Anna Leonowens - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Leonowens' maternal grandfather, William Vawdrey (or Vaudrey) Glascott, was an English-born commissioned officer of the 4th Regiment, Bombay Native Infantry, in the Bombay Army. Glascott arrived in India in 1810, and was apparently married in 1815, although his wife's name is not known. According to biographer Susan Morgan, the only viable explanation for the complete and deliberate lack of information regarding Glascott's wife, in official British records, is that she "was not European". Morgans suggests that she was "most likely ... Anglo-Indian (of mixed race) born in India." The Glascotts' first child, Mary Anne Glascott, was born in 1815 or 1816.

Mary Glascott married a non-commissioned officer of the Sappers and Miners, Sergeant Thomas Edwards on March 15, 1829 in Tannah. Edwards was from London and a former cabinetmaker. Tom Edwards's died before his second daughter was born, in Ahmadnagar on 26 November 1831. While she was christened Anna Harriett Emma Edwards, Leonowens later changed Harriet to "Harriette" and ceased using her third given name (Emma).

For most of her adult life, Anna Edwards had no contact with her family and took pains to disguise her origins by claiming that she had been born with the surname "Crawford" in Caernarfon and giving her father's rank as Captain. By doing so, she protected not only herself but her children, who would have had greater opportunities if their mixed-race heritage remained unknown. Investigations uncovered no record of her birth at Caernarfon, news which came as a shock to the town that had long claimed her as one of its most famous natives.

Mary Edwards later married an Irish soldier, Corporal Patrick Donohoe of the Engineers, who was later awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in Bombay during the Indian Mutiny. In 1845, her 15-year-old sister, Eliza Julia Edwards, married Edward John Pratt, a 38-year-old British civil servant who had served in the Indian Navy. One of their grandsons was the actor William Henry Pratt, better known as Boris Karloff. Because Edward John Pratt was also an Anglo-Indian, Anna Edwards never approved of her sister's marriage, and her disconnect from the family was so complete that decades later, when a Pratt relative contacted her, she replied threatening suicide if he persisted.

Anna Edwards's relationship with her stepfather Donohoe was not a happy one, and she later accused him of putting pressure on her, like her sister (with whom she also fell out), to marry a much older man. In 1847, the family went to Aden, to where Donohoe had been seconded as assistant supervisor of public works. Here Anna Edwards was taught by the resident chaplain and orientalist, the Revd. George Percy Badger, and his wife Maria, a missionary schoolmistress. The Badgers recognised the girl's aptitude for languages and, in 1849, they took her with them on a tour through Egypt and Palestine.