{"id":31,"date":"2020-03-16T18:15:39","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T18:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boughrood.wales\/?page_id=31"},"modified":"2020-03-26T14:49:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T14:49:18","slug":"fowke","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/boughrood.wales\/?page_id=31","title":{"rendered":"Fowke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\nIn 1773 Warren Hastings, then Governor General for the East India \nCompany in India, took over production of opium. Trade with China had \nbecome one of the Company’s most significant activities and opium from \nIndia was its most wanted product in China, so this\n was a way to boost the Company’s revenue at the expence of the private \nBritish merchants who then ran the trade. \n\n
\n\n\nProduction was mainly at Patna, upstream on  the Ganges from Calcutta \nand downstream from Benares. At Patna, the opium juice was dried in the \nsun then moulded into cakes. Hastings sold the monopoly first to a Mr \nMackenzie, who sold it on to Hastings’s servant\n Sulivan who quickly made a large sum and sold it on to John Benn, the \nfuture husband of Margaret Fowke, sister of Francis who built Boughrood \nCastle. John Benn sold it on almost immediately for another large \nprofit, all this in 1773. \n\n
\n\n\nJohn Benn was at that time secretary to Mr Markham, son of the \nArchbishop of York and  then the Company’s Resident at Benares. In 1774,\n\nthe following year, Markham was replaced by Francis \nFowke and Benn continued at Benares working for his new boss, thus his \nrelationship with Francis’s sister Margaret when she came to stay with \nher brother a little later. \n\n
\n\n\nIt seems likely that Benn was at that point, 1774, wealthier than \nFrancis. It also helps to explain why Benn, when he returned to England \nin 1786 on the same ship with Margaret and Francis, was\n still as rich or slightly richer, than Francis. It was on the ship that he became engaged to Margaret – they were married in 1787 in London.\n\n<\/p>\n