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At the point at which he applied to join the Indian Police, Denis's son Bertram's application form states that his father was born at a place called Tinnevelli in Southern India (this seems to be modern Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu), and was of Irish nationality. We know from his marriage and death certificates [British Library India Office Records N-1–625 folio 157; British Library India Office Records N-1–451 page 329] that Denis Wilmot was the son of Francis Langford Rae and (presumably) Francis's wife Mary Christiana Swords. It is likely that Denis never really knew his father. A Francis Ray died in Calcutta on 15th October 1866 and was buried the following day [Family Search: "India Deaths and Burials, 1719–1948," Francis Ray, 16 Oct 1866; citing ; FHL microfilm 499,024], when Denis was nineteen months old.
[An online transcription of Francis's will [British Library India Office Records L-AG-34–29–266 page/folio n7deg; 17] states that he died on 31st January 1866 when Denis was less than a year old. This is slightly ambiguous because the date of 31st January does not appear on the image of the will, which itself is dated 28th January, and it may be that the transcriber has arbitrarily assigned a date of death at the end of the month in which the will was made.]
Francis was certainly dead well before April 1869, when Denis was four, because on 20th April 1869 Denis's mother Mary re-married to William Dargan, a Conductor in the Ordnance Department (a high-ranking NCO responsible for the movement of military supplies), and she was described at the time as a widow [British Library India Office Records N-2–50 folio 117]. Mary and William married in "St Thomas' Mount & Poonamallee" which means in Chennai, south-east India, but four years later, on 24th February 1873, Denis's seventeen-year-old sister Maria married the somewhat older Claudius Augustus Wheldon, an Uncovenanted Civil Servant, in Rangoon. Denis's career would be spent in Burma so it may well be that at seven or eight he went to live with his newly-married sister.
Denis's eldest brother Langford was to become the Managing Director of the famous Arbuthnot's Bank and their middle brother Frank became an accountant. To begin with Denis joined the local Native Government, a move which may have been inspired – or facilitated – by his brother-in-law Claudius. He went on to become a senior police officer and administrator and an amateur anthropologist, based in the Kachin Hills. Some of the information on his family comes from the memoirs of Major Sam Newland DSO, who was a schoolfriend, and later on an army comrade, of Denis's sons. According to his son Bertram's marriage certificate [GROS Statutory Marriages 1892 685/04 0464], Denis Wilmot was at some point a District Superintendent of Police, and according to the Civil List his first appointment in the police force began on 1st April 1884, when he was nineteen, although according to his Statement of Services he had joined the Native Government on 15th September 1883, and wouldn't have his first Substantive Appointment to the police until 8th May 1888. Perhaps these discrepancies represent periods of training and probation.
The following "Statement of Services" exists for Denis up until 1916:
[British Library India Office Records V/12/401: History of Services of Gazetted and Other Officers in Burma Vol. 1 –: Services of Gazetted Officers Part 1, Corrected up to 1st July 1916]
DENIS WILMOT RAE. —Born 12 Mar. 1865. Rendered previous services in N.G. appt. from 15 Sep. 1883.[1] (Statement of services received.)
Substantive Appointment.
Officiating Appointment.
Held charge of the office of D.S.P, Bhamo, from 25 June to 21 Aug. 1891.[5]
On duty with the Main Escort Column from 26 Dec. 1894 to 25 Mar. 1895.[7]
...
P.L. for 2 months 17 days from 18 Aug. 1896.[10]
P.L. for 2 months 6 days from 9 July 1898.[13]
Held charge of the Bhamo district as a temporary measure from 9 July to 8 Aug. 1902.[15]
P.L. for 28 days from 4 Oct. 1902.
In charge of the office of the D.C., Bhamo, from 1 Mar. to 30 Apl. 1905, from 14 May to 13 June 1905, and from 21 Apl. 1906 to 24 Sep. 1906.
P.L. for 1 month 10 days from 16 Mar. 1907.
Held charge of current duties of the office of the D.C., Bhamo, in addition to his other duties from 1 Nov. to 11 Dec. 1909.
P.L. for 1 month 2 days from 24 Apl. 1915.
Below are Vivian's comments on the Statement of Services [comments in square brackets are mine]:
Here we see that Denis worked for the Native Government (N.G.) from September 1883 to May 1888, then was an Additional Superintendent of Police until February 1898, with a brief spell as acting District Superintendent (D.S.P.) in 1891. In 1898 he was promoted to Extra Assistant Commissioner (E.A.C.), which he remained until April 1912, . During this period he acted as Deputy Commisioner several times. From 1912 until his retirement in May 1917 he was a District Superintendent, 3rd Grade: the Statement of Services only takes us up to May 1916, but page 83 of The India Office List for 1917 shows Denis as still a District Superintendent 3rd Grade, although it contains less information than the Civil List would do, and page 145 of The India Office List for 1918 records that "Rae, D.W." of the Indian Police retired on 19th May 1917. At this point he was forty-seven and according to Vivian Rodrigues, retirement was normally at fifty-five, so he might already have been ill with the cancer which was to kill him less than four years later. Or, given his other interests, he might have taken early retirement in order to become a full-time anthropologist. The death of his five-year-old daughter Mary Agnes in April 1916, and the ongoing war, must also have taken their toll.
According to family history Denis married first to a Chinese wife whose name is not recalled, by whom he had a daughter Beatrice Eunice Rae, born (according to her death certificate) on 2nd February in 1892 – although other documents say 1893 or 1894. During this period Denis was rattling around between Bhamo, close to the Chinese border; Shwegu about 25 miles to the west; Mawgyan (Mogaung) 10 miles north of Shwegu; and Namhkam (Namkham) 40 miles south-east of Bhamo. It is not known whether Denis's first wife died, or separated from him, or indeed whether they were ever formally married or just drifted apart, but Denis certainly did stay in touch with his first family, for his name appears as a witness at Beatrice's wedding to Eric Alfred Henry in Magwe on 24th September 1913. Denis at that point was District Superintendent of Police in Magwe. [British Library India Office Records N-1–625 folio 157]
Beatrice and Eric evidently lived in Bhamo but they were not to have much time together. About eighteen months after their marriage Eric took a trip to the UK, as we see him returning by the Bibby Line ship the Leicestershire from England to Burma, departing on 19th March 1915 (where he is listd as a Civil Servant), and the England & Wales National Probate Calendar for 1919 records that "Henry Eric Alfred of Bhamo Upper Burma died 27 December 1918 Administration (limited) London to Violet Maude Henry spinster attorney of Beatrice Eunice Henry. Effects £1000."
Beatrice and Eric nevertheless managed to have a daughter, Iris Eunice Henry, born in 1914 and died in 2009; and a son, Peter, born in 1917 and died in 2008. Iris married first Lambert Charles Shepherd in 1939, and second, the senior Scottish lawyer Lord John (Jock) Cameron in 1944. Her first husband, Lambert, had died and so had Jock Cameron's first wife, Eileen, who had been a friend of Iris's. Peter meanwhile married Gwyneth Enid Margery Howgate and had two children with her.
I have no record of what Beatrice did for the next thirteen years after her husband's death, but she sailed to the UK via Colombo on the SS Balranald in January 1932 (alone), and her first address in the UK was at Benhilton, Sutton, Surrey. Burma is listed as her country of last permanent residence, so this is the point at which she moved to the UK. In 1939 the England and Wales register lists her as a widow of independent means born on 12th February 1894, living at 21 Garway Road, near Paddington and in 1947 the electoral roll shows her at 20 Hereford Road, Paddington, one street west of Garway Road. This is very near Porchester Gardens where her half-brother Bertram had stayed in 1921, so perhaps they had connections there, or it was a popular area for Indian ex-pats. By this point, she was the mother-in-law of Lord Jock Cameron. She later went to live in Brixton, London and died in the Wandsworth area in 1985.
