What Happened to Tipu Sultan's Wives After the British Killed Him?

At one o'clock in the afternoon on the fourth of May 1799, British and East India Company troops stormed the island fortress of Seringapatam. Within about an hour the city had fallen, and by nightfall Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, was dead, found under a pile of bodies in a gateway on the north wall. That same afternoon the British commander, David Baird, posted a guard around one building he was careful not to enter: the zenana, the women's quarters of the palace, where some six hundred women were now prisoners of the Company. Almost every book about Tipu ends on that day. His wives, his father's widows, the court musicians and dancers, the servants and the girls who had grown up behind those walls were rarely given a name, let alone a story. In this video, we trace what actually happened to the wives and the women of Tipu Sultan after the British killed him. From the young Company captain, Thomas Marriott, who counted 601 women in 1800 and whom they came to call their brother, to the long road to the fortress of Vellore in 1802, with some two hundred more women smuggled into the convoy than anyone had registered. From the cuts to their allowances in 1806, to the night of the Vellore mutiny that July, when the sepoys raised the flag of Mysore over the fort, to the deportation of his sons to Calcutta while the women stayed behind. We follow them through decades of forgotten captivity, a protest in which they walked out of the fort and refused to be counted, an audit that found the Company still paying women who had died years before, and the last record of the Mysore Begums of Vellore, in 1858. And we end in Kolkata, where some of Tipu's descendants were reported pulling rickshaws. This is the story of the women history left behind when it closed the book on Tipu Sultan. If you made it this far, leave the word Vellore in the comments. And if you enjoyed the video, please subscribe. These deep dives take real work, and your support genuinely makes a difference. Sources: • Jennifer Howes, Tipu Sultan's female entourage under East India Company rule, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 31(4), 2021, pp. 855 to 874 • Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (London, 1807), vol. 1 • Alexander Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultaun (London, 1800) • Theodore Hook, The Life of General Sir David Baird (London, 1832) • Macquarie University, Seringapatam 1799 archive • Wikipedia, Tipu Sultan • Wikipedia, Siege of Seringapatam (1799) • Wikipedia, Vellore mutiny • Wikipedia, Vellore Fort • Wikipedia, Gumbaz, Srirangapatna • Wikipedia, Tipu's Tiger • Royal Ark, Mysore genealogy • Scroll.in, Tipu Sultan fell in battle. But where exactly did he die? (2022) • Deccan Herald, Bitterness rules Tipu's kin in the city of sorrow (2011) • The Telegraph, via Gulf News, Tipu Sultan's descendants to have royal status restored (2009) • LiveHistory India, Kolkata's Tollygunge and the Tipu connect (2018) #TipuSultan #TigerOfMysore #Mysore #Seringapatam #Srirangapatna #Vellore #VelloreMutiny #Zenana #EastIndiaCompany #BritishRaj #ColonialHistory #IndianHistory #Karnataka #ArthurWellesley #Kolkata #WomenInHistory #RoyalWomen #RoyalFamilies #ExiledRoyalty #LostKingdoms #DynastyHistory #HistoricalDocumentary #ForgottenHistory #SouthAsianHistory #AngloMysoreWar