“Weel about and turn about and do jis so, eb’ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow” : dancing on the margins of the Indian Ocean

On 17 April 1838 two men, George Lloyd and George Morgan, appeared before the Supreme Court of Calcutta. The court found them guilty as charged: of having assaulted a man named William Tipping on the public street and of stealing his musical snuffbox valued at fourteen rupees. The judge sentenced both men to seven years’ transportation, but while Lloyd was ordered to Van Diemen’s Land, one of Britain’s penal settlements in Australia, Morgan’s destination was to be the East India Company’s Indian penal settlement in the Tenasserim Provinces of Burma. The newspaper reporting the trial, The Calcutta Courier, noted that Morgan’s ‘demeanour had all along been very contemptuous’. On leaving the courtroom he had, apparently, ‘thanked his lordship’. [opening paragraph]