Some years after Beatrice's birth Denis took up with Mah Gyan (a.k.a. Ma Kyin or Machin), with whom he was to have six children, the eldest in February 1900 when Mah Gyan was around twenty-one, although they didn't marry until 1903. This marriage, at least, seems to have been both long-lasting and successful. The Burmah Expedition, South Gate of Bhamo, showing the Stockade, Look-out Hut, and Guard-House by Melton Prior, The Illustrated London News, 6th March 1886 Various documents shed light on the individual postings of his very active career. Under the heading "Police" the 1895 Thacker's Directory for the Bhamo area shows Rae, D.W. as "Asst. Supt. (Bhamo)". Fifteen hundred years beforehand Bhamo had been Sampanago, the capital of the ancient Shan kingdom of Manmaw, and it was still a major administrative centre. In the 1913 book A Civil Servant in Burma by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, we glimpse "Mr. D. W. Rae of the Provincial Service, an officer of tried experience in the Kachin Hills", in winter 1897, assisting a Joint Commission of British and Chinese officials whose task was to demarcate the border between Burma and China, and correct an error which in 1893 had led to the Chinese border being established too close to Bhamo; and to the Burmese town of Sima, further to the north, being arbitrarily incorporated into China. This is confusing because Denis's Statement of Services shows him as "On duty with the Main Escort Column" in the winter of 1894/95, not 1897/98 (when such an expedition definitely did take place). It may be that he escorted a column twice, and the second one has not been noted in his Statement of Services. Or it may be that Sir Herbert has conflated two separate episodes. There was a Burma–China Boundary Convention of 1st March 1894, nearly ten months before Denis's Statement of Services places him with the Main Escort Column. In 1950 a document sent by the British Foreign Office to the CIA stated,.with reference to this 1894 Convention, that: In the 1890s explorations were carried out to the north of the Bhamo district and it was found that the Irrawaddy–Salween watershed would form a good boundary in that area (9), but for the time being administration was not extended beyond 25°30'N (10) [the northern limit of the Bhamo administrative district], and it was resolved to partition the Kachin Hills east of Bhamo and south of 25°30'N (11). The Chinese made claims both in the Bhamo district and in the unadministered north, but finally the Boundary Convention of 1894 left the frontier undefined in the north, while south of 25°35'N the British made concessions in both the Bhamo district and the Shan States (12–18). Owing to objections on strategic grounds, the line was revised by the Convention of 1897 in favour of Burma (18–20), and the frontier was then demarcated by a joint Commission except for a two-hundred miles stretch in the Wa area where no agreement was reached (21–22). [cut] 18. The frontier as thus agreed was to undergo swift modification, however. The Government of Burma had, even before the Convention was agreed to, objected to the proposed line, and the line was later the subject of severe criticism. The objections were fourfold. In the first place, villages and even in some cases houses were cut in two by the line. Secondly, the Chinese were brought within thirty miles of Bhamotown. Thirdly, the Chinese were allocated the area of Namwan, at the point where the roughly north-south boundary of the Bhamo district meets the roughly west-east boundary of the northern Shan States, and through this area ran the principal line of communication between Bhamo and the Shan States. It was true that under Article 2 of the Convention troops might pass through the area, but only if previous notice were given of the transit of any party of more than twenty men and only with the prior sanction of the Chinese authorities if more than two hundred men were sent. The military authorities in particular objected to this situation, which was liable to hamper the movement of forces in an area where as yet British control was not completely consolidated. Fourthly, eleven villages in the Namkham area and the whole sub-state of Kokang were allotted to the Chinese although they were in fact feudatories of the Sawbwa of Hsenwi, the rest of whose state lay on the British side of the ]ine. 19. In consequence of these objections, an opportunity was soon found of modifying the line. The French had long taken an interest in Kiang Hung, to the north of Indo-China, and it was in view of their interest that the condition had been inserted in the Convention prohibiting the Chinese from ceding any part of this state to a third Power. In 1895, however, under French pressure, the Chinese Government ceded a portion of the state to Indo-China, and this breach of the Convention of 1894 was made the grounds for demanding a revision of the frontier. 20. The Anglo-Chinese Convention of 4th February 1897 re-aligned the frontier so that Sima and Kokang were retroceded to Burma, and a perpetual lease was granted to Her Majesty's Government of the Namwan area. ... [cut] II. The Undelimited Frontier 1895–1914. 23. Though the frontier of the Bhamo district and the Shan States was agreed in 1894, north of the point 25°35'N all was still uncertain. The country beyond Myitkyina was in a chaotic state, and the Kachins not infrequently carried their raids across the imaginary line separating the unadministered from the administered area. The situation was such as to lead in 1895 to a strengthening of administration in the Myitkyina area by the detachment of that area from the Bhamo district and its formation into a distinct administrative district of Myitkyina. At that time the northern limit of the Myitkyina district still lay only a few miles above Myitkyina town and below the confluence where the 'Nmai and Mali join to form the Irrawaddy. 24. It was known, however, that Chinese officials were penetrating into unadministered areas west of the Irrawaddy–Salween watershed and it was suspected that they aimed at presenting a fait accompli to any Boundary Commission that might be appointed under the Conventions. From the sound of it there may well have been some sort of unrecorded expedition in 1894, but it wouldn't have been an Anglo–Chinese joint effort at that point. In regard to Vivian's other suggestion, I can find no record of a punitive expedition to Fort Hertz in the winter of 1894/95. Exatly what column Denis was escorting from December 1894 to March 1895 remians a mystery, and we have to assume that he did indeed also go with the Anglo–Chinese Commission of winter 1897, even though it isn't specified in his Statement of Services. According to Sir Herbert, the Commission foregathered at Bhamo, then marched due east "through the pleasant hill-station of Sinlumgaba, past terraced rice-fields watered by ingenious irrigation works, over shallow streams". If Denis was indeed with the column in 1897, they may have picked him up at Sinlumgaba, where he was based at the time according to his Statement of Services (in December 1894 he was at Bhamo). Owing to a deadlock between the two factions the Commission stalled and ended up spending four months camping in tents by a stream at the provisional border, haggling over details and waiting for orders from their governments. Sinlumgaba must be the place now usually spelled Sinlumkaba or Sinlum Kaba. Burma Under British Rule by John Nesbit shows that Sinlumgaba was about thirty miles east of Bhamo and on or near a road constructed in 1897, and Notes on the Nidification of some Birds from Burma by Major H. H. Harington ["nidification" means "nest-building"] also places Sinlum-Kaba thirty miles due east of Bhamo, at an altitude of 6,000 feet. The modern location of Sinlum Kaba is slightly obscure since its name doesn't appear on the maps, but it seems to be the place now usually called Wuteng, in between Sinlum and Sinlumkaji, about eighteen miles due east of Bhamo in a straight line, but about thirty by road. Traveling Luck confuses the issue by saying that Sinlum and Sinlumkaba are one and the same, but it actually shows them as a mile or two apart, and both Traveling Luck and True Knowledge list Sinlum, Sinlumkaba and Sinlumkaji as three successive locations and show Wuteng as being at the same coordinates as Sinlumkaba. Traveling Luck shows: Sinlum Latitude: 24.25°, Longitude: 97.5° Sinlumkaba Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667° Wuteng Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667° Sinlumkaji Latitude: 24.2833333°, Longitude: 97.55° Stad.com also has: Sinlumkaba Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667° True Knowledge has: Sinlum 323 miles (520km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 182 miles (293km) north of Mandalay Sinlumkaba 324 miles (522km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 184 miles (296km) north of Mandalay Wuteng 324 miles (522km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 184 miles (296km) north of Mandalay Sinlumkaji 326 miles (525km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 186 miles (299km) north of Mandalay It seems clear, therefore, that despite being only eighteen miles from Bhamo in a straight line, Sinlumgaba is the place now marked on maps as Wuteng – or, if they are separate places, they are less than half a mile apart. You can see a satellite view of Wuteng at Tegeo.com. Confusingly, Bing Maps labels the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng as Momauk, but that seems to be an error: Momauk is an actual town, two miles west of Sinlumkaba. Mapcarta labels the locality slightly to the east as Au Taing, which I assume is another spelling of Wuteng. It states that "Sinlumkaba is a locality in Momauk Township, Bhamo District, Kachin State and has an elevation of 4,836 feet. Sinlumkaba is situated nearby to the locality Hpunggankawng, as well as near Au Taing." Confusingly, the Abilek Patal Indian archive carries a Report by Mr. D. W. Rae; lately Civil Officer with the Namkham Column; on the subject of the boundary between the British Shan State of North Hsenwi and the Chinese Shan States of Mongmao and Sefan. [National Archives of India; NAIDLF00447665; Progs.Non;396/308;June;1893] dated June 1893, which means Denis was on at least three survey columns, in 1893, 1894/95 and 1897, even though only the middle one is listed in his Statement of Services. Worse, according to his Statement of Services he wasn't a Civil Officer until 1897, yet here he is being described as a Civil Officer in 1893. The whole file is labelled Secret E, and consists of Denis's report and an accompanying note from the Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Burma, with comments from somebody labelled H.D. saying that this report isn't needeed, as they already have a better one by a J.G. Scott. Denis's report is indeed a bit minimalist and lacklustre – not at all what you would expect from a budding anthropologist – although it does come with a nice map of the area north-east of Namhkam (which itself is eighty miles south-east of Bhamo). Despite H.D.'s disparaging remarks, whoever first forwarded the report commented that "This is a nice clear map. I should like to have a printed copy as early as is convenient." Denis's map of the boundary north of Namkham: Namkham itself is near the bottom left, just left of the T in "NATIONAL" From D.W. RAE, Esq., Assistant Superintendent of Police, Civil Officer, Namkham Column, to the Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo,—No. 6, dated the 2nd May 1893. I HAVE the honour to submit herewith my notes on the Chinese frontier, together with a map illustrating the approximate boundary. The map has been compiled from maps by Captain Walker and Lieutenants Davis and Prowse. ————— Notes on Chinese Frontier. The information I was able to gather relating to the Chinese frontier is in connection with the boundary between the petty Shan States of Müngko, Wanteng, Namgtow, Musè, Selan and Namkham, and the Shan-Chinese States of Chêfan and Müng Mow, and is as follows:— To the north of Müngko a small range of hills known as Tansangpang Mat, is the recognized boundary between that State and the Shan-Chinese State of Chêfan or Sèfan. Adjoining Müngko on the west is Wanteng. The boundary between this State and Chêfan or Sèfan is said to be the Möng Lôn Ka stream. The column did not visit this State, and I am therefore unable to vouch for the accuracy of the position of the stream on accompanying map. The next definite boundary line is the Namyang stream which divides Namtow and the Shan-Chinese State of Müng Mow. The Shwêli, or rather the old bed of this river, is then recognized by the Sèlan and Namkham Myozas as the boundary between these States and Müng Mow. With reference to the debateable strip of land between the Namkham and Namwan rivers I was unable to collect any information for want of opportunity. The accompanying map illustrates the approximate boundary between the Shan States under British control and those subject to China. [How strange it would surely seem to Denis that his as-yet-unborn second son's adopted son's daughter would transcribe his letter 132 years in the future.] Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure by ER Leach, first published in 1959, describes a conflict among the Kachin people of Hpalang, between Bhamo and the Chinese border, which occurred circa 1900 and which was later described to him from collective memory by Kachins living in the area in 1940. Hpalang seems to be immediately west of what is now the Yaw Yung military post, or about seven miles east south east of Sinlumkaba. A duwa is a chief, so Ri duwa presumably means "Chief Rae". But to return to the Hpalang feud. All were agreed that, with the Lahpai vanquished, the Nmwe ruled as chiefs in Hpalang. At this point the constituent villages appear to have been Nmwe, Laga, Gumjye, Sumnut. These all shared a common numshang (sacred grove). All reports agreed that the Sumnut headman of this period was an aggressive and dominating personality. The Sumnut themselves said that he was the recognised bawmung30 of the whole community, and that the Nmwe chief though harmless enough was only a figurehead. The Maran said that this Sumnut headman was a bandit (damya) who made a living from cattle raids and extorting 'blackmail' (protection money) from the Shan villages in the valley below and that a quarrel finally broke out between the Nmwe and the Sumnut over the disposal of some cattle. Tradition here was at first somewhat bowdlerised for my benefit but the Maran grievance seemed really to be that Maran had themselves purloined, in dubious circumstances, some pack animals belonging to a passing Chinese caravan and that the Sumnut had then seized the animals and sold them over the border, thus making it impossible for the Maran to extort the ransom that had been intended. The Sumnut on the other hand said that the new quarrel was again about a woman. Since the Sumnut were now dama to the Nmwe, the latter were not entitled to dispose of their women to other lineages except by agreement of the Sumnut. The Sumnut wished to maintain the mayu-dama relationship and negotiated for a further marriage, but the Nmwe insult¬ingly refused to accept the bride-price offered. Consequent upon this renewed quarrel between the Nmwe and the Sumnut, the Sumnut appealed to the British for justice and the great Ri duwa (D. W. Rae, the first British Civil Officer, Sinlum) arbitrated the dispute. This part of the story at least is historical. In 1900 D. W. Rae did arbitrate a major Hpalang feud and gave a surprising ruling. He ruled that the Lahpai chiefs should again rule over the upper (western) end of the Hpalang ridge, while the Nmwe chiefs should rule over the lower (eastern) end. I think it is fairly certain that no Kachin could have expected such a 'judgement of Solomon' and that this was the very last sort of decision that anyone wanted. However, today the leaders of the Nmwe and the Sumnut each carefully preserve their respective copies of Ri duwa's vital judgement. My copy of this intriguing document has not survived but the published record of the affair is given in Appendix II. We know that Denis Wilmot was indeed in the Bhamo area from August 1900 until August 1902. After that he was in Sinlumkaba until July 1907: nevertheless when he married again, on 4th January 1903, it was in Bhamo (again, in Burma/Myanmar, not Bengal, despite what the registry entry says). Bhamo seems to be only about eighteen miles west of the likely site of Sinlumkaba, so it would have been an easy weekend trip. His bride was a twenty-three-year-old girl variously named in the records as Ma Kyin, May Kym, Machin or Mah Gyan, by whom he already had two children – the eldest of whom, Robert, had been born in February 1900, so probably not long before the judgement in Hpalang. Mah Gyan's father was named Lo Sit Pyun, and according to family memory had Chinese connections and Rory discovered that she was descended from a noble family in Nanking. Her son Bertie's application to join the police says that she was born at Maubin in Lower Burma, about thirty miles west of Yangon, which I've been told increases the likelihood of her being Chinese. Of the various spellings of her name, the only one which is apparently in her own hand calls her Mah Gyan. Ma, "sister", is a standard Myanmese honorific for a young woman: in later life she became Daw Kyin, equivalent to going from Miss to Madam. The spelling "Mah", however, combined with the use of "Lo" or "Ho" in front of a man's name, From Customs of the World by RW Marshall, 1912, courtesy of Wikipedia: Shan people: "On festival occasions representations of fabulous or heraldic animals often make their appearance. The Shans are particularly fond of them, and this is a sample of the fearsome deer that dwell in haunted forests." suggests that the family were indeed Shan Toyoks, Shans with some Chinese blood (Toyok, "cousin", is a local nickname for the Chinese). I wonder, though, whether Rory's half-brothers misunderstood him and he had traced the family not to Nanking but to Namhkan, a town on the Myanmese/Chinese border about forty miles south-east of Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Cecil Bruce Orr, a senior officer in the Burma police, would later describe Denis' and Mah Gyan's son Bertram as Anglo-Karen, meaning that Mah Gyan was Burmese and of the Karen tribe. However, Sam Newland recalls her as being "a Shan woman of great beauty" and the family also remember her to have been Shan. This makes far more sense, given Denis's long association with the Kachin Hills whose inhabitants are mainly either Kachin or Shan. Her birthplace doesn't fit with her being either Shan or Karen – but perhaps her mother was Shan and had travelled to Maubin with her probably-Chinese husband. According to burma-all.com "Shan" is what other people in Burma call this tribe, and is derived from a Chinese word for "hill-savage". They call themselves Thai or Tai, meaning "free", are part of the same group as the people of Thailand and are so fiercely independent that many of their villages in Burma have neither chief nor council. Many live in south-west China, where they are called Dai, but Nanking is over a thousand miles away, so if it is true that Mah Gyan was descended from Nanking aristocracy she probably had some non-Tai Chinese blood. I do not know whether Denis married his first wife with all the paperwork or not, but he certainly seems to have tied the knot formally with Mah Gyan. Vivian Rodrigues, whose family were officials in Burma, commented that it was common for senior British officials to take a native woman as a mistress or an unofficial wife, but formally to marry a native woman took "scary bravery". Of course, Denis seems to have sprung from the Irish landed gentry and he probably had that aristocratic sense that the rules were whatever he wanted them to be, but it's greatly to his credit that he wanted the rules to be that his lovely Shan girl was as good as any woman living. Regarding Denis's later career, various documents fill in the details of his Statement of Services, sometimes with minor differences in dating, which confirms that the S.o.S. may not be absolute gospel on what he did when. The India List and India Office List for 1905, page 70, confirms that D.W. Rae was an Extra Assistant Commissioner, 4th Grade, in the Provincial Civil Service. The National Archives at Kew list the following documents: Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner for about 6 weeks IOR/L/PJ/6/714, File 922 16 Mar 1905[his S.o.S. says 60 days from 1st March] Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo IOR/L/PJ/6/723, File 1478 4 May 1905[S.o.S. says 14th May] Mr D W Rae to temporarily officiate as Deputy Commissioner IOR/L/PJ/6/728, File 2114 29 Jun 1905[not listed on S.o.S.] Mr D W Rae, Extra Assistant Commissioner, to officiate as Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo District IOR/L/PJ/6/768, File 2003 14 Jun 1906[S.o.S. says 21st April] Appointment of Messrs D W Rae and W B Tydd to officiate as deputy commissioners of the Bhamo and Ruby Mines districts, Burma IOR/L/PJ/6/828, File 3261 5 Sep 1907[S.o.S. says from 15th July, with a drop in pay grade from 4th to 3rd on 23rd Septemeber] Unfortunately only a few of the Civil Lists for this period are available online but he isn't in the list for July-September 1909, at all, which suggests that as an Extra Assistant Commissioner he wasn't yet considered a Class 1 officer, even though he was to "hold charge" as District Commissioner later that year. The Agricultural Journal of India of March 1911 includes an article on the culture and agricultural practices of different peoples living in the Kachin Hills, with the citation "Information obtained largely from D. W. Rae, Esq., e.a.c. Assistant Superintendent, Kachin Hill Tracts". Denis evidently had some standing as an amateur anthropologist. A paper called Aspects of Bridewealth and Marriage Stability among the Kachin and Lakher by E. R. Leach refers back to a 1929 article called The Kachin Tribes of Burma by J. S. Carrapiett, who had in turn cited "P. M. R. Leonard, D. W. Rae and W. Scott" on the subject of the Kachin people called the Gauri. We know from his Statement of Services that Denis became a District Superintendent of Police in April 1912. We see him again in the Civil List, where he is a Superintendent of Police, 3rd Grade, based at Magwe in central Burma as at New Year 1915, and a year later he is in the same job, at the same pay, but back in Bhamo – although according to his Statement of Services, on that very day, 1st January 1916, he was reassigned from Bhamo to special duty in Katha. Page 83 of The India Office List for 1917 shows Denis as still a District Superintendent 3rd Grade, although it contains less information than the Civil List would do. Page 145 of The India Office List for 1918 records that "Rae, D.W." of the Indian Police retired on 19th May 1917. Denis Wilmot Rae and Mah Gyan (my great-grandfather and great-grandmother through the adoption of my father) had the following children: Robert "Bobby" R Rae, born 2nd February 1900 in Bhamo and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Virginia Monica Rae, born 3rd March 1902 and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Bertram Langford Denis Rae (my adoptive grandfather), born 28th September 1903 in Bhamo, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Harry Paul Rae, born 2nd December 1905, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Mary Agnes Rae, born 23rd October 1910, christened 2nd December 1911 in Maymyo, died of malaria 22nd April 1916 aged five. [India Office BL_BIND_005138294_00058; BL_BIND_005138295_00237] Denis Louis Joseph Rae born 19th September 1912, christened 16the April 1913 in Magwe. [India Office BL_BIND_005138451_00039] All that remains at the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng (the red pin marks the official coordinates, 200 yards from the rice fields: perhaps there was a house there once): the white dots on one of the terraces may be the sun-hats of villagers, still farming the land. Note the dates: Denis Wilmot and Mah Gyan got married and christened two children they already had, one nearly three, the other ten months old, all on the same day on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. Later they had two more children, one five, the other three, christened on the same day on 14th February 1909 in Maymyo (now called Pyun U Lin). Their relationship was obviously a stable and long-lasting one, but what do we make of these group ceremonies? My first thought was that when their children were born they lived somewhere in the backwoods that didn't have a registry office or a church (or not one of the right denomination), and so they just sorted out their paperwork, including the technicality of getting married, whenever they happened to hit town. Denis is listed as E.A.C. at Sinlumkaba at this point, which was around eighteen miles east of Bhamo (although thirty miles by road), and negligibly small, although probably a good site for his anthropological studies. All that remains of that "pleasant hill-station" at those coordinates now is the trace of the terraced rice fields described by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, and what looks like a nearly-dry riverbed, both now becoming overgrown with trees, although there is evidence that some of the terraces are still being cultivated. Photo' labelled on the back: "NEGATIVE SHIPPED TO WASHINGTON – // 4 NOV. 44 // ROUTE THROUGH SINLUMKABA HILLS TAKEN BY 38th DIV ON WAY SOUTH TO BHAMO", from eBay advert Denis remained mainly based at Sinlumkaba from August 1902 until July 1907, when he was posted back to Bhamo, but he was also in charge of the District Commissioner's office at Bhamo from 1st March to 30th April 1905, from 14th May to 13th June 1905 and from 21st April 1906 to 24th September 1906. Rattling back and forth between Bhamo and Sinlumkaba seems to have been the norm for Denis, but the group christening in Bhamo in 1903 suggest that his wife and children remained mainly at Sinlumkaba, and only made the journey to Bhamo occasionally. According to the census Bertram was born at Bhamo in September 1903, so perhaps Mah Gyan made the trip to a town with a midwife: or perhaps when he filled in the census Bertie only meant "in the Bhamo area". Sam Newland spoke of Bobby Rae, the eldest boy, having lived a backwoods life before going to school, which suggests the family did live mainly at Sinlumkaba. Then they had another group christening in Maymyo (a.k.a. Pyin Oo Lwin), aboutb 25 miles east of Mandalay, in February 1909 when they had gone there to leave Bertram to board at St Joseph's convent, and perhaps to leave his brother Bobby at a boarding school there called the Government High School for Europeans. Another possibility is that the family were based in Bhamo throughout this time, or visited there regularly, but the priest there was sniffy after having married the parents and christened two of their children on the same day in January 1903, so they put off christening the younger ones until they could do it in Maymyo. A white officer married to a native woman would already have been seen as a bit of a freak show, so Denis would have attracted attention both for marrying Mah Gyan rather late, and for marrying her at all. Bertram actually started at a convent school in Maymyo in 1909, a few days before he was christened, so again it was a case of "Let's get it all done in one trip". The family seem to have regarded Maymyo as some sort of home-base by 1914, when Samuel Newland and Bertie both started at the Government High School for Europeans in February 1914, because Sam later wrote that all of the Rae boys were at the school with him. Their sister Virginia attended the Maymyo Convent school. However, we know from his Statement of Services that in February 1914 Denis was based in Magwe, about 150 miles south-west of Maymyo, and a year later he was based in Myitkyina, 70 miles north of Bhamo, for two months and then back to Bhamo, about 150 miles nor' nor' east of Maymyo. They must have decided to place all their children into schools in Maymyo because it meant that at least they all had each other, even if their parents were 150 miles away – although I have no direct input on whether Mah Gyan stayed with her husband or her children during this period, once the youngest started at school in Maymyo. Sam Newland does not mention her as being nearby during their schooldays, though he did meet her and make note of her great beauty. We know from Sam Newland that Denis Wilmot died of cancer in "about 1920 or so". According to family history Denis died in 1919 – a note to this effect was scribbled on a document relating to Francis Langford Rae – and both family memory and Sam's memoirs say that Bertram was unable to go to university because there was now no money to pay his fees. We can be certain however that the date of Denis's death was later than 1919, because an extant shipping list shows that on 12th September 1920 a D.W. Rae, Kokine in 1951, from The Burton Family Collection an Inspector of Police aged fifty-five and resident in Burma, arrived in Liverpool having come from Rangoon as a First-Class passenger on a merchant ship called the Martaban. He has a tick in a column for people who intend to be permanently resident in England, but the column has been re-labelled "India" (a term which at that time included Burma). This has to be Denis Wilmot. He was already retired at this point and it would appear that he used his new liberty to visit his son: and perhaps to bring his daughter Beatrice's children, Iris (six) and Peter (three), to the U.K., as both were living at a school in South London run by their father's sister by summer 1921. Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb. Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
Various documents shed light on the individual postings of his very active career. Under the heading "Police" the 1895 Thacker's Directory for the Bhamo area shows Rae, D.W. as "Asst. Supt. (Bhamo)". Fifteen hundred years beforehand Bhamo had been Sampanago, the capital of the ancient Shan kingdom of Manmaw, and it was still a major administrative centre.
