A fascinating set of models, commissioned by a Scottish woman, provides an insight into the cultural exchange between Scotland and India in the early 19th century. Born in Brechin (Angus) in 1785, Margaret Tytler received wide respect during her life for her intellectual contributions, linguistic skills and the care that she had taken with the making of these models.

While the models are preserved in our collection, until recently not much was known about Margaret, her upbringing and how and why she had made them. In this article, Friederike Voigt, Principal Curator, West, South and Southeast Asian collections, shares some of Margaret’s captivating story.

From Scotland to India

Margaret Tytler spent her childhood moving with her family, first from Brechin to London in 1797. Her father, Henry William, a medical doctor, had decided to follow his passion as an author and translator of Greek and Latin poetry rather than to treat patients. For his fellow citizens, this was an unacceptable choice, and social pressure forced the family to leave Brechin.

They found a new home in Titchfield Street in London’s West End. The family’s financial situation was precarious, so Henry William accepted a medical post in the army. For a few years they lived together at Cape Colony (in present-day South Africa). After the family had returned for a short period to London in 1803, they finally settled in Edinburgh. Their flat at Hay’s Court was just outside the city gate, with a view of the castle.

Her father’s death brought the biggest change in Margaret’s life. In 1812, she decided to book a passage on the newly launched ship of the East India Company, Prince Regent. She went to join her older brother who was already in India. Her voyage to Kolkata took five months. From 1814 until her death in 1822, Margaret lived in Patna (Bihar) and Tirhut near the border to Nepal with her mother and her younger brother, who was also a surgeon in the East India Company’s army during the first century of British rule in India.

Engaging with local Indian life

Margaret’s collection originally contained 83 models. They represented three areas of human activity in India: food production, the making of fibres and fabrics, and diverse crafts and occupations.

She also wrote a catalogue which provides insights into her engagement with local people. We learn about how she wandered the streets and markets in Patna and its surroundings to visit artisans; that she watched the farmers when she was riding out in the cool air of the early morning hours. She tells us about Jaganath, a famous turner of wooden toys who shared with her his knowledge of lacquering. The papermakers allowed her to take detailed measurements of their equipment, which she needed to make her models to scale. And a distillery worker helped her to distil spirit using her own model.

In more than one case the models had a practical value for her:

Why scale models?

Unusually, Margaret chose scale models to document her experience of Indian life. Other European women at the time produced written or visual accounts of their travels in India. Margaret, however, applied her analytical mind and compared the tools and machinery employed to make things. She wanted her scale models to be used for learning in Scotland and to enable technological progress there.

When the family lived in London, Margaret’s father was a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (today the Royal Society of Arts). The Society was founded in 1754 to increase industrial productivity in Britain. And it was rather liberal: it admitted women as well. Though we do not have any direct proof, it seems that Margaret read the Society’s published reports and visited their museum. The Society requested inventors to submit a written essay and an accurate model to prove the functionality of their inventions. The models were afterwards displayed in the museum for the public to learn from:

In her documentation of the crafts and agriculture in India, Margaret followed the example of the Society. She designed her models to scale, and she wrote a catalogue to explain them. She took all the necessary measurements for her models. However, with the precise making of them, she commissioned local carpenters whose skills and knowledge she valued highly.

An unusual woman

More than once, Margaret was given due credit for the intellectual contributions to society that she had made with her models. For example, she was commissioned to make a set for the museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata. The full set of models was illustrated in one of the first lithographed books that were printed in Kolkata in the 1820s.

Her own set of models she bequeathed to the University of Edinburgh (now in our collection). Shortly after its arrival in 1825, it went on display in the University’s Natural History Museum. The Edinburgh antiquarian William Alexander Cadell appreciated the precise nature of her models and used the Indian bellows for a comparative study that he published in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal in 1827.

The Indian bellows (museum reference A.UC.832.49) is on display in the Collecting Stories gallery at the National Museum of Scotland. The label was written by the Edinburgh South Asian community group Networking Key Services in collaboration with the museum.