Empire: World History - 369. The First British Indians: The Suffragette Princess (Ep 1)

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

**Unlock the entire First British Indians series ad-free by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** Sophia Duleep Singh: heiress to the Sikh Empire, ward of Queen Victoria, suffragette and revolutionary. How did this Indian princess end up fighting alongside Emmeline Pankhurst and infuriating Winston Churchill?  In Episode 1 of this mini-series exploring the extraordinary daughters of the last Maharaja of the Punjab, William and Anita discuss the incredible, forgotten life of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. They explore her family's tragic fall from grace, her political awakening after experiencing racism in colonial India and her fierce fight for women’s right to vote. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor:  Imogen Marriott Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Forward slash trial to try three months of the London Review of Books for free. Just do it. It's the most wonderful journal in the country and you will never regret it. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads? than they do on social, let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify.

Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group, they're fans. Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnhem. And me, William Drimple.

So today we're going to start a mini-series about the extraordinary daughters of The Last Ruler of the Sikh Empire, the Maharaja of the Punjab. Now, these four episodes are going to take us through the stories of different sisters. You have Sapphire, Catherine, Bamba, Irene and Pauline. Now, these stories are so diverse. They include the suffragettes, women who fought to get women the vote, mixed race life in Edwardian London, lesbian love in Nazi Germany, and resistance against the British Empire. And let me tell you, Empire Club members

get this whole series in one go with no ads. So just follow the link in the description to join our club. Now, these princesses grew up in the heart of the British Empire which had destroyed their world and their family. And in this, I'm going to hand the reins over to Anita because this is really not just her story. It's a story which she discovered, which she made famous. A woman who had been totally forgotten by history

was resurrected, and you wrote a wonderful book about it, which I much loved and enjoyed and reviewed. You did, and you were very, very kind of it. And, you know, it's probably whatever I do in this life, the thing I'm going to be most proud of. I wrote the biography of Princess Sophia de Leap Singh and published it in 2015. And, you know, you've got to just imagine at that time, no one had ever heard of the Indian suffragette. It was just a strange, weird. Some people said, have you made up a novel because it seems so far-fetched. But now, 26, this is a woman who had a postage stamp dedicated to her. She's had a blue plaque in her honour. Which you opened and managed to drop the entire thing on your head, I remember.

Curtin came on my head. Yes, it did. I yanked it with gusto. Also, currently an exhibition in Kensington Palace Gardens is dedicated to her and her sisters. So we're going to begin this series with Sapphire, the Indian princess who fought for British women to have the vote. And I should say we sort of lightly covered this at the beginning. of our Empire adventure. When we were just little baby podlings.

You liked the podlings. I know you would, yes. So look, we're going to go into much more detail, but also rather than just telling you about the family a lot, I urge you to go back and listen to our Coenor episodes where we're going to a real deep dive into her father and grandfather. But we might as well sum it up. So, I mean, just why don't you take the reins here, Willie,

and sum up what her backstory, her lineage is. So Sophia Doolip Singh was born 150 years ago, and she was a product of the great Sikh Empire, which was a considerable empire. Not many people, I think, learned about this at school. But the Sikhs at one point controlled not only the current Indian Punjab and its Pakistani equivalent over the border, but a huge chunk of Kashmir and Himalayas, right up to the borders of China and the Wakang corridor. And it's an enormous chunk of territory and was very powerful. It was the one Indian kingdom, which at the time in Ranjit Singh had resisted. did the British. It had ex-Napoleonic generals running its army, and it was both economically and militarily a considerable force, and the British did not tackle with it. You're right. And right

at the helm of that was Safaya's grandfather, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Sherri Punjab. Shere Punjab, the lion of Punjab was what he was known as. There were two very different memories of Ranjit Singh's reign. In Pakistan, he is, Willie, not remembered very kindly. In India, a hero who repelled Afghan warlords who came over the mountains and would regularly raid Punjab. But Pakistan, not so enamored. It is one of those stories which divides, depending on which side of the border you are. Pakistanis remember the very brutal generals, many of them, these ex-Napolionic guys who were regularly hanging people all over the gates of Bashawa and so on. But in India, he's regarded as one of the most tolerant, most

enlightened rulers. And of course, for Sikhs, he's their great hero. Every seek looks to Rajit Singh as the greatest warrior who led their people and did this extraordinary job of freeing them from the bondage of both maratas and Afghans and moguls and giving them their own enormous state. Yeah, absolutely right. And look, just in case you don't know, he cuts quite the figure. He had one empty, sightless eye socket. And there is this story that's attached to his mythology that when a courtier once asked him, you know, what happened to your eye, sire? He said, God wanted me to look upon all. religions with one eye, which is why he took the light from the other from me.

And Willie, something very famous that people will be familiar with on his bicep. Tell us. So something that's still knocking around in contemporary politics and anyone that saw our recent series about Mamdani's intervention about the Koinor, this links back to Ranjit Singh. Because Ranjit Singh prized the diamond out of the Afghans, particularly Sharshudra Mulk, who was his prisoner. allegedly, according to Afghan sources, torturing his son in front of him until he handed it over.