In the 1913 book A Civil Servant in Burma by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, we glimpse "Mr. D. W. Rae of the Provincial Service, an officer of tried experience in the Kachin Hills", in winter 1897, assisting a Joint Commission of British and Chinese officials whose task was to demarcate the border between Burma and China, and correct an error which in 1893 had led to the Chinese border being established too close to Bhamo; and to the Burmese town of Sima, further to the north, being arbitrarily incorporated into China.
This is confusing because Denis's Statement of Services shows him as "On duty with the Main Escort Column" in the winter of 1894/95, not 1897/98 (when such an expedition definitely did take place). It may be that he escorted a column twice, and the second one has not been noted in his Statement of Services. Or it may be that Sir Herbert has conflated two separate episodes. There was a Burma–China Boundary Convention of 1st March 1894, nearly ten months before Denis's Statement of Services places him with the Main Escort Column. In 1950 a document sent by the British Foreign Office to the CIA stated,.with reference to this 1894 Convention, that:
In the 1890s explorations were carried out to the north of the Bhamo district and it was found that the Irrawaddy–Salween watershed would form a good boundary in that area (9), but for the time being administration was not extended beyond 25°30'N (10) [the northern limit of the Bhamo administrative district], and it was resolved to partition the Kachin Hills east of Bhamo and south of 25°30'N (11).
The Chinese made claims both in the Bhamo district and in the unadministered north, but finally the Boundary Convention of 1894 left the frontier undefined in the north, while south of 25°35'N the British made concessions in both the Bhamo district and the Shan States (12–18).
Owing to objections on strategic grounds, the line was revised by the Convention of 1897 in favour of Burma (18–20), and the frontier was then demarcated by a joint Commission except for a two-hundred miles stretch in the Wa area where no agreement was reached (21–22).
[cut]
18. The frontier as thus agreed was to undergo swift modification, however. The Government of Burma had, even before the Convention was agreed to, objected to the proposed line, and the line was later the subject of severe criticism. The objections were fourfold. In the first place, villages and even in some cases houses were cut in two by the line. Secondly, the Chinese were brought within thirty miles of Bhamotown. Thirdly, the Chinese were allocated the area of Namwan, at the point where the roughly north-south boundary of the Bhamo district meets the roughly west-east boundary of the northern Shan States, and through this area ran the principal line of communication between Bhamo and the Shan States. It was true that under Article 2 of the Convention troops might pass through the area, but only if previous notice were given of the transit of any party of more than twenty men and only with the prior sanction of the Chinese authorities if more than two hundred men were sent. The military authorities in particular objected to this situation, which was liable to hamper the movement of forces in an area where as yet British control was not completely consolidated. Fourthly, eleven villages in the Namkham area and the whole sub-state of Kokang were allotted to the Chinese although they were in fact feudatories of the Sawbwa of Hsenwi, the rest of whose state lay on the British side of the ]ine.
19. In consequence of these objections, an opportunity was soon found of modifying the line. The French had long taken an interest in Kiang Hung, to the north of Indo-China, and it was in view of their interest that the condition had been inserted in the Convention prohibiting the Chinese from ceding any part of this state to a third Power. In 1895, however, under French pressure, the Chinese Government ceded a portion of the state to Indo-China, and this breach of the Convention of 1894 was made the grounds for demanding a revision of the frontier.
20. The Anglo-Chinese Convention of 4th February 1897 re-aligned the frontier so that Sima and Kokang were retroceded to Burma, and a perpetual lease was granted to Her Majesty's Government of the Namwan area. ...
II. The Undelimited Frontier 1895–1914.
23. Though the frontier of the Bhamo district and the Shan States was agreed in 1894, north of the point 25°35'N all was still uncertain. The country beyond Myitkyina was in a chaotic state, and the Kachins not infrequently carried their raids across the imaginary line separating the unadministered from the administered area. The situation was such as to lead in 1895 to a strengthening of administration in the Myitkyina area by the detachment of that area from the Bhamo district and its formation into a distinct administrative district of Myitkyina. At that time the northern limit of the Myitkyina district still lay only a few miles above Myitkyina town and below the confluence where the 'Nmai and Mali join to form the Irrawaddy.
24. It was known, however, that Chinese officials were penetrating into unadministered areas west of the Irrawaddy–Salween watershed and it was suspected that they aimed at presenting a fait accompli to any Boundary Commission that might be appointed under the Conventions.
From the sound of it there may well have been some sort of unrecorded expedition in 1894, but it wouldn't have been an Anglo–Chinese joint effort at that point. In regard to Vivian's other suggestion, I can find no record of a punitive expedition to Fort Hertz in the winter of 1894/95. Exatly what column Denis was escorting from December 1894 to March 1895 remians a mystery, and we have to assume that he did indeed also go with the Anglo–Chinese Commission of winter 1897, even though it isn't specified in his Statement of Services.
According to Sir Herbert, the Commission foregathered at Bhamo, then marched due east "through the pleasant hill-station of Sinlumgaba, past terraced rice-fields watered by ingenious irrigation works, over shallow streams". If Denis was indeed with the column in 1897, they may have picked him up at Sinlumgaba, where he was based at the time according to his Statement of Services (in December 1894 he was at Bhamo). Owing to a deadlock between the two factions the Commission stalled and ended up spending four months camping in tents by a stream at the provisional border, haggling over details and waiting for orders from their governments.
Sinlumgaba must be the place now usually spelled Sinlumkaba or Sinlum Kaba. Burma Under British Rule by John Nesbit shows that Sinlumgaba was about thirty miles east of Bhamo and on or near a road constructed in 1897, and Notes on the Nidification of some Birds from Burma by Major H. H. Harington ["nidification" means "nest-building"] also places Sinlum-Kaba thirty miles due east of Bhamo, at an altitude of 6,000 feet.
The modern location of Sinlum Kaba is slightly obscure since its name doesn't appear on the maps, but it seems to be the place now usually called Wuteng, in between Sinlum and Sinlumkaji, about eighteen miles due east of Bhamo in a straight line, but about thirty by road. Traveling Luck confuses the issue by saying that Sinlum and Sinlumkaba are one and the same, but it actually shows them as a mile or two apart, and both Traveling Luck and True Knowledge list Sinlum, Sinlumkaba and Sinlumkaji as three successive locations and show Wuteng as being at the same coordinates as Sinlumkaba.
Traveling Luck shows: Sinlum Latitude: 24.25°, Longitude: 97.5° Sinlumkaba Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667° Wuteng Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667° Sinlumkaji Latitude: 24.2833333°, Longitude: 97.55°
Stad.com also has: Sinlumkaba Latitude: 24.2666667°, Longitude: 97.5166667°
True Knowledge has: Sinlum 323 miles (520km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 182 miles (293km) north of Mandalay Sinlumkaba 324 miles (522km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 184 miles (296km) north of Mandalay Wuteng 324 miles (522km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 184 miles (296km) north of Mandalay Sinlumkaji 326 miles (525km) north of Ne Pyi Daw, 186 miles (299km) north of Mandalay
It seems clear, therefore, that despite being only eighteen miles from Bhamo in a straight line, Sinlumgaba is the place now marked on maps as Wuteng – or, if they are separate places, they are less than half a mile apart. You can see a satellite view of Wuteng at Tegeo.com.
Confusingly, Bing Maps labels the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng as Momauk, but that seems to be an error: Momauk is an actual town, two miles west of Sinlumkaba. Mapcarta labels the locality slightly to the east as Au Taing, which I assume is another spelling of Wuteng. It states that "Sinlumkaba is a locality in Momauk Township, Bhamo District, Kachin State and has an elevation of 4,836 feet. Sinlumkaba is situated nearby to the locality Hpunggankawng, as well as near Au Taing."
