The Mysterious Mr Jacob: Diamond Merchant, Magician and Spy

by John Zubrzycki

  The article did not escape Jacob’s notice either. He was in Bombay recovering from a bout of bronchitis when a copy of the Pall Mall Gazette arrived at his hotel room. ‘It did amuse me. A small portion of it is true; but the greater part is pure fiction,’ he told the Bombay Gazette in one of the few interviews he ever gave. ‘The author has evidently either been drawing on his imagination or been misinformed.’ Seizing the chance to supposedly set the record straight, Jacob claimed he was Italian and that his grandfather had gone to Turkey to build palaces and bridges for the Sultan. When he died, his uncle Joseph succeeded him and assumed the Turkish name of Mamar Bashi, which meant chief engineer. ‘Then my father, thrown on his own resources, started business for himself as a manufacturer of soap, introducing that article into Turkey for the first time.’ The family prospered until some unspecified disputes arose that forced him to leave Diyarbakir. He then found work with the British telegraph company linking Scutari (present day Uskudar) with the Persian Gulf.18

  Aside from being Italian by birth, the rest of the story including joining the telegraph company was much more plausible than his previous tales of schoolboy pranks and slave markets. In the mid-1860s, the use of telegraphy was expanding rapidly. When the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was successfully laid in 1866, it was hailed as the greatest technological triumph of its age. Like the railway, it was seen as a means of spreading Western civilization, science, commerce and religion. The need for a telegraph line linking Britain and India became urgent after the Mutiny of 1857. Three different proposals were submitted, two of them using submarine cables. But the technical challenges of laying cables underwater proved insurmountable, and the British Government decided to build an overland cable from Constantinople to Fao on the Persian Gulf. Construction of the section from Uskudar began in August 1858, but progress was slow due to the harsh winter and the disputes between the chief engineer and the Ottoman authorities. In 1860, when Jacob was eleven years old, the line reached Diyarbakir where, according to a local historian, ‘all the people watched the telegraph wires with great admiration and prayed for Sultan Abdul Mejid most gracefully’.19

  The Ottoman authorities were quick to grasp the potential of the overland telegraph for strengthening their power over their vast empire. There was some opposition from local mullahs who debated how close a cable ‘conveying the voice of Satan from one place to another’20 could pass to a mosque, but merchants and traders who recognized its economic value often offered labour and financial support to extend the telegraph to their towns.

  It would take another five years to clear the remaining technical and political obstacles and complete the line to Fao where it was joined to the Indo-European submarine cable allowing uninterrupted telegraphic communication between London and its Indian Empire for the first time. It was at best a tenuous link. Following the telegraph line in the 1880s, Henry Barkley found that, on an average, the wire was strung from every third post and more often than not trailed along the ground. ‘Yet we were assured by the telegraphist in Diarbekir that it was in working order, and that he had no difficulty in forwarding messages.’21

  The completion of the line sparked a mini economic boom along its route. Guards were stationed along the entire length of the line to prevent poles and wires from being pilfered. Clerks and interpreters were employed to transmit messages and engineers were needed to maintain the network.

  Jacob would have been fifteen years old in January 1865 when the line was completed. If he had indeed mastered Arabic, his services as an interpreter would have been in demand. The date matches another crucial clue. When cross-examined about his past during a court case in Simla in 1881, Jacob said he had arrived in India sixteen years earlier, which would have allowed time to work his way with the telegraph company to the Persian Gulf, where he could have boarded a boat heading for India, arriving in the latter half of 1865.

  Jacob’s decision to leave Diyarbakir was motivated by more than a desire to see the world. His journey, he told the British writer Gilbert Frankau many years later in Bombay, was part of a spiritual quest, a search for the secrets revealed to him in the ancient Arabic tomes ‘on the philosophers of Samarcand, of Tahmas, and of Seena’ which he had found in his father’s library.22

  He worked on the telegraph line until he reached Baghdad where something told him he would discover ‘the man who would expound to me the mysteries of life’. But, instead of finding his master, he found only impostors. Wandering the streets of the city, penniless and starving, he told Frankau how ‘a beautiful woman, almost royal’ took pity on him. She fell in love with him and he stayed in her palace for several months, ‘forgetful of my quest, content to live in the luxury she showered on me’. When his spiritual cravings returned and he asked to leave, she made him a prisoner and begged him to stay, promising everything a man could hope for—‘riches, a noble name, power over material things’.