And this is the symbol, this was the jewel in the crown in the hands of the Sikh. So this is a great moment for Sikh history. Absolutely right. So look, the story goes that after the death of Ranjit Singh, and again, go to our Coenor episodes if you want to hear this in more detail. We go into it in granular detail in that. But there is great upheaval in the kingdom. And the family is at war because who is going to succeed, Ranjit Singh.

until the last man standing is not a man at all. It's a little boy called Do Leap Singh. With chubby cheeks in the picture. Indeed. And he is going to be the father of our heroine today, Sophia. His story, we go into an enormous amount of detail in our co-in-all episodes again. And Willie, I mean, you've sort of said his heartbreak story, isn't it, really? It's a deeply upsetting story, both politically because it is the tale of the end of Sikh rule and the conquest by this corporation. the East Indie Company. But also on a personal level, this is a guy who loses his kingdom, grows up to be this beautiful adolescent that Queen Victoria falls in love with, who's famously painted by Winterhalter. It's one of the greatest, if not the greatest portrait to come from

the Raj. So yeah, really tragic, you know, completely disenfranchised. He ends up in England and becomes a favourite of Queen Victoria, one of her many pets, some have observed, because she liked a foreign prince and princess. But she loves him. And so he, he's a favourite. And so he, he, He's in great favour, but he can't marry anybody when he comes of age because he's too brown. Instead, he goes searching for a bride, and the place that he searches for a bride is a mission in Cairo, because he wants someone virginal, pure, he's disillusioned with the kind of sophistication of the British court. We should have to say that at this point, he is far from virginal. Oh, no.

It's been living at large in the clubs of England. But he finds this young beauty, and she's 16 years old. Her name is Bamba Mueller. And it's really important because she gets written out the story, and that's what we're trying to put back these really important characters into this story. She is the daughter of a German merchant and what was described at the time as an Abyssinian slave. Somebody that was a mistress rather than a wife, somebody who serviced her mullah rather than was his partner in life.

And they then dilap the product of this union. this very beautiful, Arabic speaking, completely clean living. Flower of a child is married to a much older man in 1864. And she is the mother of Sophia. So Sophia and her siblings, there are six of them. There were seven, but one died very soon after birth, but six of them in the nursery. And this poor woman, Bamba Mula, who is completely alienated from society. She's alone.

She doesn't have anything in common with. the Duchess of Athol or all the people who are flocking around Duleep Singh and his marvellous house called Elverdon on the Norfolk Suffolk, borders. Which used to belong to my mother's family, the capals, before he bought it. Absolutely got to get a down-rumpel in there. Not a couple? A couple. It is a keppel in there. But he sort of recreates this grand, muggle, Indian Sikh empire throwback with a mishmash of styles

that he gleans from archives in the London Museum and John Nash designs it for him. And so, you know, there is all of this going on and she, it looks like this young girl is going to grow up in the lap of luxury. We should talk about the children, though, I mean, because there were a few of them. So there are these wonderful photographs of these kids.

There's Victor, the eldest, who will go to Sandhurst to inherit the title. Frederick, known to the family as Freddie, who will go to Cambridge and become an antiquarian, improbably. And then there's Albert Edward, who she calls Eddie. And then there's three extraordinary women, Bamber, Catherine and Sophia. Yeah, and honestly, the women are much more interesting than the men in this story. As so often the case, Anita. I'm glad you can see that point.

Six children, all in the nursery, together splitting their time between Belgravia and Elvedon. It should be said that after the huge falling out that takes place over the Coenor Diamond, And again, I refer you to the Coenor episodes. It is a terrible alcoholism that descends on Paul Bamber Mula. It is somebody who is not very good at handling the situation that she is in. And increasingly, because she's lonely and because she's isolated and because her husband is basically sleeping around behind her back, she is starting to reach for the bottle.

Anyway, Sapphire, born on the 8th of August, 1876, so it's her 150th anniversary this year. During a heat wave. During a heat wave, which we're recording this, experiencing that heat wave right now, becomes a beloved of Queen Victoria. Out of all of the daughters, it is Sophia who is the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She even takes her name, her middle name, as a sort of a doffing of the cap by the Maharaja, who's still friendly when she's born to Queen Victoria.

Her middle name is Alexandrovna, named for Queen Victoria, whose name is Alexandrina. So even then, you know, Deleaf has to put his own little twist on it, but he has this thing of, you know, you are connected to the Queen of England, the Empress of India. Don't you ever forget it? And Victoria, despite, you know, the fact that she wears this family heirloom and is referred to behind her back by some of the Deleafs things as Mrs. Fagan, the receiver of stolen goods, does actually warm to the children. And it too, Sapphire in particular. So it all feels, William, that it's all going to be great. They're going to live this charmed existence. But it goes wrong.