Confusingly, the Abilek Patal Indian archive carries a Report by Mr. D. W. Rae; lately Civil Officer with the Namkham Column; on the subject of the boundary between the British Shan State of North Hsenwi and the Chinese Shan States of Mongmao and Sefan. [National Archives of India; NAIDLF00447665; Progs.Non;396/308;June;1893] dated June 1893, which means Denis was on at least three survey columns, in 1893, 1894/95 and 1897, even though only the middle one is listed in his Statement of Services. Worse, according to his Statement of Services he wasn't a Civil Officer until 1897, yet here he is being described as a Civil Officer in 1893. The whole file is labelled Secret E, and consists of Denis's report and an accompanying note from the Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Burma, with comments from somebody labelled H.D. saying that this report isn't needeed, as they already have a better one by a J.G. Scott. Denis's report is indeed a bit minimalist and lacklustre – not at all what you would expect from a budding anthropologist – although it does come with a nice map of the area north-east of Namhkam (which itself is eighty miles south-east of Bhamo). Despite H.D.'s disparaging remarks, whoever first forwarded the report commented that "This is a nice clear map. I should like to have a printed copy as early as is convenient." Denis's map of the boundary north of Namkham: Namkham itself is near the bottom left, just left of the T in "NATIONAL" From D.W. RAE, Esq., Assistant Superintendent of Police, Civil Officer, Namkham Column, to the Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo,—No. 6, dated the 2nd May 1893. I HAVE the honour to submit herewith my notes on the Chinese frontier, together with a map illustrating the approximate boundary. The map has been compiled from maps by Captain Walker and Lieutenants Davis and Prowse. ————— Notes on Chinese Frontier. The information I was able to gather relating to the Chinese frontier is in connection with the boundary between the petty Shan States of Müngko, Wanteng, Namgtow, Musè, Selan and Namkham, and the Shan-Chinese States of Chêfan and Müng Mow, and is as follows:— To the north of Müngko a small range of hills known as Tansangpang Mat, is the recognized boundary between that State and the Shan-Chinese State of Chêfan or Sèfan. Adjoining Müngko on the west is Wanteng. The boundary between this State and Chêfan or Sèfan is said to be the Möng Lôn Ka stream. The column did not visit this State, and I am therefore unable to vouch for the accuracy of the position of the stream on accompanying map. The next definite boundary line is the Namyang stream which divides Namtow and the Shan-Chinese State of Müng Mow. The Shwêli, or rather the old bed of this river, is then recognized by the Sèlan and Namkham Myozas as the boundary between these States and Müng Mow. With reference to the debateable strip of land between the Namkham and Namwan rivers I was unable to collect any information for want of opportunity. The accompanying map illustrates the approximate boundary between the Shan States under British control and those subject to China. [How strange it would surely seem to Denis that his as-yet-unborn second son's adopted son's daughter would transcribe his letter 132 years in the future.] Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure by ER Leach, first published in 1959, describes a conflict among the Kachin people of Hpalang, between Bhamo and the Chinese border, which occurred circa 1900 and which was later described to him from collective memory by Kachins living in the area in 1940. Hpalang seems to be immediately west of what is now the Yaw Yung military post, or about seven miles east south east of Sinlumkaba. A duwa is a chief, so Ri duwa presumably means "Chief Rae". But to return to the Hpalang feud. All were agreed that, with the Lahpai vanquished, the Nmwe ruled as chiefs in Hpalang. At this point the constituent villages appear to have been Nmwe, Laga, Gumjye, Sumnut. These all shared a common numshang (sacred grove). All reports agreed that the Sumnut headman of this period was an aggressive and dominating personality. The Sumnut themselves said that he was the recognised bawmung30 of the whole community, and that the Nmwe chief though harmless enough was only a figurehead. The Maran said that this Sumnut headman was a bandit (damya) who made a living from cattle raids and extorting 'blackmail' (protection money) from the Shan villages in the valley below and that a quarrel finally broke out between the Nmwe and the Sumnut over the disposal of some cattle. Tradition here was at first somewhat bowdlerised for my benefit but the Maran grievance seemed really to be that Maran had themselves purloined, in dubious circumstances, some pack animals belonging to a passing Chinese caravan and that the Sumnut had then seized the animals and sold them over the border, thus making it impossible for the Maran to extort the ransom that had been intended. The Sumnut on the other hand said that the new quarrel was again about a woman. Since the Sumnut were now dama to the Nmwe, the latter were not entitled to dispose of their women to other lineages except by agreement of the Sumnut. The Sumnut wished to maintain the mayu-dama relationship and negotiated for a further marriage, but the Nmwe insult¬ingly refused to accept the bride-price offered. Consequent upon this renewed quarrel between the Nmwe and the Sumnut, the Sumnut appealed to the British for justice and the great Ri duwa (D. W. Rae, the first British Civil Officer, Sinlum) arbitrated the dispute. This part of the story at least is historical. In 1900 D. W. Rae did arbitrate a major Hpalang feud and gave a surprising ruling. He ruled that the Lahpai chiefs should again rule over the upper (western) end of the Hpalang ridge, while the Nmwe chiefs should rule over the lower (eastern) end. I think it is fairly certain that no Kachin could have expected such a 'judgement of Solomon' and that this was the very last sort of decision that anyone wanted. However, today the leaders of the Nmwe and the Sumnut each carefully preserve their respective copies of Ri duwa's vital judgement. My copy of this intriguing document has not survived but the published record of the affair is given in Appendix II. We know that Denis Wilmot was indeed in the Bhamo area from August 1900 until August 1902. After that he was in Sinlumkaba until July 1907: nevertheless when he married again, on 4th January 1903, it was in Bhamo (again, in Burma/Myanmar, not Bengal, despite what the registry entry says). Bhamo seems to be only about eighteen miles west of the likely site of Sinlumkaba, so it would have been an easy weekend trip. His bride was a twenty-three-year-old girl variously named in the records as Ma Kyin, May Kym, Machin or Mah Gyan, by whom he already had two children – the eldest of whom, Robert, had been born in February 1900, so probably not long before the judgement in Hpalang. Mah Gyan's father was named Lo Sit Pyun, and according to family memory had Chinese connections and Rory discovered that she was descended from a noble family in Nanking. Her son Bertie's application to join the police says that she was born at Maubin in Lower Burma, about thirty miles west of Yangon, which I've been told increases the likelihood of her being Chinese. Of the various spellings of her name, the only one which is apparently in her own hand calls her Mah Gyan. Ma, "sister", is a standard Myanmese honorific for a young woman: in later life she became Daw Kyin, equivalent to going from Miss to Madam. The spelling "Mah", however, combined with the use of "Lo" or "Ho" in front of a man's name, From Customs of the World by RW Marshall, 1912, courtesy of Wikipedia: Shan people: "On festival occasions representations of fabulous or heraldic animals often make their appearance. The Shans are particularly fond of them, and this is a sample of the fearsome deer that dwell in haunted forests." suggests that the family were indeed Shan Toyoks, Shans with some Chinese blood (Toyok, "cousin", is a local nickname for the Chinese). I wonder, though, whether Rory's half-brothers misunderstood him and he had traced the family not to Nanking but to Namhkan, a town on the Myanmese/Chinese border about forty miles south-east of Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Cecil Bruce Orr, a senior officer in the Burma police, would later describe Denis' and Mah Gyan's son Bertram as Anglo-Karen, meaning that Mah Gyan was Burmese and of the Karen tribe. However, Sam Newland recalls her as being "a Shan woman of great beauty" and the family also remember her to have been Shan. This makes far more sense, given Denis's long association with the Kachin Hills whose inhabitants are mainly either Kachin or Shan. Her birthplace doesn't fit with her being either Shan or Karen – but perhaps her mother was Shan and had travelled to Maubin with her probably-Chinese husband. According to burma-all.com "Shan" is what other people in Burma call this tribe, and is derived from a Chinese word for "hill-savage". They call themselves Thai or Tai, meaning "free", are part of the same group as the people of Thailand and are so fiercely independent that many of their villages in Burma have neither chief nor council. Many live in south-west China, where they are called Dai, but Nanking is over a thousand miles away, so if it is true that Mah Gyan was descended from Nanking aristocracy she probably had some non-Tai Chinese blood. I do not know whether Denis married his first wife with all the paperwork or not, but he certainly seems to have tied the knot formally with Mah Gyan. Vivian Rodrigues, whose family were officials in Burma, commented that it was common for senior British officials to take a native woman as a mistress or an unofficial wife, but formally to marry a native woman took "scary bravery". Of course, Denis seems to have sprung from the Irish landed gentry and he probably had that aristocratic sense that the rules were whatever he wanted them to be, but it's greatly to his credit that he wanted the rules to be that his lovely Shan girl was as good as any woman living. Regarding Denis's later career, various documents fill in the details of his Statement of Services, sometimes with minor differences in dating, which confirms that the S.o.S. may not be absolute gospel on what he did when. The India List and India Office List for 1905, page 70, confirms that D.W. Rae was an Extra Assistant Commissioner, 4th Grade, in the Provincial Civil Service. The National Archives at Kew list the following documents: Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner for about 6 weeks IOR/L/PJ/6/714, File 922 16 Mar 1905[his S.o.S. says 60 days from 1st March] Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo IOR/L/PJ/6/723, File 1478 4 May 1905[S.o.S. says 14th May] Mr D W Rae to temporarily officiate as Deputy Commissioner IOR/L/PJ/6/728, File 2114 29 Jun 1905[not listed on S.o.S.] Mr D W Rae, Extra Assistant Commissioner, to officiate as Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo District IOR/L/PJ/6/768, File 2003 14 Jun 1906[S.o.S. says 21st April] Appointment of Messrs D W Rae and W B Tydd to officiate as deputy commissioners of the Bhamo and Ruby Mines districts, Burma IOR/L/PJ/6/828, File 3261 5 Sep 1907[S.o.S. says from 15th July, with a drop in pay grade from 4th to 3rd on 23rd Septemeber] Unfortunately only a few of the Civil Lists for this period are available online but he isn't in the list for July-September 1909, at all, which suggests that as an Extra Assistant Commissioner he wasn't yet considered a Class 1 officer, even though he was to "hold charge" as District Commissioner later that year. The Agricultural Journal of India of March 1911 includes an article on the culture and agricultural practices of different peoples living in the Kachin Hills, with the citation "Information obtained largely from D. W. Rae, Esq., e.a.c. Assistant Superintendent, Kachin Hill Tracts". Denis evidently had some standing as an amateur anthropologist. A paper called Aspects of Bridewealth and Marriage Stability among the Kachin and Lakher by E. R. Leach refers back to a 1929 article called The Kachin Tribes of Burma by J. S. Carrapiett, who had in turn cited "P. M. R. Leonard, D. W. Rae and W. Scott" on the subject of the Kachin