Papers
of Thomas Henry Digges La Touche, 1836-1938,
Geological
Survey of India 1881-1910
British
Library, India Office European Manuscripts Mss Eur C258/x
1880-1890---1891-1892---1892-1895---1896-1897---1897 Great Assam Earthquake---1899---1900-1903 The Directorship Crisis ---1904-1911---
La
Touche (1856-1938) was awarded a degree in Geology in 1880 under Professor Hughes
at St. Johns College Cambridge. He joined the Geological Survey of India in
1881, two years after R. D. Oldham (1858-1936) and was one of the few geologists to complete 25 years in the Geological Survey of India. In late 1890 La Touche proposed
marriage to Anna (Nancy) Handy, and they were married the following year.
Although Nancy accompanied him on his early field work, the arrival of children
and his appointment to remote field areas led to long separations, often
exceeding 8 months each year, and on one occasion lasting 2 years. Field work started in October and continued to
March, and the findings of the work were written up in the recess during the
hot summer months in headquarters in Calcutta. Throughout the time of these
prolonged separations they wrote to each other daily. Tom's letters to Nancy
and the children, who lived initially in the hill stations of India, and
eventually in Ireland, form a continuous diary of important events and affairs
in the office, and in the field. More importantly they provide an illuminating
view of the life style and personal interactions of the dozen Geological Survey
Officers who were based in Calcutta. He acted for Sir Thomas Holland as
Director of the Geological Survey 2 Aug. 1909 and retired in 1910. He died in 1939 Cambridge aged 82.
La Touche's often amusing writings show Carl
Griesbach (Director - died in retirement in May 1907) to be a disorganized and disparaging leader who was
responsible for many frustrations in the Calcutta office 1890-1901, and who
had failed to optimize the potential of his staff. In contrast, R. D. Oldham's
brief spell of leadership in 1897 demonstrates a real interest in optimising
and encouraging the best qualities of his team of geologists. Oldham in 1902 should under normal circumstances
have become the next director following the retirement of Griesbach, as he was merely one year shorter in seniority. But the
energetic and pro-active Viceroy, Lord Curzon, with the bumbling Griesbach as
an example of everything he disliked in the Civil Service, sought to revitalize the search for
minerals and energy resources in India. His choice by default would have been one of three Superintendents, each with two decades of service,
who were next in line for the job: Oldham, La Touche and Middlemiss. He decided against all three. Instead he advertized in the UK for a new man, something he had done successfully in his choice for Director of the Archaeological Survey of India.
It is likely that Griesbach himself was responsible for
sowing doubts in Curzon's mind about the Directorship potential of his three
most senior men. Griesbach disliked Oldham's fastidious attention to geological
detail, which had slowed the mapping of the Rewah region of central
India, and which had caused him to have to referee decisions to mitigate the instability of hillslopes near
Government House, Naini Tal. Griesbach had also had a row with Oldham when he ordered
him to accompany Curzon's secret armed mission to assess a coal field in Oman in October 1901.
Oldham's report (which like his objections to the Oman mission, have yet to
be found) apparently displeased Curzon.
Griesbach's lack of appreciation for La Touche, who was second in line,
was unfounded. He considered La
Touche's Burma mapping to be incompetent (he grudgingly owned the
following year that it wasn't) and in the presence of colleagues rashly attributed his unsavory and unfounded opinion of LaTouche to the mouth
of Curzon's Secretary, Holderness, prompting La Touche to defend his honor by
obtaining a denial from Holderness and a devious and incomplete apology from Griesbach. Griesbach,
no doubt wishing not to lose face over this appalling deceit had the last word with the
administration, and it was no doubt unfavorable to La Touche. The charming
Middlemiss, third in line, who from his numerous written contributions (with the benefit of
hindsight) was the most productive of the three Superintendents, may have been
judged too quiet, and insufficiently ambitious to be considered Directorship
material.
After a long delay caused by a failed search,
Curzon passed over all three men & chose instead Thomas Holland, a bright
and ambitious geologist who was ten years younger, and who had joined only in
1890, but who possessed enormous
energy and talent, echoing the
intellect and industry of Curzon himself.
Tom La Touche's anguish is transparent, as he first encountered rumours of being passed over, and enventually watched his chance to
become the Director of the Geological Survey evaporate, but he chose after much
reflection not to complain.
