Advice for British women bound for India covered far more than finding a husband. It told readers what to wear on a long voyage, what to pack, how to travel alone, where to obtain clothes and furniture, and how to manage a household. These books reveal the practical concerns and colonial assumptions of their British authors—not a complete account of women’s lives or Indian society.
How advice for women traveling to India developed
Women’s travel writing about India reaches back before the Victorian memsahib era. The University of Surrey’s catalog record for Carl Thompson’s Women’s Travel Writings in India 1777–1854 places women’s accounts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (University of Surrey). A more recognizable genre of advice books for British women traveling to India appeared from the 1870s and continued into the early twentieth century.
Examples include the fourth edition of A Few Words of Advice on Travelling and its Requirements Addressed to Ladies (1878), Indian Outfits & Establishments (1882), Lillias Campbell Davidson’s Hints for the Woman Traveller at Home and Abroad (1889), and Maud Diver’s The Englishwoman in India (1909). The books differed in date, audience, and emphasis: some focused on the journey, others on settling in India or traveling alone. There was no single standard set of instructions.
The journey: routes, clothing, and packing
The voyage itself changed over the period these books address. Anu Kumar’s 2017 account describes sailing-era journeys as taking three to four months, with routes that might stop at St Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, Aden, or Socotra before Bombay. Steamships later used Mediterranean and Red Sea routes; the Suez Canal shortened the crossing. By the late nineteenth century, the feature describes Southampton-to-Bombay voyages of around 28 days, with stops, and a route via Gibraltar, Malta, and Port Said. These are broad historical summaries, not itineraries or durations for every ship (Scroll, 31 October 2017).
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What to wear at sea
HMLS’s 1878 fourth-edition guide recommended a warm, dark-grey tweed dress with pockets for the voyage. It also advised taking older underclothing that could be discarded after becoming soiled. On a different clothing question, the guide said: “The black silk dress has to be really a good one and I should advise, as well as two bodices, two skirts also…” HMLS is identified by initials in the account; the name should not be expanded without consulting the original edition.
What to pack—and why advice varied
Advice books generally warned against overpacking, but the practical lists could still be extensive. An 1847 book, Real Life in India, by the pseudonymous “An Old Resident,” recommended fourteen dresses alongside bedding, cabin furniture, hygiene supplies, books, candles, and storage cases. That list reflects one author’s expectations and the conditions he imagined; it should not be mistaken for a universal packing standard.
For women traveling alone, Davidson’s 1889 book included a door-wedge and railway key among suggested safety items, along with a compass and ordinary travel supplies. Such details show how advice writers addressed the small practical uncertainties of moving through unfamiliar places, not simply the social goal suggested by “husband-hunting.”
Settling in: tailoring, household work, and leisure
Making use of local services and goods
Indian Outfits and Establishments discussed having clothes made by a durzee, or tailor. The advice described in Kumar’s feature also included hiring furniture, buying cane furniture locally, and using a ressaie, a local quilt or light mattress. In these recommendations, settling in involved adapting possessions and arrangements to local services and materials rather than bringing everything from Britain.
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Real Life in India advised newly arrived women to consult other women about domestic affairs and described servants as doing household work. This is a view of household life shaped by the book’s colonial social order, not a neutral description of Indian labor or a complete record of British women’s experiences. The advice assumes class distinctions and access to domestic workers that would not have applied to all women.
Protecting possessions from climate
The books also treated the climate as a practical concern for belongings. In a letter to her father, Frances Wells described a piano “bound completely in brass, so as to stand the climate, with a packing case lined with tin, and a red wadded cover which is necessary in India and four glass insulators to keep white ants off.” The sentence is quoted through historian Alison Blunt’s work as reproduced in Kumar’s feature; the original letter is not the source consulted here.
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What the advice books can—and cannot—tell us
Advice literature offers a window into what particular British writers thought women should prepare for: arduous travel, clothing choices, personal security, household management, leisure, and the care of possessions. It also exposes assumptions about gender, class, race, and the colonial order. Its prescriptions are not evidence that every woman followed them, nor do they represent Indian society as a whole.
The scale of British women’s presence in India changed over time. Kumar’s 2017 feature attributes the following figures to historian Alison Blunt: around 250 European women in India by 1810; around 5,000 British women in the North West Provinces in 1872; and 42,004 British women in 1901, within a British population of around 154,691. These are figures as reported in that feature, rather than independently verified here against Blunt’s original demographic source.
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Taken together, the books are best read as practical manuals embedded in a particular historical order. Their details can illuminate how British women were told to travel and settle, while their limits remind us that advice is not the same thing as lived experience.
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