she was to blame or not, it is easy to read the moral of her story, which was that there was no sympathy among the sterner sex for women who entered into competition with men in money-making and trade. In modern days public opinion, as regards her position of being 'a separate merchant from her husband,' would not have applied the epithet 'notorious' to her actions. It brought about the dismissal of her husband from the service of the Company, an event which at that time carried no disgrace with it. He obtained the licence, with which he should have provided himself when he married the intrepid Miss Barker, and spent the rest of his years in free trade.
Mrs. Nicks paid a short visit to England and returned to Madras, where she married three of her daughters to men who held good positions in the Company's service. She lived down the scandal that grew out of the sharing with Yale of his garden-house by the Cooum, and died at Madras, probably in her house in Choultry Street, on the north side of the fort, in 1709. Her husband followed her in 1711 ; and both he buried in the old cemetery where they had already laid three daughters as well as the little son.
A tragic story is told of one of the free traders of Madras who lived in the fort and probably had one of the garden-houses by the Cooum, to which he and his wife retreated in the hot weather. The story has been told more than once in print of how Peter Curgenven was taken prisoner by the pirate Angria and made a galley slave; how he served at the oar for five long, terrible years, and how he was ransomed and returned home to die. Thanks to the kindness of a member of the Curgenven family, I have been put in possession of the details of the story.
Peter was born in Lelant in Cornwall (1682), and was educated at Sherborne School under his uncle, the Kev.