  One night, while the eunuchs guarding him were sleeping, he pushed aside some paving stones in the courtyard and escaped down the sewers, wading through the horrible muck while fighting off giant rats. ‘I thought I would never come out alive; but somehow, half-swimming, half-wading and always striking with my hands at those horrible rats, I reached the Tigris.’

  Before an incredulous Frankau could respond, Jacob said: ‘That would make a scene for a novel, would it not? Sometimes I have thought to write my own life. I have seen so much. But you, perhaps you will do it better …’23

  CHAPTER THREE

  PROSTITUTES, PRINCES AND A POISONING CASE

  A LEATHER-BOUND index in the National Archives of India contains the first confirmed mention of Jacob anywhere in a historical record. The index lists a file dated February 1872, titled ‘Papers relating to the dismissal of Mr Malcolm Jacob from the service of the Raja of Dholepore; Foreign Department Proceedings General B.’ Twice over a period over several years, I asked for the file to be retrieved and each time a slip of paper came back with the dispiriting words ‘Not transferred to NAI’. No trace of the file existed in the India Office Records at the British Library either. I ordered every file on Dholpur from the first half of the 1870s held in the archives in New Delhi and London, but could still find no reference to Jacob.

  The missing file left a huge gap from the time of Jacob’s arrival in India in 1865 until 1876, when a British officer saw him doing ‘sleights of hand in Simla’.1 Jacob spoke of working in the courts of Hyderabad, Jaipur, Rampur and Baroda, but the files I consulted from those states also drew a blank. Other than the fact that the Government of India had considered his dismissal from the service of the Ruler of Dholpur important enough to warrant bringing it to the attention of the India Office, there was little to go on.

  Compounding the mystery was Jacob’s predisposition to lie about, obfuscate and exaggerate his antecedents and to change his story depending on the circumstances. There was also the tendency of those who met him to highlight the more exotic aspects of his past or embellish details to appeal to a wider audience. Like the story of being sold as slave to a rich Turkish pasha, there was an element of truth in almost everything he said.

  That Jacob made his first landfall in India at Bombay was clear. The city was the main point of arrival for travellers coming from Europe and the Middle East. In the 1860s, the voyage from Jeddah took eight days if the winds were favourable, slightly less if one had embarked at one of the ports in the Persian Gulf. An allusion to being shipwrecked off the coast of Muscat contained in some of the stories of his life would have accounted for his claim that he arrived in Bombay ‘without either hat or boots, and with only three pence in my pocket’.

  Jacob arrived in Hyderabad in the final year of the reign of Afzal ud-Daula, the fifth Nizam. Afzal ud-Daula was crowned ruler of India’s most powerful state just before the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857. The British feared that if the Nizam ‘raised the standard of the crescent’ and the majority Muslim state joined the rebels, the Mutiny would spread southwards and enve
lop the whole of India. But he had remained loyal.

  Beyond that, his reign was largely unremarkable. A portrait of Afzal ud-Daula painted during his reign shows an obese man with triple chins, short stubby fingers and a four-strand pearl necklace that rests heavily on his ample stomach. Sir Richard Temple, who was Resident at Hyderabad from 1867, described the fifth Nizam as a perfect example of what the ‘enervating conditions of India produced in the course of a few generations upon the conquering tribes that came from Central Asia’.2 The Nizam took what could be called a hands-off approach to ruling the state. ‘The Nizam has never turned out of the city, nor does he permit his Minister to quit its precincts except upon the rarest occasions. Before facts can reach him they must be wonderfully distorted, and he is everywhere surrounded with a great number of very worthless parasites,’ commented the Madras Times.3

