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The Black Hole Memorial in Calcutta


Tathagata Neogi showed us the place where it happened and the memorial in St.John’s church.

“Of one hundred and forty-six prisoners, one hundred and twenty-three were smothered in the Black Hole prison, in the night of the 20th of June, 1756. Few survived capable of giving any detail of the manner in which it happened; and of these I believe none have attempted it: for my own part, I have often sat down with this resolution, and as often relinquished the melancholy task, not only from the disturbance and affliction it raised afresh in my remembrance, but from the consideration of the impossibility of finding language capable of raising an adequate idea of the horrors of the scene I essayed to draw. But as I believe the annals of the world cannot produce an incident like it in any degree or proportion to all the dismal circumstances attending to it, and as my own health of body and peace of mind are once again, in a great measure, recovered from the injuries they suffered from that fatal night, I cannot allow it to be buried in oblivion.”
– John Zephaniah Holwell, “A genuine narrative of the deplorable deaths of the English Gentlemen, and others, who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort William, at Calcutta, in the kingdom of Bengal; in the night succeeding the 20th day of June, 1756” (1758)

Blog post by Sahil Ahuja
http://pixels-memories.blogspot.com/2012/09/black-hole-memorial-calcutta.html

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