers, topics and tags. Put your search term in the box and press enter or hit search

Use quotes around exact multiple word searches, eg "winston churchill".