It goes very badly wrong. And Dullip, who is in his youth, this beautiful boy that Queen Victoria falls in love with, who is painted by Vinterhalter, one of the greatest portraits of the Raj. He turns into a bit of a monster, actually, by that. He's not someone who we would have liked on this podcast. No, and he's not kind. really, not kind. I mean, you know, he's sort of, he acts the adoring father, has camera, because cameras have just been invented at this time. So he takes these loving portraits,

particularly of Sophia. She's the most sort of photographed as a young baby of all of her brothers and sisters. And he likes doing these portraits of her sitting in her mother's lap, and her mother just looks so, so sad. But the little baby is sort of like beaming out and lovely. But there's not much else. And that's because his mind's on other things. Because for him catastrophically, the British keep him on rather a short leash financially, which he doesn't like. You know, he spends like his best friend, the Prince of Wales, because he's been taught to believe by Queen Victoria that he's one of the family. You know, he spends a lot of time at Osborne House in the Isle of White, is right in the inner sanctum of her affections. But

every time he needs some money, he has to write to the Indy office, he has to ask them. He has to say, look, can I actually spend money on this or that? And he does spend. And he's aware, isn't he, that he's, you know, that they've taken this incredibly rich kingdom, the richest land in India was his. And now he's having to write for every fiver he wants to put on the horses at Newmarket. Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, he's leading a dissolute lifestyle. Let's not, you know, make any bones about this. But what he becomes bitter about is when they start to cut him off. because they start thinking the India office, Queen Victoria's been too indulgent of this guy, why should we be paying his gambling debts or if he wants the latest styles for his children? Why should be doing that? So they start returning his invoices saying we're not going to pay them. And so he has to start selling his jewels, you know, whatever little he has left from this vast fortune that had been amassed by the Sikh Empire.

And he writes to the Queen, accusing her government of having to, you know, of having set out to destroy him from the very beginning. I'll just read a little bit from one of the letters, Willie, that he wrote in rage. From childhood, I have been absolutely in the hands of the government without a will or independent action of my own, trusting implicitly to their good faith. And now there appears to have been a deliberate intention from the first to leave my children and family to gradually sink in this world.

And in 1886 he finally stands, doesn't he packs up with his wife and Jordan and he tries to go back to India to raise the flag. He tries to reconvert Sikhism and he has a plan which the British get onto that he's going to ferment a revolution in India. And so there's one very simple solution for that that the British have. They just don't let him get there. Yeah, he gets as far as Aidan. You're absolutely right. The British control port and the Red Sea. all voyages go through the Suez Canal.

That was the trajectory. He is stopped at Aden. He is arrested. His family is arrested. Safaya's first arrest, and it will be the first of many, happens when she is nine years old. So what happens in Aden is that he declares himself, Duleep Singh, Safaya's father,

as the implacable foe of the British, that he is going to get back to India one way or the other, the Tsar is going to rise up with him. They are going to pincer the British out of the north of India. And this is a complete reversal from the days in his 20s when he was this apple of Queen Victoria's eye. The darling of her eye. Absolutely right. Absolutely right.

It is the most sour of relationships. So he's staying in Aden, refusing to go back home to England and be a good boy. But what he does at this point, Willie, is why I actually, you know, for somebody I really did. careful when he was a little boy and I felt terribly sorry about his separation from his mother, how the British put her in a tower, how they forced him as a frightened little boy to sign this piece of paper that gave over his kingdom, his diamond, his future and was sort of sent off to become a Britisher. I despise what he does at this point because he cuts his family loose. He tells his wife, who is already depressed enough to be married to such a neglectful man,

that, you know, you go back, take the kids back, I have nothing to do with this, I am onwards to India. So she has to go back to England penniless. He has sold everything, everything for this adventure to go and reclaim his throne. He has thought nothing about the welfare of his children. He buggers off to Paris. He's got a secret meet-up with his mistress, a chamber maid from Kennington called Ada Weatherall. Remember her name. We're going to meet her again in episode four. She's going to be very important. Who he meets in basically a bordello. It's a knock and shop. Yes. Cox's Hotel appropriately named. Ada works there.

And Duleep is a frequent flyer, shall we say. And that's how those two get together. It's all very tragic. Tragic, tragic story. A hundred percent. Bamba washes up back in England with six listless children. She is abandoned. She is humiliated. She is broken. People are spitting at her in the streets because they are, you know, the newspapers which once adored Dooley, but now talking about him being a traitor, that he's tried to side with the Tsar. What, you know, what the hell?

This ungrateful Eastern potentate. Who the hell does he think he is? And she dies in 1887. Sophia is 10 years old. It's actually Sophia who gets ill first. She catches typhoid. Her mother, who has just managed to pull herself out of her. of a bottle long enough to be distraught and is nursing her and is praying on her knees

every night for her to recover catches the typhoid and the very morning Sophia opens her eyes and her fever has broken. The first thing she sees is her mother dead on the floor by her bed. So just imagine that kind of trauma. She sort of never forgave herself for that that she had the illness that then spread to her mother. And then only six years later, Eddie dies, the much beloved Eddie. And he develops pneumonia, doesn't he? Yeah, Safaya's beloved little brother that she has actually acted as mother to ever since her own mother died is so promising.

