The orphaned children of indenture

WHIPPED AND JAILED

- SELVAN NAIDOO

TWENTY-four-year-old Gollapilli Durgy, indentured number 107821, died two years after she arrived as an indentured worker on board the Pongola from Madras in October 1904. The report of her death shows that she died at the Avoca Central Hospital on February 5, 1906, having suffered from complications that arose from severe dysentery.

Durgy arrived with two children, a 7-year-old boy named Nagamma, indentured number 107822, and a 3-year-old female child, indentured number 107823, strangely named Nagamma as well. The family were indentured to the Natal Ltd, Mt Edgecombe, Verulam Sugar.

In 1909, three years after Durgy had passed away, her children were apprenticed to a Mr AM Morel of Mt Edgecombe. Both children’s names appeared on a Form of Contract in Apprenticing Destitute Children.

The form indicated that the Protector of Indian Immigrants, James A Polkinghorne, signed the form on behalf of the children to be employed as domestic servants until they were 16 years of age, when they would be entitled to a free pass to seek other forms of employment wherever they wished.

As apprentices, they were to be provided with suitable and sufficient food, washing, lodging and be paid two shillings each month. During this time of serving their apprenticeship, half their monthly wages would be paid into the Natal Government Savings Bank to be given to the children on completion of their apprenticeship on the date stipulated in the form.

Reading against the grain of the archival Form of Contract in Apprenticing Destitute Children document, we can deduce that orphaned and destitute children were part of the system of indenture from arrival to their employment placement, and were subsequently duty-bound and enslaved to a contract without volition.

In this instance, Durgy’s children were Officially re-indentured on the November 30, 1909, three years after she had passed away in 1906.