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Five years ago Chowkidar published the story of Mary Warwick (nee
Bemers) and it was indeed astonishing. Born into a prosperous family
in 1868 and unhappily married, Mary spent the last twenty-five years of
her life in India as a man, having adopted a male persona and calling
herself Major Michael Warwick. This engaging book came about as
the result of two serendipitous events: Mary's great grandson, Anthony
Spender and his wife were visiting the churchyard at St Michael's in
Woolverstone when they met the author, Simon Pearce, who has lived
in the small village for forty years and was familiar with the history of
the Berners family , the lo cal gentry. At the same time, and five
thousand miles away, Vikram Srivastava had posted on Facebook some
photographs of the house near Nainital where he lives . Why was it
called the Warwick Estate, he wondered? Mr and Mrs Spender
travelled to India to meet him and to see where Mary Warwick had
lived. A number of her possessions were still there including,
incongruously, a lawn mower, kitchen scales, furniture and books, as
well as the small chapel s he had built.
The central question of why Mary, at the age of 45 chose to return to
India and live there as a man, has not been answered. Perhaps it never
will be, but a clue might lie in the wretched behaviour of her husband
Charles Warwick. He was a womanizer, a drunk and a bully , hitting his
wife about the head and attempting to drown her. Some of these
assaults were witnessed by the couple's Indian servants, something
almost as shameful as the actual blows. Mary and Charles had married
in secret and she accompanied her so ldi er hu sband on his postings
abroad, including a spell in Lahore. Two children were born but the
marriage was doomed and Mary obtained a judicial separation in India,
a highly unusual procedure for the time. She had become a Catholic
and her later life , as a man, was intensely bound up with charitable
work and religion. In the last photograph, captioned Brother Michael
Warwick, s he is wearing the robes of a monk. So convincing was
'Brother Warwick' that it was not until after death in April 1944 that
her sex was revealed. [t really is a very strange story and the author
has garnered much information, painting a vivid picture of the two very
different lives li ved by his subject.
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