He has just won a place to eat him. And before he gets to take it up, he develops pneumonia and he dies. And, you know, Sapphire sits by his bedside, just like her mother sat beside her with Bamba and Catherine, while he's slipping. in and out of consciousness and calling for his parents. It is awful. So there you have, you know, Safaya sitting by little Eddie's bedside with her sister, Bamba, also named after their mother, and Catherine, looking at this little boy fighting a fever that he just can't escape. And he's slipping in and out of consciousness and he's asking for his mother and father. And he dies. And he's

buried in Elvedon in the churchyard next to his mother, and people still go on pilgrimages there. Very tragic little graveyard under these very English conifer trees. I went in pouring rain, which didn't add to the kind of atmosphere of happiness about the whole place. Well, I mean, if you do ever venture that way, you'll see that there are always little tributes left in front of these three graves. Lots of flowers by blue sheets. Yeah. And little notes. Yeah.

So the Dalyp Singh family, and Sophia is just basically losing everybody. she loves. You know, a father who then very soon after Eddie dies, he dies broken and broke in a Parisian hotel, never made it back to Punjab, never got his reputation back, was destroyed by this second relationship with Ada Wetherall, more of that in the fourth episode of this mini-series. And the three remaining sisters are now effectively looking after each other. Victor the eldest, he's at Sandhurst. He doesn't really, he hasn't really got a paternal bone in his body. Freddy's at Cambridge. Nobody else is going to come and save them. Who's paying the bills and where are they living?

Good, really good question because Indians don't like to hear this, but it is Queen Victoria who intervenes. And it is Queen Victoria because of her affection largely for Sophia who decides to put her hand out and catch this desperate family. So she puts these children under the guardianship of a man called Arthur Oliphant. When Sophia, Catherine, Bamber, Victor, you know, are getting older just before they're all going off to their own adventures. She gives Sophia primarily, but the other sisters are in tow, a home. Faraday House on the grounds of Hampton Court Palace. It's a grace and favour residence, and she gives an allowance of £200 a year to keep it up. And this is where Sophia is going to live on and off for the rest of

her life. Is it in the palace or on the grounds? Right opposite the front gates of Hampton Court. So it's part of the Crown Estate, or it was part of the Crown Estate at that time, and it was one of this real estate of grace and favour that the queen would give to those she had the most affection for. So there would be heroes from the mutiny, as the British called it. Anyone who had fought and lost their lives, their wives and children could find a home here in these grace and favours, or dignitaries, or favourites of the court. And Sophia is one such. So this is going to actually be pretty much the centre point of her life for the rest of her life. And how old does she By the time she moves into Faraday house, we saw her age nine coming back from Aden.

What is she now? She's 18 years old when her coming out occurs at Buckingham Palace. She has her debut in front of Queen Victoria herself. And there's a very beautiful little detail about how Queen Victoria allows her to kiss her on both cheeks, which is really a sign of favour. Otherwise, you know, people curtsy from a distance. But Sophia is kissed and embraced. And she has tea with the Queen. So she hasn't lost any of her status?

Sophia has it, but Victoria loathes her sisters, absolutely hates them. Why? Because they hate her. Right. That's the thing. And she has spies looking after these children who are constantly feeding back anything disloyal that they might say. And Sophia is always regarded to be sort of the pliant one, the manned one, whereas the other two are called wild and feral. And she grows into quite a beauty.

She's not classically beautiful. I find her beautiful. And the newspapers at the time, well, good. And the newspapers at the time found her beautiful. Partly it was because she knew how to dress herself. She's wearing some very fancy dogs on the pictures I'm looking at here. She's able to wear the very latest fashion. And in fact, the British embrace her.

They call her, you know, sort of a perfect Edwardian princess. A thoroughly English gal notwithstanding her oriental name is how the Church Times put it. But, you know, despite this quite vacuous life that she's leading, you know, going to every party. Breeding prize Pomeranians, I like that. Yeah, she's, I mean, she enters crafts and wins with her dogs. And she's also, you know, very good on a horse. Her stock is rising. The sisters is sinking.

And Victor and Freddie are sort of, you know, nothing and nowhere. Victor's a lot like his father and he's being closely watched. I think you're underestimating this nice antiquarian who does some lovely antiquarian stuff. He will be very important, Freddie, but not in any way that newspapers will notice or society will care. That's why he goes off to live in Norfolk quietly and collect books and coats of arms. You know, that's Freddie. But Freddie is a great supporter solace to the rest of the family. Even though Sophia is the one that they can bear and the one that they can bear,

and the one that they like. She isn't from what British society would call, you know, a safe family, a safe background. You know, she's got a father who tried to bring down the Raj, her grandmother escaped a British fortress. Her elder brother, Victor, is as scandalous as his dad was and is declared bankrupt, and that's reported widely in the press. And, you know, Freddie quietly living his antiquarian life in Norfolk, where he's so eccentric, Freddie, He banishes electricity from his house. He thinks it's awful.

