In 1780, a British East India Company regiment was defeated at Polilore by troops of the Mysore kingdom. Several hundred British soldiers were captured, held prisoner and forced into slavery. Many were forced to labour until 1784 and a few as late as 1799. Approximately 300 of these prisoners were also forcibly circumcised by their Muslim captors.
One of the British prisoners was Irish-born lieutenant colonel Cromwell Massey, who kept a secret diary during his incarceration at Seringapatam. In November 1780, Massey wrote that he and his men were:
“Terribly alarmed this morning for our foreskins.”
Massey had good cause for concern: he was circumcised shortly after. So too was a junior naval officer, who later wrote:
“I lost with the foreskin of my yard all those benefits of a Christian and Englishman which were and ever shall be my greatest glory.”
Most of these captives were liberated when a much larger British force invaded Mysore in 1799 and toppled its Muslim ruler, Tipu Sultan. Cromwell Massey was among them. He returned to Britain and lived to the age of 103, dying in Ramsgate in 1845.
Source: Various, inc. diary of Cromwell Massey, 1780. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.