THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

with the publication of a circular outlining conditions in India, which was distributed to
members of Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society. At the August meeting
of the Society, a resolution was passed to engage Thompson’s aid in presenting a series
of lectures to inform the public of the need for reform in India. 93 In a letter to William
Lloyd Garrison in January 1839, Thompson noted his affiliation with the Aborigines’
Society. Yet, as Thompson wrote, given “the present state of British India . . . [we] hope
by a vigorous effort to effect an early alter[ation] in the administration of public affairs in
India.” As a result, Thompson noted, most of his addresses in late 1838 and early 1839
had focused on conditions in British India. 94 In another letter, Thompson wrote of his
growing interest in a British India association: “I incline more and more to the plan of a
separate, independent, thorough-going society for prosecuting, as its exclusive work, the
cause of the Hindoo.” Still, Thompson waited for “the way to open” to establish such an
organization. 95
A fortuitous meeting with William Adam in late January proved to be the opening
Thompson sought. 96 Adam had recently returned from Calcutta. Sent to India in 1818 as
93 Anna M. Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1899), 73-79.
94 George Thompson to William Lloyd Garrison, January 5, 1839, BAA, 67-68. See also George
Thompson to Richard D. Webb, February 15, 1839, BAA, 69.
85.
95 George Thompson to unknown, January 7, 1839, as quoted in Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol,
96 Scholarship on William Adam is quite limited. For an early biographical study of Adam, see
S.C. Sanial, “The Rev. William Adam,” Bengal Past and Present: The Journal of the Calcutta Historical
Society 8 (1914), 251-272. Joseph DiBona suggests the historical neglect of Adam “may be attributed to
the fact that much of what he fought for failed. He was a man who fought passionately but futilely for
many of the great social issues of the nineteenth century.” Joseph DiBona, ed. One Teacher, One School:
The Adam Reports on Indigenous Education in Nineteenth-Century India (New Delhi: Biblioa Impex
Private, Ltd., 1983), 6.
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