I love the sound of him. Collects Jacobian art. You'd like him even more. I'd like him more. I love Jacobian art. He loves all that. And he also, he loves the monarchy. So one little detail which I found when I was doing research is that he hanged a portrait of Oliver Cromwell upside down in his toilet.

So anybody who was taking a leak would have a look at Cromwell standing on his head. So you've got a really sort of strange family. But we're going to take a break now because this thoroughly English girl who's been sort of moderately educated, but not too much. In Brighton of all places. Yeah, I mean, they're all sort of packed off to different places to try and improve them. Something will happen in 1902, which will change everything. And this thoroughly English gal who everybody loves and invites to every party is going to end up. enemy of the people despised by the British press.

Join us after the break. This episode is brought to you by The National Archives. It's Tom Holland here from Goldhangers. The Rest is History. Now, American Independence is often painted as a quest for freedom, a triumph of democratic ideals. But it was also a period of immense risk and violence, which turned the colonial world upside down.

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He won't turn up. But the great and the good, everybody from Sapphire Society is going. But the girls don't have an invitation. And so they sort of scheme and they beg and they try and they end up going behind the back of the Secretary of State for India and turning up. And actually what should have been a triumphant homecoming for them, you know, sort of returning to the place where your father was a Maharaja is awful. Well, you just go through sort of the kind of treatment that, because I think it's true to say, and I have said this, that this is the first time Sophia will experience racism. In England, she's a little darling. She's Queen Victoria's favourite.

Everybody, you know, she only sort of skitters across the top of high society. In India, she's another brown face among millions. And this, I think, is a frequent feature of the colonial period that Indians such as Gandhi come to England, they become successful lawyers, they have a circle of vegetarian, spiritualist, mystic-loving friends around them. And the minute they go back to India, suddenly they're downgraded. They become colonial subjects. They're not treated with any respect at all.

They're treated as the colonised. And this is what Sapphire has, having been very much, you know, the queen of crafts with her Pomeranians and all the rest of it riding around on an early bicycle and this sort of thing. Absolutely. Ladies' magazines love her. They can't get enough of her, you know. But the colonial authorities, rather than regarding her as a top reader or whatever,

regard her as a massive threat because she is the daughter of the deposed king of the Punjab. He could stir things up. Yeah. And Willie, they told them, no, they told them not to come. But they sort of snuck on different boats to get over to India and they're there anyway. So when they do reach India, they are frozen out. The British officials at the Darbar treat them with contempt. They're not invited to any of the main ceremonies.

They are pretty much shunned. And this is something that Sophia's never seen. The other thing she's never seen is how much her father and grandfather had. You know, there are no roads in Lahore named for her father. father and grandfather. But there are lots named for Victoria. There are statues of Victoria everywhere. They're sort of a reflection of London. Still there, sitting in the middle of the Mal in Lahore, yeah. Yeah, the Mal, exactly. There are all these reflections of British places in her country, but her people are not acknowledged and her family is not

acknowledged. And even the Afghans have a nice memorial in the middle of Lahore in the form of The Zamzam Gun, which is the great gun of the Punjab, which is an Afghan gun. But there's nothing from the Sikh period which is visible or which is celebrated. There are beautiful Sikh pavilions, of course, in Lahore Fort. Well, and also there's the tomb of Ranjit Singh still is in Lahore, and I've been there. But, you know, other than that, it's kind of like she's, her whole entity has been deleted. But you know where it hasn't been deleted? It hasn't been deleted in the minds of the people.

So everywhere she goes when she travels to Punjab from the Delhi Darbar, she is greeted by Sikhs primarily but not singularly, who throw themselves at her feet and say, you are the lion's cub. Tell us what you want us to do. Do you want us to fight? We will fight for you. And, you know, this respect that she gets from people who look like her

completely turns her mind. And while she's in this sort of state of mental and emotional turmoil, or she gets introduced to Indian nationalists. Lala Lajput Rai, who's not a famous name in Britain but is well known in India, leading early nationalist, 1907, on that visit she meets him. And she's very much in this group of people who will be in the center of what will be the Indian National Congress and so on. And what they start telling her about what Indians are experiencing, her eyes, the scales fall from her eyes.

What was I thinking? Hang on, they don't accept me. Okay, they're nice. to me, but look at what they're doing in this country. And you're right, she starts to mix in nationalist circles. She starts to become political. And La La Lajapeth Rai is like a father to her, like the father she really didn't have in her own father. You know, he sort of cares for her. He shows her love and respect. And she writes furiously to her friends because Lala Lajbeth Rai eventually will be caught in a Lati charge, a charge with long sticks.

Latties are these long sticks that the police. Made a bamboo. Yeah. And they could beat you savagely with them. And, you know, this is an older man who is peacefully protesting and he gets whacked over the head and he died. So there's a moment of sort of complete revelation that this people that she thought respected her have rejected her. And the people she's forgotten about her own people, the Sikhs and the people of Northern India cluster around her. and give her the respect that she's not been getting from anyone else.

