Ayah/Amah – institutional individuals of the British Empire

Jayantha Somasunderam from Canberra supplies me grist for my word processing wrist by emailing articles from foreign newspapers and History Today. One such I found intriguing and use it for my article today.

Female Man Friday – the Ayah

We are all familiar with the Ayah of yore, now extinct, at least by title. Rich families gave over their children to the ayah’s care almost wholly. I suppose it was a Brit aristocratic tradition that infiltrated Ceylon. I know this well because a very close relative married a proposed girl from Sabaragamuwa– rich with rubber and gems. Their child was given over completely to an ayah who had the plus point of having brought up the children of a famous walauwa.

The baby in our family was not breast fed at all; slept in a separate room with the ayah and she fed him more than the stipulated quantity of milk and spoonfuls of ghee: the aim being to get him chubby. Having a roly poly baby was high recommendation for the ayah, never mind the kid’s future well being.

These ayahs held a special place in the household, sharing top position with drivers of the household vehicles, while cook women, kellas, kollas and podians who did the odd jobs fetching and carrying were at the bottom of the domestic help scale. I used the term Female Man Friday since many ayahs were also housekeepers holding the confidence and encouraged association with the lady of the house.

Those who lived simpler like us from down to earth Kandy had no specific ayah since mothers looked after their babies, often with help of relatives, some not privileged and so given a home and all necessities. I must add that we mothers who breast fed our infants, following the tradition, or knowing that that was the best start for a child, were often looked askance as plebeian by those richer and more inclined to laze their time away.

Fashionable and with it for them was formula for babies and ayahs to care for them. My grandmother in the village employed at least three servants: cookie, girl helper and boy Jack of all trades. Only the car driver had a room to himself, and food laid out on a table in the spacious room below the overhead paddy storage bins. Another pragmatic move in our home in Kandy was that my three elder sisters had to take turns preparing dinner and lunch on weekends, in spite of the efficient cook woman. Being youngest I was spared the conscription; all the worse for it in later life!

We working mothers did have a woman to care for our left-at-home kids but we did not summon her as Ayah, but by her name. We are eternally beholden to them and many are those who receive pensions from grateful children they brought up. I know an intellectual married his nursing attendant who saw him through a serious illness, through gratitude and loved and cherished her.

Another planter married the ayah who tried to imitate the other brown memsahibs and ended up the object of derision with her:”Come I’ll saw you the garden.” Poor thing. The previous one I mentioned lived her simple Sinhala way and remained dignified and respected.

Many are the literary references to these woman, often depicted as domineering.

More recently, Sri Lankan overseas residents have recruited domestics from the home country to look after children or manage homes when the wife too has an out-of-home job. Employees of the UN and its agencies in New York were permitted recruiting domestic help from the home country. These were affectionately called Nanny or more usually Nana by the young ones they cared for,

The article I mean to quote and get facts from is: Remembering the forgotten Indian nannies of London: Ayahs’ Home by Gaggan Sabherwal, South Asia Diaspora reporter, BBC News, 16 June 2022,

He writes that during the height of the British Empire, thousands of Indian women and, maybe Sri Lankan, called Ayah were recruited and worked in their country in British residences as nannies and were often brought to UK to continue looking after children. Those from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Java (Indonesia) were called Amah. Many were abandoned when their service was no longer required. They were cruelly left to fend for themselves.

A building which housed them is set to be commemorated with a Blue Plaque. This is a sort of badge of honour in a scheme run by the UK charity – English Heritage – and honours buildings across London that have been closely associated with important historical figures. Several Indians including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Constitution making B R Ambedkar have been commemorated with the plaques. (Not given in the article, but it should be the buildings they stayed in or were associated with , which were decorated with the plaque).

The honour to the Ayahs’ Home, now at 26 Edwards Road, Hackney, East London, is the result of a campaign started by Farhanah Mamoojee, who heard of the Ayahs’ Home on the BBC documentary A Passage to Britain in 2018 which made a brief reference to the lodging house in Hackney, close to where Mamoojee lived. She set up the Ayah’s Home Project to document the history of the caregivers and also applied for Blue Plaque status for the Home.

Who were the Ayahs

Ayahs and Amahs were domestic workers and considered to be the backbone of British homes in colonial India. Their main task was to look after the children of the family who most often spent more time with them than with their bothered-by-the-climate memsahib mothers. Those who were taken back ‘home’ to Britain were often only to help in the arduous journey and were sent back or retained for a couple of years and then passage arranged for them to return to their home countries,

But some were dismissed, abandoned and consequently forced to fend for themselves. Some of these placed advertisements in newspapers asking for help to return home. Others may have got re-employment while a few took residence in slummy tenements and were usually thrown out when their meagre savings ran out.

According to the Open University’s Making Britain research project, it was found that the Ayah’s Home was started in 1825 in Aldgate by a woman named Elizabeth Rogers. On her death a couple acquired the place and advertised it as a lodging house for travelling ayahs. It was not merely a lodging house, but a job agency and soon enough a place of conversion to Christianity. No records exist however, to substantiate this fact of conversion.

In 1900, the home was taken over by the Christian London City Mission and the home was shifted first to 26, King Edward’s Road, Hackney, and then in 1921 to number 4 on the same road, housing hundreds of destitute child care givers. They did not pay for their board and lodging, the Home being run on donations from local churches.

With the disintegration of the British Raj in most of the East, in mid 20^th century, the building at Edwards Road was converted to a private residence. However, in March 2020, Ms Mamoojee organised an event at the Hackney Museum to showcase the Ayahs of the Brit Empire. The museum embarked on research on the home and identity of its inmates. The award of the Blue Plaque was welcome not only to mark out the home but, as Ms Mamoojee noted, to honour these women who deserve honour, and being remembered.

It would be most interesting if a London dweller visited the address given and sent us current information.

Sri Lankan creative writing in English (maybe there’s much more in Sinhala and Tamil) has featured servants and the Ayah more particularly. I mention two novels: Rajiva Wijesinha’s 1995 Servants: a cycle and Punyakanti Wijenaike’s 1971 Giraya with its cruelly cunning and possessive Ayah who carried a decorative giraya (arecanut slicer) at her waist.

The very successful TV series of the novel had Trelicia Gunawardena as Lucyhamy; Vasanthi Chathurani as the young bride of secretly queer and excellent actor Peter de Almeida, the Ayah’s Baby, and Chandani Seneviratne among others.