people called the Gauri. We know from his Statement of Services that Denis became a District Superintendent of Police in April 1912. We see him again in the Civil List, where he is a Superintendent of Police, 3rd Grade, based at Magwe in central Burma as at New Year 1915, and a year later he is in the same job, at the same pay, but back in Bhamo – although according to his Statement of Services, on that very day, 1st January 1916, he was reassigned from Bhamo to special duty in Katha. Page 83 of The India Office List for 1917 shows Denis as still a District Superintendent 3rd Grade, although it contains less information than the Civil List would do. Page 145 of The India Office List for 1918 records that "Rae, D.W." of the Indian Police retired on 19th May 1917. Denis Wilmot Rae and Mah Gyan (my great-grandfather and great-grandmother through the adoption of my father) had the following children: Robert "Bobby" R Rae, born 2nd February 1900 in Bhamo and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Virginia Monica Rae, born 3rd March 1902 and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Bertram Langford Denis Rae (my adoptive grandfather), born 28th September 1903 in Bhamo, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Harry Paul Rae, born 2nd December 1905, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Mary Agnes Rae, born 23rd October 1910, christened 2nd December 1911 in Maymyo, died of malaria 22nd April 1916 aged five. [India Office BL_BIND_005138294_00058; BL_BIND_005138295_00237] Denis Louis Joseph Rae born 19th September 1912, christened 16the April 1913 in Magwe. [India Office BL_BIND_005138451_00039] All that remains at the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng (the red pin marks the official coordinates, 200 yards from the rice fields: perhaps there was a house there once): the white dots on one of the terraces may be the sun-hats of villagers, still farming the land. Note the dates: Denis Wilmot and Mah Gyan got married and christened two children they already had, one nearly three, the other ten months old, all on the same day on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. Later they had two more children, one five, the other three, christened on the same day on 14th February 1909 in Maymyo (now called Pyun U Lin). Their relationship was obviously a stable and long-lasting one, but what do we make of these group ceremonies? My first thought was that when their children were born they lived somewhere in the backwoods that didn't have a registry office or a church (or not one of the right denomination), and so they just sorted out their paperwork, including the technicality of getting married, whenever they happened to hit town. Denis is listed as E.A.C. at Sinlumkaba at this point, which was around eighteen miles east of Bhamo (although thirty miles by road), and negligibly small, although probably a good site for his anthropological studies. All that remains of that "pleasant hill-station" at those coordinates now is the trace of the terraced rice fields described by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, and what looks like a nearly-dry riverbed, both now becoming overgrown with trees, although there is evidence that some of the terraces are still being cultivated. Photo' labelled on the back: "NEGATIVE SHIPPED TO WASHINGTON – // 4 NOV. 44 // ROUTE THROUGH SINLUMKABA HILLS TAKEN BY 38th DIV ON WAY SOUTH TO BHAMO", from eBay advert Denis remained mainly based at Sinlumkaba from August 1902 until July 1907, when he was posted back to Bhamo, but he was also in charge of the District Commissioner's office at Bhamo from 1st March to 30th April 1905, from 14th May to 13th June 1905 and from 21st April 1906 to 24th September 1906. Rattling back and forth between Bhamo and Sinlumkaba seems to have been the norm for Denis, but the group christening in Bhamo in 1903 suggest that his wife and children remained mainly at Sinlumkaba, and only made the journey to Bhamo occasionally. According to the census Bertram was born at Bhamo in September 1903, so perhaps Mah Gyan made the trip to a town with a midwife: or perhaps when he filled in the census Bertie only meant "in the Bhamo area". Sam Newland spoke of Bobby Rae, the eldest boy, having lived a backwoods life before going to school, which suggests the family did live mainly at Sinlumkaba. Then they had another group christening in Maymyo (a.k.a. Pyin Oo Lwin), aboutb 25 miles east of Mandalay, in February 1909 when they had gone there to leave Bertram to board at St Joseph's convent, and perhaps to leave his brother Bobby at a boarding school there called the Government High School for Europeans. Another possibility is that the family were based in Bhamo throughout this time, or visited there regularly, but the priest there was sniffy after having married the parents and christened two of their children on the same day in January 1903, so they put off christening the younger ones until they could do it in Maymyo. A white officer married to a native woman would already have been seen as a bit of a freak show, so Denis would have attracted attention both for marrying Mah Gyan rather late, and for marrying her at all. Bertram actually started at a convent school in Maymyo in 1909, a few days before he was christened, so again it was a case of "Let's get it all done in one trip". The family seem to have regarded Maymyo as some sort of home-base by 1914, when Samuel Newland and Bertie both started at the Government High School for Europeans in February 1914, because Sam later wrote that all of the Rae boys were at the school with him. Their sister Virginia attended the Maymyo Convent school. However, we know from his Statement of Services that in February 1914 Denis was based in Magwe, about 150 miles south-west of Maymyo, and a year later he was based in Myitkyina, 70 miles north of Bhamo, for two months and then back to Bhamo, about 150 miles nor' nor' east of Maymyo. They must have decided to place all their children into schools in Maymyo because it meant that at least they all had each other, even if their parents were 150 miles away – although I have no direct input on whether Mah Gyan stayed with her husband or her children during this period, once the youngest started at school in Maymyo. Sam Newland does not mention her as being nearby during their schooldays, though he did meet her and make note of her great beauty. We know from Sam Newland that Denis Wilmot died of cancer in "about 1920 or so". According to family history Denis died in 1919 – a note to this effect was scribbled on a document relating to Francis Langford Rae – and both family memory and Sam's memoirs say that Bertram was unable to go to university because there was now no money to pay his fees. We can be certain however that the date of Denis's death was later than 1919, because an extant shipping list shows that on 12th September 1920 a D.W. Rae, Kokine in 1951, from The Burton Family Collection an Inspector of Police aged fifty-five and resident in Burma, arrived in Liverpool having come from Rangoon as a First-Class passenger on a merchant ship called the Martaban. He has a tick in a column for people who intend to be permanently resident in England, but the column has been re-labelled "India" (a term which at that time included Burma). This has to be Denis Wilmot. He was already retired at this point and it would appear that he used his new liberty to visit his son: and perhaps to bring his daughter Beatrice's children, Iris (six) and Peter (three), to the U.K., as both were living at a school in South London run by their father's sister by summer 1921. Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb. Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
From D.W. RAE, Esq., Assistant Superintendent of Police, Civil Officer, Namkham Column, to the Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo,—No. 6, dated the 2nd May 1893.
I HAVE the honour to submit herewith my notes on the Chinese frontier, together with a map illustrating the approximate boundary. The map has been compiled from maps by Captain Walker and Lieutenants Davis and Prowse.
[How strange it would surely seem to Denis that his as-yet-unborn second son's adopted son's daughter would transcribe his letter 132 years in the future.]
Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure by ER Leach, first published in 1959, describes a conflict among the Kachin people of Hpalang, between Bhamo and the Chinese border, which occurred circa 1900 and which was later described to him from collective memory by Kachins living in the area in 1940. Hpalang seems to be immediately west of what is now the Yaw Yung military post, or about seven miles east south east of Sinlumkaba. A duwa is a chief, so Ri duwa presumably means "Chief Rae".
But to return to the Hpalang feud. All were agreed that, with the Lahpai vanquished, the Nmwe ruled as chiefs in Hpalang. At this point the constituent villages appear to have been Nmwe, Laga, Gumjye, Sumnut. These all shared a common numshang (sacred grove). All reports agreed that the Sumnut headman of this period was an aggressive and dominating personality. The Sumnut themselves said that he was the recognised bawmung30 of the whole community, and that the Nmwe chief though harmless enough was only a figurehead. The Maran said that this Sumnut headman was a bandit (damya) who made a living from cattle raids and extorting 'blackmail' (protection money) from the Shan villages in the valley below and that a quarrel finally broke out between the Nmwe and the Sumnut over the disposal of some cattle. Tradition here was at first somewhat bowdlerised for my benefit but the Maran grievance seemed really to be that Maran had themselves purloined, in dubious circumstances, some pack animals belonging to a passing Chinese caravan and that the Sumnut had then seized the animals and sold them over the border, thus making it impossible for the Maran to extort the ransom that had been intended. The Sumnut on the other hand said that the new quarrel was again about a woman. Since the Sumnut were now dama to the Nmwe, the latter were not entitled to dispose of their women to other lineages except by agreement of the Sumnut. The Sumnut wished to maintain the mayu-dama relationship and negotiated for a further marriage, but the Nmwe insult¬ingly refused to accept the bride-price offered. Consequent upon this renewed quarrel between the Nmwe and the Sumnut, the Sumnut appealed to the British for justice and the great Ri duwa (D. W. Rae, the first British Civil Officer, Sinlum) arbitrated the dispute. This part of the story at least is historical. In 1900 D. W. Rae did arbitrate a major Hpalang feud and gave a surprising ruling. He ruled that the Lahpai chiefs should again rule over the upper (western) end of the Hpalang ridge, while the Nmwe chiefs should rule over the lower (eastern) end. I think it is fairly certain that no Kachin could have expected such a 'judgement of Solomon' and that this was the very last sort of decision that anyone wanted. However, today the leaders of the Nmwe and the Sumnut each carefully preserve their respective copies of Ri duwa's vital judgement. My copy of this intriguing document has not survived but the published record of the affair is given in Appendix II.
We know that Denis Wilmot was indeed in the Bhamo area from August 1900 until August 1902. After that he was in Sinlumkaba until July 1907: nevertheless when he married again, on 4th January 1903, it was in Bhamo (again, in Burma/Myanmar, not Bengal, despite what the registry entry says). Bhamo seems to be only about eighteen miles west of the likely site of Sinlumkaba, so it would have been an easy weekend trip. His bride was a twenty-three-year-old girl variously named in the records as Ma Kyin, May Kym, Machin or Mah Gyan, by whom he already had two children – the eldest of whom, Robert, had been born in February 1900, so probably not long before the judgement in Hpalang. Mah Gyan's father was named Lo Sit Pyun, and according to family memory had Chinese connections and Rory discovered that she was descended from a noble family in Nanking. Her son Bertie's application to join the police says that she was born at Maubin in Lower Burma, about thirty miles west of Yangon, which I've been told increases the likelihood of her being Chinese.
