Nicholas Joachim POGOSE (1852–1872)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 7, Grave D60
IN
MEMORY OF
NICHOLAS JOACHIM POGOSE
OF CH. CH. OXFORD, SON OF
J. G. N POGOSE, DACCA BENGAL
BORN 9TH FEBRUARY 1852.
DIED 18TH MARCH 1872.
IHS
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH
BORN IN CALCUTTA.
DIED AT ST LEONARDS
BURIED HERE AT HIS SPECIAL REQUEST.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
“HIS SUN HAS GONE DOWN
WHILE IT IS YET DAY”
This stone is made of Carrara marble.
Nicholas Joachim Pogose was born in Calcutta on 9 February 1852. He was the son of Joachim Gregory Nicholas Pogose of Dhaka, Bengal, who was a zamindar, a merchant, and a partner of the Dhaka Bank (the first bank in Bangladesh). Nicholas's paternal grandparents were Gregory Nicholas Pogose and Elizabeth Sarkies.
Nicholas's father married his second cousin Mariam Avdall (born in Bengal in 1825/6), who was known as Mary: her father Johannes Avdall was the headmaster of the Armenian College & Philanthropic Academy in Calcutta from 1825 to 1870.
Nicholas’s parents Joachim and Mary Pogose had four sons:
- Gregory Joachim Pogose (born in Bengal in 1845/6)
- John Avdall Pogose (born in Bengal in 1850/1)
- Nicholas Joachim Pogose (born in Calcutta on 9 February 1852)
- Paul Pogose (born in Bengal in 1853/4).
Nicholas's father, who was known as Nicky Pogose, belonged to the Armenian community of Dhaka. He founded the Pogose School there in 1848, and was its headmaster until 1855.
The family came to England when Nicholas was seven: The Times reported on 15 April 1859 that among passengers arriving from Calcutta were “Mr. and Mrs. Pogose, Master Pogose, three children, and two servants”. Nicholas’s father probably went back to Bengal on his own, as at the time of the 1861 Mrs Mary Pogose (35), who described herself as a landowner’s wife and the head of the household, was boarding at 26 Queen’s Terrace, Paddington with her four schoolboy sons – Gregory (15), John (10), Nicholas (9), and Paul (7) – and only one servant.
By 1862 Nicholas's parents had moved back to Dacca.
Nicholas’s eldest brother Gregory was matriculated at the University of Oxford from The Queen’s College on 26 April 1865, and was called to the Bar on 17 November 1868.
Nicholas himself had been sent to Eton to board, presumably in about 1864, and then on 19 May 1869 at the age of 17 was matriculated at the University Oxford by Christ Church. On 8 February 1870, the day before his eighteenth birthday, he was summoned before the Vice-Chancellor’s Court for riding a bicycle on the footpath opposite the University Museum in Parks Road; but the police officer who swore to the offence “did not notice that anybody was endangered by the defendant’s velocipede”, and he was fined 10s. and 11s. costs. This velocipede was probably an old bone-shaker, with rotary cranks and pedals mounted to the front wheel hub, rather than the pennyfarthing of the later 1870s, so its speed would have been limited.
At the time of the 1871 census Nicholas (19), described as “Commoner Ch Ch Oxford”, was lodging during the university vacation at 5 Boyle Street, Westminster with a porter and his family; and the only other member of his family who appeared to be in England at the time was his brother Paul (17), who was boarding at Rugby.
Nicholas died of typhoid in 1872:
† Nicholas Joachim Pogose died at 25 Eversfield Place, Hastings, Sussex at the age of 20 on 18 March 1872. He was initially buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London on 22 March, but his body was reinterred in St Sepulchre's Cemetery on 13 November (burial recorded in parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church.
His body was presumably interred in the St Mary Magdalen section of the cemetery because his last residence in Oxford had been in Beaumont Street. The grave marker in St Sepulchre's states, “buried here at his special request”, and a note in the Kensal Green burial register reads:
The body of Nicholas Joachim Pogose was removed from the Cemetery for reinterment at St Sepulchre's, Oxford on the 13 Nov 1872 by Faculty granted on the 7 Nov 1872.
Family of Nicholas Joachim Pogose
Nicholas's family remained in Bengal, where his father was one of the nine commissioners of Dhaka Municipality in 1874/5.
Nicholas’s younger brother Paul Pogose died in October 1876 at the age of 22. Just two months later on 3 December 1876 his father Joachim Gregory Nicholas Pogose also died: he was buried at the Narinda Christian Cemetery in Dhaka.
Nicholas's surviving older brothers Gregory Joachim Pogose and John Avdall Pogose both became “mentally incapacitated”, and by 1893 their mother Mary Pogose was providing both care and financial support for them. She died in Calcutta in March 1893 and is buried in the Holy Nazareth Armenian Church there.
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