A highlight of La Touche's
letters is his important contribution to the study of the 1897great Assam earthquake. Two weeks prior to the June earthquake
Oldham, who was Acting Director during Griesbach's furlough in England, asked La Touche to
supervise the Calcutta office while Oldham visited Naini Tal. In this remote hill station Oldham had hardly felt the earthquake and didn't realize the magnitude of its effects until
several days later. On learning of the huge region of destruction Oldham dashed back
to headquarters where "like a bombshell" he dispersed his Survey
officers throughout the epicentral region. Until Oldham's arrival they had focused their efforts on
documenting damage only within Calcutta.
La Touche was dispatched to ground zero in Shillong, an area that he had
mapped in detail more than a decade earlier. His observations, photos and drawings form a substantial
portion of the 1899 Memoir, which was about to establish Oldham's reputation as a
seismologist. Missing from Oldham's memoir are the seismograms that La
Touche obtained from a seismoscope he constructed in the field from bits of
tin, a suspended boulder and a glass photographic plate. Apparently LaTouche's seismoscope continued to operate in Shillong because he mentions it in the days after the 1905 Kangra earthquake when he was asked by Holland to send a similar instrument to Simla.
La Touche also sheds new light on the perceived inadequacies
of Parvati Nath Datta whose appointment in 1888 Henry Medlicott had vigorously
opposed, and whose skills Oldham had criticized in the first year of William
King's directorship, but who Griesbach was slow to suspect of error. It is clear that even after a decade in
the Survey, Datta remained a low fidelity geologist, missing important details
through careless mapping, and occasionally identifying minerals and
rocks incorrectly. Datta appears as a tragic
figure in Burma, and it is easy to feel sorry for him as he tramped, or was
carried, through the villages and hills, irritating local people and fudging his
maps, which required subsequent extensive correction largely by LaTouche. Datta's incompetence led to him being denied appontment to the Superintendent level, although with tactful diplomacy he was permitted to share theposition of Acting Superintendent in 1908 during LaTouche's tenure as Acting Director in Holland's absence.
Throughout the quarter century of his letters La
Touche gives us insights into the mechanics of survey work, the cost of living
and the entertainments and illnesses of officers in colonial India. He tells us little of the native
population, and although several individuals feature in the pages of his diary,
they are mentioned only fleetingly in his letters to his wife.
A word is needed about the methods and
motivation of the geologists of India.
It must remembered that the primary mission of the Geological Survey was
to find coal, and subsequently oil, reserves to fuel the trains and ships that
powered the administration. Of
secondary interest, though of no less pressing importance, was the search for ore deposits. Pure science, then as now, was greeted by the government with a disintersted yawn. Even the broad-minded Curzon saw science as merely a tool to political and economic strength. Science was tolerated because Oldham's father, Thomas Oldham, who had
established the Geological Survey, had persuaded the government that it was not
possible to find coal rationally until the structure and stratigraphy of India
had been mapped. Hence there was a
need for scientific study of the ages of all the rock units and the production
of detailed maps showing their relationship. The awkward mix of economic motivation and scientific
discovery sat uncomfortably on the shoulders of the Director who had to satisfy
both. The absence of radioactive
dating methods meant that the only way to work out the arrangement of rocks,
was to find index fossils, whose evolution and uniqueness provided a natural
clock to reconstruct the chronology of India's geological past. The search for these key fossils was to
take up much of a geologists time.
Where there were no fossils (igneous and metamorphic rocks) the only
recourse was to find the interface between one rock unit and another, in the
hope that it furnished the clue about which came first. Most of the Indian
continent had been mapped by the time that La Touche arrived, and Survey Officers
in the late 19th century were deployed mostly mapping the deformed sedimentary structures surrounding
the Indian craton, in Baluchistan, the Himalaya, and Burma.
Tom La Touche's letters to his family prior to marriage are
irregular and few have survived compared to the daily letters that started in
1891 and are written in a steady stream during his months of separation from
his family in the next 20 years. His letters contain sketches for Nancy and the children, and occasional pressed flowers. Most of the photos he mentions in his letters are missing from the files, but the geological ones can be found in the archives of the GSI in Calcutta. Nancy's replies to Tom
are full of information about the children, less legible and contain fewer
insights about the Survey. With few exceptions they are not transcribed here.
Tom died in 1938 aged 82 in Cambridge, two years after Oldham and his obituary in Q. J. Geol Soc. was written by Charless Middlemiss.
1900-1903 The Directorship Crisis and the secret search for coal in Oman
---
three dashes indicates omitted material,
phrases
in italics are non-verbatim summaries, or explanatory material
some words were undecipherable and are shown in square brackets with a query [?Harrarpur]
some words are now rarely used: bandobast=discipline, forgainst=an opposing position,
Items highlighted in red indicate letters from, or interaction with R.D. Oldham.
items in blue - the secret Oman coal mission found in the 1900-1903 html page