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Joseph Salter
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Missionary who worked with Asian seafarers in the East End of London and the Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders
About
Joseph Salter was a missionary based in the East End of London who focused his energies on 'Asiatics'. He worked for the London City Mission. Salter was the first resident missionary at the Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders, founded in 1857. The Maharaja Duleep Singh was one of the main benefactors for the Home. Salter wrote two books about his work with ex-lascars and other immigrants through this establishment and his work in the area. He dedicated his first book to Duleep Singh. Salter gave various ethnographic sketches of the different people he met through his missionary work. He met Indians from the upper classes as well as the working class. He studied Hindi with the valet of Meer Jafur, the son of a courtier to the Gaekwad of Baroda, in order to evangelize to London-based Indians. Salter also helped establish the Ayahs' Home in Aldgate.
The Asiatic in England: Sketches of Sixteen Years among Orientals (London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday, 1873)
The East in the West (London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1896)
Fisher, Michael, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004)
Mathur, Saloni, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
Wainwright, A. Martin, 'The Better Class' of Indians: Social Rank, Imperial Identity, and South Asians in Britain 1858–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008)
L/PJ/6/2122, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