  When Jacob arrived in Hyderabad he found a city that had changed little since the days of the Mughals. Hyderabad was wealthy but it was far less cosmopolitan than Bombay. English poet and journalist Edwin Arnold who visited in the early 1880s wrote: ‘This population goes armed, as has been said, to the teeth—to the stomach, to the back and legs, to the neck and head. In truth, it is hardly less the fashion to wear pistols, sabres, daggers, guns, and spears in Hyderabad than to carry umbrellas in Piccadilly.’4

  Fortunately, Jacob was employed as a scribe by the Emir ul-Kabir, the state’s most senior nobleman. The Emir’s position was similar to that of a prime minister and the year and a half he spent in Hyderabad gave Jacob firsthand knowledge of the machinations of the court and its proclivity for intrigues. Those intrigues intensified when Afzal died suddenly in 1869, leaving as his successor his only son, Mahboob Ali Khan, who was only two years and eight months old.

  Jacob became embroiled in the succession crisis that followed Afzal’s death The British wanted to assume the guardianship of the infant and take over the administration of the country. Hyderabad’s nobility said no.5 Jacob was entrusted to carry a letter to the British Resident contesting the legitimacy of the new Nizam, but when he learnt of the contents of the letter, he decided that, regardless of who won the contest, his own life would be in danger.

  From Hyderabad, Jacob went to Calcutta, the thriving capital of British India, where he found work with the jewellery firm, Charles, Nephew & Co. Street’s Indian and Colonial Mercantile Directory for 1870 lists the firm as being located at 11 Old Court House Road in what was then known as the ‘Chowringhee sector’.

  The building is one of the oldest in Calcutta, dating back to at least 1840. Number 11 is now the office of the Regional Design & Technical Development Centre of the Government of India’s Development Commissioner (Handicrafts). The centre, however, has been shut for years. Most of the shops in the building have been boarded up, their entrances blocked by street stalls selling cheap shoes, faux leather briefcases, Indian rip-offs of American Barbie dolls and gaudy cotton T-shirts. The upper storey appears deserted.

  The only other shop in the building still trading is J. Sur & Co. The firm has been operating from the same site since 1842 selling survey equipment. That would make it old enough to have supplied sextants to the pundits who were sent out to the frontiers of the British Empire to map possible invasion routes by the Russians at the height of the Great Game. It would also have been operating when Jacob was around.

  Today, the merchandise is more sophisticated but little else has changed. Four massive stone columns in each corner support the high wooden-beamed ceilings. Teak display cases line the walls. In a small niche to one side of the main room, a clay statue of the Hindu God of business Ganesha sits on a small stool as part of a makeshift shrine. Behind the statue hang photographs of several generations of Surs who have kept the business going while those around it have shut down. When I made inquiries, the proprietor assured me that the other shops on the ground floor of the building had identical layouts. Jacob’s workplace would have had the same large showroom with a workshop at the back that opened on to Mangoe Lane.

  Charles, Nephew & Co. was typical of the jewellery firms in cities like Calcutta and Bombay in the middle of the nineteenth century that catered to wealthy Europeans and Indians. Besides jewellery, it sold optical items, watches and clocks and papier mâché articles from Europe. Customers chose a design for a necklace, brooch, bangle or other ornament from a catalogue which was then executed by master craftsmen employed directly by the firm. The workmanship was all done by Indians—goldsmiths, silversmiths, enamellers and stringers. The firm also bought pieces from private collectors and held estate auctions.

  As the Imperial capital, Calcutta had a large number of cash-rich government servants and military officers. Street’s directory noted that ‘through Calcutta passes all the produce of Bengal, and its merchants are among the wealthiest in the world’.6 It listed six jewellery firms, two of which—Hamilton & Co. and Cooke & Kelvey—were located in the same building as Charles, Nephew & Co.

  The concentration of shops selling jewellery was probably due to the building’s prime location. One block away stood the Great Eastern Hotel which, Mark Twain declared, provided the best lodging ‘East of Suez’. It was a short walk to Dalhousie Square where the main banks, insurance offices, the post and telegraph office and the Writers’ Building were located. Within the area bounded by Dalhousie Square, the Hooghly River and the Maidan were also found the Governor General’s residence, the High Court and St. John’s Church.

