Historic Figures: The Europeans

Anna and Louis (see the separate article)

OTHERS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

Among those who appear in the various books about Anna are:

Robert Hunter, a harbor officer and sometime English secretary to Mongkut, has been described as a quarrelsome person who made unreasonable demands and twice sent for British warships.

Captain John Bush abandoned life as a mariner to become the Harbor Master.

Thomas George Knox was a destitute British officer who was employed to drill the Second King's troops. He later joined the Consular staff and eventually became the British Consul General. He married a Siamese woman, the Daughter of a Duke and a former lady-in-waiting at the court of the Second King under Mongkut. They had two daughters, Caroline who married Louis Leonowens, and Fanny, whose story is told by R. J. Minney in Fanny and the Regent of Siam (the Kralahome of The King and I).

The Missionaries: During the nineteen years those mentioned in the books were there, the ten Protestant missionaries made only one convert and that was an orphan they arranged to have educated in American. The flowing beards of the men and their hell-fire methods frightened the Siamese. Mongkut did choose two of their wives to teach his wives English but they spent most of their time trying to convert their students so they were finally denied access to the harem. This is reflected in The King and I and in Mongkut's condition on Anna's employment. One, Dr. Dan Beach Bradley introduced the first printing press, the first surgical operations, and vaccination against smallpox. However, he criticized a waltz danced at the Consulate (not the palace), and also said a theatrical performance there was improper. As a group the missionaries were not popular with the Consular staff.

According to R.J. Minney, Fanny Knox fell in love with a Siamese, Phra Preecha, a member of a prominent family which was not friendly to the Kralahome. The latter is portrayed in a very bad light. He wanted Fanny to marry one of his grandsons and, when she married Phra Preecha, Chulalongkorn's friend, he took his vengeance on them both. The bridegroom was arrested on trumped up charges and executed. Fanny stayed in Siam where she lived alone in one room and had few friends among the other Europeans. She devoted her life to good works and was instrumental in some reforms of education and in the formation of trade unions. One of her students helped organize the coup d'état of 1932.. However, much in this book must also be taken with a grain of salt. According to Minney, it was Anna who taught the King English when he had actually learned it many years before. She also got many of the facts about Louis's career in Siam wrong.

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