Black Hole of Calcutta - Controversy

Controversy

Holwell claims that one hundred and twenty-three died of one hundred and forty-six held. While his account was not questioned in Britain at the time, other contemporary accounts claimed a larger number and differed on other details such as the room size and whether there was a window. In 1915, British scholar J.H. Little challenged Holwell's claims in his article, "The 'Black Hole' — The Question of Holwell's Veracity", arguing that Holwell was an unreliable witness and his veracity is questionable. Little went so far as to label Holwell's version "a gigantic hoax". Other historians, including Indian scholar Brijen Gupta, disagreed with Little's strong rejection, but nevertheless suggest that Holwell's account was exaggerated.

The following arguments have been listed against Holwell's account:

• Absence of any independent confirmation: It is stated that apart from Holwell's account no other source mentioned such an incident. Given its nature, it seems very unlikely that all traces of such a thing having happened would have disappeared. It must be remembered that the Bengal sultanate was a decaying, bureaucratic one, not at all suited to systematic suppression of information. Historian R C Majumdar in his An Advanced History of India says that Holwell's story is entirely baseless and cannot be considered reliable historical information. However, Secretary Cooke, another alleged European survivor of the Black Hole, gave evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1772.
• Little argued that, after the deaths in the occupation of Calcutta and the subsequent evacuation and desertion, 146 British prisoners could not have been left in Siraj's hands three hours after the surrender, though this claim has been challenged. Holwell's list of the alleged victims explicitly includes Anglo-Indians and East India Company sepoys. Aside from the aforementioned list, in his account he writes of being crushed by a fellow inmate who was a "Topaz" (a black Catholic soldier); moreover, the only female survivor, Mrs. Carey, was described as a "country-born" woman, which in the language of the time meant of mixed blood.
• Only forty-three of the garrison were listed as missing from Fort William after the incident and therefore the maximum number of deaths could only be forty-three. However, this is also subject to the objection that according to the Holwell account itself, not all the prisoners would have been listed as members of the garrison.
• Bholanath Chunder, a Bengali landlord, opined that a floor area of 267 square feet (25 m²) could not contain 146 European adults. In order to prove this, Bholanath fenced round an area 15 by 18 feet (4.6 by 5.5 m) with bamboo stalks and counted the number of his Bengali tenants who could be crammed into it. The number was found to be much less than 146, and a Bengali villager's body occupies much less space than a British soldier's. By comparison, modern subway standards specify 3 square feet (0.28 m2) for rush-hour standees, 146 people in the 'Black Hole' would have had about 1.85 square feet (0.172 m2). However, this objection misses the point that the prisoners in the 'hole' were so cramped that they perished, and subway densities are designed to give enough space to prevent this.

The true number of deaths will probably never be definitively established. No list was made of the British soldiers surrendering at the fort, not even a count of heads. Many escaped between the surrender and the alleged confinement in the 'Black Hole'. Even Holwell was offered by a friend the chance to escape. Therefore, the number of deaths in the 'Black Hole' could have been considerably fewer.

Historian Simon Schama suggested on his 'A History of Britain' programme, which aired in September 2000, that Holwell exaggerated the exact number of people by about 3 times its actual amount but did not dispute that the event actually took place.