He was born at Quadring in 1818. I could find no further British record of him and even wondered if he had died in infancy, and then in 2009 I was looking on the FORBIS datebase regarding fasmilies in India and he was mentioned as having joined the East India Company Army and having gone out to India on the "Essex" in 1840.
I no longer live near London and further research was impossible, but in August 2015 I bundled a number of military research references together and engaged the specialist researcher Ann Swabey to dig them out. George Genn's service record being one of them.
George as I say was born in 1818. He was uncle to William Mackinder Genn who would have known of him if never met him, and had various other family members who had sons called George named after him.
George was born under a wandering star. He has proved an interesting and frustrating cove to research and as I write this I am still digging.
I have never found any British record of him after his birth, but by April 1840 George was in London, enlisting in the army of the East India Company. George was a farrier, ie a blacksmith (like his brother Charles) and with all the sense of the army they put him in the infantry rather than the cavalry.
The East India Company was a private mercantile company that effectively (until 1858) adminstered India and other Far Eastern British possessions on behalf of, and for the benefit of, the British Empire (and itself), the government of Britain itself not having control at this time. It had done so since the British had defeated the French in the struggle for India in the mid 1700s.
The Company was very rich and had a vast bureaucracy and a large private army and navy, both of the latter being modelled on the lines of the regular British army and navy.
The Company divided India into three "Presidencies" or administrative geographical chunks, these being Bengal, Bombay and Madras to the south. Each presidency had its own army. The vast majority of the regiments were comprised of native soldiers commanded by British officers, but each army had a small number of regiments comprised solely of Europeans (not necessarily of exclusively British stock).
George was enlisted into the 2nd Madras European Regiment, initially recruited in 1839 and to be known as the 2nd Madras European Light Infantry. He was 5ft 5 ins tall, with brown hair and grey eyes.
He sailed for India on the East Indiaman "Essex" and arrived at the centre of the Madras Presidency, Fort St George, later that year. It is still there and shown below in the 1850s.
The East India Company European regiments modelled themselves on the British army in training and dress and we can perhaps see George reflected in illustrations of the period with the guys standing at the back below right being a fair reflection
and the dashing fellows below a further shot.
The 2nd Madras European Light Infantry wore red coats of course, blue trousers and buff facings.
Whilst many other company's regiments saw active service in the 1840s (his cousin Billett Genn saw service with the 3rd Lancers in the Sikh Wars of 1848/9), George's was not among them, and he spent nine hot and sweaty years on mostly garrison duty in Madras.
George took his discharge to pension in September 1849. He was then 31 and there is no record in the Company records (they allowed wives) of any spouse.
The last record of him in the Company records is "embarked for NS Wales 19th September 1849". This is New South Wales, Australia of course. The Company paid your passage home but few men of the Company ever went home, most emigrated further or stayed in India.
I checked the Australian records, George not being on Ancestry or mentioned in the NSW Archives.. George did not go to New South Wales, he sailed on for Tasmania.
George is in the Tasmanian records. He arrived in Hobart Town on 4th November 1849 - his ship was the 454 tonne sailing barque "Johannes Sarkies" ironically carrying a few transported convicts that had been convicted of offences in India. The barque did a regular run from India to Australia and back at this time.
We know that George was carrying a rupture, indeed that may have been the reason for his leaving the army. On arrival he is listed as an (army) pensioner.
Things did not work out for George. It may be that his injury affected his ability to work. It may be that there simply was little work, there being so much convict labour about. Stefan Petrow of the University of Tasmania in his paper of policing in Tasmania at the time, says that there was an economic downturn in the island in the late 1840s and that "both convicts and the increasing number of free emigrants found work scarce". He goes on to say"large numbers of people, not just convicts, were in financial need and were forced to steal to survive".
George was on his own and between a rock and a hard place. What is known sadly is that George and two others stole from his employer, 3 bushels of wheat to the value of 15 shillings and received a 7 years sentence at Hobart Town Quarter Sessions on 30th August 1851. An extract from the "Colonial Times" of 2nd September 1851 reporting the Quarter Sessions hearing ..
George was clean shaven with dark brown hair, a long face and a large nose. He carried a fair number of tatoos, being bracelets on both wrists, the regimental motto (cede nullis - yield to none) and the bugle symbol of the light infantry (below) with the figure "2" inside it denoting his regiment on his left arm, and on the right a tatoo of a woman and the initials "MR" whoever she was.
George had to be put in the work or probation gangs as they were known, and he was required to work on those for eighteen months, being known to have worked at the Cascades Probation Station in 1851/2 which was one of the worst in Tasmania, the convicts being required (George already had a rupture) to cut and draw logs a long distance at the timbered area called Cascades at Hobart. He was not built for it and it must have nearly killed him.
Subsequently George must have been assigned to work in the colony, but he was not well and at the end of 1853 we find repeated references to him in the "PB" (prison barracks) and Hobart Hospital. He died at Hobart Hospital on 19th March 1854 - he was 35. A sad end.
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