Elsie's mother, Harriet Thompson, went out to India when she was
seventeen to her father, George Powney Thompson. She married when she
was eighteen.
She met her future husband, John Inglis, at a dance in her father's
house. Her children were often told by their father of the white muslin
dress, with large purple flowers all over it, worn by her that evening,
and how he and several of his friends, young men in the district, drove
fifty miles to have the chance of dancing with her!
"She must have had a steady nerve, for her letters are full of various
adventures in camp and tiger-haunted jungles, and most of them narrate
the presence of one of her infants, who was accompanying the parents on
their routine of Indian official life." In 1858, when John Inglis was
coming home on his one short furlough, she trekked down from Lahore to
Calcutta with the six children in country conveyances. The journey took
four months; then came the voyage round the Cape, another four months.
Of course she had the help of ayahs and bearers on the journeys, but
even with such help it was no easy task.
John Inglis saw his family settled in Southampton, and almost
immediately had to return to India, on the outbreak of the Mutiny. His
wife stayed at home with the children, until India was again a safe
place for English women, when she rejoined her husband in 1863.
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