Of the various spellings of her name, the only one which is apparently in her own hand calls her Mah Gyan. Ma, "sister", is a standard Myanmese honorific for a young woman: in later life she became Daw Kyin, equivalent to going from Miss to Madam. The spelling "Mah", however, combined with the use of "Lo" or "Ho" in front of a man's name, From Customs of the World by RW Marshall, 1912, courtesy of Wikipedia: Shan people: "On festival occasions representations of fabulous or heraldic animals often make their appearance. The Shans are particularly fond of them, and this is a sample of the fearsome deer that dwell in haunted forests." suggests that the family were indeed Shan Toyoks, Shans with some Chinese blood (Toyok, "cousin", is a local nickname for the Chinese). I wonder, though, whether Rory's half-brothers misunderstood him and he had traced the family not to Nanking but to Namhkan, a town on the Myanmese/Chinese border about forty miles south-east of Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Cecil Bruce Orr, a senior officer in the Burma police, would later describe Denis' and Mah Gyan's son Bertram as Anglo-Karen, meaning that Mah Gyan was Burmese and of the Karen tribe. However, Sam Newland recalls her as being "a Shan woman of great beauty" and the family also remember her to have been Shan. This makes far more sense, given Denis's long association with the Kachin Hills whose inhabitants are mainly either Kachin or Shan. Her birthplace doesn't fit with her being either Shan or Karen – but perhaps her mother was Shan and had travelled to Maubin with her probably-Chinese husband. According to burma-all.com "Shan" is what other people in Burma call this tribe, and is derived from a Chinese word for "hill-savage". They call themselves Thai or Tai, meaning "free", are part of the same group as the people of Thailand and are so fiercely independent that many of their villages in Burma have neither chief nor council. Many live in south-west China, where they are called Dai, but Nanking is over a thousand miles away, so if it is true that Mah Gyan was descended from Nanking aristocracy she probably had some non-Tai Chinese blood. I do not know whether Denis married his first wife with all the paperwork or not, but he certainly seems to have tied the knot formally with Mah Gyan. Vivian Rodrigues, whose family were officials in Burma, commented that it was common for senior British officials to take a native woman as a mistress or an unofficial wife, but formally to marry a native woman took "scary bravery". Of course, Denis seems to have sprung from the Irish landed gentry and he probably had that aristocratic sense that the rules were whatever he wanted them to be, but it's greatly to his credit that he wanted the rules to be that his lovely Shan girl was as good as any woman living. Regarding Denis's later career, various documents fill in the details of his Statement of Services, sometimes with minor differences in dating, which confirms that the S.o.S. may not be absolute gospel on what he did when. The India List and India Office List for 1905, page 70, confirms that D.W. Rae was an Extra Assistant Commissioner, 4th Grade, in the Provincial Civil Service. The National Archives at Kew list the following documents: Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner for about 6 weeks IOR/L/PJ/6/714, File 922 16 Mar 1905[his S.o.S. says 60 days from 1st March] Mr D W Rae to officiate as Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo IOR/L/PJ/6/723, File 1478 4 May 1905[S.o.S. says 14th May] Mr D W Rae to temporarily officiate as Deputy Commissioner IOR/L/PJ/6/728, File 2114 29 Jun 1905[not listed on S.o.S.] Mr D W Rae, Extra Assistant Commissioner, to officiate as Deputy Commissioner, Bhamo District IOR/L/PJ/6/768, File 2003 14 Jun 1906[S.o.S. says 21st April] Appointment of Messrs D W Rae and W B Tydd to officiate as deputy commissioners of the Bhamo and Ruby Mines districts, Burma IOR/L/PJ/6/828, File 3261 5 Sep 1907[S.o.S. says from 15th July, with a drop in pay grade from 4th to 3rd on 23rd Septemeber] Unfortunately only a few of the Civil Lists for this period are available online but he isn't in the list for July-September 1909, at all, which suggests that as an Extra Assistant Commissioner he wasn't yet considered a Class 1 officer, even though he was to "hold charge" as District Commissioner later that year. The Agricultural Journal of India of March 1911 includes an article on the culture and agricultural practices of different peoples living in the Kachin Hills, with the citation "Information obtained largely from D. W. Rae, Esq., e.a.c. Assistant Superintendent, Kachin Hill Tracts". Denis evidently had some standing as an amateur anthropologist. A paper called Aspects of Bridewealth and Marriage Stability among the Kachin and Lakher by E. R. Leach refers back to a 1929 article called The Kachin Tribes of Burma by J. S. Carrapiett, who had in turn cited "P. M. R. Leonard, D. W. Rae and W. Scott" on the subject of the Kachin people called the Gauri. We know from his Statement of Services that Denis became a District Superintendent of Police in April 1912. We see him again in the Civil List, where he is a Superintendent of Police, 3rd Grade, based at Magwe in central Burma as at New Year 1915, and a year later he is in the same job, at the same pay, but back in Bhamo – although according to his Statement of Services, on that very day, 1st January 1916, he was reassigned from Bhamo to special duty in Katha. Page 83 of The India Office List for 1917 shows Denis as still a District Superintendent 3rd Grade, although it contains less information than the Civil List would do. Page 145 of The India Office List for 1918 records that "Rae, D.W." of the Indian Police retired on 19th May 1917. Denis Wilmot Rae and Mah Gyan (my great-grandfather and great-grandmother through the adoption of my father) had the following children: Robert "Bobby" R Rae, born 2nd February 1900 in Bhamo and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Virginia Monica Rae, born 3rd March 1902 and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch] Bertram Langford Denis Rae (my adoptive grandfather), born 28th September 1903 in Bhamo, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Harry Paul Rae, born 2nd December 1905, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch] Mary Agnes Rae, born 23rd October 1910, christened 2nd December 1911 in Maymyo, died of malaria 22nd April 1916 aged five. [India Office BL_BIND_005138294_00058; BL_BIND_005138295_00237] Denis Louis Joseph Rae born 19th September 1912, christened 16the April 1913 in Magwe. [India Office BL_BIND_005138451_00039] All that remains at the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng (the red pin marks the official coordinates, 200 yards from the rice fields: perhaps there was a house there once): the white dots on one of the terraces may be the sun-hats of villagers, still farming the land. Note the dates: Denis Wilmot and Mah Gyan got married and christened two children they already had, one nearly three, the other ten months old, all on the same day on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. Later they had two more children, one five, the other three, christened on the same day on 14th February 1909 in Maymyo (now called Pyun U Lin). Their relationship was obviously a stable and long-lasting one, but what do we make of these group ceremonies? My first thought was that when their children were born they lived somewhere in the backwoods that didn't have a registry office or a church (or not one of the right denomination), and so they just sorted out their paperwork, including the technicality of getting married, whenever they happened to hit town. Denis is listed as E.A.C. at Sinlumkaba at this point, which was around eighteen miles east of Bhamo (although thirty miles by road), and negligibly small, although probably a good site for his anthropological studies. All that remains of that "pleasant hill-station" at those coordinates now is the trace of the terraced rice fields described by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, and what looks like a nearly-dry riverbed, both now becoming overgrown with trees, although there is evidence that some of the terraces are still being cultivated. Photo' labelled on the back: "NEGATIVE SHIPPED TO WASHINGTON – // 4 NOV. 44 // ROUTE THROUGH SINLUMKABA HILLS TAKEN BY 38th DIV ON WAY SOUTH TO BHAMO", from eBay advert Denis remained mainly based at Sinlumkaba from August 1902 until July 1907, when he was posted back to Bhamo, but he was also in charge of the District Commissioner's office at Bhamo from 1st March to 30th April 1905, from 14th May to 13th June 1905 and from 21st April 1906 to 24th September 1906. Rattling back and forth between Bhamo and Sinlumkaba seems to have been the norm for Denis, but the group christening in Bhamo in 1903 suggest that his wife and children remained mainly at Sinlumkaba, and only made the journey to Bhamo occasionally. According to the census Bertram was born at Bhamo in September 1903, so perhaps Mah Gyan made the trip to a town with a midwife: or perhaps when he filled in the census Bertie only meant "in the Bhamo area". Sam Newland spoke of Bobby Rae, the eldest boy, having lived a backwoods life before going to school, which suggests the family did live mainly at Sinlumkaba. Then they had another group christening in Maymyo (a.k.a. Pyin Oo Lwin), aboutb 25 miles east of Mandalay, in February 1909 when they had gone there to leave Bertram to board at St Joseph's convent, and perhaps to leave his brother Bobby at a boarding school there called the Government High School for Europeans. Another possibility is that the family were based in Bhamo throughout this time, or visited there regularly, but the priest there was sniffy after having married the parents and christened two of their children on the same day in January 1903, so they put off christening the younger ones until they could do it in Maymyo. A white officer married to a native woman would already have been seen as a bit of a freak show, so Denis would have attracted attention both for marrying Mah Gyan rather late, and for marrying her at all. Bertram actually started at a convent school in Maymyo in 1909, a few days before he was christened, so again it was a case of "Let's get it all done in one trip". The family seem to have regarded Maymyo as some sort of home-base by 1914, when Samuel Newland and Bertie both started at the Government High School for Europeans in February 1914, because Sam later wrote that all of the Rae boys were at the school with him. Their sister Virginia attended the Maymyo Convent school. However, we know from his Statement of Services that in February 1914 Denis was based in Magwe, about 150 miles south-west of Maymyo, and a year later he was based in Myitkyina, 70 miles north of Bhamo, for two months and then back to Bhamo, about 150 miles nor' nor' east of Maymyo. They must have decided to place all their children into schools in Maymyo because it meant that at least they all had each other, even if their parents were 150 miles away – although I have no direct input on whether Mah Gyan stayed with her husband or her children during this period, once the youngest started at school in Maymyo. Sam Newland does not mention her as being nearby during their schooldays, though he did meet her and make note of her great beauty. We know from Sam Newland that Denis Wilmot died of cancer in "about 1920 or so". According to family history Denis died in 1919 – a note to this effect was scribbled on a document relating to Francis Langford Rae – and both family memory and Sam's memoirs say that Bertram was unable to go to university because there was now no money to pay his fees. We can be certain however that the date of Denis's death was later than 1919, because an extant shipping list shows that on 12th September 1920 a D.W. Rae, Kokine in 1951, from The Burton Family Collection an Inspector of Police aged fifty-five and resident in Burma, arrived in Liverpool having come from Rangoon as a First-Class passenger on a merchant ship called the Martaban. He has a tick in a column for people who intend to be permanently resident in England, but the column has been re-labelled "India" (a term which at that time included Burma). This has to be Denis Wilmot. He was already retired at this point and it would appear that he used his new liberty to visit his son: and perhaps to bring his daughter Beatrice's children, Iris (six) and Peter (three), to the U.K., as both were living at a school in South London run by their father's sister by summer 1921. Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb. Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
Cecil Bruce Orr, a senior officer in the Burma police, would later describe Denis' and Mah Gyan's son Bertram as Anglo-Karen, meaning that Mah Gyan was Burmese and of the Karen tribe. However, Sam Newland recalls her as being "a Shan woman of great beauty" and the family also remember her to have been Shan. This makes far more sense, given Denis's long association with the Kachin Hills whose inhabitants are mainly either Kachin or Shan. Her birthplace doesn't fit with her being either Shan or Karen – but perhaps her mother was Shan and had travelled to Maubin with her probably-Chinese husband.
According to burma-all.com "Shan" is what other people in Burma call this tribe, and is derived from a Chinese word for "hill-savage". They call themselves Thai or Tai, meaning "free", are part of the same group as the people of Thailand and are so fiercely independent that many of their villages in Burma have neither chief nor council. Many live in south-west China, where they are called Dai, but Nanking is over a thousand miles away, so if it is true that Mah Gyan was descended from Nanking aristocracy she probably had some non-Tai Chinese blood.
I do not know whether Denis married his first wife with all the paperwork or not, but he certainly seems to have tied the knot formally with Mah Gyan. Vivian Rodrigues, whose family were officials in Burma, commented that it was common for senior British officials to take a native woman as a mistress or an unofficial wife, but formally to marry a native woman took "scary bravery". Of course, Denis seems to have sprung from the Irish landed gentry and he probably had that aristocratic sense that the rules were whatever he wanted them to be, but it's greatly to his credit that he wanted the rules to be that his lovely Shan girl was as good as any woman living.
Regarding Denis's later career, various documents fill in the details of his Statement of Services, sometimes with minor differences in dating, which confirms that the S.o.S. may not be absolute gospel on what he did when. The India List and India Office List for 1905, page 70, confirms that D.W. Rae was an Extra Assistant Commissioner, 4th Grade, in the Provincial Civil Service. The National Archives at Kew list the following documents:
Unfortunately only a few of the Civil Lists for this period are available online but he isn't in the list for July-September 1909, at all, which suggests that as an Extra Assistant Commissioner he wasn't yet considered a Class 1 officer, even though he was to "hold charge" as District Commissioner later that year.
The Agricultural Journal of India of March 1911 includes an article on the culture and agricultural practices of different peoples living in the Kachin Hills, with the citation "Information obtained largely from D. W. Rae, Esq., e.a.c. Assistant Superintendent, Kachin Hill Tracts". Denis evidently had some standing as an amateur anthropologist. A paper called Aspects of Bridewealth and Marriage Stability among the Kachin and Lakher by E. R. Leach refers back to a 1929 article called The Kachin Tribes of Burma by J. S. Carrapiett, who had in turn cited "P. M. R. Leonard, D. W. Rae and W. Scott" on the subject of the Kachin people called the Gauri.
We know from his Statement of Services that Denis became a District Superintendent of Police in April 1912. We see him again in the Civil List, where he is a Superintendent of Police, 3rd Grade, based at Magwe in central Burma as at New Year 1915, and a year later he is in the same job, at the same pay, but back in Bhamo – although according to his Statement of Services, on that very day, 1st January 1916, he was reassigned from Bhamo to special duty in Katha.
