Historically, Aden town in Crater had been a thriving centre of trade with Africa, India and China. But when Commander Stafford Bettesworth Haines seized it on 19 January 1839 on behalf of the East India Company, for use as a coaling station for ships steaming to and from India, it was a derelict village of some 600 inhabitants — Arabs, Somalis, Jews and Indians — housed for the most part in huts of reed matting erected among ruins recalling a vanished era of wealth and prosperity.
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For Queen Victoria, the capture of Aden was the first addition to the British Empire since her accession to the throne in 1837. Haines’ knowledge of Aden’s history made him optimistic about the possibilities for its future.
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‘Scarcely two centuries and a half ago’, he wrote, ‘this city ranked among the foremost of the commercial marts of the East the superiority of Aden is in its excellent harbours, both to the East and to the West; and the importance of such a station, offering as it does a secure shelter for shipping, an almost impregnable fortress, and an easy access to the rich provinces of Hadhramaut and Yemen is too evident to require to be insisted upon’.
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Appointed Political Agent by the Bombay Presidency of the East India Company Haines served in this capacity without leave for the next fifteen years, presiding over Aden’s rapid expansion as a fortress with a garrison of 2000-3000 Indian sepoys and as a port which by the early 1850s had a population of 20,000.
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Haines’s deep personal commitment to the revival of Aden’s prosperity, despite the parsimony and vacillation of his political masters, ultimately led to his tragic imprisonment in Bombay. He had not kept strict enough control over his accounts and, although acquitted of embezzlement, the East India Company had him confined for six years in a debtors' prison in Bombay. He died in 1860, a few years after his release, aged just 58. But in South West Arabia his name lived on and for decades local tribesmen referred to the inhabitants of Aden as Awlad Haines (‘Haines’s children’).
The house initially occupied by Haines in Biggari Valley, Crater, and known as The Residency or The Old Residency is said to have been rented from a local Hindu merchant and to have been situated near a Hindu temple.
Old maps from 1875 and 1877 place the Residency in Crater about 600 metres due south of the Main Pass, in the Biggari Valley. A map dated 1917 calls the building ‘The Old Residency’. This photograph was possibly taken some time before 1920.
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There was scanty accommodation in his house for guests and he had to place three to four gentlemen in one room, nor had he a room fit for dining a small party; and so he put up a small thatched building close by with a dining-room and two small sleeping or sitting-rooms. The largest room in his residence was only 11 ft x 11 ft, and it was his dining-room, and the servants had to pass through the office to get to it, which was very inconvenient, as both money and all records were kept there. In Sultans of Aden (1968) Gordon Waterfield described the building as ‘extremely hot and the rooms inconveniently small'.
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By 1930 the Residency was being used as a guest-house for visiting Arab chiefs. From 1948 until about 1954 it became the headquarters of the British Agency, Western Aden Protectorate. It is possible there are remains of the building still in existence today.
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Haines eventually built himself a new, more suitable residence at Ras Tarshyne overlooking Sapper Bay and Telegraph Bay and with views across the water to Little Aden. This was a much more comfortable house and his wife and child joined him there from Bombay.
