The last king of Xinjiang: how Bertram Sheldrake went from condiment heir to Muslim monarch
- Bertram Sheldrake converted to Islam at the age of 15 and spent much of his fortune promoting the religion in Britain
- His efforts brought him an invitation from leaders of the newly proclaimed Muslim nation of Islamestan in China’s far west
It’s a long way from the south London suburb of Forest Hill to the once dreamed of Republic of Islamestan.
You may never have heard of Islamestan, in Chinese Turkestan, or its one-time “king”, Bertram Sheldrake. Islamestan is long gone, swallowed up in the historical shifts of a turbulent region, but for a brief and unlikely moment, an English pickle-factory heir ruled, with his wife, Sybil, over the newly independent Muslim country, to the far west of China.
The whole of what was then referred to as Chinese Turkestan, or Sinkiang (now Xinjiang), was, in the 1930s, subject to tribal rebellions and warlord uprisings. It was ultimately concluded by the chiefs of various tribes in the region that only an outsider (but necessarily a Muslim one) could bring unity to the region. Having read newspapers brought by travellers, they sent a delegation to south London to visit an Englishman who had caught their attention. Sheldrake was invited to assume the throne of Islamestan. Not being quite sure of the correct title for the new ruler, the British press helpfully offered some suggestions – “The Pickle King of Tartary”, “The English Emir of Kashgar”, “Lord of the Rooftop of the World”.
To contemporary British newspaper readers, it must have seemed as if Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King (1888), wherein two English adventurers, Dravot and Carnehan, become the leaders of Kafiristan, a remote region of Afghanistan, had come true. Having had a good public-school education on his father’s pickle profits, Sheldrake would have known Kipling’s cautionary tale. Things hadn’t turned out well for Dravot and Carnehan in Kafiristan; neither would they go smoothly in Islamestan for “The Pickle King of Tartary”.
Bertram William Sheldrake was born in the same year that Kipling’s cautionary tale was published, the son of Gosling Mullander Sheldrake (known simply as “George”), who ran the successful firm of G. Sheldrake, Manufacturers of Pickles, Sauces, Chutney, Ketchup, Vinegar, etc.; Bottlers of Capers, Curries, and other Condiments, located at 293-295 Albany Road, London, SE5. The business had done well since being founded in the 1870s, changing its name to the rather pedestrian South London Jam and Pickle Manufactory and then Sheldrake’s Pickles while trading up from the insalubrious surroundings of Southwark to the leafier environs of Denmark Hill.
Bertram must have been a precocious schoolboy. Although raised Catholic, in 1903, at the age of 15, he converted to Islam (then generally termed “Mohammedanism”), learned Arabic and changed his name to Khalid.