Page 83 of The India Office List for 1917 shows Denis as still a District Superintendent 3rd Grade, although it contains less information than the Civil List would do. Page 145 of The India Office List for 1918 records that "Rae, D.W." of the Indian Police retired on 19th May 1917.
Denis Wilmot Rae and Mah Gyan (my great-grandfather and great-grandmother through the adoption of my father) had the following children:
Robert "Bobby" R Rae, born 2nd February 1900 in Bhamo and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch]
Virginia Monica Rae, born 3rd March 1902 and christened on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. [FamilySearch]
Bertram Langford Denis Rae (my adoptive grandfather), born 28th September 1903 in Bhamo, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch]
Harry Paul Rae, born 2nd December 1905, christened 14th February 1909 in Maymyo. [FamilySearch]
Mary Agnes Rae, born 23rd October 1910, christened 2nd December 1911 in Maymyo, died of malaria 22nd April 1916 aged five. [India Office BL_BIND_005138294_00058; BL_BIND_005138295_00237]
Denis Louis Joseph Rae born 19th September 1912, christened 16the April 1913 in Magwe. [India Office BL_BIND_005138451_00039]
All that remains at the coordinates of Sinlumkaba/Wuteng (the red pin marks the official coordinates, 200 yards from the rice fields: perhaps there was a house there once): the white dots on one of the terraces may be the sun-hats of villagers, still farming the land. Note the dates: Denis Wilmot and Mah Gyan got married and christened two children they already had, one nearly three, the other ten months old, all on the same day on 4th January 1903 at Bhamo. Later they had two more children, one five, the other three, christened on the same day on 14th February 1909 in Maymyo (now called Pyun U Lin). Their relationship was obviously a stable and long-lasting one, but what do we make of these group ceremonies? My first thought was that when their children were born they lived somewhere in the backwoods that didn't have a registry office or a church (or not one of the right denomination), and so they just sorted out their paperwork, including the technicality of getting married, whenever they happened to hit town. Denis is listed as E.A.C. at Sinlumkaba at this point, which was around eighteen miles east of Bhamo (although thirty miles by road), and negligibly small, although probably a good site for his anthropological studies. All that remains of that "pleasant hill-station" at those coordinates now is the trace of the terraced rice fields described by Sir Herbert Thirkell White, and what looks like a nearly-dry riverbed, both now becoming overgrown with trees, although there is evidence that some of the terraces are still being cultivated. Photo' labelled on the back: "NEGATIVE SHIPPED TO WASHINGTON – // 4 NOV. 44 // ROUTE THROUGH SINLUMKABA HILLS TAKEN BY 38th DIV ON WAY SOUTH TO BHAMO", from eBay advert Denis remained mainly based at Sinlumkaba from August 1902 until July 1907, when he was posted back to Bhamo, but he was also in charge of the District Commissioner's office at Bhamo from 1st March to 30th April 1905, from 14th May to 13th June 1905 and from 21st April 1906 to 24th September 1906. Rattling back and forth between Bhamo and Sinlumkaba seems to have been the norm for Denis, but the group christening in Bhamo in 1903 suggest that his wife and children remained mainly at Sinlumkaba, and only made the journey to Bhamo occasionally. According to the census Bertram was born at Bhamo in September 1903, so perhaps Mah Gyan made the trip to a town with a midwife: or perhaps when he filled in the census Bertie only meant "in the Bhamo area". Sam Newland spoke of Bobby Rae, the eldest boy, having lived a backwoods life before going to school, which suggests the family did live mainly at Sinlumkaba. Then they had another group christening in Maymyo (a.k.a. Pyin Oo Lwin), aboutb 25 miles east of Mandalay, in February 1909 when they had gone there to leave Bertram to board at St Joseph's convent, and perhaps to leave his brother Bobby at a boarding school there called the Government High School for Europeans. Another possibility is that the family were based in Bhamo throughout this time, or visited there regularly, but the priest there was sniffy after having married the parents and christened two of their children on the same day in January 1903, so they put off christening the younger ones until they could do it in Maymyo. A white officer married to a native woman would already have been seen as a bit of a freak show, so Denis would have attracted attention both for marrying Mah Gyan rather late, and for marrying her at all. Bertram actually started at a convent school in Maymyo in 1909, a few days before he was christened, so again it was a case of "Let's get it all done in one trip". The family seem to have regarded Maymyo as some sort of home-base by 1914, when Samuel Newland and Bertie both started at the Government High School for Europeans in February 1914, because Sam later wrote that all of the Rae boys were at the school with him. Their sister Virginia attended the Maymyo Convent school. However, we know from his Statement of Services that in February 1914 Denis was based in Magwe, about 150 miles south-west of Maymyo, and a year later he was based in Myitkyina, 70 miles north of Bhamo, for two months and then back to Bhamo, about 150 miles nor' nor' east of Maymyo. They must have decided to place all their children into schools in Maymyo because it meant that at least they all had each other, even if their parents were 150 miles away – although I have no direct input on whether Mah Gyan stayed with her husband or her children during this period, once the youngest started at school in Maymyo. Sam Newland does not mention her as being nearby during their schooldays, though he did meet her and make note of her great beauty. We know from Sam Newland that Denis Wilmot died of cancer in "about 1920 or so". According to family history Denis died in 1919 – a note to this effect was scribbled on a document relating to Francis Langford Rae – and both family memory and Sam's memoirs say that Bertram was unable to go to university because there was now no money to pay his fees. We can be certain however that the date of Denis's death was later than 1919, because an extant shipping list shows that on 12th September 1920 a D.W. Rae, Kokine in 1951, from The Burton Family Collection an Inspector of Police aged fifty-five and resident in Burma, arrived in Liverpool having come from Rangoon as a First-Class passenger on a merchant ship called the Martaban. He has a tick in a column for people who intend to be permanently resident in England, but the column has been re-labelled "India" (a term which at that time included Burma). This has to be Denis Wilmot. He was already retired at this point and it would appear that he used his new liberty to visit his son: and perhaps to bring his daughter Beatrice's children, Iris (six) and Peter (three), to the U.K., as both were living at a school in South London run by their father's sister by summer 1921. Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb. Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
Denis remained mainly based at Sinlumkaba from August 1902 until July 1907, when he was posted back to Bhamo, but he was also in charge of the District Commissioner's office at Bhamo from 1st March to 30th April 1905, from 14th May to 13th June 1905 and from 21st April 1906 to 24th September 1906. Rattling back and forth between Bhamo and Sinlumkaba seems to have been the norm for Denis, but the group christening in Bhamo in 1903 suggest that his wife and children remained mainly at Sinlumkaba, and only made the journey to Bhamo occasionally. According to the census Bertram was born at Bhamo in September 1903, so perhaps Mah Gyan made the trip to a town with a midwife: or perhaps when he filled in the census Bertie only meant "in the Bhamo area". Sam Newland spoke of Bobby Rae, the eldest boy, having lived a backwoods life before going to school, which suggests the family did live mainly at Sinlumkaba. Then they had another group christening in Maymyo (a.k.a. Pyin Oo Lwin), aboutb 25 miles east of Mandalay, in February 1909 when they had gone there to leave Bertram to board at St Joseph's convent, and perhaps to leave his brother Bobby at a boarding school there called the Government High School for Europeans.
Another possibility is that the family were based in Bhamo throughout this time, or visited there regularly, but the priest there was sniffy after having married the parents and christened two of their children on the same day in January 1903, so they put off christening the younger ones until they could do it in Maymyo. A white officer married to a native woman would already have been seen as a bit of a freak show, so Denis would have attracted attention both for marrying Mah Gyan rather late, and for marrying her at all. Bertram actually started at a convent school in Maymyo in 1909, a few days before he was christened, so again it was a case of "Let's get it all done in one trip". The family seem to have regarded Maymyo as some sort of home-base by 1914, when Samuel Newland and Bertie both started at the Government High School for Europeans in February 1914, because Sam later wrote that all of the Rae boys were at the school with him. Their sister Virginia attended the Maymyo Convent school. However, we know from his Statement of Services that in February 1914 Denis was based in Magwe, about 150 miles south-west of Maymyo, and a year later he was based in Myitkyina, 70 miles north of Bhamo, for two months and then back to Bhamo, about 150 miles nor' nor' east of Maymyo. They must have decided to place all their children into schools in Maymyo because it meant that at least they all had each other, even if their parents were 150 miles away – although I have no direct input on whether Mah Gyan stayed with her husband or her children during this period, once the youngest started at school in Maymyo. Sam Newland does not mention her as being nearby during their schooldays, though he did meet her and make note of her great beauty.
We know from Sam Newland that Denis Wilmot died of cancer in "about 1920 or so". According to family history Denis died in 1919 – a note to this effect was scribbled on a document relating to Francis Langford Rae – and both family memory and Sam's memoirs say that Bertram was unable to go to university because there was now no money to pay his fees. We can be certain however that the date of Denis's death was later than 1919, because an extant shipping list shows that on 12th September 1920 a D.W. Rae, Kokine in 1951, from The Burton Family Collection an Inspector of Police aged fifty-five and resident in Burma, arrived in Liverpool having come from Rangoon as a First-Class passenger on a merchant ship called the Martaban. He has a tick in a column for people who intend to be permanently resident in England, but the column has been re-labelled "India" (a term which at that time included Burma). This has to be Denis Wilmot. He was already retired at this point and it would appear that he used his new liberty to visit his son: and perhaps to bring his daughter Beatrice's children, Iris (six) and Peter (three), to the U.K., as both were living at a school in South London run by their father's sister by summer 1921. Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb. Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
Denis cannot have stayed in Britain for long, for the trip between Burma and Britain took around a month and he must have set off again around New Year, if not before. A Denis Rae of the right age died on the 2nd of February 1921 in Rangoon [FamilySearch]. Unless Denis's cancer was really fast-acting he had probably been ill for some months, so logic suggests that he made the trip to the U.K. to visit Bertie because he knew he was dying, and wanted to see his second son one last time. Bertie's application to join the police states that at the time of his death his father lived at "Waterville" in Kokine, Rangoon – then a village on the southern edge of Yangon, now a suburb.
Mah Gyan, along with one of her brothers or brothers-in-law, hired the well-known barrister Charles H Campagnac in order to defend her son Bobby from a charge of murder in 1928. The Anglo-Burmese Library's List of Evacuees shows a Ma Kyin being evacuated from Mandalay on 27th March 1942, with a destination c/o Mrs A.G. Alexander, 6 Hardwar Road, Dehra Dun. I do not know when Mah Gyan died but it must have been no earlier than the mid 1950s, because Sam recalls that her son Denis went to live with her after World War Two and Denis's daughter Susan, who was born in 1948, lived with her for a while and remembers her well.