But they also expect something from her. You know, what they're saying is, tell us what to do. And she's like, I've never had to tell anybody what to do in my life. And when Lala Lajbeth Rai is killed, she snaps. And she actually puts in writing in her diary how much she hates the British. She has never thought this in her love. She has fought her sisters who have hated the British for quite some time, that that is no way.

way to live. They're not our enemy. What are you talking about? Our father abandoned us. They're the ones who took care of us. But after Lala Lajpethrae dies, well, that's it. So when she returns back to England, she's a changed woman. She's completely different. Well, she starts doing things for other people rather than being sort of this selfish magazine pin-up. She starts fundraising for the Lashkas, you know, these Indian sailors who are dumped in England without being paid. You know, she starts looking after the abandoned ires who come over with small English children and then when the children outgrow their need, they don't have the money to get back. And the most important thing is that she hears this voice that echoes what she's heard in India.

In India, it went, avaz, or avas, or avas, though avas, though. In England, the cry is, give us a voice, give us a voice, give us a voice, and it is coming from the suffragettes. So we shouldn't be too surprised, Willie, that she throws herself into the cause. She recognises it. For those who don't know who the suffragettes are, explain to us, Anita, who they are,

because major force at the beginning of the 20th century. So women didn't have the vote. And it's, you know, fairly, we're talking about the 1900s. They don't have the vote, okay? And they are fighting to be. recognize first politely with suffragetist organizations who try and lobby politicians argue their case and then the suffragettes who are much more militant they march they smash windows they set fire to post office boxes they're off bombs every so often yeah i mean they don't kill people but they do

destroy property rip up the orchids in the in in queue gardens you know that the kind of thing that people thought oh that's not what women do it's a scandal and these women are so scandalous. They are detested by the press. It's a male-owned press. And so they are demons, Harrodons in the eye of the British press establishment. And Sophia, knowing this, knowing that she had, you know, sort of done the backstroke and the adulation of the British establishment, throws herself with these wicked, wicked women. She not only donates money. She drives press carriages through the streets of London. And this was one of the things that the suffragettes did to attract press attention, but also to wind people up.

They would sort of drive their press carts, covered in all their votes for women badges, and park them outside theatres, so that when the drunkards came out from a musical performance, there would be a Barney and there would be a fight and they could be seen to be fighting physically against the establishment. Now, all this culminates in Black Friday, the 18th of November, 1910, The man behind it is? Well, Winston Churchill, you may have heard the name. So Winston Churchill is the Home Secretary.

Winston Churchill has had some experience of Sophia Del Eapesing. And I think it's fair to say, he don't like her. He don't like her at all. Because not only has she been sort of rattling tins and going on these runs and making a spectacle of herself, she's been selling the Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace, which the Daily Mail has loved to get angry about. So, you know, it's wound up the establishment so much that King George V, who's now on the throne, you know, Edward doesn't reign for very long, tries to get her thrown out of Hampton Court.

He goes to his private secretary and he said, is there any way of removing this tiresome princess from this place? It's embarrassing. And the answer that goes back is, if you want to put Queen Victoria's goddaughter out on the street, you do it. because let us tell you here at the India office, we think it might send out a rather dangerous message to India where things are already restive, and we're talking about 1910 here, you know, there's trouble brewing, and how is it going to look that this little Indian chit of a girl

is standing up to the British establishment? This takes us neatly to Kaxton Hall, November 1910. The 18th of November, I think one of the most depressing days in British Democratic, history. So the government's been dragging its feet on this piece of legislation called the conciliation bill. And the conciliation bill would give the vote to some women. That on the 18th, the Prime Minister Asquhart effectively kills it dead. He says, it's not going to have enough time to pass. He guillotines it. He suffocates it. Emmeline is ready. She's thought, Emilyne

Pankhurst, who is this pale-faced, absolute virago of a woman who leads the suffragettes. Queen of the suffragettes, yeah. She knew this might happen. So she's gathered about 300 of her most committed suffragettes, and they plan to march to Parliament and hammer down the door and make Asquith explain themselves. Not as a huge mob, because Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, has cleverly passed a piece of legislation that makes it illegal to walk in groups of more than 12. So what they do, the suffragettes, because they are smart,

is that they separate into many different groups of 12 and leave at five minute intervals to get to the House of Commons. And Sophia de Leap Singh is in the vanguard of this, marching shoulder to shoulder with Emmeline Pankhurst and the rock star suffragettes of their day. They reach the gate, St. Stephen's Gate. If you've been to Parliament Square, you'll know it very well. And they are effectively kettled by the police.

