Born in the East End of London to an English mother and Indian father, Albert Mahomet was a photographer, teacher and a preacher. He has left a record of his life and of the life of the poor in London's East End and Norfolk in his book From Street Arab to Pastor.

Mahomet's father, a former lascar, left his family when Mahomet was young and died on a ship to Calcutta. His mother, Ann, was arrested some time around 1867 and so Mahomet and his three siblings were taken into Limehouse workhouse and then the Thursford Union near Wells. Two years later, Mahomet was rescued by his uncle and took up a job as a servant in Wells. After a series of jobs he moved to Lincoln and became a teacher in a United Methodist Free Church Sunday School. He began to preach in the area and was active in the temperance movement.

In December 1881, Mahomet married a fellow evangelist, Paulina Gill. They returned to Wells in 1893. Mahomet also became a professional photographer. Some of his photographs can be found in the library in Wells. It is not known when he died.

Kuruvila Zachariah was an Indian Christian who having studied at Christian College, Madras, was sent to England in 1912 on a Government of India scholarship. Having arrived in London in September 1912, he visited Thomas Arnold, the education advisor for Indian students. He was advised that he had a place to read history at Keble College, Oxford, but upon consideration took up a place at Merton College instead.

Zachariah attended Oxford Union debates and became involved with the University Christian Union. He did not join the Oxford Majlis because they met on Sunday evenings. In 1915, Zachariah received a first-class degree in history. Zachariah applied for teaching posts in India from England, taking advice from the India Office about entry into the Indian Educational Service. He was offered a position at Presidency College, Calcutta, and so returned to India in November 1915.

Zachariah was Professor of History at Presidency College until 1930 and then Principal of Hooghly College and Principal of Islamia College following that. He then took up several advisory positions within the Government after Indian independence. In 1954, Zachariah was appointed Historical Advisor and Minister at the High Commission in London. He died in 1955. Presidency College, Calcutta, continues to hold an annual Kuruvilla Zachariah Memorial Lecture in his honour.

Frank Moraes was born in Bombay in 1907, the son of a Catholic Goan civil engineer. From 1927 to 1934 he read history at Oxford University as a member of St Catherine's Society. He was active in student politics and was elected President of the Oxford Majlis and London Indian Majlis (Indian Students' Association) and of the Indian Students' Union in England. Moraes was affected by events such as the General Strike and the economic depression of the late 1920s. He was the editor of an Oxford student newspaper, Bharat. Later he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London, and was called to the Bar.

He returned to India in 1934 and practised as a barrister for a few months. Bored with his profession, he wrote several articles for a subsidiary newspaper of The Times of India. In 1936 he joined the staff of The Times of India as a journalist and in 1938 he was promoted to junior assistant editor. From 1942 to 1945 he toured Burma and China as the newspaper's war correspondent.

Moraes married in 1937. He and his wife Beryl had a son Francis (Dom), who became a well-known poet in the 1960s. During the 1940s Beryl Moraes became ill and was confined thereafter to mental institutions. From 1946 to 1949 Francis Moraes lived in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and worked as editor of The Times Ceylon and The Morning Standard. He also served as Indian correspondent for several British newspapers. In 1950 he returned to The Times of India and became its first Indian editor. In 1957 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Goenka family newspaper, the Indian Express (formerly the Morning Standard). He also wrote articles for various newspapers outside India. Occasionally he broadcast for the BBC and Radio Australia. In December 1972 he retired from the Indian Express. He settled in London in 1973 and died the following year. 

Samuel Satthianadhan was born into a Christian family in Madras, the son of Reverend W. T. Satthianadhan. At the end of the 1870s, Satthianadhan went to Cambridge to study law. He wrote a number of articles and sketches about English University life for Indians.

In 1881, Satthianadhan returned to Madras and married Krupabai. Her father was a convert to Christianity. At the time of marriage, Satthianadhan was headmaster of a school in Madras and then Ootacamund. In 1886, he became assistant to the Director of Public Instruction and then later Chair of Logic and Moral Philosophy at Presidency College, Madras. Krupabai had been educated at Madras Medical College and despite arrangements to go to England in 1877 was unable to because of ill-health. She wrote Saguna, which is considered to be the first autobiographical novel in English by an Indian woman. Krupabai died in 1894. Following her death, Samuel married Kamala. Kamala was also a writer and wrote several stories about Indian Christians.

Janaki Agnes Penelope Majumdar was the daughter of the Hemangini and W. C. Bonnerjee, the first president of the Indian National Congress in December 1885. Born in Calcutta, in June 1886, Janaki, her mother and siblings settled in England from 1888. They soon moved into a house they named 'Kidderpore' in Croydon. Janaki spent 1893-5 back in India and then returned to England and went to Croydon High School for Girls.

She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1904, and was the first Indian woman to receive a degree in Natural Sciences. Following the death of her father in 1906, 'Kidderpore' was sold. Janaki began a teacher's training course at the London Day Training College in 1907 and did voluntary work at the Charity Organization Society's Newington Branch. In 1908, she returned to Calcutta with her mother and met P. K. Majumdar. He had studied at Birmingham University and trained as a barrister in London. They were married in 1909 and lived in Calcutta. She returned to London following her husband's death in 1947.

In 1935, Janaki wrote a family memoir about her childhood, her father and her husband, with a major emphasis on her mother, Hemangini. It tells of a South Asian family living in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This memoir, Family History, was edited by Antoinette Burton and published in 2003.