Black Hole of Calcutta
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Black Hole of Calcutta. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a dungeon in Fort Williams, Calcutta. During an insurrection of the natives, the English garrison of this fort, then a trading station, were taken captive by the nabob, Dowlah. On the evening of June 20, 1756, 146 prisoners were crowded for safe keeping into the little dungeon of the place only twenty feet square. The room was so crowded that the door could only be closed with difficulty. The room had but two small windows. In that warm climate, the men were in a few moments in a violent perspiration, and began to call loudly for air. The native keepers, however, dared not awaken the nabob, who had gone to sleep. The prisoners raved and cursed, and fought for a position near the little barred windows. They offered the guards large sums of money to exert themselves to secure larger quarters, but the poor Hindu guards were powerless. They tried to pass in water through the windows, but the amount was so small and the men were so frantic that it was spilled without doing much good. In the morning but twenty-three men were taken out of the Black Hole alive. The nabob appeared utterly unconcerned. It is a little satisfaction to know that he was murdered a few months later by a political rival. For an account of the Black Hole atrocity by a master of description, the reader is referred to Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive. See India ; Clive ; Lucknow
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
á small chamber, 20 feet square, in the old fort of Calcutta, in which, after their capture by Surajah Dowlah, the men were conwhole garrison of 146 fined during the night of June 21, 1756. Only 23 survived. The spot is now marked by a monument.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts take John Zephaniah Holwell's survivor narrative at face value — 146 crammed in, 23 alive at dawn — and Aiton's directs readers to Macaulay for the full horror. Holwell has been the doubted witness since at least 1915, when the Bengali historian J. H. Little called the story a "gigantic hoax"; most modern scholars accept that something happened in the guardroom on the night of 20 June 1756 but treat the arithmetic as inflated, with figures nearer 64 confined and about 40 dead often preferred, and note that no other contemporary account corroborates it. The monument Collier's mentions was Lord Curzon's 1902 replica of Holwell's pillar; after nationalist protest led by Subhas Chandra Bose it was removed from Dalhousie Square in 1940 and stands today in the graveyard of St John's Church, Kolkata. Aiton's satisfaction that the nawab was soon "murdered by a political rival" compresses events: Siraj-ud-Daulah was defeated by Clive at Plassey in June 1757 and killed shortly after, the episode having served meanwhile as a standing justification for the British conquest of Bengal.
Written for this edition, 2026.