They're sort of pushed back and not allowed to make. move. It doesn't seem violent. The place is filled with bystanders. There are sailors on shore leave who've turned up because it's been well trailed in the press that Asquith is not going to let this bill pass and that the suffragettes aren't going to let that stand. And so everybody is expecting violence. The suffragettes put on a good show, right? So it's filled with men. It's filled with police officers on horseback, in uniform, some not in uniform, and just members of the public. Lots of men gathered in Parliament Square and the police have been given a really unusual order that day. They've been told, don't arrest the women, discourage them. Sort of a euphemistic

line. But what it means is basically push them, hurt them until they give up and go away. Because what Winston Churchill doesn't want is he doesn't want these bloody women clogging up the legal system, standing in courtrooms, denouncing the unfairness of not giving women the vote and making their speeches and going to prison and going on hunger strike and embarrassing him and the crown even more. So what follows on Black Friday when Safara's kettled at the gate with Emmeline, the next group arrives and then the group after that and then the next group. And Safari is forced to watch as these women are, there's no easier way of put it sexually

assaulted by the police. Some are picked up and thrown against pavements and railings. You've got members of Parliament hanging out of the windows just to get a better look at what was going on because it's a complete circus. Police officers picking up women and throwing them into crowds of men say, here, do whatever you want to these bloody bitches. You know, they're obscene testimony from that day. It is gruesome what is done. Women's breasts are punched. They are kicked between the legs. They are thrown back and thrown back, but not arrested. And you've got Emmeline and Sophia and the others at the gate say, arrest them. Just arrest them. And no arrests are being made. And what happens to Sophia herself? Is she assaulted? What she does is she's a

tiny, tiny slip of a woman. This violence goes on for six hours, but quite sort of early on. She manages to slip the cordon. She's tiny, right? She's about five foot tall. Roughly, roughly like another loud of the Punjab on this podcast. I have two inches on her, let me tell you. Five two. So she sort of slips up because she sees this one police officer who is repeatedly picking up a woman and smashing her against the concrete. And this woman gets up again because the women will not go back. That's the other thing.

You know, they've been treated so harshly. But their absolute commitment is we are going to get this vote this day. we are not going to retreat, no retreat. And so this poor woman who's dazed after being smashed against the concrete gets up again. She's picked up again, off her feet dashed to the ground again. Sophia sees this and thinks actually a third time she is going to die. So she rushes in, she gets in between the police officer and this unnamed suffragette, we never learn her name, and she body checks the man away.

Now, he would have been shocked out of his shoes, Willie, because it would be. like seeing, I don't know, one of the huge celebrities of the day, Zendaya popping up in a riot and pushing a police officer back. And all he wanted to do was get the hell away from her because wherever she is, there is press attention. And the police officers that day have covered up some of them their identifying numbers so that they can behave whatever they way they want and there'll be no repercussions. Savaya having pushed him off this woman and potentially saved her life.

life won't let it go and she starts screaming at him. Show me your number. Show me your number. Just show me your number. And he tries to melt into the crowd. She follows him. She's a nutter, right? You know, you score this as a win that you've saved this woman's life. But she is not having it. She wants to bring this man to justice. So she keeps following him through the crowd. She is getting tossed around like a rag doll and getting battered from all sides, but she won't stop. And she manages to get this policeman's number V-700, V-700, and she repeats it and repeats it and repeats it. And finally, after six hours, these women are arrested.

Sophia is one of them. I've seen the arrest record. But none of them are charged because the Home Secretary cannot afford to let these women tell their story, a Black Friday in front of the general public. So how is this covered, Anita? Well, I mean, it leads to a real sea change in public opinion because there are press, Like I said, everybody was expecting a spectacle that day, so there are photographers and they see what is happening. There's one picture on the front page of the Daily Mirror of a suffragette called Ada Wright who's curled up on the ground with policemen looming over her and one man trying to protect her.

And there are others of, you know, sort of these sticks. It's sort of very reminiscent of the lati charges as I described in India. You know, the policemen are sort of taking these long sticks and hitting these women. And these pictures are now public. So the mood, the tide, starts to change a bit. They're still frightened of these annoying Harrod and women, but they have some sympathy. So when Sophia starts to complain about V-700, because she does, let me tell you, she won't let it go. She escalates and escalates and escalates.

And because she is someone, people are even entertaining her complaints. It gets to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, it goes higher. it finally ends up with the Home Secretary. And I've seen a little note that he writes, because he is so fed up with this woman, send no more reply to her. W.S.C. Winston Spencer Churchill, you can see where his pen angrily dug into the paper.

It's fabulous, a fabulous piece of historical ephemeral. So she now has a taste for this. In our modern terms, we probably call her the beginnings of an activist. And her next thing is the tax resistance. In 1909, an organisation called the Women's Tax Resistance League has been founded. And of course, Sapphire joins it immediately. She refuses to pay the tax on her servants. She refuses to pay the dog license on her famous Pomeranians that she takes to crafts.

She refuses to pay the carriage license. So she writes her to the tax office, she tears up their demand. And she tells them, I shall pay no taxes until I'm allowed to vote. No taxation without representation. quite right so far. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and when they then come for her, they basically, the bailiffs aren't going to let this go.

