Mary Martha Sherwood - Marriage and India

Marriage and India

On 30 June 1803, Sherwood became an army wife by marrying her cousin, Captain Henry Sherwood (1776–1849) (cousin marriage was a common practice before the twentieth century). For several years, she accompanied her husband and his regiment, the 53rd Foot, on numerous postings throughout Britain. In 1804, Capt. Sherwood was promoted to paymaster, which slightly improved the couple's finances. In 1805 the regiment was ordered to India and the Sherwoods were forced to leave their first child, Mary Henrietta, with Sherwood's mother and sister in England.

Sherwood's four-month sea voyage to India was difficult; she was again pregnant and the regiment's ship was attacked by French warships. The Sherwoods stayed in India for eleven years, moving with the army and an ever-increasing family from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Dinapore (Danapur) to Berhampore (Baharampur) to Cawnpore (Kanpur) to Meerut (Meerut). They had six children in India: Henry (1805–1807), Lucy Martha (1807–1808), Lucy Elizabeth (1809–1835), Emily (1811–1833), Henry Martyn (1813–?), and Sophia (1815–?). The deaths of the infants Henry and Lucy Martha and later of young Emily and Lucy Elizabeth affected Sherwood deeply; she frequently named the heroes and heroines of her books (many of whom die) after her late children.

Following the agonizing death of her second child, Henry, of whooping cough, Sherwood began to consider converting to evangelical Christianity. The famous missionary Henry Martyn (for whom she named her sixth child) finally convinced her; but it was the chaplain to the company, Mr. Parson, who first made her aware of her "human depravity" and her need for redemption. After her conversion, she was anxious to pursue evangelical missionary work in India, but she first had to persuade the East India Company that its policy of religious neutrality was ill-conceived. Because there was social and political support for missionary programs in Britain, the Company eventually approved her endeavors. Sherwood established schools for both the children of army officers and the local Indian children attached to the camp. The children were often taught in her home, as no buildings were available. The first school began with 13 children and grew to over 40, with pupils ranging from the very young to adolescents; uneducated soldiers also attended at times. Sherwood discovered that traditional British teaching materials did not appeal to children raised in India, and therefore wrote her own Indian- and army-themed stories, such as The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) and The Memoirs of Sergeant Dale, his Daughter and the Orphan Mary (1815).

Sherwood also adopted neglected or orphaned children from the camp. In 1807 she adopted Annie Child, a three-year-old who had been given too much medicinal gin and in 1808 a malnourished two-year-old Sally Pownal. She found homes for those she could not adopt and founded an orphanage. In 1816, on the advice of doctors, she and her family returned to Britain; in her autobiography Sherwood relates that she was continually ill in India and it was believed at the time that neither she nor any of her children could survive in a tropical climate.