Black Hole of Calcutta

Black Hole of Calcutta Prison in Calcutta, India, where 64 or more British soldiers were placed by the Nawab Siraj-ad-Dawlah of Bengal in June 1756. The cell was 5.5 × 4.5m (18 × 15ft) and most of the soldiers died of suffocation.

Black Hole of Calcutta A prison room at Fort William, Calcutta, India, so called after the alleged suffocation there in 1756 of some English prisoners. They had been incarcerated by the nawab, Siraj ud-Daula, in retaliation for extending the fort against previous agreements. The incident has an important place in British imperial mythology, for British accounts grossly exaggerated both the smallness of the room and the number of prisoners, thus suggesting an act of barbarism on the nawab's part.

Black Hole of Calcutta. By legend, on 20 June 1756 Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula, Robert Clive's great enemy, packed 146 Englishmen captured at Calcutta into a small guardroom. The next day only 21 were left alive. There is today much dispute about Siraj-ud-Daula's culpability and the actual number of victims, which may only have been 43.

David Anthony Washbrook