You know, the tax office isn't going to let this go. They come in and they take her jewels. They turn up, they seize her jewels, which is really such an echo of the seizure of the coenol from her father. All of these things will be completely, you know, sort of provocative to her. There's a wonderful thing that happens. bailiffs turn up one day at the, you know, Faraday House, they've got this warrant. The housekeepers opening the door doesn't want to let them in, but they go sort of charging past her.

They go upstairs. They take the lady's jewelry out. And this ring in particular is going to be auctioned off in Ashford. And what happens is that the suffragettes know this when this happens and they fill all of the seats with suffragettes. And any man who is there, they sit on them. They sit on the men or they sit behind. them growling in their ears going... Don't get in the way of a suffragette.

You better not. And this amazing woman, she's an artist. If you are an artist, you all know, Louise Joplin Row, celebrated Victorian painter, friend of Oscar Wilde. She buys the ring and she goes across the room at the end and she hands it back to Sophia. And of course, the crowd goes mad and the suffragettes unfur their banners. It's a movie. It's a movie.

They hold this rally in the auction. I mean, you know, it's fabulous. So, yeah, she does that. she refuses to sign her census papers. She scrolls across it. You can go to prison for that as well. As women do not count, I refuse to be counted. She's just a pain.

And this is all escalating. The bombing campaign of the suffragettes, when they're setting fire to things and destroying the contents of letterboxes, that's stepping up as well. People are worried that they are actually going to kill people because, you know, they're ratcheting up their campaign. And then suddenly it all ends with the war.

war and the suffragettes, including Sophia, put down their demands. Sophia throws herself into the war effort. She becomes a nurse for those broken Indian soldiers coming back. In the Brighton Pavilion of all places, in this Indian-looking domed construction in Brighton. And that's now filled with wounded Indian soldiers from the trenches. And she goes, nurses them. She does. And this is a quieter and more gentle and loving side of the fact.

She's maternal. You know, she is the same woman who wanted to look. look after Eddie and look after her sisters and take care of everybody, but who's been forced into this situation of having to fight for those who can't fight for themselves. After the war in 1918, the representation of the People Act kicks in. Now, that means women over 30 with a property qualification will get the vote, not full equality, not by any means that won't come until 1928. But quite a step forward. Yeah, it's a breaking of a dam. You could definitely say that. And it is, you know, and Sophia carries on sort of being prominent in the suffragette movement.

Actually, if you go to the Parliament Square, there is a suffragette statue and her name is on it. So that's a recent edition, just sort of paying homage to what the women of this country and elsewhere, oh, women like Sapphire. She lives a quiet life in Buckinghamshire. I can't imagine anything that she does is completely quiet, but yeah. No, she does sort of taken refugees during the Second World War. She looks after them. She's alive as late at the Second World War. She absolutely is.

And I have met two of them that she looked after. God, this is such an extraordinary thing. So she vaults from the world of Radgett Singh, which seems so very long ago in the mid-19th century, right up to 1948, is it when she finally dies? She dies 22nd of August, 1948. So, yeah. And, you know, she sees her, the country that she loves India ripped in half. Her father's kingdom torn asunder.

She's 72 years of age. She dies and leaves instructions for her funeral, which I think are very beautiful. I mean, the band is to play a full Wagner funereal march. It's a Christian funeral. But she is to be cremated afterwards and her ashes are to be taken back to India. Are they taken back to India? Yes, they are by Bamber. but we'll get to that in her sister Bamba's story.

But one thing I just wanted to add, in her will, even though partition has unleashed the very worst of communal hatred among the Punjabis of India and what is now Pakistan, she leaves in her will, she divides between three girls' schools, a Hindu one, a Muslim one and a Sikh one. And when in her life she was asked to give her any, entry for who's who. People bang on for ages about how clever and wonderful they are. She writes nothing at all, which is why she disappeared from history so comprehensively because she was

useless at blowing her own trumpet. She just gave one line under interest. She said, the advancement of women. That's it. That's her entry. Her name and that. And that in a nutshell is Sophia, who's the most well known of the sisters now that was completely. unknown, not so long ago. And you've all got to go out and buy Anita's wonderful biography. Well, there's lots of stuff in there if you'd like to. There's also an exhibition now at Kensington Palace with an illustrated book full of extraordinary photographs. But we will be continuing this story into territory we haven't gone before with the story of Sophia's sister. So who are we going to do next, Anita? Well, we've got we've got Bamba, Catherine. So, you,

You know, one is a hellraiser. One is seriously beautiful, but living the most alternative lifestyle of the time. He falls in love with her German governess. Lifts in Castle for the best part of 30 years, right through the First World War, right into the rise of Nazi Germany, and who in the middle of the 1930s, and I will give complete credit to Peter Bunce, who did the book that you were talking about, the beautiful book, because he's uncovered a lot of this stuff, Quite literally, an Indian shindler is a story that is now sort of developed.

Rescuing Jewish families from concentration camps. Her name is Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh, and her story has never properly been told. So if you want to hear that, and you don't want to wait, join Empire Club to access the entire series. And you can just follow the link in the description. Until the next time we meet is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durember.

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