  ‘The streets in this portion of the city are wide and handsome,’ wrote a traveller in 1867. ‘The buildings being for the most part low, detached from one another, abounding in pillared colonnades, verandas, and porches, with Venetian blinds … Surrounded by and nestling in their beds of foliage, they look like summer houses in some vast park; and together with the Princely country houses of the merchants give to Calcutta its name, “The City of Palaces”.’7

  Jacob later said he was employed as a workman at Charles, Nephew & Co., but since the manufacture of jewellery was done by Indians, he probably worked as an assistant to one of the British managers. His duties would have included keeping an eye on the stock, checking the quality of the settings and making sure customers’ orders had been correctly filled by the Indian artisans.8 His employment was cut short when the firm suddenly went bankrupt in late 1870, owing its creditors hundreds of thousands of rupees. Initial press reports gave no reason for the firm’s failure but, in February 1871, the police announced that they had arrested one of the company’s former employees and charged him with embezzlement.

  The firm’s collapse was a turning point for Jacob. He could have taken a position in one of the other jewellery shops on Old Court House Road. But he also knew where the greatest profits—and adventures—lay. Aged just twenty, he decided to turn his back on British India and enter the world of the Princes. It was a highly prescient decision.

  It is easy to see why the Princely states exerted such a strong attraction. As an anonymous young clerk in the early 1870s explained to a political agent in Rajasthan: ‘You see, Sahib, in the British provinces there is no excitement, no chance of anything turning up; besides, one cannot slur over one’s work, and promotion is gradual and regular. Whereas in native states, though the chances are few, there are always chances; and if a person be favoured by fortune, he may find himself suddenly at the top of the tree.’9

  Fortune certainly awaited Jacob but, first, he had to hone his skills and build up his contacts. During his year and a half in Hyderabad, he had learnt to speak Urdu, the language of India’s Muslim Princes, and gained an insider’s knowledge of the workings of the royal courts. His experiences were not unique. Over the centuries, Indian rulers had employed Europeans in a variety of roles including those of mercenaries, medical officers, architects and gardeners, as well as governesses for their children. Despairing over the incompetence of Indian rulers, like Afzal ud-Daula, Lord Mayo encouraged the practice of appointing British tutors for heirs to the throne. Based on the experienc
e of the tutor to Afzal’s heir—the young Mahboob Ali Khan—the policy had mixed success. ‘After twelve, the Azure retires to the zenana, and tyrannizes over 400 women, who spoil and pet him as a matter of course. Zenana influence is the principal thing against which the tutor of one of these boys has to contend.’10

  Jacob’s advantage was his ability to find a niche to exploit, whether it was India’s fascination with the feats of conjurors or a ruler’s belief that possessing the largest diamond in the world would bring him luck and status.

  ‘He quickly realized the conditions of the country and the superstitions of its people. He went from place to place, particularly in the Native States, as an astrologer and palmist and, in a few years, accumulated a small fortune,’ the Bombay Chronicle reported. His name soon became a household word. ‘At that period, India, indeed, was a happy hunting ground for fortune-tellers, and Jacob, who managed to acquire a knowledge of Hindustani, was regarded as Prince among them.’11

  The susceptibility of Indian rulers to superstition was legendary. The chronic gullibility of the Indian mind could be judged from the fact that the Penal Code contained a section providing for the punishment by the courts of anyone who ‘induces a person to believe that he may become the object of divine displeasure’, observed Marcus Paul Dare, in his book, Indian Underworld; A First-hand Account of Hindu Saints, Sorcerers, and Superstitions. To successfully exploit that gullibility required recognizing the Indian’s fixation for money and preoccupation with magic. ‘Even shrewd moneylenders and stockbrokers, accustomed to piling up wealth themselves by every known questionable trick, seem to “fall” for the many variations of India’s prize confidence trick: how to get your money doubled.’12